GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
As we wait: Calm, mostly cloudy. The storm system that's been commanding headlines on its march across the US finally gets here tonight, but for today, we can ignore it (though you might want to do a little power-outage prep). Winds from the east, temps climbing toward 40 by early afternoon, some sun, but mostly clouds. There's a chance of snow starting this evening, but it's more likely to arrive after midnight.Total snowfall forecasts for the storm have been going up...
Here's the current forecast for VT (and the Adirondacks), with anywhere from 7-12 inches expected on the VT side of the river;
And for NH and ME, with similar totals expected on the NH side.
A whale of a sunset. That's how Kit Hood describes the view overlooking Randolph Tuesday evening—and truer words were never written.And an icy sunset. As the ice settles in over Lake Fairlee, from Ridge Satterthwaite.Faced with everyday demand, Listen cancels Christmas Day Dinner. “We’re so busy meeting the demands in the food pantry and the dining hall,” program director Angela Zhang tells the Valley News's Liz Sauchelli. “Our dining hall is hitting new records every month.” That rise in demand for the organization's services, Sauchelli writes, comes as staff are stretched by a pandemic-era decline in volunteers and Listen has struggled to source food reliably. Al Michalovic, who with his wife Dana ran the dinner until 2018, tells Sauchelli it can take two and a half months to plan the once-a-year meal.With its "tuition reset," Colby-Sawyer is part of a wave of smaller colleges bringing tuition in line with reality—and hoping to fill classes. You may remember that back in September, the college announced it would be slashing tuition in half. Well, that move caught the eye of the NYT's Anemona Hartocollis, who highlights the New London school in a piece on the trend. The reasoning, President Susan Stuebner tells her, is straightforward: “How many families are we not in conversation with because they see the sticker price and say, ‘Not for me’?” Hartocollis explores the issue. (Thanks, MT!)SPONSORED: At Alice Peck Day, you’ll have more than a happy first day — you’ll have a happy and rewarding career. From the front lines to the back offices, Alice Peck Day employees love what they do—and it shows in every step of a patient’s healthcare journey. Open positions include waitstaff, sleep tech, physical therapist, registered nurse, respiratory therapist, senior director of human resources, and more. Join our friendly community hospital today! Sponsored by APD. VT AG's office settles with Bradford's Upper Valley Services over neglect allegations. The allegations against the organization, which works with developmentally disabled adults, date back to 2017-18, and involve the drowning death of one client, the basement confinement of another, and the hiring of a staffer who should have been disqualified. Each case, the AG's office said yesterday, stemmed from "inadequate staff training and case management"; the agreement mandates reforms that include a new case management oversight position and a clinical review committee.So, what are you having for lunch at Phnom Penh Sandwich Station? That's the question for Sarin Tin, who with his wife Lay Yi started out with a farmers market stall selling spring rolls and curry, expanded to a food truck, and then in 2016 opened PPSS's beachhead in Lebanon, the first Southeast Asian spot in town. Their WRJ location in the old Polka Dot followed in 2018. Their Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Thai-inflected food has built a loyal following on both sides of the river, and Sarin talks about what goes into making it all work. Plus, of course, his lunch choice, which didn't even used to be on the menu."At a certain point I just thought, I would much rather stay in Cornish and read a book, go for a hike in the woods, cook dinner." It's not that New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss leads a hermit's life; neither did a previous owner of his Cornish address, J.D. Salinger. But as Bliss's fame peaks, thanks to his collaboration with Steve Martin on a 2020 cartoon collection and, last month, Martin's memoir of Hollywood told through Bliss's drawing, getting away from the world has its appeal. In Seven Days, Dan Bolles delivers a full-on profile of Bliss and his work, from childhood on, accompanied by many fine cartoons.After years of discouraging news about public views of American democracy, some optimism. That's based on findings by Bright Line Watch, whose four co-directors include Dartmouth political scientists John Carey and Brendan Nyhan. In a survey of political scientists and ordinary Americans following November's midterm elections, they found that public confidence in vote-counting at every level has grown, and belief in election fraud has dropped—most notably among Republicans. The survey also touches on other measures of adherence to democratic norms. Plenty of detail at the link.And Covid hospitalizations... Are going up in both states.
In NH, the state yesterday reported 198 new cases, with an average of 186 198 cases per day for the week between Dec. 8 and Dec. 14, down 4 percent from the week before. Meanwhile, the state hospital association reported 99 people hospitalized with Covid yesterday, compared to 73 last Wednesday.
And in VT, reports VTDigger's Erin Petenko, the state continues to report "low" community levels of Covid (though it has upped the flu rate to "moderate"), but weekly hospitalizations have doubled over the week before, from 31 to 60. As of yesterday, 34 people were hospitalized with Covid. Overall, the state reported 448 Covid cases in the past week, a slight bump from the 439 the week before.
