GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Oh, that north wind.... On the bright side, this morning's clouds should be on their way out by early afternoon. But we've also got cold air filtering into the region, and we're going to see temps struggle to get out of the 50s today. They'll drop into the 30s tonight, with frost likely in plenty of spots. Never fear: Things will warm up a bit tomorrow.The magical play of light...
When highways and skyways intersect, in this case on a road in Lyme village yesterday evening, by Jay Davis.
In this drone shot overlooking Quechee Monday morning, by Lisa Lacasse;
And this perfect rainbow looking east from West Fairlee Monday evening, by John Pietkiewicz.
"There's not a lot of goodwill based on the way they've gone about this.... We feel rather disrespected at this point." That's Patrick Dakin, who sits on Royalton's planning commission, talking about the way Dollar General has gone about trying to set up shop in SoRo. Though Aubuchon Realty professed no knowledge of any tenants for the building it wants to erect, Seven Days' Rachel Hellman notes that the VN's Jim Kenyon found a Dollar General agreement to occupy the building, the chain is advertising on LinkedIn for a store manager in town... and now, in a statement, DG tells her, "Based on our current timeline, we anticipate to break ground in the near future."Cornish to weigh whether to move library to refurbished general store or renovate the existing library. You may remember that last year, the store's owner offered it to the town to be transformed into a community center and library. Now, after 15 months of study, reports Alex Hanson in the Valley News, the committee studying the options will present them to townspeople in separate meetings this week and next. A new nonprofit, Hanson writes, would raise funds to refurbish the store; renovating the Stowell Library has a less clear path.SPONSORED: Join the Feast from the Farms Tour on Saturday, October 8. Three Norwich working farms and two historic hill farms are on the tour. There's a history podcast to listen to at each stop, historic photos to view, autumn food games, and recipes to collect along the way. You can also purchase a localvore box lunch, made by Cedar Circle Farm, to take with you. Tickets are $25; kids under 12 are free. This is a fundraiser for Norwich Historical Society and a great chance to see some really beautiful spots in Norwich during foliage. Get your tickets online here. Sponsored by the Norwich Historical Society.Randolph High faces dispute over transgender player in girls' locker room. The girls' volleyball team, reports WCAX's Kiana Burks, has been barred from the locker room while the high school investigates allegations that players harassed a transgender team member; a player who spoke to Burks, meanwhile, says the issue began when the trans student "made an inappropriate comment" while team members were changing. Some team members have complained about sharing the locker room with the student; VT language on the issue is here (scroll down).So, what are you having for dinner at Thyme? That's the question Susan Apel asks in Artful of Eileen McGuckin, the WRJ restaurant's owner for the last nine years. McGuckin worked for years at what used to be the Tip Top Café before taking it over, and she runs it now with her partner, chef Francisco Guerra. “We have a shared passion for the business and vision for where we want to be,” she tells Susan. As for what she'd eat... Well, she says, it was on the menu even before she bought the restaurant. "It's stood the test of Thyme," she tells Susan. Ouch, Eileen.The Exit 19 shutdown in literature. A reader writes, "This will shock you, but I have not memorized all of the interstate exit numbers up and down the Upper Valley. The text of the NHDOT press release therefore seems almost mystical: A detour utilizing message boards and temporary construction signs will be put in place directing traffic to use I-89 northbound Exit 20 to reverse directions to I-89 southbound where they can use the Exit 19 southbound off-ramp. It has a sort of Alice-in-Wonderland-meets-Catch-22 vibe..."Meanwhile, at Exit 17... That's the I-89 exit leading to Route 4, and Tuesday afternoon, according to the NH State Police, a car hit a large piece of metal on the highway there. The investigating trooper discovered it was the top of a box truck, whose license the victim was able to catch. A short time later, Canaan police found the truck—without a roof—on Route 4. The driver, from Houston, had "struck a bridge in New York the previous day," according to the state police press release, then "continued to drive the damaged vehicle until the roof completely departed the vehicle on I-89." He's been charged with DUI.William Cox gets his due. Or at least a commemorative plaque on his gravestone. Though not much is known about what he actually did, Cox, who wound up a tanner and farmer in West Fairlee, was present at and took part in the Boston Tea Party in 1773, when he was 23 years old. Yesterday afternoon, the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum held ceremonies for two Vermonters who helped out at the Sons of Liberty tea-dumping; a third will be held today, WCAX reports. Cox is buried in the W. Fairlee Village Cemetery on Route 113.Masland suggests NH and VT's members of Congress might need to intervene in Lyme-E. Thetford bridge dispute. In a letter reprinted by Sidenote, the Thetford state rep lays out the case for why NHDOT's plan to close the bridge for 18 months will disrupt life on both sides of the river, from derailing schoolkids to Crossroads and Thetford academies losing tuition dollars to local businesses losing employees and customers. NHDOT is set on a closure, he writes, and "changing the outcome...will require intervention from higher up": maybe members of Congress, maybe the US DOT.