Daybreak Tuesday, 11/3/26

Mostly cloudy, but warm anyway. There’ll be more clouds around today than yesterday, but we’ve still got that high pressure with us, along with a gentle southerly flow, so temps will once again get into the mid 60s and lows down to the low 40s.

When the sky’s a painting. It’s been like that some days, as photos from Barbara Mason in Lebanon and Jay Davis, looking out at VT from Three Mile Road in Etna, demonstrate.

“It’s near impossible to remember the future.” Auk and Eddie are hanging out in DB Johnson’s Lost Woods this week, talking past, present, future—and Eddie, in particular, takes comfort in the past: “I save stuff to do earlier… In the past, it’s done whether I did it or not.”

“I’ve never put up a flag pole before”: With a bucket loader and a whole lot of help, 16-year-old brings landmark to WRJ park. Yesterday afternoon, WRJ’s Leo Snyder Hamalainen saw a year’s worth of effort come together in Veterans Park as his Eagle Scout project to erect a flag pole by Hartford’s war memorials bore fruit. He and his fellow scouts from Troop 45 in Hanover had prepped the site with a half-ton granite base months before: Yesterday, reports Eric Francis, it was time for the pole-raising—with the help of a GMP utility crew and their bucket loader. The whole process, from fundraising to actually assembling the pole, was a group effort, and Eric was on site with his camera yesterday: His photo essay is at the link.

Crash closes Route 4 in Quechee (no link). Around 7:15 last night, reports Eric Francis, who spent the evening monitoring police scanner traffic, calls began coming into 911 about a collision—and when the first fire engine from Quechee Station arrived on scene six minutes later, it reported one car was fully engulfed in flames. Route 4 was shut down completely for the next several hours from Quechee Main Street by the Fat Hat Factory to Deweys Mills Road near the Gorge. There are unconfirmed reports of deaths in the accident, and the VT State Police sent their crash reconstruction team, but has not yet issued any statement on what happened. More tomorrow.

What it’s like to work as a 911 dispatcher in Hartford during a shortage. In the Valley News, Sophie Levenson reports that the town’s emergency communications center has four open positions, leaving just six people “responsible for covering the phones 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, preferably with more than one person working at a time.” That puts real pressure on staff. Levenson spent a Thursday shift with Christina Kramer as she fielded calls and dispatched police officers, fire fighters, and EMTs—and not just in Hartford, since the dispatch shortage is actually a statewide and, indeed, national issue. Levenson details what it takes.

SPONSORED: A new health center at Valley Regional Hospital? Possible. The Michael and Sheila Satzow Health Center is now open across from Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont. Made possible by a generous donation from Michael and Sheila Satzow, the new health center provides more capacity and quicker appointment times. Primary care patients will find modern exam rooms and have access to X-ray and lab services during their visit. Specialty services, including orthopaedics, midwifery and podiatry, will relocate here from the main hospital in the coming months. Right here, we have a healthy disregard for the impossible. Sponsored by Dartmouth Health.

A five-foot-tall, 20-something Iñupiaq seamstress alone on an Arctic island—with a cat named Victoria and “a crippling fear of polar bears.” As Susan Apel writes in Artful, the story of Ada Blackjack—who, after that 1921 misadventure, was eventually rescued, though not before she taught herself to hunt and fish—would make a pretty great film. But for the moment, we’ve got a new joint exhibition at the Hood, Baker-Berry, and the Rauner Library, with photos, diary entries (she got to the island as part of an expedition with four male explorers, three of whom took off and the last of whom died), gossip, and the story of her and Vic’s rescue. Susan describes the story.

One Covid legacy: focusing on more convenient friendships. As Kirk Kardashian writes for the Tuck School, one post-pandemic feature of social life is that we “interact with fewer people, our social circles are more fragmented, and we appear less inclined to form relationships that require effort.” That’s the conclusion of business prof Adam Kleinbaum and his colleagues, who back in 2009 began giving incoming students a social network questionnaire—which put them in the rare position of being able to compare pre- and post-pandemic responses. These days, they found, convenience—physical proximity—matters. Kardashian describes the research and what it suggests about fostering connection.

SPONSORED: Give a gift that inspires and informs. Subscribe to Northern Woodlands magazine today and get $5 off. The most recent issue includes the latest on an ambitious reforestation program, an interview with native plant advocate Doug Tallamy, how to find and prepare hen of the woods, and more. It’s published in Lyme by the Center for Northern Woodlands Education, which also produces “This Week in The Woods” (regularly shared in Daybreak) and The Outside Story, a weekly syndicated ecological essay series. Sponsored by Northern Woodlands.

Libraries in Newbury VT, Strafford, and Post Mills win repair grants. The money, reports new Valley News writer Nina Baker, comes from Vermont’s Dept. of Libraries and is aimed at repairs and capital improvements. The Morrill Memorial & Harris Library in Strafford took in $115K to replace the roof and add insulation. The Peabody Library in Post Mills was awarded $220K and Newbury’s Tenney Library $80K. The state agency in its announcement Friday did not detail what the money is to be used for, but you can find the full statewide list of recipients here.

VT is New England’s most rural state. In all, a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston notes, over 86 percent of its land is rural—compared to 81 percent in ME, 78 percent in NH… and 0 percent in RI. Some 65 percent of its population lived in rural areas in 2023 (the last year data’s available), down from nearly 70 percent in 1980. Only 37 percent of NH’s population lives in rural areas. As you’d expect, the report goes on, median rural household incomes in VT were highest in the greater Burlington area; meanwhile, in NH, Grafton County had the highest share of residents with college degrees. There’s lots more data at the link.

Need a little jolt of adrenaline this morning? Mexican urban mountain bike racer Dali Alonso Garcia’s got you for the next minute or so, with his POV video going breakneck down the stairs and alleyways of mountainous Guanajuato City for an Urban Enduro race. Here’s what a training run looks like. (Thanks, JF!)

The Tuesday Crossword. It’s time for Laura Braunstein’s “mini” puzzle!

Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.

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HEADS UP

The Hanover Garden Club hosts Amy Highstrom and “Butterflies in Your Garden.” Using data from local butterfly counts, the Sunapee Butterfly Club’s Highstrom “will discuss local non-migrating species that visit, reproduce, and overwinter in our landscapes and gardens. She’ll offer tips and visual guides to help us recognize common butterfly species and understand their habitats.” 1 pm at the Montshire and via Zoom.

Bruce Caldwell and “Was Hayek a Conservative?” at Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center. Caldwell, an economic historian at Duke, is the general editor of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek and co-author of Hayek: A Life, so you could definitely call him an expert on the eminent Austrian economic theorist. Caldwell will be talking about the man who lies at the center of his academic career at 5 pm in Rocky 003.

Free advance screening of Club Kid from Hop Film. Jordan Firstman’s debut feature stars himself as, as Hollywood Reporter puts it, “a drug-happy party promoter tripping the light fantastic in New York” who’s all-in with his friends, “a queer melange of DJs and scenesters and enablers”—until he’s asked to take custody of a 10-year-old son he never knew he had. 7 pm in the Loew.

At the Hop, Deirdre Brenner and Carmen Flores with “Night Songs.” The two Dartmouth grads (Brenner on piano, Flores on viola) “trace the contours of the night through music by JS Bach, Reena Esmail, Jessie Montgomery, Nadia Boulanger, Rebecca Clarke, and Dobrinka Tabakova. The viola and piano become the voice of twilight, tenderness and imagination.” 7:30 pm, Morris Recital Hall.

The Tuesday poem

We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

— From “A Brief for the Defense” by Jack Gilbert.

See you tomorrow.

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