GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly sunny, mid 40s. There's a brief bit of high pressure around today, bringing us mostly blue skies and seasonable temps, with winds—which could get a little gusty around midday—from the northwest. Chance of snow showers overnight, lows in the mid 20s.One more piece of frost art. Will Smith writes from Norwich, "I had to act quickly to take photos with my cell phone as the sun was rising... Had my timing been a few minutes later, I never would have known this frost formation had existed. Timing is everything!"It's time for Dear Daybreak! In this week's collection of stories and more from readers, Jon Kaplan takes us along on an early mud-season bike ride, when the itch to get out on wheels just couldn't be denied; Bob Hagen reflects, in verse, on keeping—and sharing—apples over the winter; and Barbara Fildes writes about a moment of communal grace in the face of unfathomable loss.Sunapee grappling with possible municipal budget cuts. It was the only town in the Upper Valley whose voters rejected the town budget, reports the Valley News's Christina Dolan, and as a result, the selectboard faces a choice: find $800,000 in cuts, or bring a revised budget in front of voters. It's meeting Monday night to decide which course to take, but the chair, Suzanne Gottling, tells Dolan she doesn't think there's much appetite for the latter course. “We have to go full steam ahead on living with the default budget," she says."Quite the finale. It's past my bedtime." There's been no shortage of coverage of last week's hearing on the fate of Woodstock Police Chief Joe Swanson. And if you've been following along, there's not much news in Rachel Hellman's portrait of the event in Seven Days. But Hellman does a fine job of setting the scene, explaining what was going on, and capturing both the mood and some of the fireworks at the 14-hour hearing: the five police employees who said they'd quit if Swanson is reinstated as chief, the Swanson supporters who got ticked at the presiding officer, and the unresolved conclusion.N. Hartland farmer spearheads project to recycle agricultural plastic. Farmers use a lot of it to wrap and protect hay they feed their animals over the winter, and for years, Guy Crosby had to throw the used wrappers into landfills, writes Natalie Bankmann for UVM's Community News Service—and, he tells Bankmann, farmers "don’t like having to use plastic and, worse yet, having to put it in a landfill." So, working with the Connecticut River Watershed Farmers Alliance and its director, Mike Snow, Crosby now collects the plastic from 50 farms and takes it to the Leb landfill, eventually to be shipped off for recycling.SPONSORED: Attention golfers! Join Eastman Golf Links NOW and save 10% with early bird rates! EGL members enjoy our great course conditions, two-week tee time reservations, friendly staff, leagues, tournaments, social events and camaraderie, all of which has combined to make us #1 in the Valley News Readers Choice Awards for 9 straight years. Hit the burgundy link or go here for complete information on memberships, player passes and application links. Join by March 31 to save! (Rates increase 10% on April 1.) Address questions to [email protected]. Sponsored by Eastman.Creating a whole world in just ten minutes: a look ahead at Parish Players' Ten-Minute Play Festival. The annual event—seven plays with seven different directors running 10 minutes each—opens on Friday on Thetford Hill, and in Artful, Susan Apel checks in with co-producers Duncan Nichols and Kate Magill about what Nichols likens to the discipline of writing a haiku, and with one of the directors: filmmaker Nora Jacobson, who talks about the practical advantages of short plays and the freedom that community theater brings.Two former Windsor guys talk: "You're really hard to explain. I mean that as a compliment." Nate Larson produces his podcast WonderBuzz from his van on the road, and just sat down with Tom Haushalter, who lives and acts in Portland, ME—and who, ahem, designed Daybreak's logo. Larson's interested in creativity, and Tom—who just played Aslan in a production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—talks about a life spent learning to give it an outlet. "If it seems like I do everything and nothing at the same time," he says, "it's because I can't decide what I want to be." Starts at 4:03. (Thanks, DM!)SPONSORED: Final Weekend – 50 percent+ off most in-stock furniture! Time is running out! From now through March 31, most in-stock and floor model furniture at Pompanoosuc Mills' East Thetford and Hanover showrooms is 50 percent off or more. These handcrafted Vermont-made pieces are built to last a lifetime—but at these prices, they won’t last the weekend. Once they’re gone, they’re gone! Don’t miss your final chance to bring home heirloom-quality furniture at unprecedented savings. Sponsored by Pompanoosuc Mills.Weekend hammer attack brings attention to emergency calls at Leb shelter. In all, Leb police have responded 53 times to the winter shelter on Mechanic Street since it opened in January, reports WCAX's Adam Sullivan. “The police response we are seeing are for assaults, intoxications, disorderly conducts, overdoses, thefts,” chief Phil Roberts tells Sullivan. Says the Haven's executive director, "We welcome the opportunity to debrief with Lebanon emergency services to determine how we can continue to provide this essential program and improve safety