“I don’t think I ever got my trail legs the whole trip, but I managed to make it to the end.” That's Sharon's Karen McNall, who with W. Fairlee's Sarah Molesworth spent August hiking the Long Trail and raising funds for the VT chapter of the Alzheimer's Association. McNall, who is also the administrative assistant for Hartford Parks and Rec, made the effort in honor of her mother, who has the disease. “She doesn’t know I did this because of the disease, she doesn’t know anybody,” McNall tells the VN's Liz Sauchelli. “But I figure this is one way I could help.” The shorter Walk to End Alzheimer's is on Saturday.On Lake Sunapee, a battle over a sliver of water. That sliver is known as Jobs Creek, and homeowners on its shores say that in recent years boat traffic in its calm waters has surged to an unhealthy degree. They petitioned the state to prohibit boats from tying up together in large "rafts" or from dropping anchor within 150 feet of shoreline. Boaters, not surprisingly, took exception, reports NHPR's Todd Bookman. For the moment, the balancing act between boaters' enjoyment and homeowners' concerns has tilted toward the boaters: the state's Dept of Safety last week rejected the homeowners' petition."I'm the vermouth in a very dry martini, and she's the rest." Filmmaker Ken Burns is laudatory about his former wife—and fellow filmmaker and longtime Walpole, NH resident—Amy Stechler, who died Aug. 26. In an interview with NHPR's Julie Furukawa, he talks about Stechler and her work, which included "The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo" and collaborations with Burns in setting his film company's distinctive style in "Brooklyn Bridge" and "The Civil War." She was both ferocious and graceful, he says, "a really, really spectacular combination." NYT obit here (gift, no paywall).NH, VT real estate: not much house-flipping here. "In simple terms," writes NH Business Review's Paul Briand, "flipping involves buying a home, usually renovating it, then turning right around and selling it at a higher price." The national real estate sales data curator ATTOM looked at data for houses and condos sold at arms' length twice within 12 months, and found that VT ranked third lowest in the country, NH seventh lowest. NH recorded 289 home flips during the second quarter, Briand reports, with Rockingham County accounting for more than a third of them. Grafton Co. had 12, Sullivan wasn't in the data.A visit to Barney. The U.S. Postal Service Center in Manchester has a huge new sorting machine, which is painted purple. Hence the name. And in one of the perks of his job, the Monitor's David Brooks got to go check it out. Manchester is one of two centers in NH (the other's in Nashua) that handle all the state's incoming and outgoing mail, and Barney and affiliated machines not only sort the mail by town, post office, and carrier route, but by "walk sequence"—that is, the addresses in order along the carrier's route.VT Covid levels remain "low," hospital admissions trend slowly upward. The state health department in its weekly trends report yesterday tallied 550 Covid cases in the past week, down from 581 the week before, reports VTDigger's Erin Petenko. At the same time, the CDC last week raised community levels in Orleans, Lamoille and Caledonia counties from “low” to “medium,” where they join Rutland and Bennington counties. The state reported 52 hospital admissions in the past week, up from 39 the week before and 35 the week before that.VT’s first cannabis manufacturers head into the kitchen. One thing the soon-legal weed marketplace will replace are “your stoner friend’s mystery edibles,” writes Seven Days’ Jordan Barry. With the new law requiring cannabis products to clearly note dosage potency, a handful of bakers and brewers are poised to create tasty experiences that won’t overpower the palate or your perception. One of them, Martha Bruhl of Middlebury’s Fog Valley Farm, owns the distinction of manufacturer license-holder 0001. Later next month, her sea-salted caramels and lemon shortbreads hit shelves.“A blur of adventure across the planet.” That’s how filmmaker Adam Chitayat describes the mesmerizing result of a video he constructed entirely out of Google Maps Streetview images. As did so many projects of its kind, Chitayat’s began during Covid lockdown. Unable to go anywhere, he says, “I viewed and downloaded the world from my desk.” Though probably not for the photosensitive, his breakneck timelapse zips through dozens of iconic locations around the globe—on a bullet train through Japan, along mountain ridges in Nepal, through museums and stadiums—all set to a heart-thumping beat.The Thursday Vordle. Have at it!
