GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Warmer, snow first thing, turning to rain. There's a system moving through today from the west, bringing a likelihood of stuff falling from the sky. With temps getting up above freezing pretty quickly this morning, snow showers will become rain showers (with a chance of freezing rain in the pockets that are slowest to warm up). Winds today from the south, some gustiness in the afternoon, high in the lower or mid 40s. Things may end as snow again overnight, upper 20s to lower 30s.ECFiber lands $11.8 million in funding to expand network. The money actually comes in two piles: $9 million from municipal bonds, and $2.8 million in funding from VT's Community Broadband Board. Most of the bond money will go toward constructing lines in Norwich, Woodstock, Wilder, WRJ, and Quechee, according to a press release from the 31-town consortium. The state money will go toward designing the network in 8 new towns: Topsham, Newbury, Washington, Corinth, Bradford, W. Fairlee, Fairlee, and Windsor.Meanwhile, Grafton County broadband effort faces challenges from incumbent providers. In all, reports Amanda Gokee in NH Bulletin, Comcast, Atlantic, Charter, and Consolidated Communications have challenged the county broadband committee's efforts in nearly 3,200 census tracts as it seeks $26.2 million in federal funds for fiber. The companies say they already provide service there. Frustrated residents disagree. “If they are saying we have adequate service, they are wrong. We do not,” Dorothy Heinrichs, a resident of Orange, tells Gokee. Covid cases building at D-H and affiliates. As of yesterday morning, the hospital network reports, DHMC was treating 33 patients with the illness, Cheshire Medical Center in Keene had 15, APD had 1, Mt. Ascutney had 4, and New London Hospital had 2. The hospitals are also preparing to reduce or delay non-emergency surgeries—a step UVM Medical Center has just taken—if necessary to expand beds available for Covid patients. Meanwhile, reports WCAX, Valley Regional in Claremont is at 100 percent capacity.SPONSORED: White River Family Practice needs a clinical practice manager. This is an exciting opportunity to lead an award-winning family medicine group into the next decade—a cohesive group of physicians, nurse practitioners, and support staff committed to offering compassionate care. Our relatively small size allows us to provide care with a personal touch and be nimble enough to navigate the ever-changing medical landscape. Looking for an experienced RN or AAP with experience leading a clinical team of 5 or more people. Email [email protected]. Sponsored by White River Family Practice.A plan to end the homeless-RV shuffle? A few weeks ago, the Valley News's Jim Kenyon wrote about an RV created by advocates to house Hartford's homeless—which has to move every two weeks. Now, Kenyon reports, advocates and Hartford officials have unveiled the outlines of a plan to amend the town's zoning ordinance to allow RVs to be used as sleeping quarters year-round. At a workshop on Monday, officials made clear there would still be strictures: one RV with up to two families per property; access to potable water and a bathroom; and fire-safety inspections.What's it like getting ready for hockey season? Not for the teams, mind you, but for the people who prep the ice? Well, now you can see for yourself: Dartmouth's Robert Gill has created a time-lapse video of the athletics department ground crew resurfacing and then painting Thompson Arena.$330,400. For a sewing desk. Of course, it was made by the Enfield Shakers and remained in pretty much the same condition as when they sold it off in 1920. It was the star of the day at the pre-Thanksgiving auction at William Smith Auctioneers in Plainfield, reports Rick Russack in Antiques and the Arts Weekly. Other locally made furniture drew five-figure bids. Perhaps more notable, this was Smith's first online-only auction; pre-Covid, his trademark was in-house auctions, which could draw as many as 400 bidders. All told, Russack writes, "more than 2,000 potential bidders were involved" with the online sale.Vireo-mania in WRJ. "It’s not often that vireos steal the birding spotlight, but Windsor County birders have been kept on their toes in recent weeks," writes the VT Center for Ecostudies' Chris Rimmer. First, there was VT's first-ever (noticed) Bell's Vireo in Woodstock. Then, just before Thanksgiving, birder Kyle Jones noticed a White-Eyed Vireo behind the Amtrak station in WRJ. The species breeds in southern New England and "should by all rights have been in the southeastern U.S. or Mexico by that date," Rimmer writes. It relocated south to nearby Ratcliffe Park, where birders spent the next few days eyeing it.The Kilhams' bears team up with researchers to solve early hominid mystery. Hang with me here. In 1978, paleontologist Mary Leakey and her team found the oldest evidence of upright hominid walking in Tanzania; nearby footprints were dismissed as a bear's. But in 2019, another group excavated those footprints, and, with help from a group of Dartmouth grad students, determined they were likely hominin, writes Dartmouth News' Amy Olson. The researchers then worked with Lyme's Ben and Phoebe Kilham to study upright walking in bears—which doesn't match what the prints show.After months of work, divided VT Climate Council approves