GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Reminder: After today, Daybreak will be off for its annual summer break for a few weeks—some vacation, some back-end work without the daily press of writing. Back with CoffeeBreak on Monday, Aug. 17. For you patient puzzlers, Laura Braunstein’s crosswords will be back that week. We also start a new round of Sketchbreak cartoons. Meanwhile, during the break, you’ll get a “Week Ahead” email each Monday with a quick rundown of that week’s events. Hope it’s helpful!
Sunny. At last, an unambiguous forecast! High pressure began settling in last night, and the next few days look to be dry and clear. Yesterday’s cold front ushered in slightly cooler temps, with highs today in the mid or upper 70s, but we’ll be back into the low 80s starting tomorrow. Clear tonight, lows around or even below 50.
Mammals. By weight. Well heck, photographer Jim Block had to group all the photos he’s taken of them (mostly this summer) somehow. So he starts off with chipmunks (2 to 5 ounces, “though I’ve never weighed one”) and winds up, of course, with a black bear (400-800 pounds, and here’s guessing he’s never weighed one of those, either). Along the way there are red and gray squirrels, woodchucks, red and gray foxes, a porcupine, beavers, a bobcat, and more.
A commuting heads up for Monday: Norwich Main Street will be closed to traffic at Firehouse Lane starting at 6:30 am on July 27 as crews relocate a water line. “Traffic headed north will be detoured via Beaver Meadow Road, Moore Lane, and Turnpike Road,” writes the town manager’s office; southbound traffic will do the reverse. “Local traffic will be allowed during this time from the north between Turnpike Road and Firehouse Lane. The work is expected to be completed by the end of the day.”
A chance encounter and an Instagram message lead to friendship, recipes, and a new zucchini for Plainfield. If you read Daybreak, you know food blogger Mitchell Davis and Edgewater Farm’s Jenny Sprague, who collaborate on weekly CSA recipes. But they didn’t know one another until relatively recently, when Mitchell moved here. For Daybreak, Corin Hirsch tells the story of how it all came about—and, more relevant for this moment in the growing season, how, when the Spragues called to ask him what they should plant this spring—“One of the most exciting phone calls of my life,” Mitchell says, he convinced them to grow a firmer, creamier variety of zucchini. With recipe.
VT State Police open investigation into Woodstock finances. Apologies—you’ll need to go to the VT Standard’s synopsis page and hit “Read More”: The investigation, reports Mike Donoghue, is “into the possible unapproved transfer of taxpayer funds from the Town of Woodstock to the Village of Woodstock to help pay for legal fees surrounding the demotion of former Police Chief Joe Swanson.” Two complaints to the town’s police department were referred to the VSP; state police spokesman Adam Silverman tells Donoghue the investigation was opened July 10 and remains active. Municipal Manager Eric Duffy is reportedly on vacation and couldn’t be reached.
Feds open DEI investigation into Geisel admissions. Dartmouth’s medical school is one of five targeted by the Dept. of Education for “alleged racial discrimination in admissions,” reports Sofia Langlois in the Valley News. In a press release yesterday, the department’s asst secy for civil rights is quoted as saying, “Many schools seem to be more focused on meeting racial quotas than selecting individuals who have earned entrance based on merit.” Says Dartmouth spokeswoman Jana Barnello, “We remain confident in Geisel’s admissions process and will respond to the Department of Education’s request for information in due course, consistent with applicable law.”
SPONSORED: Wm. Smith’s Annual French House Live Auction is coming up! Join William Smith Auctions at 10 am on Wednesday, July 29 for the annual French House Americana live auction, this year featuring the curated collection of Kathy Schoemer, including country Americana, folk art, 19th century dolls, children’s related, silhouettes, miniature paintings, nautical, antique jewelry, mourning pieces, early textiles, 19th century Oriental rugs, and more! Previews Monday and Tuesday, July 27th & 28th from 10 am to 4 pm. You can get a look ahead here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by William Smith Auctions.