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Today at 4 pm, Dartmouth history prof Matthew Delmont gives an online Library of Congress talk on "Double Victory in Black and White: What Digitized Historical Newspapers Reveal about the African American Experience of WWII." He'll explore how Black newspapers during the war highlighted the role Black troops played on the battlefield and helped lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement "by promoting patriotism while raising questions regarding race, democracy, and citizenship." No cost, but you'll need to register.
At 4:45, the Dartmouth English Department's Cleopatra Mathis Poetry and Prose Series hosts former journalist and lawyer and now novelist Jacinda Townsend. She'll be reading from and talking about her most recent novel, Mother Country, which is about—and told by—an American woman struggling with infertility who kidnaps a young girl while visiting Morocco; the young Mauritanian mother, escaped from slavery and now an undocumented migrant, who loses her; and the girl herself. In the Sanborn Library.
Today at 5 pm, Dartmouth's Dickey Center hosts a panel of experts talking about “Vaccine Hesitancy and Misinformation: Sources and Solutions." The panelists, who include misinformation expert and political scientist Brendan Nyhan, NH state epidemiologist Benjamin Chan, Council on Foreign Relations Global Health Program director Thomas Bollyky, Harvard public health senior researcher Gillian Steelfisher, and others, will explore why vaccine-related misinformation spreads and how societies can "stem the tide and shore up vaccine confidence." Livestreamed online and in-person in Filene Auditorium.
At 7 pm, Still North Books & Bar in Hanover hosts Argentinian cartoonist and VT resident Liniers (Ricardo Siri) to celebrate his new comics collection, Macanudo: Welcome to Elsewhere. Based on his daily strip in Argentina, it's filled with kids, talking animals, imaginary monsters, occasional elves, free-range chickens raised on Proust, all musing and joking about domestic life, imagined scenarios of historical figures, pop-culture stereotypes, and plenty more.
Also at 7, the Etna Library presents an online talk on the mysteries and practices of book indexing, by Michelle Guiliano of the book-indexing service Line-By-Line Indexing.
At 7:30, the Parish Players open their run (tonight through Sunday, then again next Thurs-Sun) of The Play That Goes Wrong. The farce, devised by a troupe of actors in London, is about a troupe of actors putting on a community theater production of a murder mystery, and is "devoted entirely to destroying itself before your eyes," Ben Brantley wrote in the NYT when the show hit Broadway five years ago. "Whatever visions of chaos your imagination summons, the odds are that this show’s artfully hapless team will exceed them." At Parish Players on Thetford Hill. Masks recommended for most performances, required for the shows on Oct. 2 and Oct. 6.
At 8 pm, Jon Pousette-Dart hits the stage at the Flying Goose Pub in New London. If you were listening to music in the '70s, you heard the first go-round of the Pousette-Dart Band. The group broke up in the '80s, but Pousette-Dart kept performing and writing, and these days is touring with Steve Roues on bass and harmony vocals, Eric Parker (Joe Cocker, Mick Taylor) on drums, and Jim Chapdelaine (Al Anderson, Phoebe Snow) on guitar/vocals.
And over the course of today, in honor of National Silent Film Day, JAM (you know, it used to be CATV) is airing Hitchcock's 1927 serial killer thriller The Lodger, Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s classic The Mark of Zorro, and Buster Keaton's 1920 marital mishap One Week. Plus, you can check out Tuesday evening's joint discussion between the Hartford Selectboard and the Lebanon City Council on the Upper Valley's housing crisis; guitarist Ed Eastridge looking back at his life in music (and why he's glad he doesn't play violin); and George Miller, longtime owner of Jericho Hill Farm in what is now Hartford, looking back at family history and local lore.
And for today's music...
You
knew
something like this was going to have to show up at some point. Here's Hawaiian musician and actor (the remake of
Magnum, P.I.
) Shawn Garnett
(Thanks, DK!)
And 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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