GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny and warming up. It's not going to be anything near as warm as it'll be in a few days, but we've got a strong ridge of high pressure just settling in for a spell, and today, at its start, we're due clear skies, highs reaching the mid 50s, and calm winds from the north. Patchy frost tonight with lows around 30.Looking up. Because it's always rewarding.
For starters, there's this truly stunning dawn from Bob Wagner in Bridgewater.
And the almost painterly night sky over Strafford, with the moon illuminating the clouds, from Annemieke McLane.
And this moment in E. Thetford Tuesday, when Derek Burkins was out walking his dog and a shower passed to the north as the sun was dropping below the hills and, suddenly, a rainbow picked up the colors of the foliage...
Time for Dear Daybreak. In this week's gathering of reader-submitted vignettes and short items about life in or related to the Upper Valley, a shout-out to fall from Olivia Piepmeier; not one, but two astonishing coincidences, one from Judith Hertog and the other from Krista Karlson; and a pantoum from Alexandra Corwin. She explains what that is... Talk about poetic discipline!In Hartford, voters will get to weigh in on Fairview Terrace. It's been years since traffic could travel between Gates Street and Fairview Terrace, after slope erosion made that stretch of roadway in downtown WRJ unsafe. Now, reports Christina Dolan in the Valley News, the slope's also got town officials fretting about "future landslides into downhill properties," as town manager John Haverstock puts it. They're proposing a $4 million bond, on the Nov. 5 ballot, to stabilize retaining walls and reopen the road to one-way traffic downhill. Dolan describes what would happen; town fact sheet here. Public hearing 10/29.Covered bridge in Lyme to close next week. The Edgell Bridge, which spans Clay Brook a bit south of where the northern end of River Road hits Route 10, will close for repairs starting Oct. 23; they're expected to take about four months, reports the VN's Liz Sauchelli. There'll be a few weeks of overlap before the Lyme-E. Thetford bridge reopens Nov. 15, and though some townspeople are concerned, others are sanguine. “I love that New Hampshire values its covered bridges," says Loren Wehmeyer, property manager of the Home on the Connecticut inn—whose guests will be affected by the closure.Ken Cadow wins Kirkus Award for Gather. The Oxbow High principal, a finalist last year for a National Book Award, was one of three winners announced in NYC last night by the prestigious book-review journal. The $50K prize is "one of the richest annual literary awards in the world," Kirkus writes in its press release. Novelist Percival Everett won the fiction prize for James, and Adam Higginbotham the non-fiction award for Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. Of Gather, the jurors wrote, "Humor, grace, and tenderness bring to life this beautifully realized story." SPONSORED: Mark your calendars for the third annual Winterfest Artisan Fair on Saturday, December 7! Hosted by Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, this festive event features a wide selection of handmade jewelry, pottery, ornaments, leatherwork, and much more. It’s the perfect opportunity to find one-of-a-kind holiday gifts while supporting local artisans. Learn more about the fair and about becoming a vendor at the link or here. Sponsored by APD.Crystal Blue Persuasion. Yep, it's a Tommy James and the Shondells song. It's also the name of a blueberry-flavored ice cream made by Shelburne-based Sisters of Anarchy, whose pints, ice cream sandwiches, and single-serve cups have been colonizing Upper Valley retail shelves everywhere from the Co-op to WRJ's Sunrise Farm. In her debut for Daybreak, Kate Oden—who was first drawn to the ice cream by the brand name—writes about how owners Becky Castle and Bob Clark ("Sisters of Anarchy" refers to their three children) focus on growing their own ingredients and keeping things sustainable.There's so much out there in the woods this week! The beautiful turkey tail fungus engulfing rotting deciduous trees, the equally eye-catching violet-toothed polypore, white-throated sparrows headed south, the colorful autumn leaves of hobblebush, and both downy rattlesnake-plantain and its cousin, checkered rattlesnake-plantain. Which, Elise Tillinghast writes in this third-week-of-October edition of Northern Woodlands' "This Week in the Woods", are actually orchids. With very cool leaves.NH Supreme Court justice indicted for allegedly trying to influence criminal probe into her husband. NH AG John Formella announced yesterday that Barbara Hantz Marconi, who was nominated for the court by Gov. Chris Sununu in 2017, was indicted by a Merrimack County grand jury on seven counts, after appealing to Sununu over the summer to intervene in an investigation into her husband, NH Ports and Harbors director Geno Marconi. “We will fight the charges to the fullest extent permitted by the law," Hantz Marconi's attorneys responded. The AP's Steve LeBlanc reports.After NH trail overcrowding this past weekend, some fallout. You'll remember the "chaos" that overtook the Artist's Bluff Trail in Franconia Notch State Park after hordes of leaf-peepers descended on it over the long holiday weekend, with one NH hiker sharing photos of the bottlenecked trail to the top.
Well, Sununu yesterday dismissed the idea that the state was in any way overwhelmed or unprepared, reports WMUR's Adam Sexton. "New Hampshire is a tourism state. Bring us your crowds. We can handle it," he said. "Any idea that things were chaotic or unsafe, I don't buy that at all." And at an Exec Council meeting, reports InDepthNH's Paula Tracy, he took WMUR itself to task for its coverage, "which he said left the viewer with thoughts that the state might try to limit visitors."
Meanwhile, in a statement yesterday, reports WBZ's Neal Riley, Franconia Notch State Park said, "The majority of the crowding and congestion was isolated to a few locations within the park. The Division of Parks and Recreation will be reviewing existing management strategies, including expanded parking, shuttle services, prearrival communications, and collaborative stewardship with our partners to be sure we can accommodate everyone who wants to visit."
