GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
An in-between day. It'll be a bit cooler than yesterday, with highs in the mid 30s at best. Maybe some sun this morning, but then mostly cloudy, with a slight chance or chance of snow showers in the afternoon as a low-pressure disturbance passes through overhead. Otherwise, things should be fairly calm. Lows tonight in the upper 20s.Reports from all over. No overarching theme to these three photos, just... they're all pretty cool.
You know those hiker group shots filled with sweaty, grinning faces? This isn't one of them. This is a women's hiking group from Grantham atop French's Ledges in Plainfield last week, silhouetted in Terri Munson's highly atmospheric photo.
And speaking of silhouettes, Dan Bornstein came on this near-perfect outline of a raptor's strike on prey in the snow the other day while out snowshoeing.
And speaking of atmospherics, yesterday's skies made for dramatic views, as in this photo from Linda Milman, which she calls "Spring and Winter Collide in Hartford". That fog's over the White River.
The ambitious program of courses, events, workshops, and speakers—announced to coincide with yesterday's campus visit of US Education Secy Miguel Cardona—aims to build "collaborative dialogue skills" and to showcase the college's goal of bridging political and personal differences. It builds on several ongoing initiatives, including the widely lauded faculty conversations on the Middle East. “We seem to have lost the ability—and the will—to listen to and understand perspectives beyond our own,” Arts and Sciences Dean Elizabeth Smith said in the college's announcement yesterday. “Dialogue enables us to recognize and build upon our shared humanity.”
That's the
Valley News
's Alex Hanson with a look at some of what's coming this month. WRJ's Main Street Museum will host 11 bands over the next three weekends, there's a weekend-full of music at Sawtooth, and Billings' film series screens
Joan Baez: I Am a Noise.
AVA's Annual High School Exhibition opens a week from tomorrow, while the Hall Art Foundation in Reading is hosting a retrospective of some 100 "domestically scaled" paintings by Andy Warhol through February. Plus, plays coming at Northern Stage, Shaker Bridge, and the Parish Players. And, actually, there's lots more he didn't have room for.
Is your high school student ready to unlock their creative potential? New England School of the Arts, a project-based arts high school in Lebanon, New Hampshire, is accepting applications for the 2024-2025 school year. NESA’s high school curriculum will immerse students in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math. Apply today at the burgundy link, or
next Thursday, Jan.18th 5:45-6:45pm.
Sponsored by the New England School of the Arts.
"It is not an option for us to fail": For a CRREL team in Antarctica, long workdays, 40-below temps, and nights in a bunkhouse on skis. The reason they can't fail is that researchers over-wintering at the South Pole depend on the team's ability to find and "mitigate" crevasses that would otherwise hamper or block the 1,600-mile supply route from McMurdo Station. For the US Army Corps, Justin Campfield profiles team members Zoe Courville and Hannah Wittmann. “I knew it would be awesome, but it surpassed all expectations,” says Wittmann, who recently got back to Hanover from her first trip.Dartmouth researchers find shrinking snowpack across dozens of river basins in the northern hemisphere tied to climate change. The study by Earth systems scientist Alexander Gottlieb and climate scientist Justin Mankin looked at 169 river basins across the hemisphere, write the AP's Seth Borenstein and Brittany Peterson, measuring snowpack and runoff changes since 1981. They found that when winter temps average below 17.6 degrees F, snowpacks survive; above that, and they don't. The Connecticut and Merrimack river watersheds are among those seeing big snowpack losses.SPONSORED: Organist Andrew Johnson at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College this Friday at 7 pm. The Ives Recital Series presents Andrew Johnson, a graduate student at the Eastman School of Music. Andrew will perform a recital of works by Florence Price, J. S. Bach, César Franck, Felix Mendelssohn, Herbert Howells, Jean Langlais, and others, on the outstanding instrument by Orgues Létourneau of Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec. Located at 40 College St., Hanover. Also Friday: informal organ demo hosted by the college organist at Rollins Chapel at 3pm. Sponsored by CCDC.New Lebanon winter shelter due to open week of Jan. 22. The city had planned to open the facility—on Mechanic Street just opposite Slayton Hill Road—this week, but delays on rehabbing the building have pushed the date back, the VN reports. It will hold 12 shelter beds, two bathrooms with showers, a common area, and an office. The city will hold a ribbon-cutting Jan. 19.NH hospitals are nearly full as respiratory illnesses rise, and some are reinstating mask requirements. That news, reports Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin, came from the state hospital association yesterday, noting that flu, Covid, and RSV are all playing a role. The association did not, however, say which hospitals have added mask requirements back. The increase in respiratory hospitalizations, Timmins writes, "has exacerbated hospitals’ existing challenges to keep beds open due to workforce challenges and limited options to discharge patients to other settings."
Meanwhile, across the river, UVM Medical Center is reviving its mask mandate for staff who work directly with patients, reports VTDigger's Erin Petenko. The step comes, she notes, as the state reported 59 people admitted to hospitals with Covid over the past week, the highest number in a year.
