GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Now that was a day! And we've got another one. Though the river valleys will likely start out with fog. Still, high pressure's in place, there's a warming trend, and we're looking at sunny skies (hopefully by mid-morning if you're in a foggy spot) and temps up into the lower 70s. Back to the low or mid 40s tonight, unless you're in a typically cold hollow, where it could be cooler.A moment of reflection. From the bridge linking Fairlee and Orford yesterday morning, by Jay Davis.And a moment for reflection. "The sun glinted through the trees to present this mushroom," writes Cheryl Lubin from Norwich. "Stopped me in my tracks. Such a small thing, a gift!""It's not just Dartmouth. It's the whole Upper Valley community that's deeply indebted to Buddy and will miss him forever." That's former religion prof Rob Oden talking to WMUR's Troy Lynch about the death on Tuesday of football coach Buddy Teevens. Lynch was in Hanover yesterday to check in with the town in the aftermath, stopping to talk to Hanover Haircutters co-owner Ryan Romano, Oden, and Sawtooth's Kieran Campion. "It was partly because of his overwhelming positivity," Campion told him, "that I expected he'd pull through and be back on the sidelines."That Norwich fire Monday morning is "considered suspicious" and under investigation. Though that's about all the Valley News's Patrick Adrian could get out of authorities on the blaze that destroyed a vacant home on closed-off Hemlock Road. As you remember, it was spotted not long after midnight by a state trooper up on I-91—by which time, fire chief Alex Northern tells Adrian, "It had been on fire for a long time." The house, a rental property belonging to Yanmei Lin, a professor and program director at VT Law & Grad School, had been vacant since Hemlock was closed following the July floods.SPONSORED: Alice Peck Day’s Infusion Clinic provides compassionate care. If you have a chronic health condition requiring infusion therapies, the Infusion Clinic at APD offers a nurturing, safe, and comfortable atmosphere. Our expert care team will closely monitor your therapy, answer your questions, and lessen any fears you may have. Ask your provider for a referral. Sponsored by Alice Peck Day.The vacant spot where Norwich Wines & Spirits used to be? It'll be filled soon. Actually, Cole Flannery is already at work painting and refurbishing the space, as he preps to open Half-Step Beer and Wine in the second half of October or early November. It's a shift from his career first as an active-duty judge advocate in the Army, then as an assistant AG in Texas—but as he tells Demo Sofronas in About Norwich, it's also a return to earlier days, when he was set on becoming a craft brewer. He fills Demo in on his plans: more space for beer, probably more natural wines, and a major facelift for the store.
an endless stupid round/of animals, one of them always hungry, sick, lost,/calving or farrowing, or waiting slaughter. That's from a poem by Ellen Bryant Voigt about her father, one of a lifetime of poems exploring, with unblinking gaze, her own and others' lives. Tonight at 7, Voigt, a former VT poet laureate, will sit down at the Norwich Bookstore (see below) with another former VT poet laureate, Sydney Lea, to talk poetry, the past, and the future. You can get a jump on Voigt's part of it by reading Jim Schley's piece in Seven Days about her, her new Collected Poems, her life, and her advice to writers.SPONSORED: The Victorian Ladies’ Detective Collective at Shaker Bridge Theatre. This comedy/mystery is a “cheeky" thriller that centers on women detectives and victims, not the killer. In 1893, a serial killer is terrorizing actresses in London's Battersea district. Three women who live in Mrs. Hunter’s Lodging House for Ladies take up the investigation. But without access to crime scenes or cooperation from the authorities, how can they succeed? It’s “Sherlock Holmes” meets “Arsenic & Old Lace” in this entertaining murder mystery with a modern female sensibility. Sponsored by Shaker Bridge Theatre.NH House inches closer to even split. There was a special election Tuesday to fill a Northwood seat left vacant by a GOP rep this spring: Democrat Hal Rafter, a housing analyst, easily defeated Republican and pentecostal pastor James Guzofski. That will bring the House margin to 197 Democrats and 198 Republicans once Rafter's sworn in. As Steven