GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Snow! For a little while, anyway. Maybe this is the year to take up Zen. So... There's a storm system moving in from the Great Lakes and a disturbance headed up from the Ohio/Tennessee river valleys, followed by a warm front coming up from the south. The result: A chance of snow this morning, a likelihood in the afternoon and evening, mixing with rain and maybe freezing rain in the late afternoon toward the south, evening north. Tonight, it all turns to rain. The high's tonight, mid-30s, as temps climb into the high 30s by dawn.All of which makes it annoying that tonight's the night Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) reaches its closest point to the sun. You may have heard of it as the green comet, discovered only last year and nearing Earth again for the first time in 50,000 years. But never fear: It'll be visible through binoculars and at some point to the naked eye as it brightens over the course of this month. EarthSky's got everything you want to know (burgundy link). CNN adds, "The comet can be distinguished from stars by its streaking tails of dust and energized particles, as well as the glowing green [envelope] surrounding it.Speaking of woodpiles... Which we weren't today but were on Monday, Peter Neri sends along two examples of the art, stacked in Sharon and designed by him and Jeanne McMahan: this year's VW Bug and last year's snake.If you use the New London Park & Ride... Just be aware that NHDOT is going to be repaving and adding 50 parking spaces starting on Monday—and when they start, they'll be closing 27 spaces "for the installation of [a] safety barrier delineating the work site." They expect work to be finished in August.Leb's The Karibbean wants to move, but needs help. If you've been to the Lebanon or Norwich farmers markets, you've almost certainly seen Carline Roberge and Balvin Bowen dishing out jerk chicken and other Jamaican and Haitian specialties for a line of patrons. Their home base on Hanover Street isn't entirely suited to be a restaurant. Now, with the help of The Local Crowd and Vital Communities, they've launched a crowdfunding campaign to help land a new spot in the city. So far, they're about a third of the way to their $10K goal.SPONSORED: Pay what you can at World Premiere Play ‘Bov Water at Northern Stage 1/25 and 1/26. In this powerful new play by Dartmouth alum Celeste Jennings (author of 2020’s Citrus at Northern Stage), four generations of Black women breathe and bathe in a past that’s both intentionally and accidentally forgotten. A touching, vital, and intensely human poetic journey, ‘Bov Water (1/25-2/12 at Northern Stage) aims to answer how do you define yourself if you don’t know your family’s history? Pay What You Can for 1/25 and 1/26 at 7:30 performances only. Visit NorthernStage.org or call 802-296-7000.So, what are you having for dinner at Kuya's at One Main? That's the question for Patty and Travis Burns, who last fall shifted from their small Filipino-inflected sandwich shop in Randolph into One Main Tap + Grill's space on Main Street. Moving to full-on restaurant space has let them broaden the menu—which Travis describes as ”Southeast Asian fusion and American new gastro-pub"—and bring in live music, art for the walls, and a full bar of Vermont brews and spirits. As for what they'd eat themselves? Filipino all the way.Two veteran Upper Valley performers bringing solo shows to the stage. They're Parish Players actor and longtime Hartford and Hanover High teacher Alan Haehnel and innkeeper and comic storyteller Cindy Pierce. Haehnel's My Ode to Joy, which began as a project to write a poem a day, premieres tomorrow at Parish Players’ Eclipse Grange Theatre with poetry mixed with music. Pierce's Keeping It Inn hits the stage at the Briggs Opera House next Friday. In the VN, Alex Hanson talks to both about how these highly personal shows came about.Also coming to the stage, though a little drive away: The Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine. They'll be performing at the Lyndon Institute in Lyndon Center, VT on Jan. 29—one of the first stops on a US tour that includes Carnegie Hall, writes VTDigger's Maggie Reynolds. Kingdom County Productions' Jay Craven had actually begun negotiating a date before the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February, at which point Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and others swooped in, too. One symphony on the original program, Tchaikovsky’s Ninth, has been replaced by Beethoven's Seventh."I beseech the people of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine..." That's CT state Sen. Norm Needleman, who co-chairs the legislature's energy committee, giving a sense of the frustration southern New Englanders are starting to feel toward their northern New England neighbors. At issue: NH and ME's opposition to transmission lines through their states to carry electricity produced by