“For the most part I feel good about where we are and where we’ve come.” While the rest of us bemoan the state of the natural world, Eric Orff, who has spent much of his time over the past 50 years in the natural world in NH, is all in all more positive. Orff retired from a career as a wildlife biologist, writes Granite Geek's David Brooks, and has just released “What’s Wild,” a collection of essays written over several decades. Brooks looks at some of the reasons for Orff’s optimism: an increase in turkeys and bears, a cleaner Merrimack River, and the return of terns to the Isles of Shoals.In NH, towns are starting to embrace ADUs. It helps to face a housing crisis, of course, but for a long time, many towns around the state took a dim view of the idea that a homeowner should be able to add a smaller "accessory dwelling unit"—an in-law suite, a garage apartment—so other people could live on the property, too. Now, writes Stateline's Kevin Hardy (via NH Bulletin), that attitude is changing. He looks in particular at Newmarket, which has eased zoning regs to make them easier, as well as at Dover, Keene, and Peterborough—which has taken to showing off how little they change neighborhoods.In Vermont, drugs come north, guns go south. Former NYT reporter Joe Sexton is up with an eye-opening piece in Seven Days on ways in which drug gangs in CT and MA use VT's tolerant gun laws to enlist "straw" purchasers who buy handguns up here and send them south—often in exchange for drugs. Officials at every level, Sexton writes, "say it is impossible to estimate just how many illegally purchased guns are flowing out of Vermont; the guns they have recovered represent a fraction of the total." Told through one buyer, it's a story about the gun trade, the opioid epidemic, drug traffickers, and the cost to the state. Here's publisher Paula Routly on how the story came about.Pressed by local officials, lawmakers, and social service providers, Scott administration will set up three family shelters. As Carly Berlin writes for VTDigger and VT Public, it's the first concrete step the state has taken as hundreds of individuals and families have been evicted from the motels they were staying in as part of VT's emergency housing program. Some of the 724 households that hit their motel-stay limits as of Tuesday have resorted to pitching tents. Much remains unclear about the shelters, Berlin notes, other than that they'll be in Williston, Waterbury, and Montpelier.Punishment on top of punishment: the true cost of paying a debt to society runs crushingly high. NYT video producer Kirk Semple wore a point-of-view camera into a Michigan county jail to take us step by step through “the nonstop barrage of absurd fees and excessive costs that pummel people moving through the criminal justice system.” Bail, the fee for a public defender, the $40 filing charge, random court fees, mandatory “contributions” to ten funds: They're just the start. In prison, room and board, copays for a doctor visit, and phone calls rack up more debt—“predatory administrative fees that lurk in the margins of the judiciary process," the Times says. (Gift link.)38. That's how many dogs Rudy Mitchell walked at once last month in Goesan, South Korea, setting a new world record. It's a sight to see.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
we
know what's good! Strong Rabbit's Morgan Brophy has come up with the perfect design for "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Plus you'll find the Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, as well as sweatshirts, tees, a fleece hoodie, and, as always, the fits-every-hand-perfectly Daybreak mug. Check it all out at the link!
Perla's been on the NYC scene for decades, and has performed with
the likes of Chick Corea, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, and lots of others.
He'll be in the East Reading Room at 12:30, with Dartmouth faculty Michael Zsoldos (saxophone), Tim Sessions (trombone), and Jesse Taitt (piano).
Today at 1:20 pm, the debut screening of Greg Stott and Nick Natale's new documentary, The Last Ice: Glacial Lake Hitchcock.
Unfortunately, it's a drive: It's showing at the New Hampshire Film Festival in Portsmouth. But Stott, who teaches science at the Richmond School in Hanover, and Natale, who's from Hartland and directed the film, root much of the film about the ancient glacial lake right here: in the Connecticut River Valley, featuring local landmarks, regional scientists, and authors. They're hoping to set up a local screening.
Sponsored by Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center, Rhodes will be talking about the impact of current foreign policy on this year's election, and the potential impact of the election results on American foreign policy. 5 pm, in-person in Filene Auditorium as well as online, registration encouraged for both.
Grames, who's editorial director at NYC's Soho Press, sets things going in her new novel with a flood in an Italian village that unearths a skeleton that had been buried beneath the post office. In a book that is rooted in part in family history,
, "Grames’s writing transports the reader from the novel’s first paragraphs." 7 pm.
. A celebration of Indigenous fashion, creativity, expression, and design. Both in-person and
a short film about artist Laura Di Piazza and the work and inspiration behind "Litterae," her exhibit of calligraphy and abstract art at the Howe; the Anonymous Coffeehouse tribute show for Chad Finer and Barbara Krinitz last month, with folk and bluegrass artists Andrew Brozek & friends performing; and Seyed Hossein Mousavian of Princeton, Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution, and moderator Victoria Holt of the Dickey Center at Dartmouth talking about Iran and Israel.
We're going to go back a ways today.
All the way back to 1939, in fact, when the Benny Goodman Sextet first recorded "Going Home". There were several ways in which the sextet was ahead of its time, not least that it was one of the first high-profile bands led by a white musician to include Black musicians (it wasn't until eight years later that Jackie Robinson first put on a glove for the Brooklyn Dodgers). Though Goodman's sextets had a rotating crew of players, they had three mainstays: Goodman, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, and guitarist Charlie Christian. And one of the
other
ways in which the sextet was ahead of its time was that Christian was a pioneer on electric guitar—which made it possible for the guitar to feature in a jazz piece, not just serve as a barely audible rhythm section. In other words, there's a line from Charlie Christian, who died tragically of tuberculosis two years after "Flying Home" was first recorded, to rock.
Goodman and Hampton aren't too shabby, either.
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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