GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, cooler. Well, the various fronts are gone, and colder air has moved in (for now) along with some welcome high pressure. Clouds will linger for a bit at first, but by noon we should be looking at a mostly blue sky and full-on sunshine. High today in the upper 60s or low 70s, low in the mid 40s tonight. Winds today from the north, bringing a whisper of fall.And while we're looking up...
Last night's double rainbow in Newbury, VT, from Christiana Fitzpatrick;
Here are some striking August clouds with a hint of a sundog over Norwich, from Robin Osborne;
And equally striking August clouds over Lyme, just before sunrise, from Jay Davis.
"I had one of those!" Vermont Toy Museum saying goodbye to Quechee, preps for Florida move. Over the last few decades, Gary Neil has amassed a collection of—he thinks—some 10,000 Pez dispensers, board games, trading cards, dolls, ray guns, trains, rocket ships, cap guns, and more. So much more. The museum in Quechee Gorge Village (which Neil also owned until about five years ago) started as a place to display his own collection, but grew as people, sometimes from far away, contributed. Now, Neil plans to hand it to a collector from Sarasota to display there. Matt Golec explains all in a Daybreak story.A history of two Hanover icons: Molly's and Lou's. In The Dartmouth, Marius DeMartino sits down to talk about Molly's 40 years in business with general manager—and, come January, owner—Jennifer Packard, and about Lou's 76 years with owner Jarett Berke. DeMartino's piece is filled with tidbits: Molly's was originally going to be called Molly's Saloon, but "Hanover didn’t really want a saloon in a college town," Packard says. "It got changed to Molly’s Balloon." And remarkably, Berke is only the fourth owner in Lou's long history; he fills DeMartino in on how the restaurant's eclectic menu got to be that way.
"Why is the CCBA pushing Jim Vanier aside?" That was the print headline on a Jim Kenyon column in yesterday's VN. Vanier, who has run the Lebanon nonprofit's youth drop-in center for a half century, is an icon to generations of Leb kids and teens. In his column, Kenyon writes that Vanier was given a list of "ultimatums"—including not using the youth center phone for personal calls—and is being asked to spend less time at the youth center and more at the Witherell rec center. He goes on to conclude that CCBA is trying to put Vanier "out to pasture" in an effort to run the youth center more like a business.It didn't take long for CCBA to respond in a letter from board chair Bruce Adams posted on the VN's Facebook page. Adams noted that Kenyon referred to but did not actually post a "sidebar"—a statement from him, CCBA director Kerry Artman, and Vanier himself stating that "this is a confidential matter that we are all making progress to resolve. Both Jim Vanier and CCBA requested that the Valley News respect that confidentiality, but the pressure to drive clicks and engagement online won out." You'll find Adams's letter at the link: Scroll down to the Kenyon column and click on "View more comments"; you'll also see an outpouring of support for Vanier.SPONSORED: Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth: What makes a moment? The Hop has launched its 23/24 season of resident artists and commissions, taking us deep into singular moments that define us as individuals and as a society. Highlights include Grammy-winning violinist Johnny Gandelsman performing his entire This is America anthology for the first time, cellist Tomeka Reid, and theater artist Kristina Wong's Kristina Wong for Public Office. Tickets are on sale now! Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth.Dartmouth announces Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame. First class: investing, medtech, travel search, and Shonda Rhimes. The Hall, created by the college's Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship, aims to "recognize alums’ innovative thinking and impact on their industries and on society," Dartmouth said in a press release yesterday. Its first four inductees are Rhimes, creator of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton, and her production company, Shondaland; Steve Hafner, who co-founded the travel sites Orbitz and Kayak; Keith Dunleavy, who founded health software and analytics firm Inovalon; and James Coulter, who co-founded investment firm TPG.Housing pinch on campus worsens: Dartmouth down one dorm room after unoccupied college-owned truck crashes into it. Monday morning, The Dartmouth reported yesterday, Hanover police responded to a call about a white closed-bed pickup that had crashed into the west side of Ripley Hall. No one was injured, but damage to the building “included the exterior wall and window being pushed inward," the college's Jana Barnello told the paper. The room won't be used this fall.SPONSORED: Office space available now in downtown White River Junction. Office sizes range from a one-person to a six-person work space. Upper floors served by elevator. Central AC, all utilities paid, use of conference room. Moderately priced, includes weekly custodial service. Visit your possible new office at the Gates-Briggs Building. For more information, email Dave Briggs at [email protected]. Sponsored by David Briggs.Painting bought for $4 at Manchester NH thrift store turns out to be by NC Wyeth. A so-far anonymous "treasure hunter with a good eye" picked it up in 2017, writes Carol Robidoux in Manchester Ink Link, noticed the signature but didn't think much of it, and eventually stuck it in a closet. She found it again in May and decided to check in with a Wyeth expert—who verified that it was genuine. Now it's going up for auction in a few weeks and could, Robidoux writes, go for as much as $250K. "It’s thrilling that treasures like an N.C. Wyeth painting can be discovered at a neighborhood Savers," says the Currier Museum's Bruce McColl. "It just so rarely happens."Hunting for big trees: "Almost as dangerous as (birding)." That's John Wallace, who coordinates NH's Big Trees Program, with a tongue-in-cheek comment about the addictive quality of spending time in the woods—often bushwhacking across land that hasn't seen a human in years—searching for, well, big trees. Wallace is happy to encourage such enthusiasm, since the program relies on volunteers who are as enchanted as he is, writes Hadley Barndollar in NH Bulletin. And over the years, they've