GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly cloudy, a bit warmer, showers this evening. A warm front moves into the region today, and we'll see the results in minimally warming temps (the real warmth won't arrive until tomorrow) with highs around 50, a fair bit of cloudiness, wind gusts this afternoon, and rain arriving after dark. Winds today from the southeast, lows tonight in the low 40s.A beautiful day in the neighborhood... Two Leb fall videos:
Patricia Corrigan's on Prospect St. in West Leb;
And Lori Harriman's on one of the trails by Harvest Hill in Lebanon.
Unless, of course, you've already voted. But if not and you could use a look at what's going on in VT and NH elections, there's a guide to resources at the link. It's an updated version from last week, including new links to articles in the
Valley News
and the
White River Valley Herald
, new material from news organizations in both states, and an overall set of pointers to work you might find helpful as you explore candidates and issues.
Back in June, Brian Degnan got an okay from the town's planning board to let Hoptimystic's Dan Thomas and his wife, Kelly—who operate a tasting room in Sunapee Harbor—open a brewery in a former laundromat he owns on Main Street. But now, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News, Degnan has put the building up for sale, citing “the bureaucracy that exists and the amount of effort it takes to invest money in Enfield." Dan Thomas says he's not sure what happens next. Sauchelli digs into the discord, which has to do with a variance Degnan requested.
In a sense, the incident began when Lebanon police charged Robert Stark with DUI and impounded his truck so they could execute a search warrant. That was Friday. Sunday night, an officer "
spotted an unauthorized male subject" inside the impound lot, according to an LPD press release—it was allegedly Stark, inside his truck. He refused to leave the truck, sped out of the lot, then east on Dartmouth College Highway, escaping pursuit. He was eventually found in Canaan and, with the help of a K-9, arrested. Leb Chief Phil Roberts tells WMUR this is the second time the impound lot has been broken into.
SPONSORED: Music is a much-needed balm for the soul and the psyche. Come listen to the stirring movements of the beloved A German Requiem of Johannes Brahms, at St. Thomas’ All Saints service this Sunday at 10:30am. The choir, soloists, organ and strings will fill the sanctuary and your heart with inspiring music. Click here for more details about the performance. Sponsored by St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Hanover.After a weekend of fires, VT bans debris burning until Nov. 11. That Barnard fire on Sunday, reports Emma Roth-Wells in the VN, burned an estimated 50 to 60 acres; “I’ve been on the department for 47 years and it's the largest fire we’ve ever had,” town forest fire warden Scott Mills tells her. Crews worked until Sunday night putting it out, and fire departments on both the VT and NH side have reported smaller fires. In issuing its ban, VT's forests department noted, "Over the last week, the wildfire danger has fluctuated between high, very high, and extreme throughout the state."From AI-powered wearables to Indigenous science to neutron stars and trash-as-sculpture: Dartmouth's new faculty members. They're a diverse group, the 34 new profs who've arrived in the Upper Valley this semester. Dartmouth News offers a look at the work each of them is pursuing, with a set of photo portraits by Norwich native and director of photography Katie Lenhart.“I don’t know how she did all that she did.” Emily Hood was Thetford's town clerk and treasurer for almost two decades—and the founder of the town's emergency food shelf, which also serves neighboring towns; a tireless town service officer who helped residents with everything from emergency heating assistance to filling out state forms; and the tender of her family's fruit trees and bushes, gardens, sugar bush, and goats, chickens, and turkeys. In the VN, Patrick O'Grady traces Hood's hard-working life—including her solo drive in a Ford Fairlane to a teaching job in Yuma, Arizona in the early '60s"Hands down, to me the beaver is the most fascinating species anywhere." And Mary Holland's had a lot of time to learn about a lot of species. Northern Woodlands' monthly "Writers in the Woods" series caught up with her for a Q&A about her work and what she's learned. Beavers piqued her interest when they tried to drown her dog ("I ended up having to enter icy water") and she's been rapt ever since, even entering beaver lodges to check out the insides. Her best job, she says, was as education director early on at VINS. The worst? "Bank teller. I lasted one day."The Cog takes a break. It shut down yesterday for two weeks, for track work and software upgrades. And when it reopens Saturday, Nov. 9, the train up Mt. Washington will have a “new and much-improved ticketing system,” reports the Concord Monitor. It'll be on its winter schedule, though, which means that it will turn around at Waumbek Station, "a series of huts and platforms about halfway up the mountain." As the Monitor notes, the summit has "already seen snow, ice and bitter cold weather."NH Fish & Game announces breakup of poaching ring. In all, reports NHPR's Todd Bookman, five men have been convicted of killing bear, deer, foxes, coyotes, and fishers out of season, at night, or by baiting them illegally; officials in other states are also pursuing charges. The investigation began in 2022 with a tip about baiting deer near Gilmanton with grain out of season; that first bust led to the arrests of four others, from Loudon, Dracut, Mass., and Canterbury. “This was the worst case of poaching I've seen in my 16-year career,” Conservation Officer Ronald Arsenault tells Bookman.It's not unusual for women to run for governor in NH. But back in 1910, it was. That was when Marilla Marks Ricker, a lawyer and the first woman to be admitted to an organized bar