Hydro-Québec. Needleman tells Lisa Prevost of Energy News Network, "Hydropower is the closest available source of clean power. We just have to figure out a way to get it to New England." Prevost details the battle.NH has tried for years to keep police from killing citizens in mental distress, but has a long way to go. Since 2019, officers have been able to take an intensive 40-hour course "to give officers the skills they need to keep themselves and the person in crisis safe in an emergency," report NHPR's Todd Bookman and Sarah Gibson. So far, just 471 of the state’s roughly 2,900 sworn officers have done so. It's not clear whether two Gilford officers, one of whom shot and killed 17-year-old Mischa Fay on New Year's Day, are among them. Bookman and Gibson talk to advocates and others about the system's gaps.In NH, homes grew less affordable in 2022. Median home prices began trending slightly downward in the second half of the year, reports Paul Briand for NH Business Review. But the "affordability index," which measures whether or not a typical family earns enough income to qualify for a mortgage, showed that single-family homes were 32 percent less affordable than in 2021, while condos were 35.7 percent less affordable. The picture might improve, Briand writes, if home prices continue to fall and mortgage rates drop this year.As for Covid...
In NH, the state yesterday reported 385 new cases, a big jump from the 133 the day before, with an average now of 259 cases per day for the week between Jan. 5 and Jan. 11, up 15 percent from the week before. Meanwhile, the state hospital association reported 164 people hospitalized with Covid yesterday, up somewhat from the turn of the year and dramatically since the start of December.
And in VT, writes VTDigger's Erin Petenko, the state is back to reporting "low" community levels of Covidafter its jump to "medium" last week. That's largely because hospitalizations have dropped—40 in the past week, versus 67 the week before. As of yesterday there were 27 Covid patients hospitalized, compared to 49 last Wednesday.
Randolph, Killington among VT towns affected by land-records cyberattack. The Dec. 26 attack on Cott Systems, a public records company that digitizes records for towns and cities in 20 states, has taken down the system that gives the public access to land records in 49 towns around Vermont, Kate O'Farrell reports for VTDigger. Town clerks "have reverted to systems they used years ago for recording and managing land records," O'Farrell writes. Cott has been updating clerks every evening at 6, but hasn't yet given a date the system will be back online.“The gnawing feeling that the system is failing just about everyone.” That’s the takeaway from Alison Novak’s comprehensive Seven Days article on childcare in Vermont. She writes about teachers who are burned out and poorly paid, parents who might lose their jobs because there’s no daycare spot for their children, grandparents who delay retirement to help with costs, and facilities that close because they can’t find qualified staff or earn enough to stay open. It’s a grim picture, and even the efforts of lawmakers can't guarantee it will improve any time soon.With veto-proof majorities, VT's Democratic legislative leaders hope to change negotiating process with governor. In Seven Days, Kevin McCallum writes that Gov. Phil Scott Scott "has tended to wait until the end of the legislative process to negotiate with lawmakers, using the threat of a veto to get what he wanted." Now, House Speaker Jill Krowinski and Senate Pres. Phil Baruth tell him they're hoping Scott will engage earlier. The governor has already announced that for the first time, his administration will hold policy briefings for lawmakers—though his spokesman says that's because of the large number of newcomers.From the ground up, up, up. Appreciating the finer points of the spires atop high rises is usually impossible for those of us on the ground. But not for Chris Hytha, a designer and visual artist. My Modern Met is out with a collection of Hytha’s drone images of the gargoyles, stonework, and glorious details—like the gold-leafed clock and Greek keys on the Custom House in Boston—on iconic skyscrapers from the turn of the 20th century. Equally impressive is the method Hytha developed to capture vertical structures with a drone that wants to shoot horizontally.The Thursday Vordle. With fine word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Today at 6 pm, AVA Gallery hosts freelance digital artist and Spider Man character artist Colton Orr, talking about and demonstrating "Artificial Intelligence: The Future Impact in the Art World." As AVA writes, AI tools "are the biggest shift in art technology since the development of the photograph–and the tech is just getting started. AI enables everyone the ability to create beautiful art and extraordinary new experiences, but many are concerned about its ethical implications and impact on the art industry."
