GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
A bit warmer, slight chance of showers, more clouds than sun. The front that brought us yesterday's weather is dropping southward today, and though we may see some raindrops, we could also see some sun, especially late in the day. Highs today will be around 70. Things should dry out overnight as high pressure starts building in. Lows around 50.Spring colors are bustin' out all over.
Take, for instance, the flowers in Elizabeth Borowsky's garden in Lebanon.
Or—more muted, but appealing in its own way—this spread of Dryad's Saddle fungi in Norwich. The mushroom, also known as Pheasant's Back, likes to grow on dead, rotting hardwood trees, writes Barbara Woodard.
And the view across a reach of flowering trees on Campbell St. in Hartford, from Linda Milman.
I-89 to I-91 ramp closed this morning. The ramp from I-89 southbound to I-91 northbound will be closed to all traffic from 9 am to 1 pm today, VTrans says in a press release. The agency adds they'll give reopening notice via New England 511. The closure's related to bridge maintenance on the ramp.Town meetings: Voters in Hanover elect two selectboard members, approve zoning changes, Gaza resolution; Newport voters choose Bert Spaulding, Sr., defeat town budget.
Tuesday's balloting in Hanover kept incumbent member Joanna Whitcomb on the selectboard, with 500 votes, and added Lou's owner Jarret Berke, who garnered 476. Voters also overwhelmingly approved the budget and a series of zoning amendments, including raising the maximum allowable building height downtown. But as the Valley News's Patrick Adrian reports, contention broke out at the evening's floor meeting, focused on a warrant article calling for a Gaza cease fire and a halt in US military aid to Israel; that resolution passed 101-89. Adrian describes the debate.
And in Newport, NH, Spaulding—a former member of the town's selectboard and planning and school boards—defeated three other candidates for a three-year seat, Patrick O'Grady reports in the VN. Voters were also not in a spending mood: They defeated a proposed $11.5 million budget (in its place, a default $10.8 million budget will go into effect) and by a mere two votes approved $1.01 million for a capital reserve fund for a rec center already under construction.
Dartmouth undergrads narrowly back "no confidence" vote on Sian Beilock's leadership. The vote, organized by the student government in the wake of the college president's response to the May 1 effort to build a pro-Palestinian encampment on the Green, is advisory only; about 59 percent of the undergraduate student body cast ballots. Of those voting, reports Vidushi Sharma in The Dartmouth, 1,425 students (or 30 percent of all undergraduates) expressed "no confidence," while 1,323 students (28 percent of undergrads) voted against the no confidence move.DH takes over psychiatric care at NH's treatment facility for kids. When the state first bought Hampstead Hospital two years ago, it contracted with a private company based in Nashville—over the objections of mental health advocates, writes Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin. That contract just came up, and the state has turned instead to Dartmouth Health, which for three decades has provided treatment at New Hampshire Hospital. Susan Stearns, executive director at NAMI NH, tells Timmins her members have been happy with the care at the state hospital.SPONSORED: Does hip or knee pain keep you from doing the things you love? On Wednesday, May 22, from 5:30 pm to 7 pm, orthopaedic experts from APD and DHMC will share information about different treatments such as joint replacement surgery (including new robotic technologies) and non-surgical treatments such as ultrasound guided injections and PRP therapy (platelet-rich plasma). Pre- and post-surgery tips will also be shared. Dwinell Conference Room, 23 Alice Peck Day Drive, Lebanon, NH. Free and open to the public. Sponsored by APD.End of an era: Haverhill's Upper Valley Press shuts down. The press once printed everything from Seven Days and the Rutland Herald to the Bradford Journal-Opinion and Claremont Eagle-Times. But over the last decade, all had moved on to other printers. Now, reports Paul Hayes in the Caledonian Record (which stopped using UVP in 2008), the company has ceased operations and owner Reade Brower has put its building up for sale and transferred work to the Springfield (MA) Republican Journal and the Maine Trust for Local News.Enfield board approves zoning variances for large housing development. In fact, writes Liz Sauchelli in the VN, the 300-unit mix of apartment buildings and townhouses known as Laramie Farms, slated to go up along Route 4 and Maple St., is the largest housing development ever proposed for town. The two variances, on 4-1 votes at Tuesday night's zoning board