GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Still warm. Interestingly, yesterday was warmer at higher elevations and cooler down below; today, it's the reverse. Even so, there's moisture riding the edge of high pressure off to the southeast that will keep things mostly cloudy, at least on the VT side, partly cloudy to the east. Temps will range from the mid 60s to the low 70s—still a good bit warmer than normal. Slight chance of a shower in spots this morning, winds continue from the southwest, lower 50s tonight.A strong argument for morning mist. Three of them, actually, with the swirling air lending both beauty and atmospherics to:
This balloon emerging from the fog over Lake Morey yesterday morning, by Susanne Pacilio;
Early morning in Grantham on Tuesday, from Max Bryant;
And a recent morning at Boulder Beach in Groton, VT, from Tammy Willens.
Work set to begin today on 12A bridge over the Sugar River in Claremont. It's an extensive rehab and is going to take a while—it's not due to finish up until next September, NHDOT says in its press release. Fortunately, the inconveniences will be staged: alternating one-way traffic intermittently to start, then a single traffic lane beginning around Nov. 20 (a lot depends on the weather), and then daytime closures next June. There'll be new traffic patterns and detours along the way. Details at the link.NH Exec Council race draws two Upper Valley candidates. They're running for the seat currently held by Cinde Warmington, the lone Democrat on the Council, who's running for governor. Lebanon City Council member Karen Liot Hill announced for the Democratic nomination back in August and had the field to herself until yesterday, when New London businessman and state Democratic finance chair Mike Liberty told the Globe's Steven Porter (paywall) that he's in, too. Which, Liot Hill says, is all to the good: "The more people talking about the Executive Council the better. This is a really important seat.”In Norwich, new beer/wine store to open next Wednesday. For the last few months, Cole Flannery has been readying Half-Step Beer & Wine to take over the space left vacant by the closing of Norwich Wines & Spirits. Now, reports Demo Sofronas in his About Norwich newsletter, Flannery's set an opening date: Nov. 1. "The coolers are (mostly) stocked!" Flannery tells Demo, mostly with VT and regional craft beers, while non-alcoholic brews and ciders are "trickling in this week" and wines are almost set.Hartford school superintendent says he'll retire in 2025; district to launch search now. Though Tom DeBalsi, who's held the post for 13 years, wouldn't talk to the Valley News's Nora Doyle-Burr, he did confirm that he's told the school board he intends to step down at the end of the 2024-25 academic year, Doyle-Burr writes. The board "decided to launch the search now in hopes of finding a replacement a year early, 'providing for a full year of planned transition and continuity,'" it wrote in a request for proposals from search firms. NH legislature convenes today to consider veto overrides. In all, writes NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt in a preview of what's ahead, Gov. Chris Sununu rejected nine bills during the session, ranging from a requirement that kids entering school get tested for lead levels in their blood to an expansion of the limit on how much electricity businesses and institutions generating their own renewable energy can sell back to the grid. DeWitt outlines the bills and Sununu's reasons for vetoing them.NH has its new, official "I Voted" stickers. In all, about 1,000 fourth graders from around the state drew entries for a competition held by the secretary of state's office. The three winners were announced on Tuesday: the Old Man of the Mountains; a cartoon Granite State fishing by a lake; and a moose on a ledge with Mt. Washington in fall. The designs will be printed as “I Voted” stickers and distributed to presidential primary voters in February; the three winners—from Milton, Auburn, and Mont Vernon—get lunch with Secy of State David Scanlan and Deputy Secy Erin Hennessey.VT State Police investigating two separate discoveries of bodies in the woods. The first is connected to the search for two missing Massachusetts men who disappeared under what the VSP termed "suspicious circumstances." Yesterday morning—after a game warden found evidence near the Albany-Eden Road in Eden on Tuesday—police discovered one body; a second was found about a mile away yesterday afternoon. The VSP stopped short of identifying the bodies as the missing men, confirming only that they're being treated as victims of homicide. Meanwhile, in Washington VT, hunters yesterday afternoon found a body in the woods. "Initial evidence gathered on scene," the VSP says in its press release, "indicates the death occurred under suspicious circumstances."To "a life of myriad miseries," Woodside added more. Vermont's now-closed juvenile rehab facility has gotten plenty of ink over the years, but never—until now—a 16-print-page investigation into one horrendous case of mistreatment there and how it was allowed to occur, with a full-on profile of the victim. In Seven Days' longest article ever, former NYT and ProPublica reporter Joe Sexton puts on a master class in investigative work, telling the harrowing story of Grace Welch, who grew up in W. Topsham in a home without running water or electricity, was taken from her family at 11 by the state, and eventually wound up at Woodside. Hard to read, impossible not to. Here's the backstory.Manchester's got its "ReGen Valley," Burlington's got semiconductors. And like its NH counterpart, Burlington was also named one of 31 federal "Tech Hubs" this week. As Seven Days' Anne Wallace Allen explains, "The selection doesn’t mean more federal dollars will automatically flow to Vermont," but it does position companies, universities, and nonprofits to compete for more. The money would "support startup companies and workforce training in the area of semiconductor manufacturing," Allen writes, and in particular the advancement of semiconductor technology using emerging materials.On the other hand, JetBlue drops Burlington. The move, announced yesterday and due to take effect Jan. 4, comes as JetBlue and other airlines work together to reduce flights into New York's JFK Airport to ease the impact of ongoing air traffic control shortages. As a result, the airline said in a statement, "[we] do not see a path to feasibly bringing back this flight." In response, BTV director Nic Longo said the airport is talking to other airlines about expanding service—though Delta confirmed to VTDigger yesterday that it's scaling