Hiking Close to Home: Bill Ballard Trail, Norwich, VT. This wooded trail includes many ups and downs to cross numerous seasonal creeks that flow to Charles Brown Brook, with the most spectacular creek creating the "Grand Canyon of Norwich" in the upper half of the trail. Follow down the rim of the canyon before crossing on stepping stones and continuing with a flatter walk along the brook. The trail eventually meets the junction with the closed Brown Schoolhouse Road. (The bridge is washed out here and hikers should plan to ford the stream.) Three benches here provide a good spot for a break before continuing on to the second half of the trail.
“Your phone flashlight does not count!” That sage advice about always carrying two headlamps with you when you hike comes from the “Illumination” page created by Lakes Region Search and Rescue in an ongoing series on the “Ten Essentials” for hikers to carry. As they write at the burgundy link, “A phone flashlight may help you dig through your backpack, but it doesn’t provide the focused, hands-free light needed to safely navigate a rocky White Mountain trail.” So far, they’ve posted two pages: the first was on navigation, and it’s here. Topo maps downloaded to your phone before you head out are great, they say, but always carry a paper map and compass.
SPONSORED: We've been watching our favorite wild Bald Eagle family for months! At the burgundy link, you’ll find a video looking back at the journey of Windsor, Dewey, and their eaglet V-2, from our first sighting of them on the nest in February to nearly fledging in July. And VINS is throwing a party to celebrate this incredible story! Join in on July 30th at 5:30 PM for a Fledge Party featuring speakers from Audubon Vermont & VT Fish & Wildlife, a bluegrass band, food trucks, kids crafts, and more. Sponsored by VINS.
Longtime Lebanon state rep retires. When Susan Almy was first elected in 1996, writes the VN’s Clare Shanahan, she became the first Democrat to hold the post in over a decade. She was 49 then; she’s 80 now, and after 15 terms in Concord, decided a day before candidate filing opened not to run again. Among other things, she tells Shanahan, she found she would “run out of steam on sentences sometimes, which is extremely dangerous when you’re in the Legislature.” Throughout, she’s been focused on addiction and impaired driving issues, notching several key NH bills, and on state finances, eventually chairing House Ways and Means. Shanahan recaps her tenure.
Keeping track of swimming spots while Daybreak’s away. So far it’s been a mostly cyanobacteria- and fecal-coliform-free summer (well, except for that boil-water notice that was just issued for Walpole, NH), but we’re approaching high season for water-borne nastiness. So you might just want to have these on hand.
The Healthy Swimming Mapper from NHDES (which shows the closest problem right now is an advisory at Beards Brook Town Beach in Hillsborough);
And the VT Dept. of Health’s Cyanobacteria Tracker, which shows “generally safe” conditions around the state.
Could there possibly be better words to use in a headline than “Rogue Puffins”? Well, one puffin, anyway. Earlier this month, an eBird user posted a sighting of a puffin off Star Island, in Rye, NH. “The Atlantic Puffin was a rare and exciting sighting!” NH Audubon’s Grace McCulloch wrote to NH Bulletin’s Molly Rains. “Puffins do not breed in New Hampshire; in North America, their southernmost known nesting ground is Eastern Egg Rock, in midcoast Maine,” Rains explains. Why was in NH waters, then? “Most likely, when a puffin is spotted away from a nesting colony, they’re out foraging,” a Maine conservation scientist tells Rains.
“There’s a fear of my road turning into hotel rooms even though they’re houses.” Short-term rentals are a live issue in Stowe right now, where a selectboard proposal to cap them has locals and visitors alike in a tizzy. As Aaron Calvin and Hannah Bassett write in Seven Days, only 3 percent of all VT residences are being used for short-term rentals—but that statewide figure masks extreme differences among towns. Calvin and Bassett survey the different ways four towns—Stowe, Burlington, Woodstock, and Ludlow—are tackling the complex issue. Woodstock was on it early: It began regulating short-term rentals “before many people had ever heard the term.”
