GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
It's going to be remarkably like yesterday out there. Cloudy (and maybe foggy) to start, but most of that will clear out during the morning, and temps will rise well into the 80s. Humidity should be a little bit less triumphant today.Springfield Hospital files for Chapter 11. The hospital and its parent, Springfield Medical Care Systems, will continue to operate while they go through the bankruptcy/reorganization process. In a press release, the hospital stressed that staff will continue to be paid, and no layoffs are planned. It cites high levels of charity care, bad debt, and inadequate reimbursements among its reasons for the move.Food & Wine names Morano Gelato best ice cream in New Hampshire. Yeah, sure, gelato is not ice cream. But in a rundown of "The Best Ice Cream Shop in Every State" based in part on some number-crunching by Yelp, the high-end mag lingers over Morgan Morano's flavors. Turns out the winners in ME, MA, and VT (and NJ) are all gelato places, too. Thanks for the tip, JP!Hearing in Woodstock tonight on short-term rentals. The town's struggling with how to handle the conflict between its traditional lodging industry and all the people putting their places up on Airbnb. Its selectboard and village trustees want new regs, and are proposing a moratorium on new short-term rental permits. They'll be considering the moratorium at a public meeting tonight.Ant vs. sprinkle: No contest. Andrew Martin caught an ant in the act of making off with a sprinkle from a Dan & Whit's cone, and put it up on FB. "Please help me ID the perp and where his royal queen is at," he writes. But up close, you're really got to admire the little guy.Patrick Ross's third annual Camping and Music Festival is up in Newbury this weekend, and the VN's David Corriveau highlights it. It's been building -- this year, it features Lula Wiles, and Rusty "The Logger" Dewees, plus a slew of Upper Valley musicians. But still, Corriveau notes, it's the "low-key alternative" to the now-sprawling Jenny Brook Bluegrass Festival going on at the same time in Tunbridge (more on that below). (VN, sub reqd)Black bears practice reciprocal altruism, helping friends out when it comes to food. That's Ben Kilham, who was over in the Lakes Region talking bears this week. They're protective of their own food sources, but they also form alliances, he said. Oh, and “You can communicate with bears; they understand all our non-verbal communication,” he adds. NH Leg meeting today to wrap up budget, minimum wage, regional greenhouse initiative. There's a slew of conference committee agreements lawmakers need to deal with in up or down votes. NH Business Review's Bob Sanders has a complete rundown. Then comes the main event: WWSD (what will Sununu do?)NH is actually one of the safer states when it comes to highway safety. Lots of attention on the question this week after 12 people, including the 7 in that horrendous motorcycle event, died on the state's roads. The Monitor's David Brooks digs into the numbers, and notes it's the third-safest in the country when measuring road fatalities per mile driven, though 2018 data may change that a bit. Northern VT forest becomes part of California carbon market. The 5400-acre parcel by Burnt Mountain, which is owned by the state chapter of The Nature Conservancy, is the first in VT to become part of California's effort to allow carbon-producing companies to buy "offsets" against what they generate. So now the Burnt Mountain tract is being managed--and measured--for its carbon storage potential.New UVM study finds domestic honeybees may be spreading diseases felling wild bumblebees. The team's research suggests that several of the viruses are being passed along through flowers shared by honeybees in apiaries and wild bumblebees. “Many wild pollinators are in trouble and this finding could help us protect bumblebees,” says lead researcher Samantha Alger. “This has implications for how we manage domestic bees and where we locate them.” Caledonia Spirits (you know them as Barr Hill) quintuples in size with new facility in Montpelier. The distiller, which started small in Hardwick, now sells to customers in 32 states and overseas. So not only is it expanding, but this weekend it's opening a visitor's center in its new digs. Not only does the move make Caledonia more accessible to visitors, but Montpelier's mayor says, “This is going to be a boon for us” by drawing more tourists to the city. Outside magazine is out with a rundown of the best road, gravel, and mountain bike rides in Vermont. Kingdom Trails, of course, and the four-gap LAMB (Lincoln, Appalachian, Middlebury and Brandon) ride. But also Catamount Trails in Williston, and an 80-mile gravel route through southern VT.Is Topsham's the smallest post office in Vermont? There's a nice thread on Reddit about small post offices, and boy, Topsham's is tiny. "I forget what town it was, but my Dad used to joke that one of those towns only had a 4 digit zip code because they couldn't fit the 5th digit on the building," someone writes. That about seems right.A quick note: Daybreak continues to struggle against email services' newsletter-killers. If you don't see it in your inbox on a weekday morning, would you mind checking your "junk" folder? I promise I won't skip a day without telling you ahead of time. If you want to know how to put Daybreak in your contacts so you can avoid this, just email me: [email protected].OKAY, SO WHAT'S ON TONIGHT?Well, the Jenny Brook Bluegrass Festival's going on at the Tunbridge Fairgrounds, of course. Tonight, the Malpass Brothers ("These guys don't just sound retro, they are retro..."), Beartracks, Rock Hearts, and the bluegrass-steeped Feinberg Brothers from Long Island, who front a quintet "that looks and sounds like it might have just stepped off the Opry stage in 1958."Or you could go see the International Ocean Film Tour at the HOP. Surfing Lake Superior in winter, the ocean activists of Sea Shepherd chase poachers across the globe, a French marine biologist and photographer spends a lot of time with sharks, one of surfing's greats, taking four years to sail from Sydney to Berlin and record musicians at stops along the way.... That's a lot of travel and adventure without leaving your seat. Also, Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson will be there for a Q&A. Starts at 8 pm.Alrighty, let's get out there and make the world better today. See you tomorrow.
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