GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
The rain's gone, but the cold remains. Or the coolth, anyway. Yesterday's cold front did as advertised, bringing in a decidedly cooler-than-usual airmass—so even though today will be getting sunnier as the day goes on, we won't get much above 60. Then we drop back into the upper 30s tonight—with a good chance of frost in the colder spots. Take heart: It warms up tomorrow.It's all in how you look at things.
Like, for instance, a lamp's glow on spring blossoms in Norwich, by John Pietkiewicz;
And the pattern left by a skipped stone—taken on Lake Erie by Hanover's Maureen Ripple and too beautiful not to share despite its distance away.
And hey, Daybreak swag is back! Though really, it's Vordle swag and Lost Woods swag. Plus a new Daybreak t-shirt design. Plus the old t-shirt design, long-sleeved tees and sweathshirts, and, of course, mugs. Check it all out at the link.Former LISTEN exec pleads not guilty. Kyle Fisher, who was charged by federal prosecutors earlier this month for embezzling $230K from the Lebanon-based nonprofit he once ran, is scheduled to face trial in July, reports John Lippman in the Valley News—and has hired a "high-profile" Nashua attorney, Charles Keefe, to defend him. Keefe, Lippman writes, was once a prosecutor with both the Hillsborough County Attorney’s Office and the New Hampshire AG's office, and is a past president of the New Hampshire Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers.In Bethel, a summer of fixing sidewalk cracks. With mosaic tiles. It's all due to Dayna Sabatino, owner of Day Breaks Glass Studio in the town, who came up with the idea of creating mosaics to fill the cracks and fissures that have appeared over time—and which, Seven Days' Rachel Hellman writes, are too expensive for the town to repair. Sabatino teamed up with middle schoolers and community members to prep mosaics over the winter, and now it's time to start embedding them. "I love the combination of the functionality of the mosaics mixed with the surprise of art being in the community," she says.SPONSORED: Come laugh with internationally famous comedian Ali Siddiq! He brings his unique stand-up comedy—which began behind prison walls—to Lebanon Opera House on Sunday, June 4 at 6PM. Enjoy refreshments beforehand from Salt Hill Pub, then celebrate three remarkable local women: Barbara Couch, Tracey Dustin-Eichler, and Becca Balint. Every dollar you spend will support residents of Hartford Dismas House. You’ll emerge with the knowledge that you helped support an organization working to make a stronger community for us all. Sponsored by Hartford Dismas House."Just spending time with people...makes them more comfortable with you being around." Especially, as is often the case with Alex Driehaus, when you've got a camera along for the ride. Driehaus is one of the Valley News's photographers—and one of the paper's two Report for America corps members. The Laconia Daily Sun's Adam Drapcho and Julie Hirshan Hart sat down to talk with her about her work: how she got into it (her parents got her a camera when they moved to what was then Swaziland), why she wanted to work at the VN, and especially, how she's built a portfolio "rich with empathy."In Windsor, state historic site offers “LGBTQ+ Pride Tree” a home. The tree planting will take place next week, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News. You may remember that last fall, the selectboard voted against putting it on the town common—town manager Tom Marsh tells Sauchelli it was because the common hosted no other memorials, while board member Paul Woodman tells her he voted against it because constituents "were fed up with the bullying tactics that had been going on in the town” from tree supporters. Discussions in the town since that vote have calmed the waters, he says, calling the tree planting at the Old Constitution House on June 1 "fantastic."Guys you might recognize, on the page and on the screen.
"I sought out Charlie Berger in the fall of 1975 to meet the man who raised a pair of tundra wolves in rural Vermont," naturalist Ted Levin writes about Berger, who grew up in Brooklyn, became a large-animal vet in California, began dividing his time between VT and CA in the early '70s before moving to Thetford in 2003, spent decades volunteering his time and training in the Arctic at long-distance sled dog races including the Iditarod and the 1,000-mile-long Yukon Quest (in case you want to count, that made for 48 round trips, by car, between here and Alaska), and headed out on adventures all over the world as what Levin calls "a seat-of-the-paints ecotour leader..when the word 'ecotour' had not yet been coined." Berger's got a new memoir out, Born to Go
And tomorrow, writes Alex Hanson in the Valley News, the new About My Father, with Robert De Niro and comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, opens in theaters across the country—though not around here. It was co-written by Austen Earl, who grew up in Strafford, and though it's most obviously based on Maniscalco's life, Hanson writes, it also echoes Earl's: a kid from a working-class background moving up in the world thanks to his education, and trying to bring his new life to terms with his old one. Earl talks to Hanson about the Newton School teacher who taught him to write, the shock of going to St. Paul's, and how he ended up in Hollywood.
