GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Fog then sun again, chance of showers and thunderstorms overnight. It’ll be getting hot today, with temps in the mid or upper 80s under mostly clear skies this morning and early afternoon. A cold front coming through will bring more clouds, a slight chance of showers starting late this afternoon and a chance after midnight, and a slight chance of thunderstorms. Lows tonight in the mid 60s.
A Connecticut River echo. A bit over a month ago, Daybreak ran a beautiful photo by Laura Gillespie of dawn at Kendal Riverfront Park in Hanover. Illustrator Tim Jennings was so taken by it he asked Laura’s permission to use it as the basis of a painting, and she obliged. The result now hangs in DHMC’s Rubin Gallery as part of its summer art show. As you’ll see, it’s not a copy (it would be cool if there were cows at Kendal Riverfront, though Upper Valley rowers might find that problematic). Here’s Laura’s original photo.
Enfield removes swim raft after series of pranks. The raft used to hang out at the town beach on Mascoma Lake, writes Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News. But that was before town officials decided Enfield employees were spending too much time on it. “Our part in the swim raft saga so far this year has been recovering it twice more than a mile down the lake when hooligans have either pushed it off the shore or released it from its anchor in the lake,” the town’s DPW director tells Sauchelli. The tipping point, she writes, “came Tuesday morning when town officials discovered that a picnic table had been placed on top of the raft floating in the lake.”
Grafton Center Meetinghouse gets a general store. Dot’s Market will be run by Elaina Bergamini and Jodi Bates Ibey under an agreement with Mascoma Valley Preservation—which Bergamini helped start, reports Liz Sauchelli in the VN. “Both Elaina and Jodi, they really did have the winning combination of community knowledge and desire to make this more than just a business,” MVP’s executive director, Andrew Cushing, tells Sauchelli. “Somewhere along the way,” Bergamini says, “I started imagining myself as running the store.” It will stock prepared food, basic provisions, homespun ice cream sandwiches, and a community focus, and opens in the fall.
SPONSORED: Immigrants and refugees need your generosity now more than ever. Hearts You Hold currently has over 300 requests from individuals and families trying to make a new start in this country, just waiting to be funded by caring people like you. Some are local to the Upper Valley or to Vermont and New Hampshire, others are in New York, Ohio, and elsewhere. You can sort the requests by state or category to find the folks you want to support. You’ll find them all—from basic household goods to basic clothing to helping fund summer camp for a pair of refugee brothers in Rutland—at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.
From a childhood in the Norwich and NH woods to teaching survival skills—and weeks Alone in South Africa’s Great Karoo Desert. As a kid, Dug North split his time between his mom’s place in Norwich and his dad’s in Easton, NH, northeast of Moosilauke. As Indi Rose writes for UVM’s Community News Service, a lot of that time he was wandering the woods, teaching himself wilderness skills. After he was dropped in the Karoo as a contestant in Season 12 of the History Channel’s Alone series, he tells Rose, “I expected it to feel scary and alien. Instead, it felt comforting.” Rose recounts his sojourn, and his move to teaching wilderness skills to others in VT.
For Windsor’s Stephen R. Bissette, VT’s cartoonist laureate, “It was all about dinosaurs.” He’s talking to Seven Days’ Dan Bolles about his childhood, deciding when he was 5 or 6 that he wanted to cartoon, and all the “great dino comics when I was growing up. DC had The War That Time Forgot and Star Spangled War Stories; Gold Key and Dell had Turok, Son of Stone...” In their wide-ranging conversation, Bissette tells Bolles why he initially said no to the laureate offer and why he changed his mind; his discovery of underground comics and how they helped him realize that “anything I imagined, I could put it down on paper”; about his history of VT cartooning project; and why winter is so great for cartoonists.
SPONSORED: Pompanoosuc Mills has announced that today is the final day of its 4th of July Sale! It’s giving shoppers one last opportunity to save on handcrafted furniture built to last. Customers can enjoy 30% off all new dining and bedroom orders, 25% off all other new furniture orders—including fully upholstered pieces—and 25-60% off in-stock furniture. From dining tables to bedroom and living room essentials, the event offers significant savings on timeless Vermont-made furniture before the sale ends tonight. Sponsored by Pompanoosuc Mills.
Student athletes drop lawsuit over NH transgender ban. Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, who had sued the state over its 2024 law banning transgender girls from girls’ school sports, ended the suit yesterday in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s recent decision backing similar laws elsewhere, reports Sruthi Gopalakrishnan in the Concord Monitor. Tirrell had already quit playing after protests at games and attacks on social media became overwhelming; Turmelle’s family moved to Maine “after the wave of proposed laws targeting transgender Granite Staters,” the families’ law firm writes in a statement. Gopalakrishnan explains the legal background.
