GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Back to sunshine. High pressure's building in from Canada and it looks like it's going to stick around for a bit. There may be some fog first thing but skies today will be mostly blue, with highs getting into the low or mid 60s. Moderate winds from the northwest and partly cloudy skies tonight, lows in the upper 30s.The Upper Valley's rich bird life in spring. Photographer Jim Block has spent the last six weeks finding it all over, and devotes most of his latest blog post to what he found: a striking pair of bald eagles, a variety of warblers, some highly photogenic tree swallows in Windsor, grackles, phoebes, broad-winged hawks... plus scenes from around the region.An onlooker's guide to the Croydon school budget revote. On Saturday, voters there will gather to weigh a petition to reconsider the March town meeting vote drastically cutting the school budget. Debate in town—and in the Valley News's letters column—has been heated; school officials say the only way to meet the budget is through private "micro-schooling" and parents paying to send their kids to public schools in other towns. For the revote to be binding, more than 50 percent of the voter checklist set at the time of the petition must show up. Alex Hanson sketches the specifics in the VN.The arts this month. "My inbox is an embarrassment of riches in upcoming artsy experiences," writes Susan Apel on Artful, and she sets out to prove it with a lineup of May performances and gallery shows. Shows at AVA and Artistree, the return of Upper Valley Baroque at the end of this month, photos at the Howe... and a link to an interactive feature on artist Rosemary Conroy's website letting you try various of her paintings on for size in various rooms around someone's (exceedingly neat) house.“It’s so boring. How did this happen to us?” That's Thetford's Alicia Houk, an expert on pollinator gardens, talking to the VN's Claire Potter about the lawn behind W. Leb's Kilton Library. Houk, whose husband works there, has planted a bed of native plants alongside. She's part of a movement in the Upper Valley and well beyond to promote native plants—and cut back on lawns—in order to reverse the environmental losses caused by declining pollinators. “The only way we’re going to change it is by individuals changing their own homes and gardens,” says the VT Center for Ecostudies' Spencer Hardy.Caller's tip leads to identity of woman found in Merrimack River. Police in Bow, NH, had requested the public's help in identifying the woman, whose body was discovered a week ago. Yesterday they named her as 38-year-old Katie Gorfinkle, of Concord. “We have received numerous tips from the public from all over the United States with regards to the forensic artist’s sketch,” Bow Police Chief Ken Miller said yesterday. “We want to thank everyone who called in a tip as it was one of these tips that led to the identification.” Police are still investigating the circumstances of her death.NH Exec Council okays $100 million plan for workforce housing. The council had initially balked at Gov. Chris Sununu's plan to devote federal ARPA funds to spurring housing development, arguing that there weren't enough safeguards to ensure the money goes to affordable housing. But after state officials laid out guidelines for ensuring affordability standards are met and pledge to make sure funds are spread across the state, reports NH Bulletin's Dana Wormald, councilors yesterday voted 4-1 to approve the program.Over the last 84 years, Mt. Washington and Pinkham Notch lost more than two weeks of frost. That's one conclusion in a recent Appalachian Mountain Club study that pulled together weather data collected by the Mt. Washington Observatory since the 1930s. Overall, average temps have risen and snowfall (at least, at Pinkham Notch; it gets blown off the Mt. Washington summit) has dropped, reports WBUR's Hannah Chanatry. "What we're seeing is due to manmade activities and burning fossil fuels," says the AMC's Georgia Murray.In first overseas deployment, VT Air National Guard F-35s—and their pilots—head for Europe. And not just any part of Europe, reports the AP's Wilson Ring, but the skies over NATO's eastern flank. The Guard only recently completed its conversion from F-16s to F-35s, Ring writes; it's the first Guard unit in the country to fly them. In all, more than 200 Vermont personnel and their equipment, plus eight F-35s, were sent over.VT State Treasurer Beth Pearce to step down at end of term. "I love the job. It's the best job in the state," the 68-year-old, six-term treasurer tells VPR's Peter Hirschfeld. But in addition to ongoing health problems, she was diagnosed with cancer last month. "I don't believe I can do an election, go through that process this year," she says. Probably the biggest issue facing her successor, she tells Hirschfeld, will be the state-run pension system. With her decision, Pearce continues the spate of sudden top political job openings in VT, including US senator, US rep, lieutenant governor, and secretary of state.VT Senate votes to override pension reform veto. In fact, it was unanimous: 30-zip, reports VTDigger's Lola Duffort. The bill, which was the result of long negotiations between the legislature and public sector unions, aims to cut into the state retirement system's $5.7 billion in unfunded liabilities by requiring both the state and public employees to pay more. In his veto message, Gov. Phil Scott argued that it just postpones needed structural changes. “As far as this bill is concerned, it's not just the 11th hour. It is 11:55 p.m. And I think we have to move on,” said Senate GOP leader Randy Brock."It's like a low-cost runner's high." That would be the endorphin rush within a few minutes of jumping into icy water to swim, says Vermont's new state librarian. Cathy Delneo is an open-water swimmer—despite having a leg injured in a shark attack in NC, writes Anne Wallace