GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
::Hand clasped despairingly over eyes:: Okay, so: Last night's system will continue to bring us freezing drizzle then light snow and probably rain through the morning. Watch those roads first thing. Temps today getting up to near 40, down to around 20 or below overnight. The good news? The next storm looks to be all snow. More on that tomorrow.Look up!
Because for starters, you might see a cedar waxwing, posed beatifically in South Royalton, from Jenn Megyesi.
Or a white porcupine. That's what Joseph and Alice Vining found near Littleton, NH the other day—along with a more regulation black porky and a smaller brown one. Because its eyes are dark, writes Ted Levin, it's more likely leucistic—that is, lacking some but not all melanin—than a true albino, which would have pink eyes. Alice writes, "Because their quills lack melanin, they aren’t sharp…they feel and look like white fur."
Canaan's Rob McGregor has his own credentials too, of course: He spent 19 years running the Southern District YMCA in Exeter, founded Canaan's Wescott Farm, which grows organic food to address food insecurity, and sits on Goodwill New England's board. "Rob’s nonprofit management experience and deep knowledge of the thrift store industry are a great fit for LISTEN," board chair Jay Benson says in the organization's press release. McGregor starts on March 13
Norwich's Tillie Walden named Vermont's new cartoonist laureate. Walden, who graduated from WRJ's Center for Cartoon Studies and now teaches there, is renowned in the graphic novel world. She was just 22 when she won a 2018 Eisner Award for her graphic novel, Spinning, about her coming of age as a competitive ice skater. She's since penned several other graphic novels and a kids' book with fellow cartoonist Emma Hunsinger, My Parents Won't Stop Talking! Walden is VT's fifth cartoonist laureate, following James Kochalka, Ed Koren, Alison Bechdel, and Rick Veitch.“One day it will grow into a devastating giant space monster, but right now it's just a baby and part of the gang.” That’s James Kochalka, talking to Seven Days’ Chris Farnsworth about a character in Kochalka’s latest graphic novel for kids, Glork Patrol (Book 3): Glork Patrol and the Magic Robot. The Springfield VT native and first cartoonist laureate of Vermont isn’t too bothered about working morals into his books. “Really, I'm just trying to make kids laugh. That's the only thing I want to do.” He’s clearly succeeded—he’s won the comic industry’s Eisner Award twice. And he wrote CCS's fight song, here.SPONSORED: Pay What You Can at the Pulitzer-winning play Sweat at Northern Stage. When globalization and automation bring massive cuts to a factory in Reading, PA, decades-old friendships unravel and the town's racial fault lines are exposed. Can a strike hold or will everyone have to fend for themselves? Sweat is a heart-wrenching portrait of the human cost of manufacturing's decline, shining a light on the working class communities left behind. Pay What You Can 3/8 and 3/9 at 7:30. Sponsored by Northern Stage.At DHMC, hard-pressed nurses talk union. In an anonymously sourced column, the VN's Jim Kenyon on Tuesday wrote that "nurses whom I’ve spoken with in recent days say they’re reaching a breaking point" after dealing with staffing shortages, an unfavorable nurse-to-patient ratio, what they consider to be pay inequities compared to traveling nurses, and other concerns. DH's Cassidy Smith tells Kenyon, “These are issues facing every hospital and health system—unionized or non-unionized—in the nation right now." Two previous unionizing efforts have failed in the last 15 years, Kenyon writes.“We’re not going to tweak our way out of this. We have to rethink and re-imagine the entire healthcare system.” That was the NH Hospital Assn's president, Steve Ahern, talking to reporters on Tuesday. The state's hospitals, David Brooks writes in the Monitor, continue to struggle even as the pandemic recedes from public view. The issues, he reports, range from "a shortage of wheelchair vans to a looming shortage of nursing-school faculty, from weak Medicare reimbursements to soaring cost of part-time medical staff, from burned-out nurses who quit to patients who get sicker while waiting to be seen."As local elections approach, you can check out the competitors for several local contests... In its highlights this week, JAM links to candidate forums in three towns: Norwich, with two contested selectboard elections; Hartland, where candidates for selectboard, library trustee, and school director made their cases; and Hartford, where candidates for selectboard, treasurer, library trustee, and school board all spoke at Monday's Budget and Candidates Night. Meanwhile, here's Patrick Adrian's VN writeup of Windsor's candidates forum—and one candidate's explanation of why he's in a photo from Jan. 6.SPONSORED: The Lifespan of a Fact opens tonight at Shaker Bridge Theatre. Jim Fingal is a fresh-out-of-Harvard fact checker for a prominent but sinking New York magazine. John D’Agata is a talented writer with a transcendent essay about the suicide of a teenage boy–an essay that could save the magazine from collapse. When Jim is assigned to fact check D’Agata’s essay, the two come head-to-head in a story exploding with blistering comedy and timely relevance. Runs through March 19. Sponsored by Shaker Bridge Theatre.Skier, snowboarder survive Tuckerman Ravine slab avalanche: video. The incident occurred on Saturday on The Lip area of the ravine, says the Mt. Washington Avalanche Center. The pair had ascended the Lion Head Trail and the snowboarder dropped in first, then pulled off to wait for the skier to descend the same section. As the skier did so, a slab "fractured underneath the skier and propagated diagonally out in both directions"—sweeping up the snowboarder, who was