Six VT state troopers from St. J barracks placed on leave after pursuit that ended in Haverhill. The troopers, reports Mike Donoghue in the Caledonian Record (sorry, paywall), were put on leave about a week after a Dec. 22-23 incident involving a possible domestic abuse complaint, during which troopers tracked the suspect to NH. The investigation "reportedly centers on the department’s policies concerning car pursuits and the use of spike strips to deflate tires of unresponsive drivers," Donoghue writes. The case, he adds, also involves the Dec. 23 arrest of a Newbury VT man on DUI charges.Another victim of July's floods: town budgets. At least 60 towns across VT face deficits "because millions of dollars in cleanup bills they paid last year have yet to be reimbursed by the federal and state governments," writes VTDigger's Kevin O'Connor. Middlesex, for instance, faced over $4 million in emergency spending and road repair work; so far, it's gotten confirmation of a coming check for $6,000. "A VTDigger survey found waiting and worries statewide," including in Woodstock, O'Connor writes.The Vermont Huts Association: sprinkling the outdoors with "convenient, immersive" places to stay. And not just creating them, but working hard to get people there—especially people who might not otherwise venture into the backcountry, writes Alissa Frame for UVM's Community News Service. In particular, Frame writes, the association's FOREST program has brought students to several of its huts, is working with community groups, and has joined forces with VT Adaptive—outfitting huts with all-terrain wheelchairs and collaborating on expanding a network of accessible trails.From basic reading and math to college credits, in prison. In Seven Days, Alison Novak writes about a slate of education programs for inmates of Vermont prisons, including literacy basics, high school and college courses, and technical training. Collaboration between the corrections department and education organizations bolsters the success of students both when they’re incarcerated and after they leave prison. "They've thought of themselves in a certain way," says Jeanne Smith, a literary specialist, "and this is going to change how they see themselves and change how their children see them."United Van Lines or U-Haul, people were moving to VT in 2023. For the third year in a row, the state has topped United's list of inbound movers among all states (at the burgundy link), with 65 percent of the company's Vermont moves being inbound. People cited family, lifestyle, and jobs as their top reasons for moving in. NH also saw a majority inbound, at 54 percent. The United demographic is different from the U-Haul demographic, but there, too, Vermont saw growth, ranking 12th last year in net inbound moves (TX and FL were 1, 2), up from 30th the year before. NH dropped from 38th to 40th.“When an organization has, say, financed the overthrow of the government of Guatemala, you would think there might be a speaking fee.” Novelist Johannes Lichtman was invited to speak—without pay—to the CIA’s creative writing group, Invisible Ink. Since there were no restrictions on talking about the experience, he told everyone. Or at least, everyone who reads The Paris Review. The speaking event itself doesn’t sound particularly notable, but the Langley experience—badges, parking follies, the cafeteria, and yes, the gift shop—more than makes up for it.Humpback whales: not too shabby at math. Know what a Fibonacci spiral is? You do, actually, but you might have to see one to remember. It's the visualization of the sequence of numbers where each number is the sum of the two numbers right before it: think spiral galaxies or nautilus shells. Now a photographer using a drone has captured two humpbacks in the Antarctic hunting fish by diving deep, then creating bubbles through their blowholes to stun and trap their prey—in a Fibonacci spiral. Here via ABC News.The Thursday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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At 4:30 pm, Dartmouth's Dickey Center brings in alum Stuart Reid, who's currently executive editor of Foreign Affairs, to talk about his new book, The Lumumba Plot: the Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination. The book tells the story of The Congo's travails following its independence from Belgium, as new prime minister Patrice Lumumba sought international help—including from the Soviets—in facing down a mutiny, only to be deposed in a CIA-backed coup and eventually assassinated. Reid will talk about these events, their impact on the Congolese people, and what US clandestine policy makers learned from them. In-person in Haldeman's Kreindler Conference Hall and livestreamed.
At 5 this afternoon, the Hopkins Center and the Rockefeller Center join forces to present comedian, actress, writer, and performance artist Kristina Wong, in conversation with Rocky's Herschel Nachlis about artists and political discourse—and "the blurry lines between performance, campaigning, and American politics." Wong, a Pulitzer-nominated writer who did a stint as a neighborhood council rep in LA's Koreatown, is in Hanover for her Hop performances of "Kristina Wong for Public Office". Today's event is at Hinman Forum—no charge, but they recommend registering.
This evening at 6, Royalton native Alison Turner (you probably know her better as AliT) will be performing at The Filling Station in WRJ. It's a good chance to catch a local musician with three albums to her name and a determination to make it as a performer on her own terms.
At 7 pm, Still North Books and Bar in Hanover hosts jazz nightwith singer Grace Wallace and her band.
Also at 7, Hop Film gives you a chance to do something you don't often get to do: see Vertigo on a big screen. Hitchcock's 1958 film, now considered one of the greatest films ever made, even though it got a lukewarm reception at first, stars Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak in a psychologically twisty thriller about obsession, murder, and, yep, vertigo. At the Loew.
And anytime, you can catch JAM's video highlights for this week, including: a winter solstice homeless vigil and series of speeches at LISTEN in WRJ; Northeast Wilderness Trust ecologist (and Corinth native) Shelby Perry at last week's Suds & Science talk at the Norwich Inn, talking about what would be involved in "rewilding" the Northeast with native species that used to be common here; Dartmouth grad Caroline Cook reading from her debut novel, Tell Them to Be Quiet and Wait at the Howe; and a collection of MLK-focused tributes from local speakers.
And for today...
Last spring, country singers Rissi Palmer and Miko Marks went on tour together. They'd been friends for years and had carved out separate careers in Nashville, both of them lauded for their voices, magnetic performances, and songwriting, but working together had never been in the cards: As
Nashville Scene
put it at the time, "It’s still almost totally unheard of to see two Black country artists on the same tour... [but now they] both worry less about pleasing the industry’s movers and shakers and more about the process of making music and making a life."
, filmed for PBS'
American Masters
series, with "Still Here", the title track of Palmer's new EP.
See you tomorrow.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
The Enthusiasms Archives. A list of book recommendations by Daybreak's rotating crew of local booksellers, writers, and librarians who think you should read. this. book. now!
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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