Daybreak Tuesday 10/19/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Definitely cooling down out there. On the whole, anyway. If any precipitation fell on the higher summits yesterday, it came down as snow, but now we're headed into a slight warming trend (seriously, but not until tomorrow). Partly sunny today, especially in the afternoon, with highs in the mid-50s. Winds from the northwest, could be gusty this afternoon. Low 40s tonight. The leaves from on high. 

99 Rock will remain in local hands. WFRD, which nurtured the broadcasting careers of generations of Dartmouth students but is being sold off by the college, will be bought by John and Bob Landry, who own conservative talk stations WNTK-FM in New London and WUVR-AM-FM in Hanover. The Valley News's John Lippman reports that the brothers' Sugar River Media, which also owns stations in Randolph, Springfield VT and Newport NH, is looking to broaden its existing audience. “One of the things we were lacking is a younger audience," says John Landry. "Talk show radio tends to skew old."Dartmouth requires all employees, remote and on site, to be vaccinated by Dec. 8. The college's policy had been to require employees "accessing Dartmouth facilities" to be fully vaccinated. Interim provost David Kotz announced the change last week, and now human resources officer Scot Bemis has reaffirmed it in an email to staff and faculty. The move comes in response to a federal mandate “requiring institutions that do business with the government to ensure their employees are fully vaccinated" by Dec. 8, he writes. Employees can apply for a medical or religious exemption.No diner. But maybe a "mobile stage"? In Sidenote, Tina Foster writes about the options for the Post Mills Airport following the death of her longtime partner, Brian Boland. Boland had hoped to open a retro diner on the site (with a bus bisecting it). That project "is just not feasible to pursue," Foster writes, but she adds that she and "a dedicated group of airport users" are determined to maintain Boland's spirit of "innovation, creativity, and endeavor" and are ultimately hoping to raise funds not just to preserve the museum and keep the airport open, but to build on its community role.“We are the ‘birthplace of Vermont.’ Maybe we can become the center of recycling in New England.” That's Windsor Town Manager Tom Marsh talking to the VN's John Lippman about Windsor's first-ever Great Giveaway, which happened on Saturday and which, organizers hope, might catch on elsewhere. The chance for people to pass along unwanted household items that might otherwise have gone to the landfill was the brainchild of Ham Gillett, who tells Lippman, "I got increasingly upset at the amount of things that people were throwing away that were perfectly good,” he tells Lippman.From Kabul to Indiana to... Hartland. VTDigger's Grace Benninghoff details the story of an Afghan interpreter for the US military named Musa, who fled his country after the Taliban took control. He reached out to an active-duty officer with Hartland ties who agreed to help. “For [Afghans who helped the U.S.], it was all day every day for years on end," the officer says. "There was never a break. The interpreters were at just as much risk as the U.S. forces, in some ways more.” Local residents John Basette and Matt Dunne have been helping to prepare the way, including enlisting Dartmouth as a possible employer."A no wrong door approach." In January, NH officials will roll out a new hotline for residents experiencing a mental health crisis, writes Teddy Rosenbluth in the Monitor. It's designed to end the confusion callers sometimes face now, since each of the state's ten community mental health centers has its own hotline. The idea is that with a single number, callers can get connected to the right resources, have a mobile crisis unit dispatched—or find a warm and knowledgeable voice to talk things over with. The state, Rosenbluth writes, is hoping the line can also cut down on emergency-room visits.  Republicans inhabit "Bizarro world" on Covid. No, that's not the latest Democratic talking point. That was Republican Gov. Chris Sununu on Manchester talk radio last week, referring to the Exec Council majority and, more broadly, fellow-GOPers in NH who've lined up against vaccines. NHPR's Josh Rogers notes that not long ago, Sununu was talking about them as people who "do their research." That tone of respect, Rogers comments, "seems fleeting now." The result is that Sununu is increasingly tangling with other prominent Republican leaders, including Exec Councillor Joe Kenney.“Please give us a voice so we can be part of the dialogue that will solve problems." NH Bulletin's Amanda Gokee was at the Grafton County "listening session" that the state legislative committees charged with redrawing NH's legislative districts held at the end of September. Canaan town administrator Mike Samson was among those noting that as currently configured, districts—especially north of NH's population centers—don't really meet the needs of residents; Canaan, for instance, is represented by two legislators from Wentworth. Gokee looks at the challenges of drawing lines for rural areas.“I have a hard time accepting that I have to do this, but you get to a point where you gotta do what you have to do." That's Kyle Soucy, a Kingston NH mom who's homeschooling her kids for the second year in a row. She and her husband pulled them after the school district refused to enact a mask mandate. Meanwhile, parents in other districts are refusing to send their kids to schools with mandates in place. The result, reports NHPR's Sarah Gibson, is that interest in homeschooling has reached new levels in the state—just as the state itself is backing homeschooling with hard dollars and other support.An hour and a half. That, give or take, is how long you have to drive to see Willa Cather's gravesite in Jaffrey, NH. The famed author of My Ántonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop and other novels you read in high school or college—or just for pleasure—loved Jaffrey and the view of Monadnock from there, writes Susan Apel on her Artful blog, and after her death, her partner Edith Lewis made sure she was buried there. Susan's hunt for the gravestone at the Old Burying Ground was memorable, but eventually, alerted by memorial stones and pine cones across the top, she and her husband found it."Everybody who's associated with astronomy knows about the hot pink clubhouse." That's Ken Slater, member of the Springfield (VT) Telescope Makers Club, about the iconic structure called Stellafane (Latin for “shrine to the stars”) that stargazing enthusiasts have been coming to since the 1920s. Erica Houskeeper of Happy Vermont ventured up Springfield’s Breezy Hill to uncover the hidden gem, and for her podcast spoke with Slater about Stellafane’s significance (it’s a National Historic Landmark) and why the Upper Valley was uniquely predisposed to precision telescope-making.And speaking of the stars... Outer space is universally terrifying. As if there aren’t enough ways to be spooked in October on this planet alone, Lifehacker scours the cosmos for a dreadful handful of space facts to “make you appreciate the earth we’re destroying.” So next time you find yourself gazing up at the night sky, never mind that animal test pilots who never came home may be passing by, suspended in perpetual orbit. Or that “The Galactic Graveyard” is a galaxy that can’t form stars anymore, and slowly dying. Or that somewhere out there it’s always raining glass.

So, let's see...Daybreak reports Covid numbers on Tuesdays and Fridays.

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Wheeler started as a performer in the DC/Baltimore area—though actually, she really got her start in 4th grade when a friend put a broken ukulele in the trash and Wheeler picked it up and started playing—but it wasn't until she moved north, to Providence, that she began coming to wider attention. It was the mid-'70s and the New England folk scene was 

the

 place to be, and Wheeler began opening for Tom Rush, Jesse Winchester, Jonathan Edwards, and others—then, after being hired to play bass for Edwards on tour, launched her own touring career. "Over decades," Lauren Daley wrote in the Globe last year, "she’s built a cult following through Boston radio and the New England folk circuit for her uncanny ability, not unlike Tom Rush, to have her audience laughing during one song and silently tearing up with the next."

(Thank you, SD!)

Poetry tomorrow. See you then.

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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