VT fines two men $35K for unauthorized mountain bike trails. The roughly 8,000 feet of trails were cut in the Mt. Mansfield State Forest in Stowe between 2016 and 2021, Attorney General Charity Clark said yesterday: "No one should be treating state land and state forests like their backyard." In all, reports WPTZ’s Alexis Crandall, an investigation by the state’s Agency of Natural Resources found the pair had felled some 327 trees, drilled holes to anchor wooden trail crossings, and installed rebar in rocks. “They clearly were able to go into the forest without us noticing," says a state forest and parks manager. “We didn't have anyone in that particular area in that time."
“We almost never take vacations. I can’t leave the broth alone for long.” Don’t even try to compare your sourdough starter to the forever soup at Wattana Panich, in Bangkok. The restaurant's beef broth has been simmering since 1974, writes Shan Li in the WSJ (gift link). It’s now tended by third-generation restaurateur Nattapong Kaweenuntawong, who puts the soup to bed “with military precision,” strains it every day, reboils it, and adds fresh stock. Social media has made the soup famous and boosted sales over the past five years. The pot may keep simmering long into the future; Kaweenuntawong’s daughter “has shown a knack for judging the broth’s flavor.”
The Thursday Crossword. Laura Braunstein’s tricky little “midi” for the week.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
At the Montshire, a day-long “BioBlitz” with the Appalachian Mountain Club. In honor of its 150th, the AMC has created a relay along the trail from Virginia to Maine, and the relay pennant arrives at the Upper Valley stretch of the trail today. AMC and Montshire staff will be documenting the plants and animals that live on the museum’s grounds, leading nature walks, helping identify species, and answering your questions about using iNaturalist. It all starts up at 10:30 am.
Peter Orner and Sara Lippmann kick off this summer’s Canaan Meetinghouse Readings. The two writers actually share two venues today: First, a lunchtime conversation “about crafting resonant stories that deal with the complexities of the human condition” at the Literary Arts Bridge (7 Lebanon St., Ste. 105 in Hanover); then, at 7 pm, they read from their works in Canaan’s 1793 Meetinghouse (at the first link).
Etienne Charles at Feast & Field in Barnard. The Trinidad-born jazz trumpeter, composer, and storyteller starts things off today at 5 pm with a conversation about his Gullah Roots project, focused both on the role of Black Americans in the Revolution and on the contributions of Gullah Geechee people of the coastal Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida to early jazz. He’ll follow that up with the music itself, starting at 6.
VINS screens The Extraordinary Caterpillar. As filmmaker Jeff McKay puts it, “Caterpillars are right at the center of the food chain. They are key to the food chain working as it should”—not least, because of all the plant eaters, caterpillars pass on the most energy from plants to animals when they themselves become food. “The film is a way for people to understand how plants and insects work together. My intention is to bring people into this world of small things we don’t often get to see.” 5:30 pm.
At Brookfield’s Old Town Hall, Curtains Without Borders on “Painted Theater Curtains in VT.” The VT-based group is dedicated to preserving historic painted theater curtains, and director Chris Hadsel will offer a pictorial tour of those curtains. Brookfield’s town hall has two, and the 88-year-old son of the local man who worked with the artist who painted them (and Tunbridge’s) will be on hand. 7 pm.
Hop Film screens America Unfiltered. Back during the pandemic, filmmakers Horacio Marquinez and Kirill Myltsev decided to drive the southern route from LA to NYC, stopping to talk with wide-open curiosity to ordinary Americans about what it means to be American. It was a tumultuous time in the country—they wound up at the US Capitol on Jan. 6—and they captured the raw feelings of a huge American cross-section. Film at 7 pm in the Loew Auditorium, discussion with Marquinez afterward.
Guster plays the Lake Morey Resort. Proof that a college wilderness orientation program can lead to fame and fortune (Guster’s founding trio met as freshmen in Tufts’ version back in 1991). Though they’ve got plenty of albums under their belts, the band’s always been known for its humor, pleasure in making music, and rapport with fans at live shows. Gates and food at 5, music at 8.
And anytime, it’s OSHER summer lecture series time at JAM. This year’s series on AI began yesterday, and this week, JAM highlights past summers: former Dartmouth government prof Linda Fowler last year on America’s Four Freedoms; former USGS chief scientist Virginia Burkett on climate change and American prosperity in 2024; and GW University China scholar David Shambaugh in 2023 on US-China relations.
And for today...
Guster, off their album “Ooh La Luxe.”
See you tomorrow.
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