GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Boy, talk about a change in the weather. There's a system moving in from the Great Lakes, bringing with it more moisture in the air than we've had for our recent stretch of stunning weather. Though the front itself will move out tomorrow night, today's the start of a period of unsettled weather: a chance of rain in the morning, a likelihood late afternoon and through the evening, localized thunderstorms and downpours possible. Highs today around 70, lows 60 or high 50s.Pond life. Up on the three Newbury-area ponds photographer Ian Clark follows, there's been a ton going on. The loons have settled in to nesting and vigilantly fending off intruders, red-wing blackbird chicks seem to have hatched, beavers have been busy, painted turtles are totally chill about it all...Cow life. Kathy Smith's photo could be a postcard: a cow silhouetted stoically at sunset along Route 5 in Norwich, its herd-mates barely visible to the sides.Eighteen-hour days, vacations fixing the building, constant money worries: Why the Herald's Tim Calabro is a small-town publishing hero. If you're reading this within an hour or two of Daybreak going out this morning, it's a fair bet Calabro is out on the back roads around Randolph, delivering this week's paper. And that's after his wife and co-owner, Katie, got up at 2 am to go pick up 3,700 copies from the VN's printer. In Seven Days, Rachel Hellman profiles Calabro, his rise from photographer to publisher, and the backbreaking work of keeping a community's voice alive as it loses money. And yet: "I kind of feel like I have to do this for as long as I can," he tells Hellman.Hartford's selectboard settles on banner policy. The move comes two and a half months after a group hoping to install "Hometown Heroes" banners in WRJ honoring veterans and first responders first pitched the idea. Tuesday night, reports Patrick Adrian in the Valley News, the board put in place a general policy by a 5-2 vote: Banners will be allowed in each of Hartford's five village centers (WRJ, Wilder, Hartford, W. Hartford, Quechee) for up to 30 days, and the board will have to approve each banner request. “I do think things are going to come before us and challenge us as we go,” said board member Kim Souza.Judge allows Dartmouth seniors arrested May 1 to return to Green for graduation. Ever since the tumultuous Gaza protest, bail conditions have prevented students, faculty, and others who were arrested from setting foot on various parts of campus, including the Green. Now, reports NHPR's Kate Dario, those conditions have been modified to allow the 14 seniors who were among the 89 arrested to attend graduation ceremonies; the college had asked that everyone be allowed to return, spokesperson Jana Barnello tells Dario, but the remaining students and faculty will still be barred.SPONSORED: Join Cedar Circle Farm on June 15 for Pickin’ Time: Bluegrass, Brews, & Bites! Treat yourself to an evening at the farm featuring delicious, locally grown food; exciting beverages; live music by Still Hill, the Whipple Hillbillies, and Well-Kept Men; enticing raffle and auction items; and other chances to engage with and support Cedar Circle’s Teen Farm Fellowship Program. All event proceeds will benefit this NEW fellowship, designed to train the next generation of farmers. To learn more and get your tickets today, hit the burgundy link or go here. Sponsored by Cedar Circle Farm.When you tout the Hopkins Center, it helps to have some big names in your corner. Shonda Rhimes, say. Connie Britton. Sharon Washington. The college is out with a new fundraising video that features them and other alums prominent in the performing arts talking about their time at Dartmouth and how it—and the Hop—changed their lives. "I was the first person in my family to go to college," Washington says. "So I wasn't about to tell my parents I was going to...come out and be an actor." The college, Britton says, is "a training ground for taking risks." Not surprisingly, they all like where the Hop's headed."I’ve been doomscrolling the weather.” That's Revolution owner Kim Souza in WRJ talking to the VN's Alex Hanson. Why the watchfulness? Because tomorrow is the annual start-of-summer Parking Lot Party out behind her store; last year's version was rained out. There's also a passel of other WRJ First Friday events: Lisa Piccirillo, Jes Raymond, and Alison Fay Brown performing at JAM, art openings at various galleries, music and sno cones at Putnam's, and lots more. "Arts events seem a bit weirder in the summer, more experimental and free form," Hanson writes as he looks ahead. "Odd, even."SPONSORED: Free open house and puppet show at the Morrill Homestead this weekend! Bring the family this Sunday, June 9 from 2-4 pm and be our guests for a Strafford Organic ice cream social, guided tours of Justin Morrill’s Gothic Revival home, Victorian gardens, interpretive exhibits, and a puppet show of Wasabi...A Dragon's Tale