GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Cloudy, sunny, cloudy, still warmer than normal. There's high pressure out there to the east, but there's also a warm front and storm system headed this way, and the upshot is that we'll start the morning partly cloudy, with skies getting bluer as the day goes on. This evening, though, clouds start moving back in, with rain arriving overnight. Highs today once again in the mid or upper 50s, lows only around 40 tonight.Look a peregrine in the eye. You can, thanks to some remarkable photos Newbury VT photographer Ian Clark just got of a pair in Caledonia County. As you know, peregrines are starting to nest. The debate Ian happened upon was, Where? "They spent some time seemingly discussing their nest site, with one promoting last year’s site, the other agitating for a ledge a couple dozen yards to the north," he writes on his blog—where you can follow the morning's free and frank exchange of views.Such an interesting mixed bag of election results in NH. Voters in New London, for instance, defeated zoning amendments that would have allowed greater density, while Plainfield backed an easier process for accessory dwelling units and Sunapee approved 13 of 15 zoning amendments. In Newport, voters deep-sixed the school budget as well as a new bargaining agreement with teachers. Charlestown overwhelmingly rejected a bond for a new fire station. But Leb handily approved its school budget. All those and more in the Valley News's roundup at the link, including selectboard results.In Orford selectboard contest, voters eject chair, give incumbent solid victory. To be specific, longtime resident Larry Taylor defeated board chair John Adams 238-155, while interim member Kevin Follensbee won a full two-year term by beating former fire chief and planning board chair Terry Straight 283-117, reports the VN's Christina Dolan. Despite a contentious year in town, Dolan writes, Tuesday evening's floor meeting "featured lengthy discussion and mostly polite disagreement." Voters approved the town budget and backed exploring town purchase of the Congregational church on Main Street.Meanwhile, you might spare a thought for the selectboard in Haverhill. There, despite the fact that its members asked voters not to jettison the town manager form of government adopted 30 years ago, voters disagreed, backing a petitioned article to do just that, 361 to 323. The result: Town Manager Brigitte Codling will lose her job, though she gets six months of salary and health insurance; all town administration is now in the selectboard's hands. A quorum will have to hold publicly warned meetings every time they need "to make decisions on behalf of the town."SPONSORED: Great teachers and leaders are the heart of great schools. Come to an information session on Tuesday, 3/19 at 4:30 pm at the Upper Valley Educators Institute to learn how you can start or advance your career in education. UVEI aims to support and inspire educators through licensure programs, masters degree programs, professional education, and collaboration opportunities. Register for the info session at the burgundy link above, or visit our website to learn more about our work. Sponsored by the Upper Valley Educators Institute, 194 Dartmouth College Highway, Lebanon, NH.“I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t benefit from some unvarnished truth.” And per that line from Tracy Letts' play The Minutes, that's what the audience gets during Shaker Bridge's current production at the Briggs, writes Alex Hanson in the VN. It starts out poking fun at small-town government, and gets darker as it goes. It's wll-produced and well-acted, Hanson reports—with a cast that includes Tommy Crawford, Raphael Peacock, Katie Kitchel, and Jim Sterling—but it's also "a big, heavy American story, not a small-town one, and Letts’ mix of mockery and the macabre lands like a sucker punch.""Romancing dye" and playing to the eye. The Chandler's current art exhibit is all about textiles, writes Gina Tron in Seven Days, with 130 pieces by some 60 artists: "weavings, quilts, embroidery, crochet, sewn garments, jewelry, and felted wool and silk slippers." The exhibit is called "Trichromancy: Color Divination"—a combination of "necromancy" and "trichromatic", co-curator Jeannie Catmull tells Tron, with that last word referring to the eye's color processors. The works, some large, some small, treat everything from social issues to math (that one's by a teacher) to mud season.SPONSORED: Tickets for VINS Owl Festival available Monday, March 18! Discover the enchanting world of owls at the VINS Nature Center's annual Owl Festival on Saturday, April 13. Immerse yourself in a day filled with all things owly! Meet live owls that range from Vermont’s forests to habitats all over the world and discover their life stories. Join in a craft inspired by owls, and play games to test your own owl skills. Learn all about the amazing world of owls and how you can help the ones in your backyard. Tickets available starting March 18. Sponsored by VINS.In NH House, Dems pick up two more seats in Tuesday special elections. To be sure, the contests in Rockingham and Strafford counties were in districts that leaned Democratic, reports NHPR's Josh Rogers. But once the two winners are seated, they'll narrow the GOP margin in the House, bringing the count to 201 Republicans, 195 Dems, and two independents who often vote with the Democratic caucus—making each floor vote an exercise in making sure everyone attends. Two seats, including the Hanover seat held by Sharon Nordgren before her death, will remain open the rest of the year.In Littleton, voters replace outspoken anti-LGBTQ selectboard member with North Country Pride member. Carrie Gendreau, the Republican state senator who was at the center of months of controversy in town that began with her criticism of public art sponsored by North Country Pride, wasn't running for re-election. Kerri Harrington, who co-chairs the group, won a three-way race for the seat, reports Amanda Gokee in the Globe (paywall). Elsewhere, five towns weighing a ban on vote-counting machines have rejected the move, though one will require hand counts for presidential elections. Six more voted yesterday.NH Supreme Court stays lower court decision on school funding. Last fall's ruling by Judge David Ruoff found that the state's per-pupil funding level kept it from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide an “adequate education”, and ordered the state to boost what it spends from about $4,100 per student per year to at least $7,356. Ruoff last month denied a state request to reconsider or delay—but yesterday, reports NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt, the supreme court justices unanimously overrode him, giving the state time to appeal Ruoff's decision to, well, themselves. DeWitt gives the ins and outs.So, how's it going out in those sugarbushes this year? Syrup makers in NH are getting ready for open houses this weekend, and in VT for next weekend, So both NHPR and VT Public have checked in to ask what things look like so far in this warm, low-snow year. The answer, it turns out, is mixed.