"I wonder why I ever gave up my [nursing] license...to do this. It's a real slap in the face." Given burnout rates among nurses, you've gotta wonder what would get someone to regret leaving. Answer? The US Postal Service. As Hellman reports, that Windsor County mail carrier is echoing a common feeling among rural mail carriers, after the USPS instituted a new formula to calculate their pay—which has led to drastic salary cuts in VT and nationwide. Rural carriers are paid based on volume, and the new system in part uses scanners—on which they say they were incorrectly trained—to track them.SPONSORED: The annual Pompanoosuc Mills Memorial Day Sale is back! Americans throw out over 12 million tons of furniture every year. That’s six times more than in 1960. We’re proud that for the past 50 years, we’ve been designing and handcrafting forever furniture right here in the Upper Valley. Building quality home furnishings is the single most important contribution we make to our planet. Our Memorial Day Sale is the best time to invest in ‘Fewer Better’ furniture. Enjoy 25-70% off until May 30th. Visit us at our Thetford and Hanover showrooms or at pompy.com. Sponsored by Pompanoosuc Mills.As suspect in Concord slayings heads toward trial, police detail how they found him—and the defense challenges the process. At a hearing in Merrimack Superior Court yesterday, Concord police Lt. Marc McGonagle defended the department's decision to get cellphone data for Logan Clegg, the man accused of shooting Stephen and Djeswende Reid in April of last year, without first getting a warrant. "I believed that Logan Clegg was an immediate threat to the public,” McGonagle testified. In the Globe (paywall), Steven Porter details what the hearing revealed about how police tied Clegg to the case. WMUR also covers the hearing—in less detail but with a detailed timeline.NH hospital exec: “I didn't really ever want to get into the real estate market." But that, the CEO of a small hospital in Lancaster tells NHPR's Paul Cuno-Booth, is what he had to do just to find housing for employees. And he's not alone: DH is leasing apartment blocks from landlords, others are buying homes or actually building apartments. As Cuno-Booth reports, the high cost of housing in the state is making it tougher for health care employers to fix their workforce shortages—and for some health workers to stay in NH.In VT, a debate over schools' use of "restraint and seclusion." Both are allowed, especially in cases where safety is an issue, and it's far more common than most people or many parents know, Alison Novak writes in Seven Days: Restraining techniques were used 2,300 times and seclusion more than 1,100 time in the 2017-18 school year, the last year for which there are federal data. There's a move in the legislature to prohibit both physically restraining kids and seclusion rooms, and Novak dives into the issue, including a conversation with Norwich's Aidan Katz and his mom, Nancy, about the emotional cost.301 inches of snow. 465 inches of snow. That may seem like a lot, and it is: Those are the record snowfalls for ski areas in NH (Mohawk Falls in 1956) and VT (Jay in 2000) respectively. But if you scroll through Snow Brains' page on "Every State’s Record Snow Year According to Their Ski Areas," you quickly see that we're pikers. California's Mammoth Mountain got 893 inches this year. Alaska's Alyeska got 939 in 2001. And the record? 1,140 inches at Mt. Baker in Washington in 1999.“The wranglers were on the shoulder of I-75 with horses and four wheelers when they attempted to capture the suspect.” Safe to say that Lester the steer wasn’t just suspected of escaping his new home; he actually did. And then wandered around Oakland County, MI, for six weeks until a showdown on I-75—where a wrangler on horseback was finally able to lasso him (scroll down for the dashcam video). Fortunately, no one—including Lester—was hurt. Michigan State Police tweeted, “The bovine was not charged and is back in the pasture with a story to tell all the other livestock.”The Thursday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Today at 2 pm, the Howe hosts novelist Rachel Barenbaum for the next in her series of online conversations with intriguing new novelists. This afternoon, she'll be talking to Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah about his latest novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars—about two mainstays in a televised series of gladiatorial death matches pitting prisoners in the private-prison-industrial-complex against one another, with the ultimate prize being freedom. Gabrielle Bellot reviewed it on Tuesday in The Atlantic here.
You know summer's coming when Feast and Field returns in Barnard. The celebration of local food, music, and the green hills of Vermont kicks off its season tonight (doors at 5:30, music 6-ish) with Young Tradition Vermont—Youth Commission: a teen ensemble managed by Fiona Stowell that has been rehearsing and learning from master artists since September. They've been taught by some of the best traditional musicians Vermont has to offer, and gathering inspiration from Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, Scandinavian, Southern Gospel, Old Time, and Bluegrass music. Tix are sliding scale.
This evening at 7, Hop Film presents the next in its "Asian Diaspora on Screen" series with a jump way into the past: a 1915 Cecil B. DeMille silent classic, The Cheat, starring Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa. The Hop writes: "Often typecast as the taboo, sexually dominant villain—and The Cheat is no exception in this regard—Hayakawa was, ironically, a heartthrob among American audiences and one of the first male Hollywood sex symbols." Piano accompaniment by Bob Merrill.
And at 8 tonight in Rollins Chapel, the Dartmouth Gospel Choir rocks the house under the effervescent leadership of guest director Ahmaya Knoelle Higginson and her small band of NYC-based musicians. Amazingly, there are still some tickets left.
Well, there were all sorts of possibilities for today...
But that was before Tina Turner died yesterday at the age of 83. So: Barcelona, 1990,
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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