
GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
A very fine day to be indoors. It's going to be rainy, gusty, and cold today, and some spots could see sleet and freezing rain as well this morning before it shifts over to rain. Highs in the upper 30s, winds from the southeast gusting into the mid-20s mph, and rain expected pretty much all day (and, really, off and on well into tomorrow). Low-to-mid 30s tonight.Though in the right place, all that water's pretty spectacular. You may remember that about a month ago, Robin Osborne sent in a video of an ice waterfall along the Bald Top Trail above Lake Morey. She was just back there on Tuesday and things look... well, different.Mud season claims another victim: a helicopter. And not just any chopper, either. On Monday, a DHART helicopter (that's the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Advanced Response Team) was sent to a field in Bradford, VT to pick up a patient. The pilot landed...in mud. As he moved the helicopter to firmer ground, writes D-H's Audra Burns, "the aircraft experienced a mechanical issue requiring it to be taken out of service." The medical crew on board and local EMTs took care of the patient, who eventually got to the hospital by ambulance. The chopper got a lift home yesterday by flatbed; WCAX has the video.About that Rivendell lockdown... The Valley News's John Lippman follows up on the early reports. Volunteer firefighter John Dunham and excavator Mike Wright were headed north on Route 10 in Orford when they saw a teen in camouflage and a ski mask carrying a gun cross a field toward the school. Dunham approached him and Wright called the police—as did community members who'd seen the 16-year-old on the road—while school Supt. Barrett Williams approached him from the school. He was taken into custody and faces charges of criminal threatening. Lippman details it all.And about that bacon fat pudding... It's actually known as Pudim Abade de Priscos, named for a 19th century Portuguese abbot who was also a renowned—and highly secretive—chef. In this case, writes Fat Rooster Farm's Jenn Megyesi in response to yesterday's Enthusiasms writeup, he let the recipe slip. At the time, she adds, "The whites of eggs were used for starching shirts, but the yolks were a by-product (much like the flower-blossom ends of the cashew fruit, which were discarded, but are now prized as 'nuts') which no one knew how to incorporate into food." And the pudding itself? "Delish," says Jenn.SPONSORED: World events hold three lessons for us right here at home. The pandemic, climate change, even the war in Ukraine: All remind us that our daily lives rely on secure sources of energy; solar investments pay us back at home, rather than requiring us to ship our dollars to other states or overseas; and the climate crisis is driving fundamental changes in energy markets. To learn more, click on the maroon link above. And check out the Solaflect Energy website, email, or call (802) 649-3700. Now more than ever, the power is in our hands to make a difference! Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.Local efforts to meet food need will continue. VT's Everyone Eats program, which in these parts is administered by Vital Communities, has gotten an extension and will run until July 1 rather than expiring at the end of this month, reports NBC5's John Hawks. "This program really enlightened a lot of us to how impactful this specific kind of food assistance is for a lot of folks," says Vital Communities' Lauren Griswold. Likewise, the Sharing and Caring pantry outside WRJ's United Methodist Church, which is fully stocked with prepared meals, meat, fruits, and vegetables, is remaining open for business.As the days warm... (honest, they will)... one place you might be thinking of going is the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Park in Cornish. Where, if you're like most visitors, you'll gaze in awe at the sculptor's gilded angel of love, Amor Caritas. In Artful, Susan Apel pays tribute to it—and, via a video produced by Historic Windsor, to its restoration last year. As well as to NH's Moose Plate program, which helps fund the conservation of publicly owned artworks.“I think that early rising and coming out here and recommitting myself to my art really saved me." That's Norwich singer, songwriter, and music teacher Lisa Piccirillo talking to the VN's Alex Hanson about her pandemic habit of awaking early and heading out to the studio she created in her barn—to "sit at the piano and see what would happen," as Hanson writes. The result will be Radiate, a followup to her first album from a decade and a half ago, before a detour through jobs, marriage, and motherhood. She's launched a Kickstarter effort to fund production, which as of this morning was $1,800 shy of her goal.After all that construction, a look inside Dartmouth's two new trophy buildings. It only feels like it's been forever since the college began its west end construction on a new Engineering and Computer Science Center (remember the misplaced hole in the ground? that was 2019) and the Irving Institute for Energy and Society. Now, suddenly, they're ready to open. Which they'll do on Monday. The college has put up two quick video tours to give you a sense of what they look like without people in them.NH's GOP House majority fends off changes to school "freedom account" program, "divisive concepts" law. The moves came in a series of votes last week, writes Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin. Democrats had