Around VT, “surprisingly credentialed and passionate bakers” who sell from sheds, huts, and porches. If you happen to be on the road in VT this summer and get a hankering for excellent baked goods, Seven Days’ Jordan Barry and Melissa Pasanen have you covered. Backdoor Bakery, open twice a month on a porch in Huntington, sells pastries and breads made with local eggs and fruit. Bittersweet Bakery is housed in a shed on Grand Isle. At the Crumb & Clover stand in Hinesburg, it’s challah and English muffins. If you’re lucky, you’ll hit bagel day at Vergennes’ Green Mountain Girl Sourdough hut. And in Cornwall, Lemon Fair View Homestead sells 20 varieties of sourdough loaves.
Hello, Goodbye… For pretty much all of May, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft approached, flew over (on May 15) and then left Mars in the rearview on its way to a 2029 encounter with the asteroid Psyche. Engineers used Mars and its gravity not just to speed up the spacecraft, but to prep its instruments and—for our purposes—its cameras. The result is a mesmerizing little one-minute high-res timelapse video of the approach, the Martian surface, and the departure. If you’ve got a few extra minutes, there’s also a three-minute video explaining what happened. All from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak. For the next few weeks during Daybreak’s time off, just use the same link for a fresh word every day, taken from the region’s news outlets.
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HEADS UP
The North Haverhill Fair is under way. With everything you’d expect, from working steers to ox pulls to racing pigs to Cirque Cyber to skid steer competitions, a skillet toss, horseshoes, and more. Plus, of course, parades, live music, so much fair food… Gates open at 9 am today through Sunday.
Henry Isaacs, Larry Horowitz, KT Taylor, Margaret Jacobs and others at the grand opening of Kyle Timothy Fine Art in Hanover. The new gallery on S. Main Street is opening its doors from 4-6 pm both to celebrate its arrival and to show off the work of its collection of artists.
Kotoko Brass at Feast & Field in Barnard. Musicians from Ghana, Antigua, Japan, and the US join forces for a percussion-driven sound that brings in horns, guitar, keys, and bass for dance grooves that’ll take you from West Africa to New Orleans. Food and gates at 5:30 pm, music starts up at 6.
Ken Burns presents Episode 2 of The American Revolution at the Hop. The filmmaker himself will be on hand to talk about his epic series as well as "An Asylum for Mankind,” which covers the hugely consequential period from May, 1775 to July, 1776, as what was to become the Revolution gathered force. 6 pm in Spaulding. There are still tix, but not many.
The final Canaan Meetinghouse Readings for the summer: Catherine Tudish, Ivy Schweitzer, and Rena J. Mosteirin. Tudish’s latest novel-in-stories, A Thousand Souls, has been getting attention for its layered depiction of a small VT town; Schweitzer’s first solo poetry collection, Dividing Rivers, came out last year; Mosteirin is the author of poetry collections Disaster Tourism and Experiment 116. 7 pm in Canaan’s 1793 Meetinghouse.
Opera North’s Fiddler on the Roof opens at Blow-Me-Down Farm in Cornish. You know the musical and its music: a shtetl family makes its way from “If I Were a Rich Man” to “Sunrise, Sunset” to “Tradition” to, on the way out, “Anatevka.” Online tickets are gone for performances tonight and tomorrow at 7:30, Saturday and Sunday at 5:30, but some tickets may be available for cash or check on site. Call (603) 448-4141 to check availability.
Trampled by Turtles at Lake Morey Resort. The hard-charging Duluth, MN bluegrass/rock band is a regular atop the Billboard bluegrass charts, and right now they’re on tour: Last night, they played the MGM Music Hall at Fenway. As always, admission’s free: Gates and food at 6, music at 8.
And for today...
Trampled by Turtles (tonight at the Lake Morey Resort) began over two decades ago as an all-acoustic group, after frontman Dave Simonett's musical equipment got stolen and he was left with just an acoustic guitar—so he recruited other acoustic musicians to join him. And the name? “We all brought our lists of names to rehearsal one time, and we agreed to decide on the name that we hated the least, and that one stuck." Here’s “You Never Let Me Down.”
See you August 17. Have a fantastic few weeks!
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