GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
One more day. And it’s pretty much like Tuesday and yesterday: patchy fog in the morning, some clouds, and then mostly sunny with highs approaching 80. But then, low pressure moves in with a pair of fronts along for the ride. The first of them arrives tonight, with a chance of rain starting up after dark and a likelihood after midnight. Lows tonight in the upper 50s.
Color two ways.
First, the hoop house at the cut-flower farm Flora Fields in Orford, from Lynn Cook;
And second, a freshly emerged monarch in Enfield, from Jeff Hinman.
It’s time for Dear Daybreak! This week’s collection of short pieces from readers about Upper Valley life features Laura Pulaski’s glorious Post Mills sunrise; Bruce Richards’s equal parts humorous and poignant piece about whippoorwills, his mom, and a scarecrow; and Kathy Manning’s haiku ode to peak tomato. And hey, Dear Daybreak needs submission! If you’ve got something to share, why, please do send it in!
And it’s past time for three salsas! Apologies—the long weekend threw me and this is my first chance to catch up with a new set of what’s-getting-harvested-now recipes from Mitchell Davis. As you’ll remember from last week, the Plainfield cookbook author and Kitchen Sense newsletter writer has teamed up with Edgewater Farm’s Jenny Sprague to pen recipes for her weekly CSA blog. Making the most of the late-summer tomato bounty, he’s got recipes for pico de gallo, a jarred-style salsa, and a salsa using fermented tomatoes ("more complex flavor and beneficial microbes”…).
Walt & Ernie’s in Hanover to move. It’s kind of earth-shattering. The barbershop is one of the oldest businesses in town, opened by Walter Chase and Ernie DesRoche in the Hanover Inn in 1903, writes Lukas Dunford in the Valley News, before it moved to its current location in Nugget Alley in 1938. Now, the portion of the building in which it sits—along with TukTuk Thai Cuisine—is getting torn down to make way for new apartments. Carol Eastman, the shop’s current owner and longtime first chair, began looking for a new spot two years ago and finally found one: down and across South Main St. behind the Ledyard Bank. She’ll open once the new Ledyard Park is finished.
Claremont School Board authorizes $4 million loan. The bank loan is essentially an advance on a state education grant, reports WMUR’s Tom Garris, and is aimed at covering the struggling school district’s daily expenses; it would not be used to pay down the multi-million-dollar deficit district officials discovered earlier this year. The loan, once in place, would ease the day-to-day sense of crisis the schools have been facing; meanwhile, board chair Heather Whitney said at last night’s meeting, the district is seeking help from law enforcement as it looks into the deficit’s causes.
SPONSORED: Food should never be an impossible choice. At LISTEN’s Food Pantry and Community Dining Hall, demand is up more than 12 percent from last year as families struggle with rising costs. More neighbors are turning to us for help every day. You can make a difference right now—and thanks to the Jack & Dorothy Byrne Foundation, your gift will be doubled up to $25,000. Together, we can make sure no one in the Upper Valley goes hungry. Please donate here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by LISTEN Community Services.
New Hartford High chef has a backstory. For the past dozen years, Tom Corbett—known as Chef Tom—built a following among parents and students in Williamstown, VT, his hometown: He’d prep pizza dough on Sundays, baked fresh bread daily, and “more than anything—with his bushy beard and bald head—was a friendly and familiar presence in the cafeteria,” writes Seven Days’ Alison Novak. Then, the Friday before school began, the company that had taken over food service fired him. Now he’s commuting 50 miles to Hartford—and Williamstown residents “are taking it personally,” Novak writes, while the school board’s feeling the heat. She digs into events.
National headlines for two locals’ marriage. Though John Freitag had the news in The Herald last week, the national press—USA Today, Brides, People, E! Online—have just caught up to the fact that Noah Kahan and his longtime girlfriend, who also grew up here, tied the knot in the Strafford Town House Aug. 23. The People article is at the burgundy link. Kahan’s publicist said in a statement, “On behalf of the couple, who greatly value their privacy, we respectfully ask that no additional details, photos or video be shared publicly unless they choose to do so.” Freitag offers a bit more detail—and a shout-out to Strafford for knowing how to keep things quiet, as it did when Daniel Day-Lewis and Rebecca Miller were married there years ago.
SPONSORED: Classes and ensembles at Upper Valley Music Center start next week! We still have space in programs including Music Together classes for birth-5 years, group fiddle and guitar, and music theory. Our ensembles for adults and children include chorus, orchestra, and brand new percussion ensembles. Thanks to our partners in the community, this fall we’re also offering African percussion, Music Together in New London, and an Aphasia Choir. Tuition assistance is available! Sponsored by Upper Valley Music Center.
