GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Still sunny, maybe a tad warmer. The high pressure that's brought us this run of lovely weather is starting to shift off to the east, setting up some wind flow from the south, which will nudge today's highs at least to 80 at some point. As with the last few days, we'll have fog to start, but once it clears off, it'll be full-on blue up there. Clear tonight, low around 50.Upper Valley scenes. From Daybreak readers out and about...
Atop Mt. Cardigan. Actually, Kathie Burrell was just below the summit on a cloud-drama day. "The knees," she writes, "may belong to a couple from Plainfield" who were hiking with their black dog.
Nap time in Norwich. The sheep at Hogwash Farm catching an apple tree's shade, from Barbara Woodard. They're mostly Jacob's Sheep with a few Cotswolds mixed in, the farm's Leslie O'Hara says. "Hogwash has no goats, regardless of what people may say! Sheep have horns, too…"
And whatever the winds and rains bring, sunflowers persist. Annemieke McLane's got the proof, from Strafford.
Heads up on Route 5 in Bradford! VTrans put out a press release yesterday announcing that beginning at 7 am next Tuesday, Sept. 10, Route 5 in Bradford between VT 25B and Carson Lane will be closed to all traffic until 7 pm on Thursday, Sept. 12. That's basically Route 5 between downtown Bradford (where 25B, also known as S. Main Street, hits Route 5) and Carson Lane, on the other side of the Waits River. "This full closure aims to facilitate bridge work and repairs on Bridge 91 over the Waits River," VTrans explains. "A signed detour is in place via VT-25B to VT-25 to US-5."Upper Valley Baroque answers its founding question: "Would it be possible to create an ensemble for baroque music here?" For one thing, it's about to embark on its fourth season, Susan Apel writes in Here in Hanover (with photos by Lars Blackmore). For another, it's now got a loyal cadre of musicians from around the Northeast—and has woven itself into the region's cultural life. "Artists are hosted in people’s homes," Susan writes. "Meals are communal. Musicians sometimes recruit their colleagues, describing UVB as among the 'hottest gigs in the Northeast.'" Things start up Sept. 14.Valley News hires reporting intern, asks readers' help. For the last few years, the paper has boosted its stretched reporting staff with Report for America corps members. Now, writes Dan McClory in a publisher's note, RfA is cutting back and won't be replacing Claire Potter and Frances Mize, who moved on months ago, or photographer Alex Driehaus, who's now on staff. Instead, the VN's launched its own program; one of two interns, Emma Roth-Wells, began this week. The paper's seeking reader support for the $90K program, as well as local foundation backing. You can contribute at the link.SPONSORED: A wondrous site-specific work. In Dance Heginbotham’s You Look Like a Fun Guy, dancing bodies embody the essence of mushrooms—the biggest, smallest, most adaptive, most diverse, arguably tastiest organism in existence. Discover the magic of fungi and the unseen links that hold ecosystems and communities together as the Hop kicks off its season with this work on the Dartmouth Golf Course on September 17-19. Get tickets today! Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth."How fast we become a stranger in our own house." One Christmas Eve decades ago, Peter Orner was home alone, reading William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, when the door burst open and a snow-covered guy in a Santa hat... but we'll just let Peter tell that story. In this week's Enthusiasms, he weaves together that moment and the book he was clutching, with "all the insanity" and Thomas Sutpen and Mrs. Coldfield's incessant talking and her foredoomed family. "Foredoom, there’s a Faulknerian word. Is it even a word?"After a brutal 2023, Upper Valley orchards see a bumper crop. Last year's late spring frost, you'll remember, was devastating to growers of apples and other fruit. But as Clare Shanahan writes for the VN, "One positive outcome from last year’s losses is that the trees had more energy to produce a plentiful apple crop this year." Still, while producers are reporting "an above average amount of apples," as Riverview Farm's Paul Franklin puts it, they're not resting easy. “There’s always something weather-related that you have to worry about,” says Sheila Fabrizio of N. Haverhill's Windy Ridge Orchards.In Killington, a bakery preps to pick up Maine's whoopie-pie gauntlet. Rutland's annual Whoopie Pie Festival is Sept. 14, and after baking a 770-pound whoopie pie for last year's, Dream Makers Bakers owner Megan Wagner was hoping to give things a rest. But then a radio station in Maine, home of the current 1,000-pound-plus world record holder, threw down a challenge. So now, reports WCAX's Connor Ullathorne, Wagner and her bakers are getting ready to churn hundreds of pounds of butter, shortening, and marshmallow fluff next week. First, though, they have to make thousands of pies for festival-goers.One of the best places