GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
You won't believe this, but there's a chance of showers today. Mostly in the morning, though, as clouds begin wandering off in anticipation of a really nice day tomorrow. Today, we still get temps a little below normal, hitting the mid 50s again. Any chance of rain will end this afternoon. Clear skies tonight, down into the lower 30s. Winds today from the northwest.Red skies at night. And in the morning. And not just here, either. Over the last few months, new daybreak/sunset photos have been arriving, and it's time for them to get an airing. There's Jed Williamson's pic of the sun setting over the former Dartmouth golf course right where the college hopes to build, Ann Crory's photo of sunset reflected in the glass of barn door in Piermont, Stewart Ketcham's sunrise in Maine, Janice Fischel's in West Virginia, Ginger Buchman's in Oregon, Stephen Alexander's in Texas..."It's not just a store. It's a community gathering place." The Yankee Bookshop's Kari Meutsch could be speaking for any of the area's four indie bookstores hosting a bookstore crawl on Saturday for Independent Bookstore Day. And in Seven Days, Hannah Feuer touches base with three of them, talking to Meutsch, the Norwich Bookstore's Sam Kaas, and Left Bank Books' Rena Mosteirin about why the personal touch matters in the age of online retailing. She also checks in with the Book Jam's Lisa Christie about "Shelf Help," her podcast in which the indie owners offer reading recommendations.“We’ve been waiting my whole high school career to have a track we could race on." That's Leb High School senior running standout Birhanu Harriman, talking to the Valley News's Benjamin Rosenberg about the school's new track. It hosted its first meet Tuesday, much to the relief of the celebrated Raiders track team—which has been unable to race at home for years because the old track was so shabby. “On our last 100 (meter) straightaway, you couldn’t even run in Lane 3 without falling in the divots of the concrete," senior Morgan Kantor explains. The $1.6 million project wound up last fall."My soul and my body were like, 'Now it's time to deal.'" When Jarvis Green takes the stage at the Briggs in WRJ tonight for the first-night preview of Every Brilliant Thing, it will be his first time doing so as an actor with the company he founded, JAG Productions. And it'll be personal, he tells Seven Days' Sally Pollak: He chose the play—in which his character confronts his mother's and his own depression—"because for the first time in my life [last fall], I experienced what I now know is depression. I lost my life force." Pollak sits in on rehearsal and talks it all over with Green and director Dhira Rauch.SPONSORED: Join Kimball Union Academy on May 13 for an on-campus Admission Open House. Engage with our faculty and students; experience our breathtaking 1,300-acre campus in Meriden; learn about our unique approach to education; and see the wide-ranging opportunities available to your high-school student. Register today to discover how all students can find a deep sense of belonging right here in the Upper Valley. Sponsored by KUA.Long-Tailed Ducks. A pair of them, in fact, off Gooseberry Island in Westport, MA. They feature in the painting by 12-year-old Coraline Mann of Etna that won "Best in Show" for NH in the 2023 National Junior Duck Stamp Art Contest held by US Fish & Wildlife—which just caught the eye of the Globe's "Morning Report" newsletter (scroll to the bottom; no paywall). The painting is based on a photo Coraline took this winter, and is now representing the Granite State in an exhibition touring the country for the next year. She chose long-tails because she wanted to show that ducks are "more than just your everyday Mallard.”In NH, residents start enrolling in community power. They happen to be in Nashua, the first 8,000 of them, after Eversource transferred the single billing code it had created for the Community Power Coalition from Enfield to that city. Eversource customers in other towns will probably face delays, NHPR's Mara Hoplamazian explains, because the company wants to create a separate code for each community, while the coalition wants it to get things started by using a single code in all the towns that can enroll. “We still feel like they're imposing arbitrary obstacles," Leb's Clifton Below tells Hoplamazian.SPONSORED: Free educational event with APD Orthopaedics. Do you have numbness, pain, and tingling in your arms and hands? Learn about carpal tunnel syndrome on Wednesday, May 3 at 5:30 pm. Dwinell Room at Harvest Hill, 23 Alice Peck Day Drive, Lebanon. Open to the public. Refreshments served. Sponsored by Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital.VT state website outage last week was thanks to a cut cable—in DC. For nearly 20 hours last week, the state's residents couldn't reach many of its online services, including DMV Express, which allows for license renewals and registrations. And the reason, reports Julie Pattison-Gordon in Government Technology, was a severed AT&T fiber cable to a DC data center run by Tyler Technologies, which handles VT's web hosting and content management. It took a while to switch things over to a backup center in Texas—a process the state's chief information officer says they'll work to make automatic. "I don't care where you came from...if you can live and let live." But, West Glover VT plow guy, stonemason, and former state legislator John Rodgers tells radio producer Erica Heilman, "I have a problem with...the people who come here and want to take rights away from us that our families have had for generations." For her series on class in VT, Heilman talks to Rodgers about why working class Vermonters don't run for the legislature—"they won't consider taking the pay hit"—and the disdain he sees