meeting, allow developers to erect more than one building on a lot and to put up buildings more than twice as high as the town's current limit of 35 feet.SPONSORED: Great teachers and leaders are the heart of great schools. Interested in starting or advancing your career in education? Attend UVEI's online information session on Monday, May 20th at 4:30 pm to learn about our licensure programs and M.Ed degrees. UVEI also offers opportunities for collaboration and professional education throughout the year, all aimed at engaging and inspiring educators and supporting schools. Sponsored by the Upper Valley Educators Institute, Lebanon, NH.USPS pauses consolidation plan affecting WRJ sorting facility. The move is nationwide, reports Eric Katz for Government Executive, and comes as Postmaster General Louis DeJoy faces a "growing, bipartisan chorus in Congress" critical of his plan to shift and consolidate mail processing at dozens of facilities across the country. With millions of Americans expected to vote by mail in November, the agency announced this week that it would put its plans on hold until Jan. 1, 2025—though DeJoy continues to defend the changes as “what we must continue to do to survive.” (You might need to X out a popup.)You can't put anything over on former Richmond School 6th graders. A reader writes in about yesterday's item on really long words: "Mrs Sylvester, the 6th grade English teacher at Richmond Middle School in Hanover, had her students memorize pneumonoultrasilicovolcanoconiosis as a tool to learn about prefixes and suffixes. So likely there are tons of people in the Upper Valley able to recite the spelling. I was her student in 2006 and still remember how to spell it." Now there's a conversation-starter...With the help of a Walpole NH writing group, grieving mom goes global. Tina Hedin's "Modern Love" column in the NYT about the aftermath of her 25-year-old daughter's death from a severe allergic reaction to food appeared on May 3 (gift link); by 3 am, she tells NHPR's Rick Ganley, her inbox was filling up with emails from other parents who'd lost children—and from people who were grieving in other ways. Hedin, who lived in Keene but is now traveling the US full-time with her husband, tells Ganley, "I really do feel honored that so many people have taken the time to reach out, especially considering that that was my hope in writing in the first place – was to connect with other people."New England grid operator foresees big changes for NH energy. ISO-New England's predictions should be taken with a grain of salt, David Brooks notes on his Granite Geek blog, since "the way we make and use energy is changing so fast that predicting the future of power has gotten more difficult than ever." Still, the 10-year estimates just released by the grid operator are striking, Brooks writes: a doubling of rooftop solar, a 12-fold increase in electric heating driven by heat pumps, and skyrocketing numbers of EVs on the road, from about 3,500 today to over 200,000 by 2033.Farming in the age of erratic weather: "If you go getting depressed you don't help yourself or the rest of the world." That's Barnard dairy farmer Paul Doton—who also runs a sugaring operation and grows corn—squaring his shoulders in Melissa Pasanen's Seven Days article about how farmers around Vermont are adapting to "warmer, wetter, wilder weather." Last year, as you know, was brutal, and farmers are doing everything they can to protect themselves in the event of a repeat: improving drainage, covering crops (including, in one case, using a shipping container), diversifying, and lots more.For VT veterinarian who specializes in end-of-life care, "intensely intimate, delicate work." Erika Bruner, of Berlin, is one of two vets in the state who focuses on euthanasia and on making house calls—meeting people and their pets at home, in fields, in barns, "wherever they want to be," radio producer Erica Heilman says. In a new piece for Vermont Public, Heilman talks to Bruner about her work—"I get, like, the front seat, you know, for meaningful stuff. Where their animal's lifetime—of the love that they have given them—is right there"—and spends time with her, a yellow lab named Kona, and Kona's owner as Kona breathes her last.“I’d spent years staring at dead microorganisms down a microscope, but the parrots were different; they were alive and beautiful.” Juan Masello was on a path to microbiology when a failed project brought that career to an end. Now he risks life and limb rappelling down the sheer cliffs of Balneario El Condo, in Argentina, to study the world’s largest parrot colony, writes James Hall in Atlas Obscura. There, some 76,000 burrowing parrots dig tunnels as long as nine feet to raise their chicks. Despite numerous injuries, Masello has no plans to leave the birds. “Without them, life just wouldn’t be the same.”
