GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Can you stand a little more warmth? Not that there's much choice, of course. With winds from the south, we'll see sunny skies again and temps into the 80s. And you don't need a reminder, but the Weather Service says, "The recent dry stretch has led fine fuels to completely dry out. Continued dry weather this week will lead to additional fire weather concerns despite relatively light winds." Down to the mid-50s tonight."It got hot quick, wouldn't you say?" Two spring photos that look for all the world like a conversation between...
Ostrich ferns near the Union Village Dam in Thetford, by Stephanie Carney—who writes, "Because of chill temperatures, the fiddleheading season began late. It's normally short, though with the early arrival of hot weather, it will be even more so this year."
And painted turtles hanging out on a log in Lyme, by John Pietkiewicz.
Report on Canaan traffic stop raises questions—but provides no answers—about officer's credibility. You'll remember that the NH Supreme Court just ruled that a private investigative report into the 2017 encounter between then-Canaan police officer Samuel Provenza and Crystal Eastman (now Wright) should be released. That happened yesterday. The report "cast doubt on portions" of Provenza's story, as John Lippman writes in the Valley News, but could not substantiate whether or not Provenza deliberately used excessive force. Full report with redactions (via InDepthNH) here.VSP, game wardens investigate hunting-related shooting in Hartford. On Sunday, a Pomfret man and his 14-year-old son were hunting turkey off Quarry Hill Road when the boy shot and wounded a bird. According to a VT Fish & Game press release, they had split up to find it when the father, attempting to shoot the turkey, injured his son. He drove him to DHMC, where the boy "was treated for serious, but non-life-threatening injuries." VSP press release here.A record of a very different kind of bird hunt. On the VT Center for Ecostudies blog, Chris Rimmer draws attention to a new book recounting the final year of the remarkable eight-year quest by birder Fred Pratt to find and document 150 species of birds within a single year for each of Vermont's 14 counties. He and his wife, Chris, began in 2011—and after Chris died in 2017, an entire community of birders stepped up to help, Rimmer writes. The final bird came in November, 2019, when Pratt found a pair of Northern Shovelers on Lake Paran, in North Bennington. SPONSORED: Windsor County Mentors is now offering services in Sullivan County, NH! If you would like to support a local child by becoming a mentor, we offer both community- and school-based mentoring options in Claremont and Newport. Research shows that youth with mentors have better high school graduation rates, higher college enrollment rates, decreased drug and alcohol use, and enhanced self-esteem and self-confidence. Learn more about how to help a child experience life-changing emotional and moral growth at the maroon link. Sponsored by Windsor County Mentors.“The reality I’ve discovered is that we’re all storytellers.” That was playwright Elizabeth Addison Tuesday during a panel discussion on creativity at the Top of the Hop to launch JAGfest. The VN's Alex Hanson was there as JAG founder Jarvis Green and two of the three playwrights featured this weekend talked over how they write and what they're trying to accomplish. Asked about "excellence" and "success," travis tate responded, to general laughter, "I think I measure success by how much money I have and how many people know my name,” adding that he thinks less about excellence than about "rigor."“Gain access to your monkey mind…supplying us with words, a river of language.” That’s a small taste of the wisdom of NH’s new poet laureate, Alexandria Peary, in conversation with Beverly Stoddart in InDepthNH. Their chat explores the dimensions of Leary’s work and her philosophies on writing and teaching. She insists that poetry is available to everyone, wishing for anyone who wants to write "to have confidence, to not lug around a stone backpack of doubt.” And to battle self-doubt, she says, ignore the future and write within the mindful present, where “you are wonderfully alone.”As NH prepares to upgrade fish hatcheries, environmentalists and some anglers object. “When you’re talking about satisfying an angler, they’re not going to want to go catch 30 two-inch fish. They’re going to want to go catch a couple big fish,” inland fisheries chief Dianne Timmins tells NH Bulletin's Amanda Gokee. And it's those bigger fish that the hatcheries deliver; NH's wild fish tend to be smaller. But, Gokee writes, advocates believe that farm-raised fish are driving the state's wild native fish populations out of existence and threatening the water quality of the rivers and streams that house hatcheries.What's there and what's not in VT's new Covid "surveillance" report. The state's ditching its long-running Covid dashboard next week, and VTDigger's Erin Petenko takes an in-depth look at the new weekly report that will replace it. It includes things like ER visits with Covid-like symptoms, but not daily case numbers or the number of people hospitalized with Covid. Dartmouth's Anne Sosin criticizes the move away from the dashboard. "If we are going to rely on individuals to make public health decisions, then we need to equip them with more, not less, meaningful data,” she tells Petenko.Turns out, compostable foodware is problematic. That's the dilemma up in the Burlington area, writes Melissa Pasanen in Seven Days. Chittenden County's compost facility has stopped taking compostable containers and cutlery because it's hard to distinguish from the plastic variety. "It's 17 zillion items at a time coming in a 5-ton food-scrap load, and everything is smeared with food scraps and icky," says its outreach coordinator. A return to recyclable