GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Partly sunny to start, colder. With breezy winds from the northwest bringing in cooler air, we may get above freezing today, but not by much. Meanwhile, we'll have a mix of sun and clouds, that will change late today as the next system heads our way from the Great Lakes (though it won't arrive until tomorrow). Lows tonight around 20.A rare visitor. Actually, "rare" doesn't even begin to describe it. On his latest blog post, Jim Block features an Audubon's Warbler—which is a western bird, not one that makes it back east very often. In fact, master birder George Clark tells him, “This seems likely to be the first ever sighting of Audubon’s Warbler in Hanover. Pam Hunt has been credited with sighting a male in Lebanon on October 16, 1998.” The Audubon's gets pride of place, but you'll also find cardinals, blue jays, and a fine variety of woodpeckers.It's time for Dear Daybreak! In this week's collection of readers' short posts about life in the Upper Valley: Wendy Fogg-McIntire on the passage of time in Quechee; Mary Cheyne on "quiet places to linger/as the last leaves of autumn/rain down like teardrops"; and a mini photo essay as ice settles in around the Upper Valley, with pics from Sally Harris, Annemieke McLane, and Robin Osborne, and a video from Sharon Wight.61-year-old Canaan resident dies following house fire. The Sunday night fire, reports John Lippman in the Valley News, engulfed the house near the Route 4 intersection with School Street. Canaan Police Det. Amanda Lewis arrived within a minute of the fire department receiving the call at about 11:30 pm, and found Rickey Bailey behind the house with "pretty severe injuries," according to Police Chief Ryan Porter. NH State Fire Marshal Sean Toomey tells WMUR, "All indications are this is an accidental fire, likely cigarettes or a candle." Bailey was airlifted to a facility in Massachusetts, where he died.DH gets go-ahead to take over Hampstead Hospital operations. In a 4-1 vote yesterday, reports InDepthNH's Paula Tracy, the NH Executive Council approved a contract with Dartmouth Health for the hospital network to run inpatient psychiatric care for children and adolescents at the hospital. The lone nay vote came from Democrat Cinde Warminton, who told her colleagues, “it’s a half-baked contract. It just doesn’t have the teeth in it.” Most of the hospital staff had signed a petition earlier asking to remain state employees, which as Tracy notes, isn't in the contract. Joint DH-state press release here.Katrin Tchana on Lyme: "All the people who grew up here, they just can't afford to live here anymore." Tchana, a social worker, therapist, and author with her illustrator mom, Trina Schart Hyman, grew up in Lyme, and in Erica Heilman's newest VT Public episode on class, talks about the shifts the town has seen: She traces the changes of the last few decades to the push to make it a sending town for Hanover High, which in turn drove up property values—"and then the people who were just living here for generations ended up selling their land.... It's had this huge impact on this town."SPONSORED: Give the gift of health for the holidays. Integrative Medicine at APD combines holistic health with traditional medical care to help patients decrease stress, strengthen the immune system, reduce pain, and speed recovery. We offer massage, acupuncture, cupping, energy healing, naturopathic medicine, and craniosacral therapy. You’ll find contact information, providers, and more at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by APD.Get ready for visitors: Travel + Leisure names Hanover, New London among "10 Best Small Towns in New Hampshire". Hanover makes writer Sarah Cahalan's cut for its "postcard-perfect Main Street," views over to Vermont, and "foliage just as stunning as the White Mountains with a fraction of the crowds streaming in to see it." Meanwhile, says Boston-based travel exec Janet Flagg of New London, "Quaint. I hate that word, but it is New London to a T.” Cahalan adds a shout-out to the Barn Playhouse. Says Flagg of NH: “The luxury is in the environment. The luxury’s not in the accommodations."You've probably passed by the Woodstock Inn. Ever wondered what it's like inside? Speaking of luxury, last week Condé Nast Traveler named the venerable inn one of the best hotels/resorts in the world: “Vermont’s most beautiful address," they wrote. "Grand, but not fussy. Of another era, but far from old-fashioned." Now, Boston.com's Kristi Palma offers up a photographic tour of rooms at their immaculate best—no rumpled sheets here—including the Laurance S. Rockefeller Suite, plus the inn's two restaurants.SPONSORED: Help someone right now! At Hearts You Hold, the locally based nonprofit that supports immigrants, migrants, and refugees across the US by asking them what they need, we're flooded with requests for cold-weather clothing. At the burgundy link or here, you'll find people from all over the world living in VT and NH who need work boots, kids' boots, winter coats, and more. Including families from Congo, Guatemala, Haiti, and elsewhere. