GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Hope this isn't a sign of things to come this winter. This first storm of the season is moving northeastward, with cold air at the surface and warmer air above producing the kind of mix that, later in the season, will have us cursing. Right now, it's just about being careful on the roads. Still some disagreement on timing, but the general outline's clear: Things started early this morning as snow but will move on to sleet and freezing rain before shifting over to a chance of rain as temps rise, gradually, from around 30 into the mid 30s.So here are some sites that might be useful:
New England 511 for road problems (including highway cams): You can click boxes over to the right for things like driving conditions and roadway weather stations;
Seems like a good day for a spot of color. But a highly unexpected one. Catherine LaTouche was on the old Hanover golf course a few days ago when she noticed some bright orange nestled in the grass. "I had to poke at it a bit to make sure it was a mushroom and not a rosette that had fallen off a Halloween costume," she writes. In fact, it was what's known colloquially as Orange Peel Fungus, for obvious reasons—Aleurea aurantia, if you want to be formal.Online ticket vendor stiffs Parish Players. In fact, reports Alex Hanson in the Valley News, Brown Paper Tickets owes the Thetford Hill theater company $15,000 in money collected from patrons over several shows. Brown Paper, based in Seattle, hasn't returned calls or emails from Parish Players members, has ignored letters from two lawyers working pro bono, and now has cold-shouldered Hanson. Back in 2020, Hanson writes, local community troupe We The People also had trouble getting money back from Brown Paper—which eventually paid, but only after the better part of two years had passed.In Claremont, incumbent city councilor loses seat, requests recount. Which is understandable, since Jonathan Stone, who'd held the Ward 3 seat for three terms, lost just 247-241 to organic farmer Jonathan Hayden—who'd managed to get to the polls Tuesday right after he and his wife brought a newborn son home. Stone, a former police officer in the city, has a date at the NH Supreme Court next week in a case involving his bid to keep internal affairs reports pertaining to alleged misconduct sealed, an issue that Hayden believes helped him in his campaign, Patrick O'Grady reports in the VN.SPONSORED: Celebrate togetherness! Capture a beautiful, warm feeling with your family during Thanksgiving week, or get a jump on holiday-card photos by booking a photography session with Britton Mann. Scheduling a time to meet is streamlined, and the experience will be relaxed and enjoyable. You’ll come away with authentic and connected images. Multiple generations and the family dog are welcome! Sponsored by Britton Mann Photography.Shopping local arts for the holidays. Susan Apel was "despondent" to see holiday ads on tv the second Halloween was done, so she wants to make it very clear in Artful that she is "not exhorting, merely suggesting" some possibilities. She gives mini-profiles of three art galleries to check out—Long River Gallery in WRJ, Artistree in Pomfret, and the newly named Bank Street Gallery at AVA in Lebanon—and a pile of other ideas, including tickets to local performances and gift certificates to classes at AVA or King Arthur Baking."An awesome opportunity for civilians to hear some of the stories from veterans about their service and what it’s meant or done to them." That's Sean Braunstein, a student at VT Law & Grad School, who served in the US Army back in the 2000s, talking to the VN's Liz Sauchelli about Vets Town Hall. After several elsewhere in VT, the Upper Valley will host two, the first tonight at VLGS, (see Heads Up below). "I’m always really affected by the courage and generosity of the speakers,” says Kristen Eaton, deputy director of the organization that sponsors them, founded by author Sebastian Junger.Are there books "that slow you down a little just to look at them even if you’ve no longer any idea what they were about?" That's what happened to Peter Orner the other day when he came on a copy—two, actually—of Carlo Levi's Christ Stopped at Eboli. "I could swear my pulse rate lowered," Peter writes in this week's Enthusiasm about Levi's classic memoir of his internal exile to the poverty-stricken south of Italy in the 1930s. He's been stirred especially by its portraits of the people Levi met—"People I’m determined now not to forget, but if I do it’s lucky that I have two copies to consult.""Rewriting the book club, without the assignments or attitude"—including in Woodstock. That line comes from Betsy McKay's Wall St. Journal (gift link) article on a new national trend in book clubs: reading whichever book you want, alongside others—and then maybe talking about them, or maybe not. The big international version is The Silent Book Club, which has 575 chapters around the world. Woodstock's is What's On Your Nightstand: The Not-A-Book-Club Book Club, at the Norman Williams Public Library. “I will not read a book that other people say you have to read,” says member Leslie Leslie. Thanks, CJ!“Gospel music is joyous. It’s just this big, loud, happy kind of a thing in spite of all the unhappiness that we know we have in the world." That's Karen Harris, a community member of the Dartmouth Gospel Choir and—full disclosure—my wife. She's the community member singled out in Aditi Gupta's story in The Dartmouth about the choir and its members' mosaic of race, ethnicity, generation, and religion, all joined literally in harmony—a chance for students to meet people from all over the Upper Valley and vice versa. Gupta profiles the choir, director Knoelle Higginson's "passionate" approach, and the playfulness and spirit with which members approach the music.Some people who want to fix American democracy think we should look to New Hampshire as a model. New Hampshire isn't so sure. The appeal, writes David Siders in Politico Magazine, is both the size of the NH House and its members' closeness to the people who elected them. So Siders went to Concord—where he found plenty of pols who told him that tiny districts and negligible salaries don't guarantee reasonable politics. "Sometimes," he writes, "that means thoughtful citizen legislators. Sometimes that means people who would otherwise be yelling at the TV at the end of the bar." Siders explores.VT survey finds poor acorn year—which could mean more bears hanging around homes. It's the second year in a row, VT Fish & Wildlife biologists note (here via the VT Daily Chronicle)—though they add that beechnuts overall had an "excellent" year overall, at least in southern and parts of central VT. "In areas where acorns