carried to the edge of Lunch Rocks, buried to the waist but unharmed. Here's the MWAC report, which includes a second video.With statewide bid to allow single-family homes to be subdivided off the table in NH, a look at where it is allowed. After a bill to encourage denser housing on single-family lots was killed last week over concerns that it would infringe on local zoning laws, NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt cast his eye on Spokane, WA, which went ahead with a similar law last summer in the face of skyrocketing housing prices. It's early days, but the upshot: “People realize that it actually has not dramatically changed their neighborhood overnight,” says the city's planning director. A few NH towns have made similar moves.Here's one worry off your over-full plate: Ohio train wreck contamination bypassed NH (and VT). The Laconia Daily Sun's Jon Decker writes that there were initial worries the toxic chemical cloud released as authorities tried to keep the tanker cars in East Palestine, OH from exploding could drift over the Northeast. But state DES officials looked at the air patterns and concluded it passed to the north—and have seen no sign of a spike in contaminants from its network of air monitors. Neither has Maine.VT's EMS system is "crumbling." And, writes Colin Flanders in Seven Days, "the people holding it together warn that it will collapse entirely if something doesn't change." The state's aging population is driving a "dramatic rise" in 911 calls, Flanders reports, while understaffed local EMS services struggle to keep up, make up for the volunteers they're losing, and pay the bills—especially since towns, accustomed to getting by on the cheap, are reluctant to pony up. The most obvious solution is regionalization but that's politically challenging. Flanders dives into the issues and how EMS services are trying to deal.Hey, want a media job with a history of longevity? The Old Farmer's Almanac is looking for a new editor. Just 13 people have held the role in the 231-year history of the Dublin, NH publication (not to be confused with Lewiston, ME's Farmer's Almanac). Now, Janice Stillman, the first woman to edit it, is stepping down after 23 years, reports NHPR's Olivia Richardson. The mag's publisher, Sherin Pierce, has been there 34 years and only worked with two editors. "The throwaway thing is not part of our culture," she says.Now that the 747 has been deep-sixed, Boeing engineers can focus on the important stuff. Like paper airplanes. Boeing engineers Dillon Ruble and Garrett Jensen and collaborator Nathaniel Erickson now hold the Guinness world record for paper aircraft flight: almost 290 feet. On Jalopnik, Erik Schilling explains that the team’s planes “are meant to be more darts than traditional paper planes, and there is little, if any, gliding.” Lots of folding, though, following research on paper, origami methods, and aerodynamics. Oh, and simulations. “I didn’t think we could get useful data from a simulation on a paper airplane. Turns out, we could,” says Jensen. Includes instructional folding video.The Thursday Vordle. With an upstanding word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Today at 4:30, Dartmouth's Dickey Center hosts a circumpolar discussion about Covid in the Arctic and how Arctic and indigenous communities are approaching the pandemic's public health needs. Panelists include experts from Nunavut, Finland, Iceland, Alaska, and Greenland. Both livestreamed and in Haldeman 41.
It's that time of year! This evening at 6:30, the 2023 edition of Bethel University kicks off with a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit—or as the organizer puts it, "Trivia the 'old-fashioned' way"—upstairs at Babe's Bar. In case you're new to it, Bethel University is a free, community-run pop-up "university" in Bethel whose sessions are led or taught by volunteers. It runs through March, and this year include everything from an intro to beekeeping to how to paint Ukrainian Easter eggs to the history of slavery in Vermont. Classes fill up, so register (and then show up) if you're interested.
This evening at 7:30, Shaker Bridge Theatre in Enfield launches its production of The Lifespan of a Fact. The play is the theatrical version of a real-life set-to between the writer John D'Agata (who now runs the U of Iowa's nonfiction writing program) and a fact-checker for The Believer magazine who put a D'Agata article through the wringer; the two later published a book, Lifespan of a Fact, about their argument—and the slipperiness of facts. Runs through March 19.
Also at 7:30, New London's Flying Goose Pub brings in Boston-based folk/Americana singer-songwriter Mark Erelli. Erelli, who's got 18 albums to his credit, just came out with his latest, Lay Your Darkness Down, whose songs were mostly inspired by a diagnosis of retinits pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that eventually leads to blindness. "The only way I could console myself was to know that I was still going to have some creative agency," he told an interviewer recently.
This evening at 8, the Hop presents the chamber choir The Crossing in Rollins Chapel. The ensemble, which has three Grammy awards for best choral performance under its belt (including one this year), focuses on new music, often devoted to social and environmental themes, and offers up a full program of music tonight, including Edie Hill's elegies for passenger pigeons, curlews, and the ivory-billed woodpecker.
And to start the day...
We're going to turn to Iris Dement, whose first new album of original material in a decade is just out (with a bunch of songs on it produced by legendary Nashville producer and Upper Valley music icon Jim Rooney).
Oh and hey, happy palindrome (3/2/23) day! 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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