action plan. The vote was 19-4, which doesn't seem divided, until you notice that the nays came from the four leaders of state agencies who sit on the council. They objected to "the overzealous process" in the Global Warming Solutions Act. Advocates praised the plan's recommendations, which include a clean heat standard, a "robust weatherization program that prioritizes historically marginalized Vermonters," expanded EV charging stations, and investing in changed ag management practices, reports VTDigger's Emma Cotton."I've always known I wanted to have a career helping people in some way." Emily Kenyon serves is the poverty law fellow for VT Legal Aid. As Ken Picard writes in Seven Days, the two-year fellowship is designed “to address the unmet legal needs of low-income Vermonters.” Kenyon is the first native Vermonter to earn the fellowship, and her task is both timely and towering: representing those who have struggled to receive—or, in many cases, keep—their unemployment benefits through the pandemic. The system, she says, is “riddled with procedural rules and technicalities that are hard to understand.”So Kenyon and her colleagues have just sued the VT Dept of Labor. The class action suit is "on behalf of people who were denied unemployment compensation, wrongfully terminated from the compensation or asked to return some benefits," writes Fred Thys in VTDigger. Legal Aid says that hundreds of people have been waiting as long as six months for their cases to be heard, and have been unable to collect unemployment benefits during that time."You think, ‘Oh, when I was young, the snowbanks were bigger.’ But they actually were." That's Peru, VT's Sverre Caldwell—former Olympic nordic coach and father of Olympic skier Sophie Caldwell-Hamilton—talking to the Bennington Banner's Greg Sukiennik about what warmer, wetter winters mean for xc skiing in Vermont. The short answer: nothing good. Nordic areas that aren't in "snow pockets" struggle every year. And, Sukiennik writes, the changing weather "has forced areas to pay more attention to keeping the trails groomed and standing water from collecting in low spots."So hey, Upper Valley, whaddaya say? There's this new museum up north, the Burlington Museum of Natural History, that makes the Montshire "look massive by comparison," writes Seven Days' Jordan Adams. That's because its collection of fossils, plant samples, artworks, historical documents, and maps focused on the region's natural history takes up all of two shelves in a Little Free Library-sized, glass-fronted box outside the Old North End home of Meghan O'Rourke. So... Anyone up for a new, pint-sized Upper Valley Botanical Garden? A summertime UV Aquarium?WARNING: This leather handiwork may hypnotize you. The video opens benignly: a torn paper shopping bag on the floor. Two hands retrieve the bag, size it up, and lead us on a transfixing journey that sees it reborn as a fine leather tote of the sort you’d find on Fifth Avenue. Halfway through this montage of steady, exacting craftsmanship you forget all about the paper bag, and something like awe takes over. Teeter on the rabbit hole’s edge...or just fall into maker Hahns Atelier’s YouTube channel for other transformations of ordinary objects, like an old tire becoming a smart pair of sandals.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
This evening at 6, you can join up with David Allen Sibley online, thanks to the Northshire Bookstore. If you're a birder, Sibley needs no introduction; if you're not, his Sibley Guide to Birds became pretty much the go-to guide the instant it was published. Tonight he'll be talking about his latest book, last year's What It's Like to Be a Bird, which aims to help explain what particular birds—many of them common—are doing, and to argue that birds are routinely making complex decisions. $5 to attend, more if you want to get the book.
At 7 pm, also online, Phoenix Books brings together two VT authors: Upper Valley mystery writer Sarah Stewart Taylor will be in conversation with Middlesex's Sarah Strohmeyer, whose new psychological thriller, Do I Know You?, is about a homeland security agent in pursuit of what happened to her older sister, who disappeared 11 years earlier.
Also at 7, the VT Ski & Snowboard Museum hosts an online conversation between Austrian writer Peter Radacher and Stowe snowboard designer JG Gerndt, who collaborated on a book about the history of snowboarding and snowboards—starting in the 15th century. Radacher used to compete as a snowboarder, has a collection of over 800 boards, and (probably not a surprise) founded the Snowboard Museum on his home turf near Hochkeil Mountain.
Finally, also at 7 and also online, the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center hosts Norwich-based sculptor William Ransom, who grew up on the farm that's now the Strafford Organic Creamery (run by his brother, Earl), talking about his installation at the museum, "Keep Up/Hold Up," which explores the tensions and balance involved in being a Black person in America—and in his own life, as the son of a biracial union.
Cool when you can accompany yourself, isn't it?
an original blues piece in which it turns out she can play guitar, too. At the same time. On the other side of the couch.
See you tomorrow.
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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