Allen in a Seven Days profile. Delneo grew up in VT, but spent 15 years with the San Francisco public library system before taking on the VT job in February. The state library helps locally controlled libraries with systems and access to materials, and is pulling together the technology to roll out a new ebook lending system later this year.Jay Craven’s last film to be a retelling of colonial-era VT. Before the indie filmmaker, known for his adaptations of Howard Frank Mosher novels, finished shooting his new—and likely final—project, Seven Days’ Sally Pollak visited the set in Marlboro to capture the mood. A cast and crew of both industry pros and student filmmakers seemed universally delighted to be part of Craven’s sweeping film, Lost Nation, in which historical figures Ethan Allen and notable former slave Lucy Terry Prince cross paths. “Part of the goal of this film,” says Craven, “is to say that Vermont was racially diverse from day one.” "I had moved to rural Vermont from Brooklyn, and I had two little kids and suddenly I was getting a divorce and I was living on 17 acres in the woods and I didn't know anything about living in the country." Definitely not what you think of as the usual setup for poetry, but on local writer Joni Cole's latest Author Can I Ask You podcast, VT poet Camille Guthrie tells Cole it was all grist for the mill. She talks over dealing with her midlife crisis with humor—and learning from female stand-up comedians; the depth in a cliché like diamonds (the name of her latest collection); and how things could always be worse.When microscopic images unveil universes too tiny to see. If you didn’t know you were looking at, say, neurons in a mouse’s brain magnified hundreds of times, you might swear it was a nebula hundreds of light years away. But like all the photos selected for Olympus Image of the Year awards, showcased in Smithsonian mag, the minuscule becomes magically vast…and vibrant and more intricate than we know. An image of soil fungus spores—each globe containing hundreds of nuclei—shows the inner workings of their symbiosis with plants. A close-up of a snail’s tongue is pure infinite symmetry.The Thursday Vordle. Just five letters. You know you'll get there.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
Today at 2:15, the Hood and a collection of Dartmouth departments and programs launch a two-day conference, open to the public, called "Photography's Afterlives." It brings together photographers, writers, photo historians, and others to talk about how everyday photographic images—portraits and selfies, ID and passport photos, family photos, school pictures, street photos, prison photographs, and more—can affect personal, political, and social life. Panelists include celebrated photo-journalists James Nachtwey and Susan Meiselas, as well as journalist Jeff Sharlet. Mostly at the Hood, but also at other locations on campus.
About a year ago, journalist Michael Blanding—you may have read his 2014 book, The Map Thief—published a book about the ongoing debate on the authorship of Shakespeare's plays by profiling a freelance academic named Dennis McCarthy. Blanding's book, North by Shakespeare: A Rogue Scholar's Quest for the Truth Behind the Bard's Work, details how McCarthy has shaken up the Shakespeare-studies world by amassing a good deal of evidence that Shakespeare may have written his plays but he drew heavily on the work of well-traveled lawyer, diplomat, and writer Thomas North. Today at 4 pm, the Friends of the Dartmouth Library host both Blanding and McCarthy to talk it all over. In the East Reading Room of Baker Library.
Also at 4 today, but a bit of a drive away, the Friends of the Vermont Statehouse host the official unveiling of Middlebury artist Katie Runde's portrait of Alexander Twilight. Twilight is thought to be both the first African American college graduate and the first African American legislator in the US, and his portrait will join those of former VT governors and military figures hanging in the state capitol. The unveiling will be indoors, followed by a reception on the portico.
Today at 6 pm, the Chelsea Public Library hosts a closing reception and conversation with local artist Carrie Caouette-De Lallo about her "Door to Door" exhibit. It grew out of her habit of walking around town and photographing its historic doorways—the old Country Store, the Bee Hive, the Luce House—photos that, over time, she began turning into drawings. "The drawings," she wrote in her comments on the exhibition, "have become meditations on place and, in some ways, my love letter to this community and its rich history."
At 6:30 pm, the Howe Library hosts an in-person talk—and wall-building demonstration—on New England's stone walls by Hopkinton NH writer, actor, tradesman, former NHPR producer, and stone-wall builder Kevin Gardner. He'll be talking about how and why New England came to acquire its thousands of miles of stone walls and how their styles emerged and changed over time.
At 7 pm, Hanover High's Footlighters launch a three-day run of The Theory of Relativity, Neil Bartram and Brian Hill's musical linking Einstein's insights to the tribulations of coming of age.
Elvis Costello is in New Orleans this week for his Jazzfest gig, and one of the first things he did was head to a road running near Lake Pontchartrain that used to be called Robert E. Lee Boulevard—but in January was renamed Allen Toussaint Boulevard in honor of the late singer, prolific songwriter, pianist, and record producer who once lived on the street. Toussaint was a force for decades in New Orleans, shaping its rhythm-and-blues and funk scenes with his songs, performing, arranging, and work with everyone from Dr. John to the Nevilles to, eventually, John Mayall. Oh, and Elvis Costello, with whom he cut an album in the first post-Katrina major studio session.
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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