GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly cloudy, sharply colder tonight. Yesterday's storm has moved off and tomorrow night's has yet to arrive. There could be some snow showers off to the west, but mostly today we get cloudy skies and temps in the low or mid 30s. Meanwhile, though, a cold front's dropping down from Canada for a quick visit and it'll feel more like January out there tonight, with a low in the mid teens.You're never too old to play in the snow. This was after last week's snowfall but before yesterday's, so it doesn't look like this any more: Robert Poirier built snow replicas of himself and his dog, Cida, in Lebanon. Their neighbor, Tanya Watson, sends in the proof.
Lots of outages in NH yesterday. As of yesterday evening, reports NHPR, Eversource had 51,000 customers without power, while NH Electric Coop had about 4,700 and Unitil another 2,300. Most were south and east of this region. Vermont saw far fewer outages, mostly to our south.
On the NH side, Eversource is reporting minor outages in Claremont, Cornish, and New London, but much more extensive ones to the south and east. NH Electric Cooperative's are also concentrated in the southeast. Liberty reports nothing in this region.
Groaning with book donations, LISTEN looks to keep them out of the landfill. That's because when it can't sell a book at one of its retail outlets, it has to get rid of it. And that's expensive, writes Frances Mize in the Valley News: The nonprofit spent $100K at the Lebanon landfill in 2019, and as Mize writes, books were a big part of the cost: "The stores’ fees at the landfill are based on weight, and books are an especially heavy, and consequently costly, item." So in March, the Miracle Mile store will hold its first-ever book sale. Mize dives into the book team's approach—including whether a book smells.SPONSORED: Pay what you can at World Premiere Play ‘Bov Water at Northern Stage 1/25 and 1/26. In this powerful new play by Dartmouth alum Celeste Jennings (author of 2020’s Citrus at Northern Stage), four generations of Black women breathe and bathe in a past that’s both intentionally and accidentally forgotten. A touching, vital, and intensely human poetic journey, ‘Bov Water (1/25-2/12 at Northern Stage) aims to answer how do you define yourself if you don’t know your family’s history? Pay What You Can for 1/25 and 1/26 at 7:30 performances only. Visit NorthernStage.org or call 802-296-7000.Take a deep teeny tiny breath for me. If your pet is more the beak-and-wings variety than the fur-and-paws type, vet care is hard to come by. Fortunately for owners of exotics—birds, reptiles, rabbits and such—Dr. Susan Tullar is ready in Bradford with specialized training. Specialized tools, too, like anesthesia equipment for birds. Liz Sauchelli profiles Tullar in the VN, digging into the challenges vets and exotic-pet owners face, why costs have jumped, and care trends. For example, in what might put paid to an entire genre of cartoons, owners of rabbits are increasingly likely to get them spayed or neutered. At two area libraries, mending clothing becomes an event. Woodstock's Norman Williams Public Library and the Norwich Public Library have started programs to help residents learn to mend clothing, writes the VN's Sauchelli. The Mending Circle and Mending Café both aim to share skills and promote sustainability, and are open to anyone, regardless of skill level. They're informal gatherings where people can trade knowledge, help others build confidence to take on projects, and learn how to fix something themselves—keeping some old clothes out of the landfill.Ever wonder what it looks like when a truck hauling cars slides off a snow-covered roadway in the middle of a storm? It happened on I-89 South in Warner yesterday, and NH State Police troopers "arrived to find a fully loaded car carrier off the roadway," they say in a press release. One of the cars on top had become dislodged and rolled onto the truck and then come to a rest in the right-hand travel lane. The driver, from Stamford, CT, was taken to the hospital for what were believed to be minor injuries. Then, while police and a wrecker were on the scene, a tractor-trailer passing in the left lane lost control. Workers were able to get out of the way in time.Oh well. You'll have to wait until next year (here's hoping) to land your plane on the Alton Bay Ice Runway. The crew responsible for the Lower 48's only FAA-sanctioned ice runway, on Lake Winnipesaukee, announced Saturday it won't open this year. "We've been keeping an eye on it and checking it out every two or three days," says maintenance supverisor Paul