GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Still hot and humid, only this time with a chance of severe weather. Mostly, today's going to be sunny, with temps getting into the 90s again. But as a disturbance pushes into the region, conditions are set for possible severe thunderstorms and heavy rain late this afternoon and into tonight—timing's uncertain and they're more likely to the north and west, but things could change. Upper 60s tonight.What late summer looks like.
Not that porcupines ever move fast, but you've gotta figure they're especially happy to take their own time about things in this weather. Here's one on Buzzell Bridge Road in Thetford Center, from Tom Monego.
On the other hand, this photo of Storrs Pond from Lori Harriman practically gleams with those bittersweet end-of-summer days.
Well now, this should be fun! As part of its continuing work on the I-89 bridges across the Connecticut, NHDOT Sunday night (Sept. 10) will shift the southbound lanes onto the new median bridge over the river and close Exit 20 southbound (yep, the one onto 12A) until Thursday morning next week while crews work on ramp drainage and road reconstruction. The detour will take southbound motorists down to Exit 19 and then back up to Exit 20 northbound.A banner summer for mosquitoes: “This is a window into the new normal." That quote's from Dartmouth biologist Matt Ayres, talking to Amanda Gokee in the Globe (paywall) about not just the sheer numbers, but the new species—and diseases they carry—that are showing up in these parts as the climate warms and the air grows wetter. “They’re knocking on our door,” says Ayres. “There’s a rising tide of new species that are colonizing these forests.” As you know, they breed in water, which there's been a lot of. “Mosquitoes are breeding everywhere this year,” says one entomologist, including roadside litter. And speaking of rising tides: Northern New England researchers set out to monitor the spread of tick-borne diseases. Under a new federal grant, researchers at UNH, UVM, and the U of ME will try to establish baseline data on where different ticks are found, their numbers, which pathogens they carry, and which vertebrate hosts they infect. “Ultimately," says veterinary pathologist David Needle in a UNH release, "the data we generate can help inform public health efforts and it will serve as a key warning system to pet owners, livestock producers and the general populace." (h/t to Granite Geek for noticing.)"I like to say I brought Frost with me, and he brought me home. It was a way of keeping in touch with where I grew up." The actor Gordon Clapp, who lives in Norwich, is reprising his one-man show, Robert Frost: This Verse Business, in Middlebury this weekend and his home town of Conway next weekend. Talking yesterday to Vermont Public's Michaela Lefrak, he reflected on Frost's importance to him as a teen away at boarding school, on the poet's enduring place in American culture, and on the people he's met who met Frost—"I call these people 'Frostaceans,'" he said, "like crustaceans. Because, you know, they're a little crusty by this time."The night Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, DJ Ali Shaheed Mohammed and Jarobi White shook Dartmouth's Webster Hall. You don't think of the Upper Valley as a hotbed of hip-hop, but in this week's Enthusiasm, Bill Craig recalls the surprising early '90s one-night visit by hip-hop pioneers A Tribe Called Quest. And you can't ask for a better guide to the group, Bill writes, than poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib and his book, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest—not just to their music, which "expand[ed] hip-hop's sampling vocabulary, creating jazz-heavy audio textures that honored heritage through the new," but to the issues of their times.In Concord, NH House cancels committee, subcommittee meetings after air conditioning fails in Legislative Office Building. With temps what they are, House Speaker Sherman Packard made the decision yesterday to close down hearings for the rest of this week, reports InDepthNH. Meetings affected include the Retirement Benefits Commission and work sessions on bills before a variety of House committees.NH fourth graders to design state's first-ever "I Voted" stickers. The secretary of state's office announced the contest on Tuesday, reports Steven Porter in the Globe's Morning Report newsletter (no paywall): A panel of local election officials will choose three winning designs will be selected by a panel of local election officials, which polling places will hand out to Granite Staters who vote during the 2024 elections. The winning designs, Porter writes, will be judged based on their creativity, inclusivity of all voters, and focus on New Hampshire. Next up: Figuring out when voting will occur.After a mile's swim and a golf course excursion, cow still on the lam in Laconia. The fugitive was first reported on a city road Monday evening, reports Catherine McLaughlin in the Laconia Daily Sun. Police tracked it to a yacht club, where it plunged into the waters of Paugus Bay. People on jet skis tried to herd it, but wound up accompanying it as it made its way—over the course of a mile—to the western shore. "I didn't even know cows could swim," says the city's police chief. From there, the cow "took a jaunt through the 7th, 8th and 13th holes at the Laconia Country Club," McLaughlin writes, then was briefly detained on a tennis court before breaking free. It hasn't been seen since.Beautiful, quiet... "and you're very unlikely to get hit by a car." That's a cyclist—and chair of the Hardwick, VT selectboard—describing the 93-mile, 18-town Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. It was supposed to get its grand opening in July but a certain weather catastrophe delayed that to last month—and caused the state to close its central 43 miles while crews repair washouts and slope failures. In the Burlington Free Press, April Fisher dives into the project's history (the VT Assn. of Snow Travelers played a key role), potential future (MA border, anyone?), and hoped-for impact on towns along its route.VT Head Start teacher doesn't just summit 115 Northeastern 4,000-footers—he treks between ranges. Will Robinson, who teaches in a program in Addison County, started his summer break in the Catskills, walked to and covered the Adirondacks, trekked across the Crown Point Bridge to get to the Long Trail (that was during July's rains), and finally made it after 59 days to Mt. Katahdin in Maine. All told, he covered 1,300 miles, writes Alison Novak in Seven Days—occasionally reciting nursery rhymes in his head. "That's the preschool teacher in me," he tells Novak.
