RABBIT RABBIT, UPPER VALLEY!
A fresh day. High pressure's headed our way and all those fronts passing through—the last one's saying goodbye this morning—have scoured the atmosphere. So we get a cool, dry, mostly sunny day today, with winds from the northwest and temps not getting much above 70. Fine sleeping weather tonight, temps in the mid-40s.It's sunflower season! And as much as they're a feast for human eyes, they're a feast in the more traditional sense for bees. And as Peter Brink's photo from Norwich shows, a single sunflower's like a buffet table for bees.Most WRJ businesses back open; might be another month for the Tuckerbox. On one side of their shared entryway, Piecemeal Pies re-opened yesterday to double its normal business, Darren Marcy reports in the Valley News. On the other side, Vural and Jackie Oktay returned from their first vacation in eight years to confront the damage caused to their restaurant by the Gates-Briggs Building flood. "We’re very determined,” Jackie Oktay told Marcy yesterday. “But it’s going to be a tough road.” The business lost hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of food, and possibly its basement refrigeration unit.
“We’re not having winters." That's Ray Sprague, who helps run his family's Edgewater Farm in Plainfield, talking to the Union Leader's Shawn Wickham for Wickham's piece on whether awareness of climate change has hit a "tipping point" in New Hampshire. The consensus: Maybe. People are more aware of it, but change is slow. On the front lines, though, with shorter, warmer winters and unpredictable summers, there's no appetite for debating the question. “I think there’s people, when the world’s on fire, they’ll find a reason not to believe in it,” Sprague says. “I don’t know if it’s worth having that battle.”One of the best wine shops in the Northeast? The Co-op. That, at least, is what Wine Enthusiast says. It asked around among its network of wine, drink, and food industry pros, and Meg Maker, founder and editor of the Terroir Review, singled out the Co-op stores' "thoughtfully curated" selections. "It’s like a gourmet wine shop nestled within a friendly grocer," she writes. Also on the list: Daedelus Wine Shop and Wilder Wines in Burlington, and the Warner Public Market in Warner, NH—the first shop in the state focused on natural wines and ciders from NH and VT.SPONSORED: Registration is open at Upper Valley Music Center for Fall classes and ensembles! Whether you’re a total beginner, resuming an old hobby, or looking for new musical friends, we welcome students of all experience levels, ages 0-100! Tuition assistance is available for fall programs including Group Fiddle, Guitar, or Recorder; Orchestras, Chorus and Chamber Music; Music Together(c) for little ones; and everything from Music Theory to DJ Academy. Sponsored by Upper Valley Music Center. Valley Regional commits to joining DH "behemoth." "We believe that collaboration among providers is the most effective way" to deliver care, the small Claremont hospital posted on its website yesterday, the VN reports. "To that end, Valley Regional and Dartmouth Health have signed a letter of intent to begin the process of strengthening our relationship." If the merger is approved, Valley Regional would join APD, Cheshire Medical Center, Mt. Ascutney, and New London hospitals as part of the DH network.Canaan woman dies in single-vehicle crash in Dorchester. Before dawn yesterday morning, NH State Police report in a press release, a Toyota Highlander driven by 26-year-old Alexandra Vanzandt "was traveling southbound and drifted off the west side of Route 118. The vehicle struck an earth embankment and became airborne, before coming to a final rest on the driver’s side of the vehicle." She was pronounced dead at the scene. The investigation is ongoing, police say.
A few more details surface in death of Kenyan cyclist. The specifics of the VT Overland crash that killed Suleiman ‘Sule’ Kangangi over the weekend remain uncertain, reports Ethan Weinstein in VTDigger. But in a statement yesterday, race owner Ansel Dickey said that Kangangi crashed while riding down Long Hill Road in S. Woodstock, “a well-maintained, straight, downhill section of dirt and gravel, with good visibility.” He added, "I have no doubt that everyone in the cycling community...[is] completely perplexed about how something this horrifying could have happened to such a high-caliber rider.”