NH enlists volunteers to help it track its butterfly populations. The state, writes Amanda Gokee in NH Bulletin, knows very little about how changes in the environment are affecting the 100-plus species that live there, mostly because it's never collected baseline data. There's concern, Gokee writes, "that butterflies that live in rare habitats, such as pine barrens, wetlands, bogs, or high elevation alpine, could decline as their habitat disappears"—but the state can't know how to address the problem until it knows what's happening. So state wildlife biologists are asking the public's help in reporting sightings."I want the phone to ring because I want them to know I'm here. But every time it does, it means somebody's in crisis." That’s Chantelle Blackburn, a call-taker at one of Vermont’s two 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifelines (she's in St. J), where calls in August doubled over the same month last year—and "high risk" calls were fully half of those that came in from July to September. It's an intense job, and Seven Days’ Colin Flanders joined her on a 13-hour overnight shift to learn how she brings callers back from despair, why she sticks with such harrowing work, and why a slow night doesn’t always mean everyone is okay.639 feet, 7 inches? I'll see you and raise you 5.43 seconds. You may remember that back in May, Bellows Falls High School senior (and lifelong Circus Smirkus performer) Ariana Wunderle set a new Guinness Record for the longest tightrope walk in high heels. Which is how she now finds herself in a UPI article on "The 10 oddest Guinness World Records" for 2022. They include the most eggs balanced on the back of a hand (18), the fastest time to find and alphabetize all 26 letters in the alphabet from a can of soup (2 minutes, 8.6 seconds), and, at 5.43 seconds, the fastest time to assemble Mr. Potato Head.The Thursday Vordle. With a newsy word from yesterday's Daybreak.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
Sweatshirts, hats, and, of course, coffee/tea/cocoa mugs. It's all available thanks to Strong Rabbit Designs in Sharon. Check out what's available and wear it or drink from it proudly! Email me ([email protected]) if you've got questions.
This evening at 6 in WRJ, JAM hosts its second bi-monthly storytelling circle, with a theme of "If only...". Anyone in the Upper Valley, seasoned storyteller or outright beginner, is invited to join to share a five-minute true personal story: "No competition, no judgment, no lecturing, no ranting… Just share a story about something that happened to you and listen to other people’s stories," write moderators Judith Hertog and Michelle Rogge. In the Junction Arts & Media space in the former Newberry Market.
And right next door, starting at 6:30, Interplay Jazz brings its monthly jam session to the Briggs Opera House. Interplay's David Westphalen writes, "Starting at 6:30 PM, we encourage instrumentalists to participate in a free flow to develop new music and play together. Continuing at 7:30 PM, vocalists are encouraged to join in. Bring well known jazz standards, popular songs or an original tune in your key to play with the instrumentalists, creating arrangements and improvisation in real time!" And both musicians and non-musicians are welcome to hang out and listen.
If you feel like a bit of a drive, at 7:30 this evening the Flying Monkey in Plymouth, NH hosts veteran and endlessly creative LA-based rockers Los Lobos, who've been plying concert halls and recording studios for 49 years now. Astoundingly, there are still some seats left.
Or at 8 pm, New London's Flying Goose brings in Harvey Reid and Joyce Anderson for its annual Chrismas concert. For decades, Reid and Anderson, who live in York, ME, have traveled New England's folk-oriented pubs and coffeehouses. "Joyce and I are modern troubadours, which for some reason is hard for some people to understand, presumably because it doesn’t scale up in size that well," Reid said a few years back. They're eclectic: folk, country, classical, blues, ragtime, rockabilly, Celtic, bluegrass, and more.
Starting today and running through Dec. 29, Sustainable Woodstock presents an online screening of the 2021 feature documentary Inhabitants, which follows five Native American communities working to restore traditional land management practices: a Hopi farmer in Arizona growing crops without depnding on rainfall, Blackfeet herders in Montana restoring lost buffalo herds, Karnuk people in Northern California who have perfected controlled burns in their forests, and Hawaiian natives reclaiming commercial plantations.
And whenever you feel like it, JAM's got some highlights for the week, including the first in a series of poetry readings hosted by the Black Heritage Trail of NH, in which UNH prof Dennis Britton talks Nikki Giovanni, Rudy Francisco, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Maya Angelou with featured poet Theo Wilson; JAM programming director George Spencer reads O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" with visuals by Chico Eastridge; the early December Hartland Holiday Variety Show, with music, comedy sketches, and singing; and Devon Blanchard brightens Lebanon with his annual holiday light show.
And to launch the day...
Afro Fiesta (Mermans Mosengo and Jason Tamba, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, now living in South Africa), along with Jamaica's I-Taweh and Spanish guitarist Diego Garcia, who goes by Twanguero,
thanks to Playing for Change.
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.
Want to catch up on Daybreak music?
Want to catch up on Daybreak itself (or find that item you trashed by mistake the other day)? You can find everything on the Daybreak Facebook page
, or if you're a committed non-FB user,
.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! Subscribe at no cost at:
Thank you!