Affordable housing developers in VT are turning to modular units. Last year, it cost about $370K to build a small home or modest apartment; this year, it's more like $500K, reports Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days. Which is why large developments of modular housing are now seen as a way to keep costs in check. Part of what's going on, Allen writes, is that builders are so busy they're charging more, but it's also that people in the building trades are getting paid more—unskilled workers can now make $18-$20 an hour, and skilled carpenters more like $25-$30. "It shows that these jobs in the trades are important and people can make a good living in them," says one consultant."Birds are beautiful and varied, musical and free. And they’re everywhere." So writes Jennie Rothenberg Gritz in Smithsonian, part of a portfolio of bird portraits by 10 wildlife photographers who were asked to photograph their favorites and explain why they love them. Meanwhile, the Bird Photographer of the Year awards, based in Britain, have finished sifting through over 20,000 entries and just announced their winners. The Guardian has them—along with what it took to get that shot of, say, a female peregrine in California protecting her nest from an approaching brown pelican.Word of the day: Flamboyance. Not because it's so unusual in and of itself, but for what it refers to: a group of flamingos. And it's in the news because it turns out that the birds, many of whom make their home in Mexico, are being spotted in places like Kentucky and Ohio, blown far afield by Hurricane Idalia, reports the BBC's Graeme Wood. "We have never seen anything like this," says Jerry Lorenz of Audubon Florida—where, despite the state's reputation, only about 1 percent of flamingos' global population live.The Thursday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Feast and Field in Barnard is still going strong (though not much longer), and this evening at 6 they bring in the New Old Vermonters: Spencer Lewis (guitar, violin/fiddle), Justin Park (mandolin, guitar, bass), and Mark Burds (guitar, bass). Their repertoire, BarnArts writes, "draws from Spencer’s original songwriting and fiddle tunes, many in the old time/Americana vein. They add inspired jams and folk-rock nuggets from the unheralded and obscure," all with three-part harmonies.
If you pay attention to education issues in New Hampshire, you might want to know that tonight at 6:30 at Stevens High School in Claremont, the NH Department of Education is holding its only "public listening session" in this part of the state on proposed revisions to rules and definitions affecting public schools. The revisions have been in the works since 2021 and they're controversial; last year, a leaked draft drew alarm from public-school advocates and the education policy group Reaching Higher NH, which wrote that the changes could affect “nearly every aspect of school operations," according to a report in the Concord Monitor. Here's the draft proposal.
At 7 this evening, the Norwich Bookstore hosts sociologist Nikhil Goyal and writer/activist Bill McKibben for a conversation about Goyal's new book, Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty. Goyal, who recently finished a stint as a Senate committee policy advisor to Bernie Sanders, spent a decade reporting on the lives of three Puerto Rican children growing up in an on-the-edge family in North Philadelphia's drug-ravaged Kensington section. "The stories of these children will change the way you think about poverty," the Washington Post headlined its review last week, pointing to Goyal's multi-layered exploration of the educational and criminal justice systems and children's constant exposure to violence of all kinds.
And anytime, you can check out this week's highlights from JAM, including: a Vermont AT thru-hiker telling the story of his hike; a short "field note" from the Upper Valley Land Trust's Alison Marchione in Charlestown talking about how fisher cats track their prey—especially porcupines; and a recent VT Alzheimer's Association talk in Woodstock about emerging research on the disease and how sleep, exercise, diet, and socializing may help ward it off.
And to get us charged up for the day...
One of the highlights—out of many—at last weekend's New World Festival in Randolph was a first-time appearance by the Scottish band Heron Valley.
—though the video doesn't remotely do justice to the sheer volume that a rocking bagpiper can produce.
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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