Daybreak Thursday 4/18/24

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Things get unsettled. There's a front coming through from the west, and though yesterday the models were duking it out over whether it would fall apart before reaching eastern VT, it's looking like there's a good chance of showers today, especially in the afternoon. Otherwise, mostly if not completely cloudy, highs in the mid 40s, winds from the southeast with gusts into the 20 mph range this morning. If there's rain it'll taper off overnight, lows around 40.Ice confetti. "I was out doing a site visit under the Taftsville Covered Bridge," writes the Ottauquechee Natural Resources Conservation District's Kelly Stettner, "when we noticed something falling to the water from the bridge. Upon our return to our vehicles, we realized what it was: very thin 'pages' of ice melting just enough to slide down the metal roof; when a large enough piece got far enough off the edge, the updraft of air caused by the waterfall caught the sheet and sent it cartwheeling and spiraling to the Ottauquechee River below. I could've watched all morning." So she caught it on video.WRJ's Chelsea Green to be sold to NYC subsidiary of Italian publishing giant. The $5 million deal for the publishing house founded in 1984 by Margo and Ian Baldwin was announced Monday, reports VTDigger's Juan Vega de Soto; it will place Chelsea Green in the hands of NYC-based Rizzoli International, part of Italy's Mondadori Group. Net proceeds, de Soto writes, will go to participants in its employee-ownership plan. There are "no immediate plans for layoffs or relocating the company," which specializes in books on health, sustainability, homesteading—and, more recently, vaccine skepticism.Lebanon's Simbex sold to helmet giant Riddell. The company, founded in 2000 by Rick Greenwald and entrepreneur Bob Dean and later sold to a Canadian med-tech firm, "revolutionized the monitoring of head impacts in athletics," writes John Lippman in the Valley News, though its products also include other health monitoring devices. Now, Lippman reports, Riddell—which commands the football helmet market and has been a longtime Simbex licensee—has bought it for $3.55 million in cash. "We have no plans to relocate or disrupt the Simbex operations," a spokesman says.Aubuchon expands VT stores with Bibens Ace purchase—including in Springfield and Woodstock. The original Bibens hardware store opened in Springfield in 1949, writes Kevin O'Connor in VTDigger, and expanded in 1978 with the purchase of Woodstock Home & Hardware and other stores around the state. Now, O'Connor reports, Rick Bibens, son of the founder, is ready to retire and is selling his chain's seven locations to Aubuchon. “There really wasn’t another company that I could think of that could pick up where we left off, build on what we’ve created, and take the business even further,” he says.Hop-produced opera—and Dartmouth Gospel Choir—to feature at Lincoln Center. You may remember The Ritual of Breath is the Right to Resist, the opera by composer Jonathan Berger, visual artist Enrico Riley, and poet Vievee Francis that premiered at the Hop in 2022. Now the production, centered on the killing of Eric Garner by an NYPD officer July 17, 2014, will get a grand NYC debut at Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park on the 10th anniversary of Garner's death. With a chorus from the gospel choir and Sing Harlem—both directed by Knoelle Higginson—and choirs from across the city. Press release at the link.SPONSORED: APD Gynecology offers high-quality, personalized healthcare for women from puberty to pregnancy to menopause and beyond. Our providers take the time to help patients make informed decisions about their care. It’s women’s healthcare, created just for you. Learn more at the burgundy link or visit us in our new location on the APD campus. Sponsored by APD."I reach for Stanford when I need a thwack on the head." That would be the poet Frank Stanford, who died a month shy of his 30th birthday in 1978: In this week's Enthusiasms, Peter Orner writes that Stanford was such an acute observer of the people and places around him and such a kinetic writer that he turns to him when he needs reminding that "the world is overhuge with possibility." In particular, he recommends Stanford's epic, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You. "I’ll sound ridiculous trying to explain it but I’m going to do it anyway because it’s so damn good," Peter writes.Two single-word plays in the offing. Actually, the plays have lots of words, but their titles don't... As Susan Apel writes in Artful, tonight on Thetford Hill, Parish Players opens Proxy, by Hanover physician-turned-playwright Kenneth Burchard, with the mental disorder known as Munchausen by Proxy, in which a caregiver makes up or exaggerates the medical symptoms of someone in their care, at its center. Then, next weekend, Artistree's Grange Theater stages Duncan Macmillan’s two-person play about a couple taking stock of themselves and the world around them as they decide whether to have a child.SPONSORED: Tired of the same old Saturday morning routine? Then bring your family or friends to Hanover Rotary Club's PANCAKE BREAKFAST on Saturday, April 27 from 7:30 - 9:30 at the Hanover Fire Station on Lyme Road! It's arguably the region's best family-friendly weekend happening. Proceeds benefit the Club's service projects around the world, including