GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Getting sunnier, colder. The system that came through last night is on its way out, and it's trailing colder air in its wake. So while the clouds will scatter this morning, we'll remain in the 20s all day and then start dropping toward an overnight low around 0. Winds from the northwest.Winter chowdown. Sometimes, as John Pietkiewicz's pic from West Fairlee suggests, even squirrels have charisma.Lots of interesting town meeting results out there. The Valley News has done yeoman's work rounding things up, and you can get to most towns you're interested in from the link. Grantham passed a playground bond, Chelsea will stay in the First Branch school district, Dresden voters okayed a rebuild of the Hanover High track and fixing the baseball fields in Norwich, Royalton voters—by a single vote—will allow ATVs to use portions of town roads, and various towns resolved contested selectboard and school board contests. Norwich results here, and you'll find Hartford results here (scroll down).“It’s a confusing, frustrating time. Working-class people are fed up … tired.” That was Bronwyn Sims, an artist who lives in Nelson, NH and an organizer of the truckers' convoy, talking yesterday to the VN's Nora Doyle-Burr outside The Fort @ Exit 18. About 50 locals gathered there before a few headed off to join other Northeasterners trekking to DC. The general sentiment, Doyle-Burr found, was frustration with mandates, but there were plenty of other opinions about the state of the nation. In the end, a fuel truck, a logging truck, a flatbed, and a dozen or so pickups and cars lined up to start heading south.St. J shooting victim identified, police release a few more details. Late yesterday afternoon, VT State Police identified the man as 44-year-old Vincent Keithan of St. Johnsbury; he'd been shot through the neck. In a release yesterday evening, the VSP reported that a gray Jeep that had been seen in the hospital parking lot where Keithan was shot had been stopped after a short pursuit on the Taconic State Parkway in NY by NY state troopers. "No one is currently in custody," the VSP says, and the investigation is ongoing.SPONSORED: Thank you, Daybreak readers! Because you shared our ad, Sargent Design Company was able to recruit our wonderful new Senior Interior Designer. Megan Niemczyk Landis is a Woodstock native who brings her talents and young family back to Vermont after a professional life in NYC and Rhode Island. We are also adding an assistant to the design team and a junior or mid-level interior designer. With your help our team can keep growing: Please pass on these job descriptions! Student inquiries for college internship programs are welcome. Sponsored by Sargent Design Company.A "full-throated, even thunderous, exhortation for readers to open their eyes and see 'reality'...as a miracle." These are heavy times, and they've set essayist and fiction writer Peter Orner to thinking about two writers in particular: Marilynne Robinson and the essays in her collection The Death of Adam; and Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, "who knew a lot about war and a lot about the dangers of having too much faith in ideologies and doctrines." In this week's Enthusiasms, Peter describes why they're ripe for reading right now.It's going to be the Hanover High Bears. As you may remember, the process of finding a name to replace the Marauders has been a saga, after finalist logos submitted last fall were found to have violated submission criteria. After a set of ranked-choice voting rounds to choose among the Bears, Hawks, Huskies, Maroon Crush, and Trailblazers, reports Benjamin Rosenberg in the VN, the high school council yesterday announced that students ultimately opted for the Bears. There'll be a logo contest next month, but meanwhile, the HHS hockey teams, with playoff games this weekend, will be competing as Bears.Springfield to get new taxi service. For nearly a quarter century, Kim Rhodes had been there to get people to medical appointments, grocery stores, the laundromat, and anywhere else residents with no wheels of their own needed to go. But he died recently, leaving the town with no service at all. Now, reports Bill Lockwood via the Eagle Times, David and Kathleen Holton—along with their shiny silver 2012 Mazda 3—have stepped up to fill in the gap. They've opened a storefront on Main Street and managed to keep Rhodes' old phone number. “People are already calling to set up rides,” says Kathleen.A worker-owned general store—with a focus on diversity and affordable food. Orford's Senayit Tomlinson, a musician who used to work as a cashier at Chapman's in Fairlee, is one of five part-owners of the Marshfield (VT) General Store. They bought the store last month, and over time store workers will be able to buy in as well. There's a customers' bottom-line aspect to their plans —"You can't find your cans of soup," Tomlinson says of more gentrified country stores—but Seven Days' Anne Wallace Allen writes that it's part of an effort to bring more worker-owned coops and racial diversity to rural communities.NH House Democratic leader to take leave of absence. Renny Cushing, who represents Hampton, was re-elected leader in 2020 despite his fight with stage four prostate cancer. Yesterday, in a letter read to his caucus by his daughter, he announced that "I am following the advice of my doctors and will be taking a medical leave of absence." David Cote of Nashua will take over as the Democrats' leader, while Concord's Mary Jane Wallner will replace Cote as deputy