back there.Oh, but hey: Bragging rights! Vermont—and the Burlington metro area—lead the nation for economic reliance on the candy industry. At least, that's what analysts at the travel site Upgraded Points say, after crunching the numbers on the concentration of employment, payroll, and establishments in the candy industry relative to national averages. They combined those figures into a composite score that puts VT on top: basically, its production is tiny by comparison to, say, CA, but the concentration of candy-related workers is 4.5 times the national average. NH, by the way, isn't far behind. Thanks, maple!"I just feel liberated. Liberated!" You probably would, too, if you'd just hauled your old collection of law books to the dump, gotten rid of five wedding dresses and 74 puzzles, and, overall, downsized from a house you've lived in for 40 years to a small condo. That's what former VT Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Skoglund is doing, and on VT Public, radio producer Erica Heilman catches her in the middle of it. They talk about shedding stuff, about facing what Skoglund calls "not so much mortality... but infirmity," and about the invigorating sense of moving on from an old way of living to a new one.How tortoises are restoring long-lost ecology—slowly. On the island of Española, the population of giant tortoises had plummeted over more than a century from around 10,000 to just 14. In Hakai mag, Syris Valentine writes about efforts begun in the 1960s to revive the species. With their numbers now stronger, the tortoises are bringing back the island’s original ecology. There are fewer woody plants and more grass—which in turn helps the waved albatross, an endangered bird that breeds only on Española. It may take another couple of centuries, Valentine writes, but the transformation is underway.Dance rope. This is no Double Dutch. French jump-ropeuse Mimi Youu has built a dedicated Instagram following through her short, to-the-beat, improv performances—she calls it "Rope O'Clock"—that meld dance moves with screamingly good rope skills. You'll find yourself longing for slo-mo. Burgundy link takes you to an easily accessible Reddit example. If you're on Insta, here's all you could want.The Thursday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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The Window Dressers build for Woodstock and surrounding towns gets underway at the North Chapel today and runs through next Thursday. It will produce interior storm window inserts for households that need them over the winter. All skill levels are welcome, each job is taught, all supplies and materials will be on hand, and there are plenty of things to do besides actually building inserts, including helping out at community potlucks. Sign-up sheet at the link—plenty of roles are filled for particular days, but plenty are not. And while we're on the subject, next month will see Window Dresser builds in the White River Valley (at Bethel Town Hall), in Bradford VT (at the Bradford Fire Station), and for New London and nearby towns (at St. Andrews Episcopal Church).
At 4 today, Woodstock's Norman Williams Public Library hosts newspaper columnist Ann Aikens to talk about her new collection of advice columns, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, and in particular, as the writeup goes, how to "avoid her mistakes—or at least make more interesting ones." Aikens, whose "Upper Valley Girl" ran for two decades in the Standard and is now in the Herald, "holds no advanced degrees in psychology or any other subject": She's just lived life.
At 4:30 today, Dartmouth's history department brings in NYC-based historian (and Dartmouth grad) Mercedes de Guardiola talking about her new book, Vermont for the Vermonters”: The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State. She'll explore the eugenics movement's roots in the 19th century and its impact on VT in the 1920s and '30s, when many Vermonters were separated from their families, institutionalized, and even sterilized. In Carson Hall.
Also at 4:30, the Friends of the Dartmouth Library host historian and former National Library of Medicine exhibition specialist Jill L. Newmark, talking about her book, Without Concealment, Without Compromise: The Courageous Lives of Black Civil War Surgeons—about 14 men who used their medical skills on behalf of the Union cause, including two who'd graduated from Dartmouth Med School. In Berry 180.
At 5 pm today, Upper Valley Music Center and the Lebanon Libraries host a drum circle at the Kilton. Led by percussion instructor Tim Cohen, it'll explore hand drumming techniques and patterns. Bring your own drum if you've got one, or use one of theirs (though supplies aren't endless).
And also at 5, the Dickey Center hosts a livestreamed conversation between center director Victoria Holt and Esther Brimmer, a senior fellow in global governance at the Council of Foreign Relations and former assistant secretary of state, on "Changing Geopolitics and Global Governance in the Arctic and Beyond." At a time of great tension in the Arctic, they'll discuss how global warming and global power struggles are threatening both the indigenous way of life and a longstanding tradition of international collaboration in the region.
This evening at 7, local author and Vermont folklorist Joe Citro will be at Artistree in S. Pomfret for "Dangerous and Endangered Tales"—his recounting of the spookier stories to come out of the Green Mountain State. There'll be a Q&A afterward.
This evening at 7:30, Classicopia kicks off three days of performances of "The Mendelssohns and the Schumanns": works for cello and piano by Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara and Robert Schumann. Pianist Daniel Weiser and cellist Jacques Pierre Malan will perform works by all four composers and talk about the connections between the two families. Tonight at Windsor's Old South Church, then two house concerts Saturday and at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon on Sunday.
And for today...
One of the many ways we here in the Upper Valley are fortunate is that if you can't make it to a concert at one of the smaller venues, odds are excellent that Chad Finer
was
there, and captured it on video. So if you weren't at the Roots and Wings Coffeehouse for Sarah McQuaid's appearance on Saturday, Chad's got you covered. In what someone once described as her "lush, chocolatey" voice,
she introduces
by explaining how she came by her accent: kinda Cornish, kinda Irish, by way of Chicago and Spain.
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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