Norwich-based ACTS/Honduras. Can't come? You can still donate to a good cause. Learn more at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Hanover Rotary.Hey, No. 7 isn't bad! For a while, you may remember, Hanover was hanging tough at No. 6 on USA Today's list of "10 Best Small College Towns in the US". But when the ballot-stuffing was all done, the town with "a thriving arts and culture community, while easy access to the Connecticut River and White and Green Mountains make it a great base for outdoor enthusiasts" wound up one notch below—just ahead of Williamsburg, VA and behind Annapolis, MD. The top spot went to Oxford, MS, Boston.com reports.Streams are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. A UNH team is trying to figure out how much. It turns out, writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog, that some portion—maybe as much as half—of the carbon dioxide we thought was being stored (and released) by forest floors is actually making it into streams. The problem, UNH prof Wilfred Wollheim tells him, is that measuring what's going on in a stream—which rises and falls and bubbles and burbles—is tough. So a grad student has designed a sensor... just one of "the step-by-step-by-step ways that our knowledge of the physical world advances."NH Supremes: Communities can't reject solar based on esthetics, property values alone. Last week, the state Supreme Court overturned a decision against a solar project by the planning board in Franklin, ruling that a board "cannot deny projects that comply with [zoning] ordinances based on its 'own personal feelings,'" NH Bulletin's Annmarie Timmins reports. The move comes as interest in solar picks up within the state—but developers face a patchwork of ordinances, many of which "are created with the intent of exclusion, not inclusion," Clean Energy NH's Katrin Kasper says.With an average caseload just under 300 per attorney, Orange and Windsor county prosecutors can count themselves lucky. The VT Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs says that county prosecutors shouldn't be carrying more than 300 cases at a time—and that national standards put the ceiling closer to 200. But in most counties around the state, reports VTDigger's Shaun Robinson, prosecutors face caseloads far above that line: as many as 531 in Lamoille County. Orange and Windsor are among just five counties that average fewer than 300, with 281 and 282 respectively.Workers 65 or older now account for a tenth of VT's workforce—and their numbers are growing. The reasons, Colin Flanders reports in Seven Days, range from boredom to shifting financial arithmetic as some older Vermonters find that Social Security isn't enough to live on and worry they'll outlive their retirement savings. The result is that some VT employers are adjusting hours and shifts—while welcoming older workers as "more reliable and knowledgeable than younger applicants" and a potential solution to the state's employment gap. Flanders looks at the issues both in VT and nationally."We seem to be losing our ability to see other people as real, and that worries me a lot." It's fair to say that with her podcast Rumble Strip, Erica Heilman offers an antidote: "I want the show to remind people how to do that," she tells Neel Dhanesha in a wide-ranging, thoroughly engaging interview for NiemanLab. They talk about everything from how Heilman got into podcasting ("I had a sudden, like, 8-year-old voice in my head that said, 'You should start a show'") to her series on class in Vermont ("We don’t really want to talk about class, because ultimately it begs the question of what we are going to do about it") to interviewing ("terrifying"). Heilman's at Dartmouth today (see below)."Broadway shows are very hard to put together." Shaina Taub was only in second grade when she wrote that line—but as Mary Ann Lickteig writes in Seven Days, she was "prescient." Today on Broadway, the singer, songwriter, and actor from Waitsfield—you may remember her appearance at Northern Stage last summer—debuts as the suffragist Alice Paul in a musical she also wrote, Suffs. In her full-on profile, Lickteig looks not only at how Suffs came about, but Taub's time in theater—beginning when she was 4 (or maybe 3) in a Stowe Theatre Guild production of Peter Pan—and her climb from there.Got a big screen? This is a good time for it. It's a little unclear just how photographer Brett Schreckengost knew exactly where to plant his GoPro ahead of a remotely triggered avalanche in Telluride, CO, much less was able to find and retrieve it afterward. But the result is what it looks like when a tsunami of snow is coming right at you. It's jaw-dropping even on a little screen.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:

Today, we're staying as local as you can get.

Singer, songwriter, actor, and all-around performer Tommy Crawford has a brand-new video out: the sweet, melodic "Mountain Song" with an array of Upper Valley talent backing him up—

Ben Kogan on bass, Jakob Breitbach on fiddle, and Matt Appleton, Kogan, Lisa Piccirillo, and Jes Raymond singing backup vocals. Recorded in Norwich, with animation by Crawford and Mike Cannon made of cut paper, fingerpaint, watercolor, glass, "and some found objects. And light. And magic." Here it is."She's livingthat maple lifeAnd the mapletastes really good."

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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