or beechnuts are not abundant many of Vermont’s wildlife species will be on the move looking for alternative food options before winter, and some bears will enter winter dens early," they note.VT food pantries report "dramatic" boost in demand. “We can't say exactly what is happening behind the scenes...leading to this increase, but it is dramatic, and it is present,” Haven executive director Michael Redmond tells Sam Jefferson, with UVM's Community News Service (here via VT Public). Part of the reason, Jefferson reports, is the end of a pandemic-era boost to food stamp funding. "The average loss for a Vermont family was $500 a month, and this was at the same time that food inflation was taking off,” the VT Foodbank's John Sayles says—exacerbated by wages unable to keep pace.VT murder case involving 14-year-old highlights juvenile system "that, practically speaking, does not exist." So writes Seven Days' Derek Brouwer about the case of Hussein Mohamed, accused of shooting another 14-year-old in Bristol while they were passing around a stolen handgun. Part of the challenge, Brouwer reports, is a VT law that puts juveniles who are 14 or older and accused of certain crimes in criminal court. But this case also comes as VT lacks real alternatives for kids. "Teens are being held in conference rooms, sent out of state for treatment or detained in adult prisons. It's pushing family services workers to the brink," Brouwer writes."There's almost no reason why we won't accept a sock back." That's Darn Tough Vermont CEO Ric Cabot, and his company's lifetime guarantee is a rarity in the clothing and outdoor gear world, writes Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days. Even LL Bean now just gives you a year, and you need to provide a receipt. For Darn Tough, you just have to provide a pair of socks (and, ideally, wash them, though returns department staff do wear gloves). But it's good business for the company, Allen reports, earning goodwill, extra sales—and heartfelt sock stories from customers.Space. Up close and personal. At least, from your armchair. The James Webb Telescope has revolutionized stargazing, and this weekend the NYT Mag (gift link) put up a very cool story and scrollable tour about the scope itself and what we're learning about the universe's past and future. Lots of images and explanations that will take you deep into nebulae (including the Pillars of Creation), old exploded stars, Orion, Saturn, the very distant past, an "empty patch" above the Big Dipper that's not empty in the slightest, and much more. You'll want the biggest screen you can use for this, but even small, it's stellar.No acorns? We'll go for the Taco Bell delivery! Actually, it may be a fine acorn year in Orlando, but hey, why grub around in the dirt when there's this bag sitting on the front steps? It's all on a Ring video: Delivery person drops the food off, bear saunters up (and—not on the video—comes back for the drinks), residents open the door to get the food...The Thursday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Today at 4:45 pm, both in-person and via Zoom, Dartmouth's Russian Department hosts Ukrainian historian and novelist Olena Stiazhkina for "The Last Words in the World: Ukrainians and the War Experience." Stiazhkina left her native Donetsk region after the Russian invasion there in 2014 and has two books due out in English: her novel, Cecil the Lion Had to Die, about families living through the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of an independent Ukraine, and Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary, about the 2014 invasion.
At 5 pm, Dartmouth's Rockefeller and Dickey centers host a Veterans' Day conversation with historian and associate dean Matthew Delmont focused on his book, Half American: The Heroic Story of Black Veterans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad. Though segregated in "every aspect" of their service, Delmont said in a PBS interview last year after his book came out, Black soldiers were crucial to the war, especially the Army's supply effort—without them, "Americans couldn't move, shoot, or eat." He'll discuss their experiences with fellow historian Leslie Butler. In-person in Rocky 003 and online.
And at 6 pm (meal at 5:30), the first of two Upper Valley Vets Town Halls this week gets underway at VT Law & Grad School in S. Royalton. A non-political (no debate on US foreign policy) chance for veterans of any era who served in any capacity "to stand before their community and speak for up to ten minutes about what it was like to serve their country. Non-veterans are encouraged to attend and listen....We will simply listen and learn about what it was like to serve in the wars that this nation has chosen to fight." There will be another on Sunday at 1 pm at the Orange East Senior Center in Bradford, VT.
At 7 pm, the Norwich Bookstore hosts three poets—Liza Katz Duncan, Sarah Audsley, and Sebastian Merrill—for readings that "explore a spectrum of identity": Duncan's explorations of the Jersey Shore, home, and family; Audsley's of being adopted from another country; Merrill's of "conceptions of gender and identity."
Also at 7, JAM in WRJ hosts a revival of the "Lampshade Poets" readings first begun at Lampscapes in 2012 by Dave Celone, led tonight by two of the original group—Janet Watton and Pam Ahlen—and "open to all Lampshaders as well as any poet who is interested in reading an original piece or two and willing to be videoed for JAM’s community access."
And anytime, check out what "being videotaped for JAM's community access" actually looks like, with JAM's highlights for the week: a new episode of community producer Barbara Krinitz's "The Magic's in the Music" with a variety of locals, from music therapist Grace Rapetti to songwriter Ted Mortimer to Leb Opera House manager Brian Cook on why music soothes the soul; last week's striking Dickey Center conversation between Canadian political scientist and former Haaretz columnist Miri Sucharov and law professor Omar Dajani, former advisor to Palestinian peace talk negotiators, about the dilemmas posed by the current war and "friendship across differences"; and Dartmouth religion professor and Episcopal priest Randall Balmer on the "plight of Christianity in America" at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth last month.
To bring us into the day...
Joni Mitchell turned 80 on Tuesday, and there's so much to choose from. But let's light upon Mitchell at Gordon Lightfoot's home in the fall of 1975
with Dylan and Roger McGuinn looking on and Lightfoot wandering around in the background. Taken from Martin Scorsese's film,
Rolling Thunder Revue.
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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