In New London, a musical about “the overwhelming grief that can surface when a pet dies.” That fact of life doesn’t get explored much on stage, but tonight at the New London Barn Playhouse (more below), The Pet Project goes there. It’s the musical’s world premiere, writes Marion Umpleby in the VN: a collaboration between writer and actress Laurie Graff and comedian and composer Nancy Shayne, whose shared experience in a pet bereavement group over a decade ago infuses their story about the six members of a fictional NYC group on a single night, their growing suspicions about the group’s leader, and the tribalism of cat and dog people.
“I can answer the question, why did the chicken cross the road?” That’s because one snowy day, Springfield VT’s Pattrice and Miriam Jones found themselves trying to rescue a chicken that had escaped from a nearby factory farm. That was in Maryland, where that experience led them to create a bird sanctuary. In 2009, they moved to Springfield, where VINE Sanctuary (“Veganism is the Next Evolution”) now shelters over 500 animals, including roosters, hens, ducks, turkeys, guinea fowl, cows, sheep, goats, horses, pigeons, and emus, reports VT Public’s Jenn Jarecki. Jarecki profiles the pair, the sanctuary, and its roosters rescued from cockfighting.
What it takes to move a 1500-pound rail. If you’re over in Concord, this will be something to see at some point. Back in August, the city council voted to buy an old rail corridor from CSX to help extend the Merrimack River Greenway Trail, which would eventually link up with the Northern Rail Trail. There was some fallout, because the move will likely put a local business that offers pedal-powered rides along the tracks out of business. But on his Granite Geek blog, David Brooks explores what’s needed “to pull up and haul off six miles of steel rail that by my estimate weigh at least 500 tons,” along with why rail trails are often the best chance for preserving rail corridors.
Fifty-two weeks a year over 30 years of “wildly creative, seat-of-the-pants stories.” This week’s issue of Seven Days marked its 30-year anniversary, and in her publisher’s note, co-founder (along with Pamela Polston) Paula Routly reminisces about the weekly’s evolution from shoestring operation—one night a week, the two would tote “a box of soon-to-be newspaper pages to a parking lot in Barre, where we handed them off to an ink-stained emissary from the Bradford press,” then dream up the next week’s issue on the drive home to Burlington. It’s grown to include not just a sizable and talented full-time staff, but hard-hitting stories,
So, for that matter, do Routly and culture co-editor Carolyn Fox in a compendium of choice articles through the years, from Peter Freyne’s takedown of a Chittenden County judge to Ken Picard’s pathbreaking 2003 piece on the growing population of Mexican workers on Vermont farms, to Margot Harrison’s 2008 profile of cartoonist Alison Bechdel and her work on Fun Home a decade before it went to Broadway, to Cathy Resmer and Routly’s 2009 report on the Burlington Free Press’s struggles to stay alive. And much, much more.
And speaking of color… (Remember? Up top?) The James Webb Space Telescope has just put out a really beautiful image—using its mid-infrared camera and radio data from the Atacama array—of the Butterfly Nebula. The Hubble’s photos were striking enough, but this one adds not just flash, but key information about the formation of cosmic dust.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak. If you're new to Daybreak, this is a puzzle along the lines of the NYT's Wordle—only it's not just some random word, but a word that actually appeared here yesterday.
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HEADS UP
Timbermash at Feast and Field in Barnard. The Upper Valley-rooted bluegrass/Americana foursome joins the duo of Justin Parks and Mark Burds—who performed as Mountain Dog—with fiddler Jen Friese and bassist Ben Kogan. As always, doors and food at 5:30, music starts up at 6.
Geoffrey Douglas with Love in a Dark Place at the Norwich Bookstore. The West Leb author, reporter, and columnist was once editor of an investigative weekly in Atlantic City, which as you might imagine was fertile ground for plot lines. His first novel, set in 1980s Atlantic City, “tells the story of a young reporter’s almost impossible quest to do the right thing, and to save himself—and the woman he loves— in the process.” 7 pm.
The Pet Project opens at the New London Barn Playhouse. Laurie Graff and Nancy Shayne’s musical about a fictional NYC pet bereavement group—six members and a new leader meeting on a wintry New York night—gets its world premiere tonight at 7:30. Runs through Sunday. More details on the play above.
And anytime, JAM’s got this week’s highlights for you: Hartford High alum Drew Boyce interviews the intrepid young entrepreneurs behind a startup lemonade stand in WRJ; the August marker unveiling in Canaan honoring Noyes Academy, conceived by abolitionists and destroyed by a mob in 1835; a dive into the process of creating 377, the play about high schoolers before and after a school shooting that was crafted by Leb High School students; and a recent Lebanon School Board meeting on a new cellphone policy.
And for today...
An icon covers Frank Ocean…
See you tomorrow.
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