Porter writes for the Globe (via MSN), that one-seat margin will almost certainly close after a Nashua special election in November. Meanwhile, a Democrat resigned Monday and a Republican Tuesday; there are also two independents, and a third vacancy.In NH, homes continue to become less affordable. A year ago, writes Maureen Milliken in NH Business Review, the state's median income was 74 percent of what's needed to pay the monthly cost of a median-priced home. Now? 59 percent, an all-time low. The median sales price of a single-family home last month was $490K, up nearly 9 percent over last August's $450K; meanwhile, new listings were down nearly 9 percent from a year ago.NH's ballot law commission decides: Towns can choose between two new voting machines. Actually, there's also a third option: hand-counting. But whichever, the state's old Accuvote machines are going away, and towns can opt to replace them with an updated AccuVote made by Dominion Voting Systems or a system from the nonprofit VotingWorks that relies on open-source software. Both will depend on voters feeding paper ballots in to be scanned, and neither will be connected to the internet, the Monitor's David Brooks reports (here via NHPR). The machines will cost towns about $7,000 each.Does it matter if the Jesup's milk-vetch disappears from VT? The state hosts one of only three sites in the world where the plant lives, and after the July floods, Bob Popp—who recently retired as the state botanist after 33 years—found that a population of 70 had been cut to four. Erica Heilman, in a conversation just posted to VT Public, asks him why that should matter. "Every organism has an intrinsic right to exist, I would think," he responds. Then points out that the plant was evolving into its own species, and now it might not. Heilman tags along with Popp out in the field and asks more questions.VT may have the most EV charging stations per capita, but it's not like they're evenly distributed. Which can make it a challenge for EV owners when they want to drive around, say, the Northeast Kingdom or a big swath of Orange County. Cory Dockser, VT Public's first data journalist, dives into the state of play on charging stations around the state, the obstacles to building more, and—maybe most interesting—an interactive map showing how many EVs are registered in each town and how many public chargers it has. Norwich? Two charging stations, 228 EVs. Hartford? Ten stations, 163 EVs.Stop at every covered bridge and wait 20 seconds before proceeding. Tourists? Nope. Road rally drivers! VT's Great American Mountain Valley Revival is next week, and, writes Ken Picard in Seven Days, “brainpower can beat horsepower and the fast often fall to the fastidious.” The three-day competition is not about speed; it’s about precision and the thrill of driving vintage cars—a 1969 Saab 95, a 1930 Chrysler C70 Roadster—doing exactly what the instructions say. “It's not our intention to get them lost," rally master Gary Hamilton says, "but if somebody isn't paying attention, they're going to make a wrong turn.” Or lose time to chatty backhoe drivers or bolting horses.Go big or go home. Literally. If separating your shoulder on another human being’s face sounds oddly appealing, then you might just have what it takes to be a sumo wrestler. As Jackson Wald writes for this month’s GQ, the sport is slowly catching on in the U.S., thanks to some intrepid athletes willing to give it a go. Fortunately you don’t have to do 200-pound sandbag squats to get a feel for the sumo life. Just read Wald’s article, and in the process gain a new appreciation for these wonderful behemoths—172 pounds puts you in the lightweight division—and the sport that brings them together.A mask with feathers? Nope. A skunk doing a handstand. Somebody at the National Park Service had a really good time with their Facebook post a couple of weeks back. Nine seconds of upside-down skunk, much longer wordplay in the NPS's explanation. "Why the fancy footwork and big skunk energy (smell)? Because it can. Also, you're too close and it has given you multiple cues to go away. Awkward." But hey, there's a reason it's gone viral. And video doesn't have smell-o-vision. Yet. The Thursday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
Daybreak tees, long-sleeve tees, and mugs. A
Lost Woods
mug or t-shirt from DB Johnson. Or maybe a Vordle t-shirt? Check out what's available and use it proudly!