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.Events at WRJ's Main Street Museum run on volunteers. Now its most prominent one is stepping back. Characteristically, Hartland native Joie Finley is humble about her role: “There’s so many volunteers who work behind the scenes,” she tells the VN's Alex Hanson. “I just happen to be the one who’s on the internet all the time.” But there's going to be much less of that now as Finley, caring for her mom, takes less of a role in the events that, as Hanson puts it, have made the MSM "a buzzing hive for a range of arts programming that likely wouldn’t have a home elsewhere in the Upper Valley."With 90 minutes notice, police scramble to organize welcome-home escort for injured St. J police captain. Jason Gray was released from DHMC late yesterday, just five days after being sprayed with birdshot as he responded to a domestic violence call. "Despite the pouring rain," reports Dana Gray in the Caledonian Record, "well-wishers lined Main Street in front of the Public Safety Building. Community members, police officers and firefighters stood outside and cheered as Gray and his caravan of about 30 police vehicles rolled by." Gray says he can’t see out of his right eye and vision in his left eye is blurry.New film on Christa McAuliffe takes a different approach. “So much out there was about the [1986 Challenger explosion] itself, and there wasn't a lot about her life and who she was before the tragedy.… I felt like this was an opportunity,” Kathleen Young, the film’s producer, tells the Globe's Steven Porter (newsletter, no paywall). Young, who grew up in NH, focuses on McAuliffe’s time as a teacher, her selection for the shuttle mission, the September dedication of her statue outside the State House, and interviews with former students. The film debuts on NH PBS tonight at 8:30.Things get interesting on NH landfill rules. So. Remember how last month, a legislative panel sent the proposed regs back to state environmental officials for a re-do after lots of citizen complaints that they were too lenient? Now, reports Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin, the agency has sent the rules back to the panel. Unchanged. Instead, it tried to clarify how it responded to public comments on the regs. So now, legislators have to decide what to do: approve or object to the rules. They could still go into effect either way, but an objection would make them more challengeable in court. DeWitt explains.Discovery of illegal dorms for roofing workers brings to light growing role of migrants in VT construction trades. There's a lot to unpack in Derek Brouwer's Seven Days piece on the dozens of mattresses and bunk beds inspectors found in Colchester buildings used by the fast-growing Vermont Construction Company. Some workers, a Migrant Justice spokesman says, are Ecuadorians with roofing expertise; others are Mexican farmworkers seeking steadier work. One veteran roofer tells Brouwer that "hiring subcontractors has become a matter of survival, given the lack of local workers."Peace signs of Vermont. Photographer Shawn Dumont "was on a back road near Tunbridge when he saw the sign. 'No to war,' it said, above a yellow-and-blue peace symbol." And so, writes Sasha Goldstein in Seven Days, Dumont began a quest, hauling his two kids along the state's back roads every weekend ooking for more. What he found, he tells Goldstein, wasn't just peace signs, but the back-to-the-landers who'd put them up, since he and his kids would knock on each door. Vermont today, he says, is "all because of these people. The fruit is all here because of the seeds they planted."
A pine tree grows for two years in two minutes. The timelapse is by the YouTuber Boxlapse, and starts with a pinecone, then at seven days a seed and some soil in a pot, and, right around 15 days, the first slight bulge in the soil. It's a full-on seedling by day 27... and then, to swelling music, just keeps going. It's a remarkable thing to see.
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Fleece vests, sweatshirts, head-warming beanies... Strong Rabbit has updated the Daybreak page to keep up with the changing weather. Plus, of course, the usual: t-shirts, long-sleeved tees, the Daybreak jigsaw, those perfect hand-fitting coffee/tea mugs, and as always, "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Check it all out at the link!
Dartmouth Earth Sciences prof Erich Osterberg and Geography prof Jonathan Winter join forces to talk about "
changes in climate and weather, how natural systems and communities have been affected, and what can be done to make our region more resilient in a future of increasingly common extreme natural phenomena." No charge, 5:30 pm.Trio Lakou at Fable Farm. The Barnard fermentory's Rumney Sessions near the end of the year with a trio from the larger Haitian collective Lakou Mizik.
Local, organic food and drink in the Rumney Barn, fires out in the orchard... Everything starts up at 5:30 pm.
The club's every third Thursday, and tonight, MSM founder David Fairbanks Ford hosts a film about... a typeface. Helvetica "
is always around us, regularly helping us to learn new information and navigate the worlds around us, and yet it somehow exists outside of conscious attention," the Coop's team writes. Not any more! 7 pm.
Cassie and Maggie MacDonald are sisters who grew up in Nova Scotia and now perform as a folk duo, with Cassie on fiddle and her younger sister on piano and guitar. They'll be bringing their own "twist on classic Christmas songs, ancient carols, and a sassy ode to Vixen, the most mysterious of Santa’s reindeer." 7:30 pm.
The couple are kind of a powerhouse on the Maine music scene, both of them singer-songwriters, with Reid known for his finger-picking guitar-playing (and skill on dobro, mandolin, mandocello, bouzouki, and six-string banjo), and Anderson for her fiddling. 7:30 pm.
There's producer Barbara Krinitz talking songwriting and performing with Tommy Crawford, Jamie Gage, and Dana Cooper; the collected works of the VT Center for Ecostudies' "Suds and Science" series of talks (which start up again in a few weeks); and, in case you missed it, JAM's series on how to take Advance Transit to everything from bookstores to shopping to art galleries and studios.
Yeah, sure, what the heck...
Here's Lakou Mizik (Trio Lakou tonight at Fable Farm) i
—and a pride of inline skaters.
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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