for all.”Windsor hires Weathersfield police chief. Without a formal search, reports John Lippman in the Valley News, Windsor Town Manager Tom Marsh has hired Weathersfield chief Bill Daniels to replace Jen Frank, who's moving to Florida. The move, Lippman writes, "comes less than a week following a special Selectboard session where some residents—including Selectboard member and Windsor County Sheriff Ryan Palmer—voiced disappointment that Marsh did not cast a wider net for candidates." Marsh says Frank and others gave him confidence in the choice. Lippman explains the controversy.Atop Mt. Washington: Tracking the weather and changing Nimbus's litter box. Nimbus, of course, is that cat who keeps mice at bay in the Mt. Washington Observatory, where teams of observers spend eight days at a time. They're about to start providing NHPR with statewide weather reports, and host Rick Ganley yesterday checked in with observer Alexandra Branton to talk about life on high: why they use manual, not digital, instruments; why the "mesonet" of weather stations in the Whites can be even more helpful than a twice-daily weather balloon; and what they do in their spare time.NH House want to let voters request their ballot be hand-counted. The measure passed yesterday by voice vote, reports NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt. It would let a voter ask town voting officials to set the ballot aside so it can be hand-counted after the polls close. GOP Rep. Ross Berry, who chairs the elections committee, said he backed the idea but noted, "When you do this, when you exercise this … you’re saying, I want somebody who’s been up for 16 hours straight to pull out my ballot and read it amongst other ballots that are either put in that bin or had errors." Machines are more accurate, he added. VT legislators' ethics disclosures: pen & ink in a digital age. And that's not the only problem with them, writes Hannah Bassett in Seven Days. The House and Senate use different forms that ask for different information; the information they do ask for doesn't necessarily shed light on potential conflicts of information; and the information in the handwritten forms is only available in scanned form. The result, Bassett writes: "Vermont's legislative ethics disclosures fail to provide meaningful insights into legislators' potential conflicts, according to government transparency experts."“We have our finger on the pulse of planet Earth.” It didn't last long, that finger—the Smithsonian Center for Short-Lived Phenomena lived for only seven years, but during its heyday in the 1960s, writes Ben Naddaff-Hafrey for, of course, Smithsonian, it was busy: charting oil spills and ash-laden snowfall, tracking down still-warm meteorites, creating a global database of volcanic activity, studying the four million blackbirds that descended on Scotland Neck, NC—and trying to figure out why, in 1968, an estimated 20 million squirrels in Appalachia suddenly lit out for the territory. All that and more at the link.The Thursday Wordbreak. With a five-letter word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Daybreak tote bags! Thanks to a helpful reader's suggestion. Plus, of course, the usual: sweatshirts, head-warming beanies, 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!
The Quincy Saul Research & Development Band features "local originals and intergalactic traditionals"—with Lukas Saul, Pete Michelinie, and Evan Antal, in addition to Quincy Saul. Music begins at 6 pm.
The NH-based author of multiple
NYT
-bestselling biographies has a new book out about four women (including Marlene Dietrich) who worked for the Morale Operations division of the OSS during WWII. Their propaganda was "aimed at Axis soldiers and civilians, and by forging letters and pamphlets, recording songs, and planting rumors, they helped win the war," runs the writeup. 7 pm.
Kimberly Belflower's play picks up Wendy Darling's life after her return from Neverland, as she explores "what she will carry with her into adulthood and what she will leave behind." Opens tonight at 7 pm, runs tomorrow at 7 pm and Saturday at 1 pm.
Porter's a Wisconsin-based rocker and singer-songwriter; guitarist, painter, and folk musician Pirozzoli's more local. The two have been collaborating since they met at Club Passim in Cambridge in the early '90s. 7:30 tonight, and you'll need to make reservations.
there's the workshop that Braver Angels hosted on "Skills for Disagreeing Better" in Thetford on March 16; Lily Golden and the Stars' recent performance at the Main Street Museum in WRJ; and a "blast to the past" interview by former CATV director Bob Franzoni with author Dave Norman about his book,
White River Junctions: Empires of Flour, Steel, and Ambition.
And to bring us into the day...
Next month, Rhiannon Giddens and her former Carolina Chocolate Drops bandmate, Justin Robinson, are releasing an album of North Carolina fiddle and banjo music,
What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow. "
We wanted to offer another kind of record, like walking back onto a gravel or dirt road while a stampede goes the other way,” Giddens says. “With the cicada choir, this record could’ve only happened at a certain time in the last 120 years. We doubled down on place, time, realness, and old-fashioned front porch music."
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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
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