Daybreak Thursday 8/11/22

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Getting sunnier, warmer, chance of showers late. There's a cold front coming through, which we'll mostly notice if it rains this afternoon and when things cool down nicely overnight. Otherwise, a mix of sun and clouds, highs reaching the mid-80s, down into the mid-50s tonight.Hummingbird moths!

VT primary wrapup, locally. The link takes you to Vermont Public's results for contested primary contests, including the Windsor County state Senate race (Democrats Becca White, Alison Clarkson, and Dick McCormack will face Republicans Dana Colson and Alice Flanders); and Democrat Monique Priestley's handy win in the Bradford area, where she'll face GOPer Zachary Long in the fall. Ludlow police officer Ryan Palmer, campaigning as a reformer, will be the Democratic nominee for Windsor County Sheriff against incumbent Republican Michael Chamberlain.Wondering what all that noise is in Post Mills? Just upstream of where 113 crosses the Ompompanoosuc are—or, increasingly, were—the remains of the Montague Rod and Reel dam, all that was left of the largest manufacturer of fishing rods in the country until it shuttered during the Depression. Now, writes Nick Clark in Sidenote, the dam's being removed and the river restored to a more natural course. Just a short article, but he's got pics.Meanwhile, as construction winds up in downtown Claremont, businesses hope "nothing but good things can happen now." The $5 million project on Pleasant Street around Opera House Square has brought wider sidewalks, new benches and landscaping, angled parking, and one-way traffic. The goal, essentially, is to transform what had become a thoroughfare into a pedestrian-friendly magnet. “People were talking about no identity here. That this is just a drive-through place; not a place they think about to go and do things,” Planning Director Nancy Merrill tells the Valley News's Patrick O'Grady.SPONSORED: A collective healing experience through music, song, dance, visual art, and meditation. The Hop’s interdisciplinary opera, The Ritual of Breath is the Rite to Resist, premieres Sept. 16 & 17—a meditative, immersive work responding to the theft of Black breath by the police. Also this fall: Midori's three-day marathon of Beethoven’s full violin sonatas, highlights of Camille Brown & Dancers' trilogy on race and identity, and a swirling storm of global music by Manchester Collective and rising South African cellist Abel Selaocoe. Fall listings at the link. Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.Concerts we've had all along. Camp? Not so much. It's been over two decades since Dan Weiser and Marcia Colligan created Classicopia, the ongoing effort to bring chamber music to the Upper Valley. Its first few years it also ran a summer camp for young people, but disbanded it after Weiser left the Upper Valley in 2009. Though Weiser has kept concerts going, the camp is back this year, writes Susan Apel in Artful, with Weiser and the musically gifted Borowsky family—pianist Elizabeth, violinist Emmanuel, and cellist Frances—as teachers. Faculty perform tonight and tomorrow nights, students on Sunday.VINS opens vastly upgraded sanctuary for songbirds. “We wanted it to appear as if you had dropped a building on a forest,” VINS director of exhibits Chris Collier tells Seven Days’ Maggie Reynolds. Moving from their previously modest digs (built by Eagle Scouts) to a 2,160-square foot walk-through aviary filled with native plants and shrubs, the recovering birds can now interact with visitors in an environment closely approximating their natural habitat. VINS hopes it also teaches us a bit about bird-friendly gardening, to help the stem the decline of songbird populations in VT and beyond.Randolph café joins the region's bagel boom. "I can hilariously say I've been in the food business since I was 13," Chelsie Brown says. Maybe not quite, but the Bethel native was in her young 20s when she went to work at Worthy Burger, before moving on to the kitchen at Michael Czok's Bent Hill Brewery in Braintree, writes Melissa Pasanen in Seven Days. Now, Brown and Czok have opened up Wee Bird Bagel Café in Randolph, in the space once occupied by the Three Bean Café, joining Chris Calvin's Best Bagels, Katie Stamper's UV Just Bagels, and Alden and Sarah Jones' Goose & Willie's on the bagel front.In Gunstock turmoil, a confrontation over "the very identity of the [NH] Republican Party." That's the theme of Amanda Gokee's feature in NH Bulletin on the Belknap County-owned ski and rec area in Gilford. While this summer's uproar seems to have been settled—management is back in place, the mountain's back open—Gokee sees in it echoes of this year's Croydon schools ruckus: a bid by dedicated libertarians to cut government's hold on a local institution, and