Not only did a lot of New Hampshire sugarers tap early, reports NHPR's Kate Dario, but some are seeing lower sugar content in their sap. This means they have to boil more sap to get a gallon of syrup, and as a result are seeing lower yields. On the other hand, farther north, where there's been more snow and temps have been more stable, at least one producer says he expects to do just fine. "I'm still fascinated to think you can drill this tiny little hole in a tree and end up with something as wonderful as maple syrup," he adds.
Meanwhile, UVM maple specialist Mark Isselhardt tells Vermont Edition's Mikaela Lefrak that on average, syrup production in Vermont appears to be "on track"—though a lot depends on whether a given stand of maples is in a relatively cold spot and what kind of technology sugar makers use: Those who rely on gravity alone are more dependent on the freeze-thaw cycle, which has been iffy, while producers using vacuum tubing are getting higher yields. Even so, he adds, "It doesn't take many ideal days to add up to a big crop."
In VT, religious schools pull in growing amount of public funding. It's still a small percentage of all the education fund dollars that go to private schools, reports VTDigger's Ethan Weinstein, but in just a couple of years, state funding for religious schools has grown six-fold: from about $172,000 in 2020-21 to $1,050,000 in the 2022-23 school year. Critics of that funding, Weinstein notes, argue that some religious schools "have attempted to sidestep Vermont’s anti-discrimination rules" and are charging the education fund more than their advertised tuition. Schools counter that their tuition doesn't meet costs.VT officials plan to open four homeless shelters in the next three days. That's because the state's Dept. of Children and Families estimates that about 500 people could lose their vouchers to stay in motels as shifts in the laws governing the program take effect, reports Carly Berlin for VTDigger/VT Public. At most, DCF Commissioner Chris Winters said yesterday, the shelters would operate for a week: The need arises because of changing definitions affecting who is eligible for motel vouchers. Lawmakers and homeless advocates yesterday panned the Scott administration's handling of the transition.They're baaaack! Craig Muir, a builder from Wales, was out for a hike when he came upon “a shiny, silver monolith in a muddy patch of Powys uplands.” This might sound familiar: Back in 2020, a series of similarly mysterious monoliths appeared around the world: on the Isle of Wight, in Romania, in Utah. In the Guardian, Nadeem Badshah writes about the latest—this one’s shiny metal and ten feet tall—and the puzzle over who put it there and how. “It didn’t seem like it was chucked in there, instead it has been accurately put in the ground,” says Muir, but there were no tracks and the ground wasn’t messed up.The Thursday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
Starting at 5:30 this evening (music at 6), the Rumney Sessions at Fable Farm Fermentory in Barnard bring in Bow Thayer and the Choirs of Aether—"an evening of songs and sonic exploration" with Krishna Guthrie and percussionist Steve Ferraris.
Meanwhile, there's music of a different sort among JAM's highlights for this week: flautist and clawhammer banjoist Wayne Cripps (who's also a former Dartmouth IT guy), upstairs at Dan & Whit's in front of Chad Finer's camera. Also on tap anytime you want to check them out: the Dickey Center conversation between Dartmouth's Ezzedine Fishere and the State Department's Andrew Miller on "Can the U.S. Lead the Israelis and Palestinians Towards Peace?"; and artist and writer Carolyn Matthews-Daut at the Norwich Bookstore on her 148-day through-hike of the AT.
And definitely some music of a different sort to start the day.
When he was 11, the German pianist and composer Luca Sestak discovered jazz. Which, after a couple of years of classical piano lessons, suddenly gave him some musical direction. He began playing publicly at 14 and these days, at 29, he's got an international following for his classically inflected jazz, blues, boogie woogie, and hip hop pieces—which are really, as he put it recently, "a collision between genres and sound worlds." Here, for instance, is his new riff on
, which includes Alexander Broschek on bass guitar and Nicholas Stampf on drums. Impossible to sit still once they get in the groove.
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 Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob 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!