containers may be the answer—but not all are actually recyclable. "It is getting so complicated to throw your trash out," says a restaurateur.As VT legislature rushes toward adjournment, housing is top of mind. That's in no small part, writes Seven Days' Kevin McCallum, because legislators and Gov. Phil Scott disagree over the provisions in a trio of bills that affect housing development in the state. Scott and most of the state's mayors argue that a proposed change to how Act 250 appeals would be handled throws obstacles in the path of new housing in the midst of a housing crisis. And a measure with money for middle-income housing contains several provisions Scott opposes, including a contractor registry.On the other hand, legislators facing a veto threat on a different housing bill pull provision opposed by Scott. That measure is mostly aimed at using $20 million in federal funding to help people renovate rental properties. The provision House and Senate negotiators agreed to withdraw would have required rental owners to register with the state. They kept a provision allowing state inspectors to enforce health and housing codes as well as fire safety inspections, reports VTDigger's Fred Thys."What summer is for a lot of people." That's VCE and Loon Conservation Project biologist Eric Hanson on why loons—and their calls—so capture people's imaginations. Loons are back on the region's lakes and ponds, and VPR's Grace Benninghoff talked to Hanson about the work that's gone into helping loons rebound, from protecting nest sites to trying to get the lead out of tackle boxes, and about threats to their health: maybe avian flu (biologists will be watching this summer), and, increasingly, malaria and a fungal disease called aspergillosis, both possibly driven by climate change.Hubble Space Telescope photos are cool, but they’re cool for a reason. In orbit for over 30 years, Hubble has more than earned its household-name status, surpassing our wildest imagination about the universe and how it works. As the trusty telescope winds down its mission—to pass the baton to the James Webb Space Telescope—Vice asked members of the European Space Agency to share their favorite Hubble images and what makes them so extraordinary. From auroras over cool blue Uranus to “green phantom” lights emanating from a supermassive black hole, the cosmos is never not mind-blowing.The Thursday Vordle. Raise your hand if this is the first place you come in Daybreak each morning.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
At 4 this afternoon, various Dartmouth departments and programs host Georgetown history prof Marcia Chatelain for a talk about her book, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. It won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History for what the Pulitzer committee called its "nuanced account of the complicated role the fast-food industry plays in African-American communities"—exploring the industry's role in rising rates of obesity and diabetes and its legacy of minimum-wage jobs, and, at the same time, the economic and political power built by Black franchise owners in their communities. In-person in Filene Auditorium.
At 7 this evening, Still North Books & Bar hosts "Puzzle Night"—an evening with Dartmouth librarian and crossword puzzle creator Laura Braunstein. Braunstein has published her work in the exacting pages of the New York Times and elsewhere, and is one of the co-founders of The Inkubator, which publishes puzzles constructed by women and nonbinary creators and which has just come out with a book of crosswords that "truly reflect modern life, from dating apps to activism." She will be talking about the book, offering tips on constructing puzzles, and working with the audience to solve a puzzle collectively.
Also at 7, Hop Film brings in Faya Dayi, Jessica Beshir's 2021 near-hallucinatory documentary about the walled city of Harar, in eastern Ethiopia, and in particular the single-crop economy that has emerged there revolving around khat, whose psychoactive leaves are in demand far beyond its borders. Its stories, wrote reviewer Sheila O'Malley last year, "are not told so much as they emerge from the visuals, the voices rising up through the fields, the river, the skies, the voices soft and intimate, like a whisper in your ear."
And also at 7, Vital Communities hosts an online "Local Energy Action Showcase," bringing together various towns' energy committees to talk about specific aspects of their work: Sustainable Hanover on equity and inclusion; the residential solar campaign mounted jointly by Cornish, Plainfield, Windsor, and Hartland; and Bradford's effort to weatherize the town library. Plus themes that the committees are seeing as they look toward the upcoming year's work.
Finally, at 7:30 Enfield's Shaker Bridge Theater starts its run (through May 29) of Ironbound, Pulitzer winner Martyna Majok's play about a worn-down, hard-working, grittily cynical Polish immigrant, Darja. Set at or near a single bus stop in industrial northern New Jersey, it traces Darja's life over 20 years, often in flashback, as she tries to survive in an indifferent America.
For the last decade or so, Polish singer and accordionist Karolina Cicha has made a specialty of the music of Poland's minorities. Most recently, she's been exploring one of the tiniest of the country's groups: the Karaim, a Jewish offshoot (they recognize the primacy of the
Tanakh
, the Hebrew Bible, but not the oral law of Rabbinic Judaism) who live these days in Crimea, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, and Israel. There are only 200 or so left in Poland. In 2020, Cicha launched a project called the "Karaim Music Map," tracing the Karaim presence in Eastern Europe and performing and recording songs based on traditional Karaim tunes.
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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