GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Snow. It's shaping up to be a picture-book winter's day, and the weather folks are downright giddy—or at least, as giddy as they allow themselves to be: "A well deserved and much needed widespread snowfall is expected...", with light snow arriving this morning and the rate growing heavier in the afternoon, with somewhere between 3 and 7 inches expected. Highs today in the mid 20s and winds from the east dropping the wind chill into the single digits, snow will wind down during the evening. Lows tonight around 10.Expected snow totals kept rising yesterday. Here's where forecasts stand right now for:
Mark Rothko in a trench. "There was a beautiful small amount of blue sky," Barbara Woodard wrote late last week. It was reflected in a rain-filled trench bordered by ice and snow—and as framed in Barbara's photo, really does look like it could be hanging on a museum wall.In Norwich, a rare budget discussion: How to spend a $1.1 million surplus. The town actually has a $1.8 million surplus, writes Patrick Adrian in the Valley News: $700K in unspent money from the 2023-24 fiscal year, which the selectboard will use to "lessen the tax impact" of the proposed FY25 budget; and the $1.1 million in federal pandemic rescue funds. The board has suggested some potential uses, including infrastructure upgrades to Tracy Hall or refilling capital reserves, and has scheduled meetings tomorrow night and Saturday afternoon to hear citizen input.SPONSORED: Planning a vacation to thaw out? Thaw your body out first! Many of us are making travel plans now, looking to shake the winter doldrums. As you step out of your car or plane, will you be stiff, sore, and worn out from your journey or will you feel limber, energized, and excited for your adventure? Cioffredi & Associates Physical Therapists have compiled their favorite tips and exercises you can do right in your seat, so you can arrive at your destination in full vacation form. Check them out and give them a try via the link above. Happy travels! Sponsored by Cioffredi & Associates Physical Therapy.Things to know once you're in a polling place for next week's NH primary. For one thing, David Brooks writes in the Monitor (paywall), you'll no longer need to go topless if you happen to walk in wearing a shirt with a candidate's name: The legislature has refined the law after a 2020 incident in which a woman in Exeter took off her shirt after being challenged by poll workers. Now, "if the person is actively voting and moving through, the moderator is going to let that go,” says Secy of State David Scanlan. Signs still won't be allowed and nor will campaigning inside. Brooks runs through the regs, including on onlookers and what happens if a voter's right to cast a ballot gets challenged.Believe it or not, if you want to see a river otter, this is a good time. They're most likely to be active during the day in winter, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog, and will sometimes pop up from underwater for a breath of air through openings in the ice. "When you see an otter with its head above water," Mary writes, "know that this position requires it to be treading water or sculling its tail back and forth the entire time it’s at the surface due to being 'negatively buoyant'"—that is, denser than the water around it.SPONSORED: “The Greatest Documentary You’ve Ever Heard.” That’s what Rolling Stone is calling Sam Green’s immersive sensory experience 32 Sounds, which was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. The film is a meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and shape our perception of the world around us. The Hop will screen 32 Sounds Saturday and Sunday in its "live cinema" form, complete with individual headphones for each audience member and featuring live narration by the director. Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth.Is there a way to keep AI from perpetuating stereotypes? These Dartmouth researchers think so. Because the large language models that power some algorithms are trained on writing and datasets that often have biases baked into them, writes Dartmouth News' Harini Barath, they often carry those forward. But in a new paper, grad student Weicheng Ma and computer science prof Soroush Vosoughi report that they were able to zero in on biases encoded in the parts of a neural network model known as “attention heads"—and that "pruning the worst offenders" reduced stereotyping."Some of the coolest things I’ve ever seen have only been because I was on a deer track.” That's VT's lead deer biologist, Nick Fortin, talking to VTDigger's K Fiegenbaum about hunters who, rather than wait for deer to show up, track them through the snow and woods—sometimes for days. It requires "keen observation skills, a knowledge of the natural environment and a healthy dose of patience," Feigenbaum writes—and, in VT, it's getting harder, as more and more land gets posted and snow gets scarcer. "Ten-plus miles in a place with 47 different property owners is not something you can do," Fortin says.UVM GIS guru Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne dies at 49. You may remember O'Neil-Dunne for his remarkable, years-long series of drone shots of Vermont in autumn and other seasons, but within the state's tight-knit community of mappers, GIS experts, and aerial data users he was a rock star: an approachable former Marine with deep technical expertise and an infectious enthusiasm about sharing it. “He behaved in a way that always encouraged people around him to be the version of themselves they aspired to be," UVM colleague Chris Danforth tells VTDigger's Habib Sabet. O'Neil-Dunne, an