In NH, "the opportunity is there for us to really think creatively about how we do school." As students begin the school year across the state, NHPR's Julie Furukawa sat down with education commissioner Frank Edelblut to talk about his priorities. They tangle a bit over public funding channels for home schoolers, and talk over the state's interest in work-based learning, Edelblut's take on what constitutes an "adequate education," whether the state now has "restrictions" on teaching about racism and sexism (Furukawa) or "anti-discrimination provisions" (Edelblut), and more.VT announces end to pandemic housing assistance. Officials signaled the move in a notice on the state housing authority's website, saying that it had run through federal funds more quickly than expected. There are about 12,000 households on the emergency rental housing assistance program, VT Public's Peter Hirschfeld tells colleague Mary Engisch, and 8,000 of those will lose support by Dec. 1. Advocates tell Hirschfeld they're worried about the impact on people depending on assistance—but also that they're "impressed by the seriousness" with which the state has approached housing insecurity.Mixed signals on Covid in VT. Cases remain officially "low," reports Erin Petenko in VTDigger, though case reports are up 21 percent from two weeks ago. And 58 Covid patients were admitted to hospitals in the state over the past week, up from 30 the week before. At the same time, Petenko writes, only 13 people were reported hospitalized with Covid yesterday, "making it hard to point to a consistent trend." Meanwhile, the CDC last week raised Orange and Windsor counties from the "low" to the "medium" community level.The Long Trail: "A bona fide tour of one of the East’s most fascinating ecosystems." Backpacker mag offers up a guide to the country's oldest continuously used long-distance path (here via Outside). It describes the route, from deep woods to lakes to ridges to mountaintops with stunning views, then dives into what you need to know ahead of time: water, bears, re-supplies, total vertical gain (66,000 feet), rough cost, when to go...SPONSORED: Rare Golden-Age Steinway for sale. Desirable 1928 Hamburg Steinway Model B (6’ 11”). Fully restored by a master Steinway wizard right down to certified pre-1973 ivory keys. The rare flame mahogany veneer has been properly restored to its subtle yet luminous luster. Kept in a climate-controlled environment augmented by a humidifier/dehumidifier and regular professional tunings. Fascinating provenance: purchased in Berlin in 1928, followed by a mid-30’s transatlantic voyage to New York. For pictures and additional information, call John Chapin, 603-290-0275.“Will books keep mattering in an age where Instagram and TikTok are…shoving them aside?” In a lovely WSJ essay (gift link), Christopher Lloyd’s lament begins with the loss of his mother, who along with his father was an avid collector of rare, first-edition books—among them Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, and Winnie the Pooh. Left to auction off his parents’ precious collection, Lloyd finds “a quiet library is quieter when the books are gone.” But now, at least “those books are noisy somewhere, on new shelves, in new hands, seeding new collections, straining budgets, firing imaginations...”"The Alfredo sauce was everywhere." Every once in a blue moon, a reporter gets a gift of an assignment. The NYT's Daniel Victor made the most of it (gift link, no paywall) with his writeup yesterday about a tractor-trailer carrying a load of Alfredo sauce jars that struck a median on a highway near Memphis and spilled its load. It smelled great. At first. "Unfortunately, this is Memphis and we had some pretty intense sun beating down on that Alfredo sauce, and also humidity," a local reporter said. "It was just not a great recipe for a highway full of Alfredo sauce.” And did you know about truckspills.com? (Thanks, KrH!)The Thursday Vordle. With a fine word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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There's an intriguing addition to the Lebanon Farmers Market from 4-7 today: The City of Lebanon is showing off its brand-new Ford F150 Lightning, one of the first of the highly sought-after electric pickups to hit actual streets. "This electric truck is one of only two that Lebanon Ford will get this year and one of very few that will be sold in New Hampshire in 2022," the city writes in its news flash. Greg Ames, who chairs Lebanon's energy committee, managed to snag one of the first F150 Lightning reservations, then passed it off to the city.
At 5:30 today at Still North Books & Bar in Hanover, writer and writing teacher Joni Cole launches the revised edition of her classic, straight-talking, advice-filled guide to writing, Good Naked, with a talk and workshop. As Still North puts it, "Everyone writes from a prompt, shares aloud, and feels a whole lot happier than if they'd stayed home on the couch."
BarnArts' Feast & Field keeps the music and meals coming this evening (food starts at 5:30, music at 6) with Irish folk musician Karan Casey, who was a founding member of the Irish American band Solas before going solo nearly a quarter-century ago. She's worked with everyone from The Chieftains to Béla Fleck to James Taylor, and though folk and traditional music are her wheelhouse, she's also a classical pianist and jazz singer. She'll be joined this evening by fiddler Niamh Dunne and guitarist Seán Óg Graham of the Irish band Beoga.
At 7 pm, Randolph's The Underground recording studio hosts both a live and streamed concert by Randolph-based Second Wind, an acoustic band (Jim Sardonis on guitar, Jim Green on guitar, mandolin, and dobro, bass player Eric Sakai, and percussionist Ralph Molinario on cajón and harp) that plays mix of contemporary and classic folk and blues tunes with a growing repertoire of original songs.
And this week, CATV is highlighting programs keyed to Labor Day—Dartmouth labor historian Annelise Orleck on low-wage workers; editor George Spencer's profile of labor leader A. Philip Randolph; the Manchester (NH) Historical Society's feature on the Amoskeag Strike of 1922; and FTC Commissioner Noah Joshua Phillips talking antitrust at Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center. Also, a weekend of streaming music, from JAGfest, Cantabile, the Upper Valley Chamber Orchestra, and more.
Finally, a reminder that hunting season opens in both New Hampshire and Vermont today, with black bear and gray squirrel seasons. Archery season opens in NH on Sept. 15, and VT on Oct. 1. Here's the NH rundown, and here's VT's.
And some music for the day...
Sometimes, a little improvisation can move the world. Or, at least, a crowd in Buenos Aires. In South America, apparently, it's not uncommon when little kids get lost in a crowd for them to be placed on the shoulders of the tallest person there and for the crowd to start clapping to draw attention. So, at a concert in the Plaza Dorrego about 10 days ago, a boy named Juan Cruz was separated from his father, Eduardo. Or as the band quickly started singing, "Ed-
uuuaaarrrr
-do."
Ayer en San Telmo se perdió Juan Cruz y entonces pasó esto:
— #Madrazo (#@jeremadrazzo)
5:48 PM • Aug 21, 2022
You'll never hear the name Eduardo again without humming.
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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