from newcomers who deride locals' generations-long hunting, fishing, and trapping traditions. "They want to make the Vermont they want," he says."It's not just two different villages, counties or states. We're talking about two different countries." In Seven Days, Rachel Hellman reports on the hassles of living in two problem-plagued buildings that straddle the US-Canada border in Derby Line. Frozen pipes, sewage in the basement, mold—VT health inspectors would like to help, but the landlord, who lives in Florida and has a less-than-stellar reputation there, too, won’t let them inspect the basement. He says they have no jurisdiction in Canada, where half the building sits. The complexities of cross-border enforcement are making the apartments unlivable.2,000 bottles of beer on the wall, 2,000 bottles of beer. Take one down, give up the crown… Just in time for the coronation of a new king next week, a brew made for a thanks-but-no-thanks king from almost a century ago is going on the block. In Inside Hook, Joanna Sommer explains how a British brewery made a special Coronation Ale to celebrate the crowning of Edward VIII. But, as we all know, Edward chose love over royalty and American Wallis Simpson over the warm beer of England. The 2,000 unopened bottles from his cancelled coronation in 1937 will be auctioned off for charity.The Thursday Vordle. With a fine word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Today at 2:30, Jeff Kerby, an arctic researcher who's a visiting fellow this year at Dartmouth's Institute of Arctic Studies, will talk about "The Changing Ecology of the Russian Arctic." In particular, he'll be focusing on his climate change research in Siberia's Yamal Peninsula, and the collaboration between an international team of researchers there and indigenous reindeer-herding communities.
At 5 pm, the Hood hosts a panel discussion on its exhibit, ¡Printing the Revolution!, with artists Scherezade García and Sonia Romero, curator Claudia Zapata, and moderator Mary Coffey, who teaches in Dartmouth's art history department. They'll be talking about the influence of the dozens of Chicano artists represented on printmaking history.
This evening at 7, Keeping Track founder Sue Morse will give an online talk, "Wild About Wild Habitat," sponsored by Vermont Family Forests and The Wildlife Center. She'll present photos and insights about the region's wildlife (she'll be focused on Champlain Valley, but it's not that far away), their need for connected wild habitat, and the actions individuals and communities can take to promote wildness. No charge but you'll need to register.
Also at 7, the Thetford Historical Society continues its Thursday speaker series with Marty Podskoch talking about "The History of the Civilian Conservation Corps in Vermont." A retired teacher, Podskoch has written extensively about the Adirondacks, but his current research concerns the CCC and its impact on reshaping public lands and infrastructure during the Great Depression. Its contributions were lasting, and still evident around Vermont. Podskoch adds a personal plea to bring any stories or photos you might have about the CCC—he's writing a book on the topic. At the Community Building in Thetford Center.
Also at 7, Newbury VT photographer (and regular Daybreak contributor) Ian Clark offers up "An Uncommon Look at the Common Loon" at the Morrill Memorial Library in Strafford. In a slideshow drawn from his thousands of photos, he'll be talking about the iconic birds and his experiences watching and photographing them.
And also at 7, Hop Film's "Asian Diaspora on Film" series screens Man Push Cart, director Ramin Bahrani 2005 feature about a once-successful Pakistani musicians trying to make it in NYC as a food-cart vendor selling bagels, sweet rolls, juice and coffee on Manhattan's early-morning streets—in the wake of 9/11. In the Loew.
At 7:30 this evening, Jarvis Green takes the Briggs Opera House stage in WRJ as JAG Productions begins its run of Every Brilliant Thing. Though Green himself remains a constant, Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe's play changes every performance, because its supporting cast—members of the audience—is different each time. The immersive solo comedy—about joy, depression, uncertainty, heartbreak, and all the little things that can make life worth living—runs through Sunday, May 14.
Also at 7:30, balafon master Mamadou Diabaté (originally from Burkina Faso, now living in Austria) and his rockin' African-Austrian ensemble, Percussion Mania, take over Dartmouth's Collis Common Ground for a free concert. Open to the public.
At 9, Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover brings in Jungle Room for what's likely to be their last public performance before its six members—Tuck students all—graduate and go their separate ways. Drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals, and trombone, all riffing on tunes from the '70s to now.
And anytime, you can check out JAM's highlights for the week, including "The Thing With Feathers," a multi-poet 2022 reading at AVA focused on hope; six of the plays that featured in this year's Ten-Minute Play Festival by the Parish Players; and cartoonist Ed Koren's 2018 appearance at the Norwich Bookstore after his collection In the Wild came out.
And to get us on our feet this morning...
Tonight in Boston, at the fabled Club Passim, Strafford pianist and accordian player Jeremiah McLane and his compatriots in the trad trio Kalos—Montreal-based guitarist, mandolinist, and lead singer Eric McDonald and Seattle-based fiddler Ryan McKasson—
. They'll be playing a house concert in Bow tomorrow night, but our best nearby chance to see them will be in Putney on May 5. To tide you over,
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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