GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Well, yuck. We start the day with warmer air aloft but cold air trapped at the surface east of the Greens, so if anything does fall from the sky this morning it'll land as freezing drizzle. Meanwhile, temps start a steady rise—just in time for a new system to come barreling through. Slight chance of rain this afternoon, a certainty overnight, may be heavy at times. We'll deal with the possibility of minor flooding tomorrow. Highs mid 30s today, upper 30s by dawn.Ice'll be back! Given tonight and tomorrow, who knows whether the ice on the area's lakes and ponds will survive—but then, as Peter Bloch notes on his latest video, ice-in on Little Lake Sunapee was unusually early this year: Dec. 3. That day, half the lake was crusted over, and by the next day, the deeper half looked promising, too. He sent his drone up: "It truly was a magical experience to rise up over the landscape and see forms and textures and colors that can't be observed and appreciated when our eyes are tethered to the ground."On the Miracle Mile, volunteers are front and center as LISTEN's book room is dedicated. Friday's ceremony drew a crowd, writes Liz Sauchelli in the VN—though that's partly because attendees were also there for the nonprofit's annual Book Event sale. Still, the new Linda Douville Book Nook—named for the Grantham resident who leads book volunteers at that Leb store—drew plenty of appreciation, with its new bookshelves built by the late Duncan Syme and its thousands of books neatly organized into categories and authors.N. Springfield slaughterhouse in the spotlight as police probe driver's treatment of pigs. The incident, which occurred in June, involved a driver dropping pigs off at VT Packinghouse allegedly kicking them and shoving them from his truck—in front of a USDA inspector, reports VTDigger's Greta Solsaa. After it showed up in a USDA report, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals called for a probe. The Springfield police are investigating—and a packinghouse spokesman says the driver has since been banned from the facility, which has been cited in the past for inhumane slaughter, Solsaa writes.SPONSORED: 81 percent more of your neighbors are seeking critical support from LISTEN right now than during the peak of the 2020 pandemic. And the need is growing. With your help, we can ensure every Upper Valley family stays safe, warm, housed, and fed this holiday season and beyond. 100% of your gift will go directly to providing vital services, including preventing evictions, keeping homes heated, and putting food on tables. Can your neighbors count on you? Hit the burgundy link. Sponsored by LISTEN.The "Rich Little of songbirds." Blue jays have an incredible ability to mimic other birds, including hawks—but also car alarms, sirens, even human voices. Up on Hurricane Hill in WRJ on Sunday morning, though, there were no car alarms, just a jay imitating a red-tail. There were lots of other birds out, too, writes Ted Levin on his latest blog post, including red-breasted nuthatches and "personable" chickadees. Which may, as the climate warms, be getting darker: "The dark pigment melanin protects against bacterial infections, favored by constant humidity," Ted writes, and chickadees may be adapting.No introduction needed here. Okay, this is a little Daybreak-incestuous. But it's cool, too: "Occasionally I mention a resource that I feel is so outstanding that sharing it with my Naturally Curious readers is imperative," writes Mary Holland. She's talking about none other than Jim Block's blog, with its "vast array of mammals, insects, birds, amphibians and reptiles as well as flowering and non-flowering plants." Jim's photographic tour of Brazil's Pantanal, which you saw last week, comes in for special praise, but she also writes that Jim stands out for his patience and skill and willingness to share his knowledge.SPONSORED: Inaugural curator of East Asian art reinvigorates the Hood Museum's collection in newest exhibition. Attitude of Coexistence reflects on how artistic representations of non-human subjects—deities, mythological beings, animals, natural phenomena, even machines—show humanity's changing relationship to the non-human through time. The Hood Museum is always free and open to all. Plan your visit today! Sponsored by the Hood.Do you drink beer? AI thinks x-rays of your knees can tell. So this is fun, but also serious, because in case you're wondering, knee x-rays actually say nothing about beer consumption. A study by researchers at DH and the White River VA dove into the fact that AI can find patterns that humans cannot—a potentially revolutionary feature. But it can also find patterns that are thoroughly misleading. The study found that AI might focus on things like differences in X-ray equipment to make predictions, "rather than medically meaningful features." As DH's Brandon Hill puts it, "It is almost like dealing with an alien intelligence."Thanks to popular demand, Lebanon budget meetings moved to high school gym. One of the big complaints coming out of last week's contentious budget hearing was that City Hall couldn't comfortably