LaRochelle in a Facebook video, but "the temperatures are just too warm during the day and not cold enough at night.” Ordinarily, there are 12-13 inches of ice by now. “You can see right now we’re just nowhere near it,” LaRochelle says."No shortage of possible culprits" behind hospital overcrowding. On his Granite Geek blog, David Brooks takes on the issue—pointing out that it's a national problem and exploring causes. It's not the pandemic any more, and the rise of flu and RSV cases are contributors, but "not a major factor," he writes. The fact that patients are staying longer is one big issue, either because their ailments are more complex or because rehab facilities and long-term care sites are struggling to take them. The other big issue: staffing. “I think this takes a couple years to course-correct,” says a Concord doc. “It will take time.”“Every two years, I have to remember 400 faces, their hometowns and their last names." That's because when the NH House speaker leans over to ask Paul Smith, the House's clerk, "Who is that?", Smith needs to be able to supply the name. Smith, reports NHPR's Todd Bookman, is the guy who keeps things running in the 400-member chamber, from floor debates to votes to—during the pandemic—managing multiple meeting venues. He actually served as a legislator himself, when he was 22, but left to go work for the Boy Scouts. His job, he tells Bookman, is to make the House and the speaker look good.
Coming soon to a screen near you: a "heat map" of police calls in VT. The state's Dept of Public Safety plans to roll it out in 60-90 days with an eye toward giving Vermonters "a transparent view of public safety concerns in near-real time," writes Sarah Mearhoff in VTDigger. The map will show "hot spots" of calls to police for domestic violence, robbery, and more. Critics argue that it's mostly just a map of where population is concentrated and doesn't reflect that VT is one of the safest states in the country. Its intent, says the department's commissioner, is to help identify which communities need more resources.It makes your head spin. Before Joe Bussard died this fall, he hadn’t told his daughter Susannah Anderson what she should do with his record collection. That’s a bit of a problem, writes Angela Roberts in The Frederick News-Post, because Bussard had been rescuing 78s for decades—from record stores that ditched them in favor of 33s, from abandoned coal-mining towns, from trash heaps—amassing more than 15,000 discs. Bussard liked sharing the music with others, though he was clear about the basement record-room rules: shelf stickers still read PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE RECORDS. (Thanks, DW!)The Tuesday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Today at 4:30, the Institute for Arctic Studies at Dartmouth's Dickey Center hosts poet and essayist Katy Didden for a talk, "Poems in the Voice of Lava: Iron Songs, Ore Choirs, and the Core’s Sly Music." Among other things, Didden, who teaches at Ball State, has written two books of poetry, The Glacier's Wake and last year's Ore Choir, the Lava on Iceland, the result of her research into the Laki volcanic eruption of 1783, which lowered global temperatures with devastating consequences around the world. In-person in Haldeman 41 and livestreamed.
And at 7:30 this evening, activist Tarana Burke. founder of the 'me too.' Movement, will give Dartmouth's MLK Keynote, "Building a Compassionate Community" in the form of a fireside chat moderated by the college's senior diversity officer, Shontay Delalue. The in-person event in Filene Auditorium is most likely full up, but you can watch it via livestream (you'll need to register at the link).
And for the rest of this week (through Friday), Sustainable Woodstock and Pentangle Arts are streaming the documentary, Right to Harm. The film, by Matt Wechsler and Annie Speicher (and executive produced by cookbook author and food writer/activist Mark Bittman) looks at the impact of huge concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) on nearby people, farms, and communities in five spots across the US.
And poetry for a Tuesday
This is the true end of desire,The closed ground deflecting sleet:All seasons tend to this seasonAnd the world is flat.This is the true end of explorationOver the low and the high seas;Whoever fares may try lightlyAll edges but these.This is the true end of languageThat Way of ways:All sound shapes to the one soundIce echoing ice.
—
by
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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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