avid outdoor athlete, died of a heart attack Jan. 6 while skiing at Craftsbury.VT Auditor sues VT Attorney General. The suit actually was filed in November, reports Alan J. Keays in VTDigger, after Auditor Doug Hoffer sought a legal opinion from AG Charity Clark on an audit he was conducting and didn't get one. Now he's asking a judge to require the attorney general to provide legal opinions to "officers of the State of Vermont" when requested. The AG's office has filed a motion to dismiss: “The Attorney General is disappointed her fellow statewide office holder feels his own legal interpretation of her duties is superior to hers when it very plainly is not," it said in a statement yesterday.In VT, child care centers focus on expanding capacity in wake of new legislation. The state is boosting subsidies to families and starting to send out grants for child care programs to create new spots, reports WCAX's Melissa Cooney—and that's before new taxes created by last year's Act 76 child care reform measure go into effect this summer. “Programs are feeling like there is potential for growth and for that growth to be sustainable," Dept. of Children and Families deputy commissioner Janet McLaughlin says. One example: a Waitsfield center with 50 spaces that's growing to 125."There's something just about him, the way he, the way he moves..." Back in 2016, Aardman Animations (the people behind Wallace & Gromit and Creature Comforts) teamed up with the BBC to produce a series of shorts honoring naturalist and documentarian David Attenborough on his 90th birthday. They used the voices of Britishers talking fondly about Attenborough—in the mouths of gorillas, penguins, and lyrebirds. A few days ago Rich Webber, who directed the series, went up with a "best of" version pulling all three together into 1 minute and 51 seconds of brilliance.Moon shot. It was NASA’s picture of the day last month, though for one photographer, it’s the picture of a lifetime. Valerio Minato had tried five times to seize the day when the Moon, Monte Viso, and the Basilica of Superga, near Turin, Italy, were in perfect alignment, but for six years bad weather blocked the shot. On December 13, it happened at last. It was worth the wait; the photo is dazzling. NASA explains that Earthlight (or the da Vinci glow)—sunlight bouncing off the Earth and illuminating the Moon—reveals the whole sphere, even when it appears to the naked eye as just a crescent, as it did that night. The Tuesday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
At 4:30 this afternoon, Dartmouth's Dickey Center hosts Boston College political scientist Jonathan Kirshner for his lecture, "The End of the American Order and Why You’ll Miss It." As they describe it: "The American-led international order is now over. And many are happy to see it go. The nativist right can’t be bothered with the world’s problems; the critical left is wary of American power. But both take for granted what that order achieved, and will soon lament its passing." In Haldeman 41 and livestreamed.
At 5 pm today, the Hopkins Center hosts (at the Irving Institute) a reception and panel discussion among four Osage Nation leaders and artists about Killers of the Flower Moon. Martin Scorcese's film, based on David Grann's book of the same title, tells the story of the Osage Reign of Terror, a period in the 1920s "when Osage were exploited and murdered for control of their land and oil rights," the Hop notes. The reception and panel, part of the college's Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, brings together assistant creative director Addie Roanhorse, cultural consultant Marla Redcorn-Miller '89, actor and consultant Yancey Red Corn and TJ Redcorn from the film's art department, to talk about the film and their roles in helping make it happen.
Also at 5 pm, Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center presents Neil Levesque, director of the NH Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College, talking with Rocky director Jason Barabas about the history of the New Hampshire presidential primary and things to watch in the wake of last night's Iowa caucuses. In-person in Rockefeller 003 and online.
This evening at 7, Still North Books & Bar in Hanover hosts Liniers, the VT-based Argentine cartoonist behind the internationally known comic strip Macanudo and a presence at both Dartmouth and the Center for Cartoon Studies. He'll be talking with colleague Peter Orner about his new collection, Macanudo: Optimism is for the Brave. As they write, "Zombies with fitbits, Stephen King’s Christine working as an Uber, and office politics? The bounds of a daily comic strip don’t restrict Macanudo’s imagination or subjects."
And this Tuesday, two poems...
We travelers walking to the sun, can’t seeAhead, but looking back the very lightThat blinded us shows us the way we came,Along which blessings now appear, risenAs if from sightlessness to sight, and weBy blessing brightly lit, keep going towardThat blessed light that yet to us is dark.
— "Walking to the Sun" by
, from his series of "Sabbath Poems"
Followed by what poetry editor Michael Lipson calls "its apparent antecedent":
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,See how these names are fêted by the waving grassAnd by the streamers of white cloudAnd whispers of wind in the listening sky.The names of those who in their lives fought for life,Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sunAnd left the vivid air signed with their honour.
—
by Stephen Spender.
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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
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