hoped to rein in the school choice program, which so far has attracted 1,800 students, as fiscally irresponsible. They also tried to axe the "divisive concepts" law, a move that the majority rebuffed—though it also voted down an effort to expand the law to colleges and universities. DeWitt has the blow-by-blow.UVM forges renewable energy consortium. The university on Tuesday unveiled an effort involving manufacturing and electric utility companies, government, higher ed, and several nonprofits aimed at raising VT's profile "as a proving ground for clean and renewable energy." The consortium's pilot project is an effort at the Global Foundries plant in Essex Junction to reduce carbon emissions by extracting hydrogen from water and then mixing it into its natural gas lines, reducing its need for gas.Milk haulers, a vital part of dairying infrastructure, are short on drivers. VPR's Elodie Reed reports that the problem predates the pandemic and figured into the decision by Horizon Organic to stop buying from Northeast dairy farms. Some reasons for the shortage, Reed finds: Dairy coops that hire milk haulers have trouble competing on wages with well-heeled companies—like Walmart—that also hire drivers; and milk haulers work long hours in all kinds of conditions, since farmers depend on them showing up as often as twice a day. "It’s an industry, you almost got to have been brought up into," says one hauler.VTDigger expands its map. Into Windsor County, in particular. The nonprofit news organization yesterday announced that senior editor Tom Kearney, who used to lead both the Keene Sentinel and the Stowe Reporter, will oversee coverage in southern VT, including new reporters in Windsor and Rutland counties (joining existing staff in Windham and Bennington counties). In addition, Digger has named its first newsletter editor: Alicia Freese, who grew up in Tunbridge, was one of the organization's first reporters, worked for a time for Seven Days, and then taught English in Mexico. Welcome to the fray, Alicia!“I've had basically every right that I have as an inmate violated in the name of COVID.” Like every inmate in VT, Matthew Hathaway has spent much of his incarceration since 2020 confined exclusively to his cell. Lockdowns to curb outbreaks may have left the state’s prison system as the last in the nation without a Covid-related death, reports Seven Days’ Derek Brouwer, but the measures have had a serious toll on inmates’—and correctional staff’s—mental health and well-being. Until recently, family visits weren’t allowed, and some incarcerated mothers went many months without seeing their children.Ever seen a sun dog, shelf cloud, ice tsunami, or Dragon’s Blood Tree? Odds are you haven't, unless you’re a world adventurer with a nose for amazing natural phenomena…or you already follow this Turkish geographer’s Instagram. Whether he’s traveled to every site or simply done his research, Muhammed Zeynel Ozturk curates a fine panoply of “geomorphological landscapes,” showcasing earth’s weirdest and wildest evolutionary exhibits. Come to his feed for the images of lava flows, rock formations, and (seriously) that Dragon’s Blood Tree, but stay for the richly written captions.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
This evening at 7, the Vermont Center for Ecostudies' Spencer Hardy will give an online talk, "Beyond the Honeybee: Wild Bees on the Vermont Landscape," hosted by the Friends of Mississquoi National Wildlife Refuge. Hardy, who grew up in Norwich and is VCE's bee and honeybee expert, has been helping lead a statewide wild bee survey over the last few years, and will talk about what the survey has uncovered about the roughly 300 species of wild bees in the region.
Brazilian singer-songwriter Marisa Monte "has one of those supple, knowing voices that make Brazilian pop so inviting,"
New York Times
popular music critic Jon Pareles once wrote. She became a force to reckon with early in her three-decade career, eventually winning four Latin Grammys and becoming a global superstar. She began dreaming up her latest album during pandemic lockdown in Rio. "I wanted to offer something that could heal and help people to cross this moment, to not be that depressed and sad,” she told
GuitarGirl
mag last year.
Here she is with another Brazilian superstar, Seu Jorge
(whose guitarist star turn you may have seen in Wes Anderson's
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou)
, a backing band of Brazilian greats, and a full-on string orchestra
Here comes the SunTo melt black cloudsTo light the end of the tunnelAnd the light in the skyTo inspire your wishesTo make you fill your chest and sing
When you think that
Everything is wrong and negative
And that it will get worse, get worse
Life is hard for everyone
But we all do a sacrifice
To feel better, better
Here comes the Sun
To melt black clouds
To light the end of the tunnel
And the light in the sky
To inspire your wishes
To make you fill your chest and sing
When you think that
Everything is wrong and negative
And that it will get worse, get worse
Life is hard for everyone
But we all do a sacrifice
To feel better, better
Here comes the Sun
To melt black clouds
To light the end of the tunnel
And the light in the sky
To inspire your wishes
To make you fill your chest and sing
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 and writers who want you to 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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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