in the US to be a farmer? Around Greensboro, VT. That's because cheesemaking pioneer Jasper Hill Farm and its founders, Mateo and Andy Kehler, have a very specific strategy: They sell far and wide and charge premium prices for their cheese, then source within 15 miles and pass the money they make back to the farmers they rely on. In all, reports Jake Price in Civil Eats, 62 cents of every dollar they spend stays local, and another 20 cents gets spent in Vermont. In his article and a stunning accompanying photo spread, Price looks at Jasper Hill's history, farmers, and community.What happens when the people most responsible for public disorder are barred from the social service agencies that could help? Of the 29,000 calls Brattleboro's police have gotten over the last three years, just 20 people accounted for 6 percent: disorderly conduct, drug and alcohol use, and the like. The problem, writes Kevin O'Connor in VTDigger: many of them "also face no-trespass notices at the programs that could help them." It's an issue in Springfield, too, he reports, and the state is trying to help police and agencies collaborate in an effort to tackle it. O'Connor explores the challenges.Conservation Law Foundation accuses VT of "cooking the books" on climate targets, says it's likely to sue. Those words in quotes are Kevin McCallum's in Seven Days, but they nicely sum up the environmental group's contention: that state officials may claim VT is on track to meet targets set by the 2020 Global Warming Solutions Act, but in fact they're "showing the public a version that we don't think is accurate," in the words of CLF's Elena Mihaly. At bottom, McCallum writes, this is a dispute about the accuracy of data on which projections are based. If a lawsuit happens, this is helpful background to know.Vermonter sets world uphill record on his way to three-million-feet goal. Remember how Noah Dines started the year at midnight in Stowe, aiming to climb and ski 3 million vertical feet in a year? He's down in South America now, and at El Colorado, Chile, just broke 2.5 million vertical feet, thus grabbing the record. As Powder mag's Ian Greenwood points out, he's done the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest over 80 times. “Part of the reason that I wanted to do this thing is because I said I've never tried really hard. I've never fully invested myself in one thing,” he tells Greenwood. “I want to know what that feels like.""We are looking for a good year for foliage." Just as New England's flowering trees and shrubs had a pretty magnificent year, writes former Mt. Washington Observatory meteorologist Jim Salge in Yankee mag, this year's foliage forecast is looking pretty great thanks to a slow spring warm-up and a growing season that—despite devastating flooding in some spots—left the region "with little sign of drought stress or significant overwatering." Now the question is whether we continue to get warm, sunny days and cool nights. His forecast at the burgundy link, and USA Today's cool graphic here.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
we
know what's good! Strong Rabbit's Morgan Brophy has come up with the perfect design for "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Plus you'll find the Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, as well as sweatshirts, tees, a fleece hoodie, and, as always, the fits-every-hand-perfectly Daybreak mug. Check it all out at the link!
The guild is throwing a reception and open house for its just-opened exhibit, "Quilts: An Evolving Art Form" in the Hanover library's Ledyard Gallery, with a guided quilt walk. Runs from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm.
Jenni Johnson and her band swing into the grounds of the Fable Farm Fermentory in Barnard with jazz and blues classics and more. Gates and food at 5:30 pm, music at 6.
This second novel by Cobb, who spent three decades running VT's trade group for Visiting Nurse associations, ties together the life in rural Vermont of a college-educated young man named John Gauthier as he takes work as a farmhand in the 1920s, and his life as an older priest decades later, delving into what commitment and devotion mean. At 7 pm.
And launching us head-first into the day...
Seriously, you just have to set this performance by Indian singer Varijashree Venugopal going and then hang on to the edge of your seat for three minutes. She was a child prodigy, performing South Indian ragas by the time she was four; now, on the world stage, she injects the intricate musical structures, techniques and sounds she grew up with into all sorts of contexts.
with Victor Wooten, the longtime bassist for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones; Hamilton de Holanda, the Brazilian bandolim player; drummer
K.U. Jayachandra Rao; and Pramath Kiran doing riffs on a morsing, the South Indian version of a Jew's harp.
Five extraordinary musicians and a little master class on virtuosity.
Okay, settled down? 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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