in the state decided to toss her hat in the ring—40 years after she first tried to cast a ballot in a state election, long before enactment of the 19th Amendment in 1920, the year Ricker died. In the Globe's Morning Report newsletter, Amanda Gokee traces Ricker's groundbreaking political life. “I’m running for governor in order to get people in the habit of thinking of women as governors,” she said in 1910.In need of protecting: NH's Old Home Days. A few weeks ago, the state's Preservation Alliance put out its annual "Seven to Save" list of landmarks in danger of being destroyed or falling apart. This year, it includes Old Home Day. NHPR's Julia Furukawa spoke with the alliance's Andrew Cushing about the choice. Canaan's, he tells her, is one of his favorites (how can you beat its annual belt sander race?). They were created in NH, but over the years, the volunteers who've kept them going have aged and dwindled in number. "If we lose this kind of really important tradition, I think we lose a little bit of New Hampshire," Cushing says.Farm family's trail camera appears to show groups being led across from Canada at night. In the Newport Dispatch, Daniel Duric reports that just hours after Justin LeBlanc's sons set up a pair of cameras, one of them recorded a group of men making their way down the road at night. LeBlanc tells Duric that neighbors have seen similar activity. “A lot of people were unaware that this was going on and some are still in disbelief,” LeBlanc says. Following up in VTDigger, Bryan Marovich writes that border agents agents in the Swanton Sector have seen a steep increase in apprehensions over the past year.Nearly a third of registered Vermonters have already voted. Of the more than 450,000 ballots mailed to registered voters, the secretary of state's office announced yesterday, 31 percent have been returned—a "slight uptick" from 2022, reports Erin Petenko in VTDigger; that year, 27 percent had been returned by a week out from the election, and the final 60 percent turnout was the state's highest in decades. Petenko includes an interactive town-by-town map. The USPS recommends getting ballots in the mail by the end of today if you want to mail yours in.The story behind that puzzle photo. Turns out that the baseball-on-the-Dartmouth-Green photo that featured in yesterday's jigsaw is Ken Burns's favorite baseball pic—or at least, it was 30 years ago. In a 1994 American Heritage article, he writes that it's of an 1882 game between Dartmouth and Harvard. And that "this remarkable photograph is baseball for me—an intersection of community, time, location, and hope," before going on to quote Walt Whitman: “It’s our game . . . America’s game. It has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere." (Thanks, JH!)Why does 40 degrees sometimes have you shivering and in shirtsleeves at other times? Actually, Laura Baisas' piece in Popular Science sets the bar at 60 degrees, but hey, this is northern New England. What it comes down to, she writes, is a combination of meteorology and biology. Part of the answer lies in the lag between ground temperature and air temperature: ground temperature is "always kind of behind the seasons," NH meteorologist Cyrena Arnold says. Meanwhile, Arnold says, when cold air is humid, it takes more energy to warm it up close to your skin than when it's dry—as in early spring.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
we
know what's good! Strong Rabbit's Morgan Brophy has come up with the perfect design for "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Plus you'll find the Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, as well as sweatshirts, tees, a fleece hoodie, and, as always, the fits-every-hand-perfectly Daybreak mug. Check it all out at the link!
Dartmouth anthropologist Nathaniel Dominy and St. Andrews psychologist Catherine Hobaiter talk fear and fire: "Recent findings suggest that fire can do more than provide a source of heat and security. Firelight—and the scary spooky stories we tell—may have shaped human social behaviors in profound ways, including our use of spoken language." They'll also be talking about the 2022 horror film,
Out of Darkness
. 6:30 pm in the Mayer Room and online.
The veteran sports reporter and author of
The Ultimate Boston Red Sox Time Machine Book
will be talking Red Sox history, Red Sox trivia (how up are you on Ted Williams' non-Boston career?), and Red Sox video clips. Q&A to follow. 6:30 pm.
For nearly three decades, Hass—who writes a column for the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz
on the West Bank and Gaza—has lived in both enclaves. She'll be talking about the current conflict with Columbia U gender studies professor emerita Marianne Hirsch. 7 pm, sponsored by the Leslie Center for the Humanities, in-person in Rockefeller Center 003 and livestreamed.
And the Tuesday poem.
Our lives avoided tragedySimply by going on and on,Without end and with little apparent meaning.Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.Simply by going on and onWe managed. No need for the heroic.Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.I don't remember all the particulars.We managed. No need for the heroic.There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.I don't remember all the particulars.Across the fence, the neighbors were our chorus.There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.Thank god no one said anything in verse.The neighbors were our only chorus,And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.
— From
by Donald Justice. As Daybreak reader Alexandra Corwin explained a couple of weeks ago in Dear Daybreak, a pantoum is "a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza." If you didn't see it when it first ran,
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.
Want to catch up on Daybreak music?
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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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