with the No Strings Marionette Co. At the Justin Morrill State Historic Site in Strafford, VT. See all the details at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by the Friends of the Morrill Homestead.Things are looking up for NH farmers after a dismal 2023. This year, UNH extension agent Jeremy Delisle tells NHPR's Kate Dario, apple growers are actually thinning their crops because trees are growing so healthily. Strawberries are looking good, too. This is all thanks to a mild winter, which helped fruit crops, as well as good weather during pollination season, Delisle says. Of course, we're talking farming. “You never know what's going to happen tomorrow," says Bob Frizzell, who owns Charlestown's Peachblow Farm.NH legislature sends measure to prohibit racial profiling by police to governor's desk. The bill, reports Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin, "does not include direct legal penalties for police officers or departments that violate it"—a gap its sponsor, Portsmouth Democratic Rep. David Meuse, figured would ease its passage through the GOP-run House and Senate. But if it's signed, it would be the first time NH defines racial profiling by law enforcement in state statute. Its backers argue the state's Police Standards and Training Council "can use the bill as a guide for any enforcement action," DeWitt writes.Phil Scott vetoes bill expanding reach of restorative justice in rural counties; Dems believe they can override. Scott's reasoning, reports VT Public's Peter Hirschfeld, is that the while the measure addresses a need for alternatives to the corrections system outside Chittenden and Windham counties, it comes without any appropriations and so burden's the AG's office with an unfunded mandate. AG Charity Clark yesterday told Hirschfeld that even so, she supports the bill. "We can still do the work," she said. Says Orange County's program head, "This establishes basic rights for victims.”
Along with that veto, Scott also signed a series of other bills into law. Among them, reports VTDigger's Shaun Robinson: the creation of a "land improvement fraud" registry for cases in which loggers are convicted of defrauding landowners, and a new requirement that employers disclose a position’s salary range in job postings.
In addition, reports WCAX's Calvin Cutler, Scott signed a sweeping library policy bill aimed at boosting protection for libraries and their patrons: It creates statewide rules governing challenges to books people want pulled from the shelves, and lowers to 12 (from 16) the age at which young patrons can keep their library records from being disclosed to parents or guardians.
In Calais VT, "echoes" of The Quarry Project. You may remember the epically ambitious seven-year effort by Chelsea's Hannah Dennison to create a site-specific dance/theater piece for Barre's Wells-Lamson, one of the oldest, deepest granite quarries in the country. It happened in 2022, in front of a sold-out audience. Now, writes Seven Days' Pamela Polston, a dozen artists, photographers, and others have responded to that work with works of their own. The works in the exhibit, at the Kents' Corner State Historic Site in Calais, "briefly resurrect the Quarry Project's singular splendor," Polston writes.Photography from a different perspective: above. We’re all pretty familiar with the “gee whiz” aspect of drone photography, but the sheer beauty and power of images captured from above is another thing altogether. Nominations are out for the 2024 Drone Photo Awards, and the images, in a range of categories, are astonishing in their ability to transform the utterly mundane—cars on a bridge in China—into art, or to take us soaring above places we may never go—a salt marsh in India, a mountain pass in the Dolomites, an ice floe in the Arctic. It's a chance to see the force and the fragility of our world.About that Dolomites mountain pass. It's part of Bashir Shakra's Two Years Alone, one of the video submissions for the drone awards, a four-minute encapsulation of the two years he spent hiking, climbing, and traveling through the mountainous region of Italy. Also worth your time: French polar photographer Florian Ledoux's three-minute Echoes of the Arctic.
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For starters, with the Quechee Balloon Fest coming up next weekend (the 14th-16th), JAM's got highlights from the 2021 and 2023 festivals. There's also a roundtable led by VT US Sen. Peter Welch on rising health care and drug costs, and a recycled-materials fashion show organized by reUse Arts' "Reuse Runway" program for middle-schoolers and filmed by JAM's after-schoolers. Plus, the end-of-May debate at the Hartford Selectboard over its proposed Gaza resolution.
And this morning...
Lake Street Dive singer Rachael Price and keyboardist Akie Bermiss
off the band's forthcoming album,
Good Together
.
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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