leader.For the most part, school board candidates in VT who opposed teaching about racial issues lost. A slate of candidates in Milton who ran against "critical race theory" and "indoctrination" lost by several hundred votes, writes Alison Novak in Seven Days. Two Springfield candidates campaigning against "critical race theory" lost by similar margins. The trend held in smaller towns, too. Meanwhile, with higher than normal turnout in Rutland, one member of a slate pushing to hold onto the Raiders mascot won a seat, while three from a slate endorsed by liberal-leaning Rutland Forward prevailed.New lawsuit aims to loosen restrictions on public money for religious schools, while bill tightening restrictions advances in legislature. The lawsuit, filed by parents with kids in a Catholic school in Rutland, aims to push school districts to pay for tuition at religious schools in the wake of last year's federal court ruling that VT cannot bar public tuition payments to schools simply because they're religious. At the same time, writes Peter D'Auria in VTDigger, the Senate Ed Cte has advanced a bill banning the use of public funds to support religious instruction and barring religious schools from discrimination."Vermont takes its maple syrup seriously." Yep, you could say that. And so, apparently, does Todd Plummer, who's got a "How to Make the Most of Vermont's Maple Syrup Season" guide in Condé Nast Traveler. He covers traditional sugaring operations (tending toward the bigger ones), upstarts like Runamok and creative processors (Blake Hill's Pumpkin Maple Butter, UnTapped's maple energy gels), Maple Open House Weekend, even maple-themed "experiences" offered by hotels and resorts around the state.VT-made maple-coffee drink is “not just mysterious, it’s sorcery.” That’s one mixologist’s rapt review of Sacré, a nonalcoholic beverage made with maple syrup, maple syrup vinegar, and coffee, which is taking the “mocktail” world by storm. Seven Days’ Mary Ann Lickteig uncorks the story of this bewitching beverage’s unlikely invention and how its makers, Justin and Roger Branon Rodriguez, have turned it into a minor craze. Justin, whose family runs a maple farm in Fairfield, calls Sacré’s secret the sweet-sour-savory balance “that makes your cheeks perk up and makes you want to take that second sip.”“You want enough potatoes so they will sustain the sack of flesh that contains your soul.” John Green isn’t having a great week. The acclaimed author, podcaster, and all-around polymath took to his YouTube channel to do the only thing one can do to ward off an overpowering sense of dread: roast some potatoes—“despite the gnawing feeling that the universe and everything in it is absolutely apathetic to you.” His deadpan linguistic delivery is pure delight, mixed with the meaninglessness that comes from being “a mammal eating the storage organs of nightshade plants.” (Thanks to The Browser.)
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At 12:30 today, the Hood brings in filmmaker and film historian Kevin Brownlow for an online lecture about John Kobal, an author and film historian who almost accidentally amassed one of the world's premier collections of Hollywood photographs and film stills. In conjunction with the Hood's exhibition, "Photographs from Hollywood’s Golden Era: The John Kobal Foundation Collection."
At 5:30, the Hartland Public Library hosts writer and historian of Vermont's Civil War history Howard Coffin, with an online talk about the women who kept the state's farms, publications, manufacturers, military hospitals, and pretty much everything else running while almost 35,000 men were off at war. Register here for the link.
At 6 pm, Hanover Adventure Tours is back with its free online lecture series. This evening, Maine paramedic and wilderness medicine instructor Paul Marcolini will talk about Mt. Denali National Park, the climbers who attempt the mountain, and the types of medical problems that can arise there (as well as on any mountain) and how to prepare and take precautions.
At 7:30 this evening, Dartmouth Idol returns to the Hop's Spaulding Auditorium with a new slant. Instead of a competition, it's celebrating its 15th anniversary with highlights from past competitions and "never-before-seen clips in a range of categories," hosted by director Walt Cunningham.
Also at 7:30, Shaker Bridge Theatre in Enfield returns, with the opening of Incognito. Playwright Nick Payne's four-actor, 21-character play revolves around the brain, memory, and identity through three interwoven stories about a pathologist who steals the brain of Albert Einstein, a seizure patient who loses his short-term memory, and a neuropsychologist who embarks on her first romance with another woman. Through March 20.
Back in April, 2020, a month into the pandemic, Janis Ian was doing laundry and thinking about her friend John Prine, who'd died the day before. A song chorus popped into her head, and a couple of hours later, she recorded it—on a cellphone. Then she put it online and suggested other musicians do their own versions of it. "I’d put them on line," she later wrote, "with leads to social media, and try to create new fans and sell a bit of merchandise for everyone. First was John Gorka."
—with a constellation of performers joining in: Diane Schuur singing scat, Sam Bush on mandolin, Vince Gill doing an acoustic guitar solo, jazz, bluegrass...
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 and writers who want you to 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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