found some giants, including a 108-foot pitch pine in Newbury that's a national champion.Climbed Mt. Washington lately? This guy just did it 100 days in a row. Andrew Drummond did his 100th hike on Tuesday, "up the Tuckerman Ravine Trail amidst a beautiful layer of clouds wisping up from the valleys," writes Nate Weitzer in the Globe (paywall). Drummond, who owns the ski and bike shop Ski the Whites in Jackson, tells Weitzer, "I wanted to go up there on both the good days and the bad weather days, to put myself in situations I might normally avoid.” Lucky him: He chose the wettest summer on record. Weitzer reports on what it was like to do 4,000 feet of ascent and descent every single day.Hiking the Long Trail is a history lesson. And maybe a chance for you to ponder—like, "Should I run for attorney general?" In her latest Happy Vermont blog post, Erica Houskeeper pulls together two Long Trail stories. The first is a history of the trail, and a few sentences on what you can find there: the remains of a 1944 bomber crash on Camel's Hump, the late 18th century Green Road. The second, in podcast form, is a conversation with VT Attorney General Charity Clark about why she loves hiking in general and hiking in VT in particular—she first hiked on the Long Trail when she was 7."We've gotta back off the rivers." That's Josh Hanford, commissioner of VT's Dept. of Housing and Community Development, talking to Seven Days' Kevin McCallum about a basic conundrum the state faces: It wants to encourage housing and growth in village centers, but those places often sit in floodplains. The result is that state officials are looking harder at how VT's various community development programs address climate resiliency—and maybe rethink rules that focus most incentives for development around historic downtowns," McCallum writes.In St. J, down-to-the-wire fundraising puts grassroots food co-op in position to buy building—from under a dollar store. As Rachel Hellman writes in Seven Days, "St. Johnsbury is having a moment," with 31 new businesses opening downtown since the pandemic began. A group in town has been trying to open a community-owned food co-op to support local growers and, in the words of filmmaker Jay Craven, "really bring forward momentum" to revitalization. But the NY-based owner of a closed downtown Walgreens the co-op group had its eyes on was in talks with a dollar-store chain. Hellman reports on what happened next, and what it could mean.1 bedroom, 4 bases, and lots of bathroom stalls. Need a place to stay in Pensacola, plus a place to play? You and a bunch of friends can rent the entire minor-league Pensacola Blue Wahoos stadium on Airbnb, writes Sarah Kuta in Smithsonian. Yeah, all of it: clubhouse, batting cage, field, and (why?) hairdryer. The hosts seem pretty accommodating: “Want to hit with your friends in our batting cage? Be our guest! Want to play catch on the field at 11:30 PM? Be our guest! Want to take batting practice while having a couple cold ones with the boys? Be our guest!” Just $5,143 a night and it's yours!Can you possibly get more fall than this? A beer festival inside a corn maze. It's in Indiana, but not until October, so you've got time to make plans.The Thursday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Feast and Field in Barnard starts up at 6 this evening (gates at 5:30) with the art-rock band Billy Wylder. The group, founded by UVM grad Avi Salloway a decade or so ago and mostly based in Boston (except for Salloway, who splits his time between LA and Hancock VT), is kicking off a four-concert VT tour backing its new album, Trying to Get Free, which was released last Friday. Salloway, who spent his childhood going to the folk music camp run by Pete Seeger's brother in Hancock, developed his performing chops playing with Celia Woodsmith (now in Della Mae), then refined his sound on tour for three years with Tuareg singer and guitarist Bombino. The band also includes Rob Flax (violin, synth, vocals), Bianca Cabili (bass, vocals), and Ricardo Guerra (drums, vocals).
This evening at 7, both in-person and online, the Museum of the White Mountains in Plymouth presents Jill VanTongeren talking about "The Birth of the Old Man: A Geologic Tale of the Mountains, Volcanoes, and Oceans." VanTongeren, who chairs the Earth and Climate Sciences Department at Tufts, will go at the Old Man of the Mountains—and New Hampshire's deep past—from a geologist's point of view: as she describes it, "the unique confluence of tectonic events that set the stage for the birth of the Old Man and the other granites that dot the region. I will track the geological development of New Hampshire from the closure of an ancient ocean basin and the formation of the supercontinent Pangea, through a giant super-eruption of magma and major global mass extinction, and ultimately to the opening of the Atlantic Ocean we see today."
And also at 7, the Norwich Bookstore hosts wealth and poverty analyst Chuck Collins and nationally known environmentalist Gus Speth for a conversation about Collins' new novel, Altar to an Erupting Sun. In the book, Collins, who lives in southern VT and works for the Institute for Policy Studies, the left-leaning DC think tank, traces the years-long fallout from a decision by a longtime climate activist to dispense with protests and lobbying, and instead kill an oil company exec.
Oh, also: Today's the starting day for the NH Forest Society's 4th annual Five Hikes Challenge, which runs through Oct. 31. The idea's simple: Sometime during that time, hike five trails on Forest Society lands. Of the 30 trails you could tackle, three are in the Upper Valley, in Wilmot and Newbury. But there are plenty of others that look extremely appealing.
And today we'll get things going with...
Two songs, actually. First up: Guitar teacher, musician, and inspiration to countless Upper Valleyites Ed Eastridge died Monday evening after a battle with cancer. His family's planning a tribute bash at the Briggs on Sept. 8 (if you want to perform a song or poem or whatever in his honor—just one—
). Meanwhile, the online tributes are pouring in,
a song by Ed and his wife, Dixie, about their years performing. Vocals by Bill Kirchen.
off Billy Wylder's new album, which is kind of what you'd get if you married desert blues with... well, it's fitting that it was recorded live in San Francisco.
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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