At 6:30 this evening via Zoom, the Etna Library hosts Boston-based librarian Sara Trotta and archivist Zachary Bodnar, talking about the place they work: the Congregational Library & Archives. It began in 1853 with the donation of 56 books from the personal collections of a group of Boston clergymen, and these days houses everything from personal and family papers to Congregational church records to the records of the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Trotta and Bodnar will talk about the collection's history and holdings.
Also at 6:30, Lyme bear expert Ben Kilham will give a lecture on "The Social Black Bear" in Crossroads Academy's Fanger Center Commons in Lyme. In the talk, Kilham will explore how black bears, long thought to be solitary, exhibit social behavior that may parallel early human behavior, with altruism, matrilinear hierarchy, and "a mix of intentional and emotional communication."
At 7 pm, JAM and the Norwich Bookstore host an evening of readings by a quartet of authors. Peter Orner, Dartmouth writing prof and Enthusiasms contributor, will read from and talk about Still No Word From You, his new collection of part-autobiographical part-literary-appraisal (often in the same paragraph) always conversational essays. He'll be joined by poet and Dartmouth creative writing prof Vievee Francis reading from selections of her work, renowned Argentine comic artist Ricardo Siri (who draws under the pen name Liniers) reading from his graphic novels, and Brooklyn-based short story writer Sara Lippmann, reading from her new novel, Lech. If you're planning to go, RSVP soon today so JAM has an idea of how many people to expect.
This evening at 7:15, the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts will host an online "climate conversation" with New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert, Brookfield-based New Yorker cartoonist Ed Koren, and Norwich-based photojournalist Steve Gorman. Kolbert will read from her latest book, Under a White Sky, which looks at the future of nature in the age of climate change, and then will bring in Koren and Gorman to talk about the ideas embedded in their joint exhibition at the museum, Down to the Bone. Here's Mark Singer in The New Yorker on Koren's drawings, and here's a Daybreak writeup on the exhibit when it first opened.
At 7:30 pm, Matthew Libby's Sisters gets the first of two staged readings in the Upper Valley—tonight in Filene Auditorium at Dartmouth, tomorrow, also at 7:30, at Northern Stage's Barrette Center for the Arts, where director Aileen Wen McGroddy has led a weeklong workshop. Sisters, which explores family dynamics through the voices of the very human Matilda and her very AI sister Greta, won the 2022 Neukom Institute Playwright Award. Here's a writeup about the play in The Dartmouth.
And finally, any time, check out JAM's highlights for the week, including Martin Luther King Day tributes from a broad array of Upper Valley residents (and footage of several 1960s speeches by King himself); cookbook author Claire Saffitz at her Norwich Bookstore talk about her latest book, What's for Dessert: Simple Recipes for Dessert People; and archival footage of a 2014 studio session with fast-rising singer-songwriter Noah Kahan, back when he was a student at Hanover High.
And music to start the day...
The White Horse Guitar Club is pretty much what it sounds like—a group of 11 guys in Ballincollig, a suburb of Cork, Ireland, who get together to play guitar and sing Americana. Or, more precisely, the music "
deeply rooted in the fine tradition of songwriting that flourishes in the southern states of America, particularly in Kentucky & Tennessee where the Scots/Irish influence was strong.
" They take their name from the pub where they got their start and, says Joe Philpott, one of the few full-time musicians, "We run it like a club. Our mantra is, like, how much
craic
can we knock out of this? And I think that affects the audience in that they can see there’s an enormous amount of joy and camaraderie in what we do." They've been going for a decade now and have a new album out to mark the occasion.
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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