This evening at 6 (gates at 5:30) is the second-to-last Feast & Field of the season, at Fable Farm in Barnard. Tonight, BarnArts hosts singer Jenni Johnson and her jazz/swing/blues band, also known as Jenni & and The Jazz Junketeers: Rutland's Glendon Ingles on acoustic and electric bass; Vergennes' Bob Levinson on guitar; Colchester's Felix Anderson on drums; and Burlington's Gus Ziesing on horns and background vocals. It's going to be a heck of a night to be out in the early fall air, music keeping you up and moving.
Also at 6, the Bugbee Senior Center in WRJ hosts Hartland-based big-band/swing band, The Moonlighters. Its 15 (or so) members will make an evening of Glenn Miller, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, and plenty of others.
And Valley Improv, our local troupe, is once again throwing open the doors to new members. Auditions begin at 6:15 at CCBA's outdoor pavilion in Lebanon. No pressure: just bring comfortable clothes and a willingness to play improv games.
This evening at 6:30, both in-person and online, the Howe Library in Hanover hosts journalist, author, and writing prof Jeff Sharlet for a discussion of his recent book, The Undertow. It is Sharlet's recounting of his travels through wide swaths of the country where religious faith and right-leaning politics have come together in the crowds that flock to support Donald Trump—and his conversations with people convinced that civil war is just around the corner.
At 6:45, the New England School of the Arts and Village Pizza on the Lebanon Mall present an evening's discussion of "social courage" by local sexuality educator (and storyteller) Cindy Pierce. It's for high school students and teachers. 9 Hanover Street in Lebanon (the entrance is off the Mall, above the Women's Health Resource Center).
At 7 this evening, the Norwich Bookstore brings in two celebrated poets, Sydney Lea and Ellen Bryant Voigt. They'll be looking back and forward: Lea, VT's former poet laureate, has just published a sort of memoir-in-verse collection, What Shines?, and a new collection of personal essays will appear early next year; and Voigt, a Virginian by birth, also a former VT laureate, and festooned with honors (including a MacArthur "genius" grant) after a lifetime of poetry, saw the publication earlier this year of her Collected Works. Both writers have asked that attendees wear masks.
Also at 7, the Shaker Bridge Theatre kicks off its first season in its new WRJ digs with Patricia Milton's The Victorian Ladies’ Detective Collective. It's London, 1893, and three women living in Mrs. Hunter’s Lodging House for Ladies in Battersea take up the under-investigated murders of several women in the neighborhood—and their observations about the treatment of women in Victorian society. Official opening night is tomorrow, with a reception to follow. Runs through Oct. 8 at the Briggs Opera House.
Anytime today or (until 11:30 pm) tomorrow, you can catch Sustainable Woodstock and Pentangle Arts' latest online film offering, The Ground Between Us. The 2020 documentary by Zeppelin Zeerip and Galen Knowles looks at battles over public lands around the country through the eyes of three families: in Alaska, Oregon, and Utah.
And anytime you want, you can catch JAM's highlights for the week: Elizabeth Kurylo's short film, We Remember, with poetry by Corinth's Barbara Soros and choreography by Kurylo herself; an interview with Republican NH House Majority Leader Jason Osborne about the camaraderie and sense of collaboration that developed between both parties this year as they worked to finalize New Hampshire's budget; and St. Johnsbury Alzheimer's activist Darryll Rudy, who has the disease himself, talking about "The Denial of Death in America" at the St. J Athenaeum.
And to bring us into the day...
You may know Dan Auerbach as the guitarist with the garage-rock duo The Black Keys, but he's also won renown for generating some of the most interesting music to come out of Nashville thanks to his Easy Eye Sound label. It's been on a run recently, and earlier this month released a single by Ugandan singer-songwriter John Muq, who now lives in Austin. As Easy Eye puts it, "He devises songs as small gifts, designed to settle into everyday life and provoke reflection and resilience. 'These days the world is sad,' he explains, 'so I wanted to make happy songs. I wanted to write songs that connected...'"
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.
Want to catch up on Daybreak music?
Want to catch up on Daybreak itself (or find that item you trashed by mistake the other day)? You can find everything on the Daybreak Facebook page
, or if you're a committed non-FB user,
.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! Subscribe at no cost at:
Thank you!