accommodate the crowd. So yesterday, the city announced that the council's budget meetings on Thursday, Dec. 12 and Wednesday, Dec. 18, will be held in the LHS gym. As a result, the city warns in its announcement, there will be no remote access: If you want to see it or participate, you need to be there. Seating is first-come, first-served. There's a form for providing input if you can't make it.As NH farms turn to agritourism to make ends meet, one Newfields farm illustrates the challenges. Sometimes, NHPR's Olivia Richardson reports, the Vernon Family Farm over toward the Seacoast "sounds exactly as you’d expect a pasture in the countryside to sound — with sheep bleating and baby chicks chirping." But ever since they bought it a decade ago, Jeremiah and Nicole Vernon have also held concerts there—and those have grown more popular, to the distress of neighbors who say the concerts have gotten too big and loud. They've sued both the farm and the town. Richardson lays out the controversy.Most of NH's Education Freedom Account tuition dollars went to religious education. In all, reports the Concord Monitor's Jeremy Margolis, an analysis by the paper found that nearly 90 percent of the $6.5 million that went to tuition in the 2022-23 school year went to religious schools—and a quarter of that to just five of them; Claremont Christian Academy comes in number 8 on the list. Critics of the EFA program have taken aim at its "blurring" of church and state; supporters argue, “It shouldn’t make a difference whether it’s a religious school or a non-religious school,” as GOP Sen. Ruth Ward puts it.Does more housing lead to more students and therefore higher property taxes? It's a longstanding and "completely reasonable" fear, NH Housing's Sarah Wrightsman told a conference last week. But then, reports Steven Porter in the Globe's Morning Report newsletter (no paywall), she went on to cite "recent research that refutes key components of the myth." A new study found only modest growth in student numbers with new housing—which public schools, with declining enrollments, can generally handle. And a second study found new housing produces more in property taxes than it costs the schools.In Concord, a Satanic Temple statue goes up in front of the State House—and is quickly vandalized. The statue of the half-goat, half-human "deity" of the Salem, MA-based group was put up Saturday evening at the request of a Newmarket state rep—and with a permit from the city of Concord, which sought to avoid First Amendment challenges by allowing it. Since then, reports the Monitor's Jeremy Margolis, a plaque with the group's seven tenets has been shattered and the statue has been "messed with." Even so, as of yesterday afternoon "the display set up adjacent to the Christmas nativity scene remained standing despite the blows inflicted."“Vail bought the mountains, and nothing was the same.” If you're a Noah Kahan fan, you'll recognize the line from "Paul Revere". That sentiment figures prominently in Sabine Poux's exploration for Brave Little State into how the Colorado-based ski giant's acquisitions—Stowe, Okemo, Magic—have affected the state. On the one hand, much lower season-pass costs (but much higher day-pass prices), and a lot more skiers visiting the state. On the other, traffic jams, parking problems, housing issues in ski towns, and what some people call the “McVailing” of skiing. Poux dives into the vibe shift.The music of xc skiers, only warmer. Remember the music that went along with the photo of Nordic racers looking like musical notes last week? Well, UV concert pianist Elizabeth Borowsky couldn't help herself. "I enjoyed the photo... but didn't love the digital, 'heartless' rendition in the link," she writes. "I tried to move past it but couldn't so I just recorded it on piano, taking more time and breathing some life into it with phrasing and rubato, and adding a # (sharp) to the top note because it could have been in the key signature. Now trying to turn off the part of me that wants to harmonize it with left hand chords…""I was being bullied by a crow." It all began with crows stealing Mark Rober's DoorDash chicken nuggets deliveries off his porch. Then he got to wondering just how smart crows really are. And Rober being the former NASA engineer he is—you remember the squirrels, right?—he devised a set of nine puzzles for a crow named Cheryl to pass in order to get to a stash of nuggets. The video's long, so if you don't have the patience, the upshot is: Never underestimate a crow. But honest, the fun is in the journey. With a touching finale, no less. Oh, and hey, want to get a selfie from space? Rober's got you covered on that, too.
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I asked my friend, the poet,how she was getting by.“Work and tears,”came her reply.“And listening,” she added,“in silence, to be sure.I listen closernow than before.It is a lot like reading,a thing I loved to do . . .What book felt likefirst love to you?”
— From (the much longer)
by
. The poem,
during the pandemic, is "about the interior life."
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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