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
Just in time for spring, two additions to the Daybreak swag store. We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
we
know what's good! Strong Rabbit's Morgan Brophy has come up with the perfect design for "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Plus, you'll find the Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, as well as sweatshirts, t-shirts, a fleece hoodie, and, as always, the fits-every-hand-perfectly Daybreak mug. Check it all out at the link!
At 5:30 today, the gallery hosts a panel discussion with Peter Anderson and Caleb Brown, whose joint exhibition,
Mapping Memories of Place and Space,
explores just that: maps, memory, and the past; and with Joan Hanley, whose
The Vegetative Soul
exhibit explores the human world from the plant point of view.
This time around, the theme is "Harebrained adventures". Anyone is welcome to show up and share an unrehearsed five-minute true story from your own life. As the organizers write, "No competition, no judgment, no lecturing, no ranting… Just share a story about something that happened to you and listen to other people’s stories." At JAM in WRJ.
Romero's father was a German-Jewish businessman, her mother a Lutheran nurse. Forced to emigrate under the Nazis, Romero's mother went to England; her father wound up in Hanover—where he built a life that would allow him to bring his wife and family out of war-stricken Europe. Romero's new book,
All for You: A World War II Family Memoir of Love, Separation, and Loss,
tells that story, and she'll be talking about it both in the Mayer Room and via Zoom.
A historian and consultant, de Guardiola began her work on the 1920s and '30s movement to weed out "feeblemindedness" and "degeneracy" in VT while an undergrad at Dartmouth; it culminated in the publication last year of
"Vermont for the Vermonters": The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State.
She'll be talking about that chapter of the state's history as part of the Thetford Historical Society's spring lecture series tonight at 7 pm at the NEPOC Center in N. Thetford (5470 US Rt. 5).
The Norwich Bookstore hosts Bergland, a literature prof at Simmons University, to talk about her new book,
Natural Magic
, which paints both Dickinson and Darwin as standing athwart the 19th century divergence of art and science. "Just as Darwin’s work was informed by his roots in natural philosophy and his belief in the interconnectedness of all life," the publisher's notes go, "Dickinson’s poetry was shaped by her education in botany, astronomy, and chemistry, and by her fascination with the enchanting possibilities of Darwinian science."
Hop Film screens S. Louisa Wei's 2018 documentary,
Havana Divas
, about two Cuban-born women, raised in Cuba's once-60,000-strong Chinese community,
who learned and performed Cantonese opera as kids—then were separated for decades. They finally reunited in their sixties and returned to performing Cantonese opera.
Followed by a discussion with Wei Chinese and E. Asian lit prof Miya Xie.
Led by guest director and force of nature Knoelle Higginson, the choir offers up a blast of vocal harmony and energy every time it performs. Unusually, there are still tickets available.
, including: writer
and columnist Ann Aikens at the Norwich Library, reading from and talking about her new book,
A Young Woman's Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale;
the May 2 walkout by some Dartmouth faculty and students to protest the college's actions on May 1; and the Dartmouth Civics forum on Hanover town government, at which town officials explained warrant articles and the three selectboard candidates answered questions from the audience.
And for today...
Grace Bowers first picked up a guitar when she was nine years old. That was just eight years ago. And these days, the 17-year-old is getting profiled in
Forbes
and
USA Today
as the next big guitar hero to come out of Nashville's star-making machinery. Mostly self-taught, she began posting to YouTube during the pandemic—her family had moved to Nashville from the Bay Area—and, more recently, playing in bars around town. She scored a Gibson endorsement at 14, caught the eye of a slew of high-profile Nashville musicians, formed a band, and, most recently, headed to the recording studio. The first song from their EP is now out:
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.
Want to catch up on Daybreak music?
Want to catch up on Daybreak itself (or find that item you trashed by mistake the other day)? You can find everything on the Daybreak Facebook page
, or if you're a committed non-FB user,
.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! Subscribe at no cost at:
Thank you!