a fierce backlash by a once-disengaged electorate, including Republicans, alarmed by what they might lose.With federal money drying up, VT hospitals arrive at budget season "deep in the red and about to fall off this federal cliff." That's how Vermont Public reporter Howard Weiss-Tisman describes the situation to colleague Mitch Wertlieb as they talk about the shaky finances of the state's 14 hospitals—nine of which are expected to lose money this year. Ordinarily, they request 4-5 percent budget increases from the state's Green Mountain Care Board. This year, it's more like a 12-17 percent boost. One issue, a consultant says: ""We probably have maybe four or five more hospitals than we really need.VT primary turnout second-highest in state history. For a summer primary, anyway. The 130,000 voters (roughly 26 percent) of Vermonters who sent in ballots or turned out on Tuesday were far lower than the 157,000 in the 2020 primary, but a lot more than the 106K who showed up in 2018, writes Liora Engel-Smith in VTDigger. The reason: competitive contests up and down the ballot. Includes a town-by-town turnout-rate map—with rates 30 percent or above, for instance, in Strafford, Sharon, Norwich, and Thetford, with their three-way contest for two House seats.Benning, Zuckerman separately talk over VT lieutenant governor's race. The moderate GOP state senator from Lyndon and the Democratic farmer and former lieutenant governor are friends—they were texting as votes came in Tuesday night—and, now, political opponents. VP's Mikaela Lefrak talked to each yesterday, about everything from how they celebrated their nominations (Benning got together with his motorcycle buddies, Zuckerman had a party at Democracy Creative in Burlington) to where their policy priorities lie."I guarantee you, people dressed in khakis and navy blue tops was not my brother's vision": Native Americans in MA call for Plymouth museum boycott. When the former Plimoth Plantation changed its name to the Plimoth Patuxet Museums, it was supposed to signal a commitment to portraying Native life in the region. But, reports the AP's Philip Marcelo, tribal members who've worked at the museum say its Indigenous exhibits have been suffering from neglect for years (including lax dress codes for Native reenactors), and their suggestions for modernizing and improving them have gone ignored.Seriously. Do not read this if you're hungry. The editors of Food & Wine had just one stipulation as they considered the best snack from every state: The food needed to be able to ship without a lot of effort, which meant nothing needing dry ice. Which makes it a little curious that their choice for VT is sugar on snow (though they do say you can use shaved ice, for those living in snow-challenged states). NH? Maple candy (including maple cotton candy from Ben's Maple Syrup in Temple). All I can say is, Idaho: spud bars. Maine: whoopee pies. Texas: beaver nuggets. And Alaska:.... um, kelp pickles?If there's only one secret door, it wouldn't be a Mark Rober creation. Surely you remember Phat Gus and Backyard Squirrel Mazes 1.0 & 2.0 (and, coming in October, 3.0). Former NASA engineer Rober is a genuine phenom, one of the most popular YouTubers ever (the squirrels are just the tip of the iceberg), the "Willy Wonka of Engineering," as Devin Gordon calls him in Fast Company. "He isn’t trying to teach kids to be creative, because as he sees it, kids are born creative," Gordon writes. "He’s teaching them not to stop." The doors? They're how you get into his new super-secret hideaway, Crunch Labs.Okay, okay. Here's his tour of Crunch Labs. Secret passageways, a tennis-ball cannon, the world's longest Hot Wheels track...The Thursday Vordle. Maybe we need to create a secret Vordle level....

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Well, what the heck. One more Newport Folk moment. Joni Mitchell is 78 now and it's been just seven years since she had a near-fatal brain aneurysm. Which is why her appearance on the Newport Folk Festival stage a few weeks ago was so remarkable—let alone that it's been 53 years since she last appeared there. Mostly seated on a gold throne (except when she stood to play "Just Like This Train" solo), she was surrounded by a stageful of acolytes led by Brandi Carlile and including Blake Mills, Lucius, Wynonna Judd, Celisse, Taylor Goldsmith, and Marcus Mumford. She sang along, she led, and then—

—she went viral. For obvious reasons.

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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt         Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter    Poetry editor: Michael Lipson  About Rob                                                    About Tom                                 About Michael

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