GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Reminder: Daybreak's off until Jan. 7. It's time to rest up for the year ahead.But before that happens: You're the best! Over 800 of you signed up in 2024, creating space for Daybreak in your lives. Many others passed it along to friends and helped it to its best year ever with your contributions and sponsorships. You sent photos and ideas and kind words and corrections. You responded enthusiastically to Dear Daybreak and the Monday jigsaw, reassuring me that Daybreak can keep evolving. And it will! Keep an eye out for puzzle news and more in the new year (though not immediately). You can support all that here. You're the coolest audience a newsletter could have!Now then...Snow ending, maybe a little sun later in the day. Snow will come to a close, likely by late morning or early afternoon, as this system moves off to the east, followed pretty quickly by high pressure building in for a good bit of the week to come. Highs today will be in the upper 20s, down into the low teens or single digits overnight.Winter all around.
Like, the "fishsicle" that Cynthia Crawford spotted in Norwich, formed by dripping ice. Take a moment and you'll see it.
And the playful ice filigree on Lacie Austin's window in Bradford, VT.
And the welcoming "Circle of Light" on Thetford Hill last Saturday night—"a silent, meditative walk that is focused on spreading light during the darkest part of the year," writes Robin Osborne:
Trying to sort out the whole Woodstock police chief controversy? There's a decent chance that sometime soon there'll be new developments in the ongoing saga of Woodstock's police chief. Last Thursday in the VT Standard, Mike Donoghue reported that village leaders had heard concerns about Chief Joe Swanson as early as October, before the police union issued its no-confidence vote in him—and that a private detective's report on their complaints is finished, but hasn't yet been released. Hoping to keep track? At the burgundy link, Donoghue's timeline of what's happened so far...SPONSORED: Haiti orphanage needs help from the Upper Valley. The Tysea Orphanage in Jacmel, Haiti, is home to 19 children aged 6-17, nearly all of them parentless. Most were rescued off the streets of Port-au-Prince, a hellscape of poverty and gang violence. The orphanage depends entirely on private funding and is struggling to stay afloat. It's now getting an assist from Partners in Global Change, a small Upper Valley nonprofit, founded and run by Norwich resident Paul Foster. But much more is needed. Read the whole story at the burgundy link. Sponsored by Partners in Global Change.As winter settles in, there's plenty to notice in the field. Like, for instance, lichens—which, as Rachel McKimmy writes in the VT Center for Ecostudies' "Field Guide to December", are "a reminder that life persists even during the darkest, coldest months of the year." She offers up a guide, which is handy because how else will you ID the Smokey-eyed Boulder Lichen? Also in there: Allie Radin on social caterpillars, Megan Massa on identifying nests laid bare by absence of leaves, Julia Pupko on freeze-thaw cycles and their impact on trees and snowpack, and Kent McFarland on the Pine Cone Willow Gall Midge.Fur, fluff, and clean dens—how red foxes get through winter. Partly, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog, their bodies adapt: a thicker coat, longer guard hairs to repel snow and water, furrier ears, feet, and tail (which they wrap around themselves as they sleep). But when temps really drop, foxes head for dens left vacant after last year's litter. She's got a photo of an old den a fox cleaned out: "It’s not unusual for a fox to replace the materials used for lining a den to ensure cleanliness and prevent parasites, though this is usually done when the den is being used to house a litter," she writes.SPONSORED: Local non-profit Finding Our Stride (FOS) seeks program director and head coach. FOS is looking for an energetic and organized individual to join their small team in a hybrid, part-time (60%) role overseeing free after-school running programs at 30+ schools across Vermont and New Hampshire. Responsibilities include training and supporting coaches, managing program logistics, developing resources, and expanding opportunities for youth to thrive socially, emotionally, and physically. Learn more and apply at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Finding Our Stride.From Tunbridge to Sharon to Tunbridge to Royalton to Lebanon, and finally to Palmyra, NY: Joseph Smith's parents moved around. The founder of Mormonism was born 219 years ago yesterday in Sharon, the son of impoverished and itinerant tenant farmers. In Smithsonian, Eli Wizevich traces Smith's early years in these parts, then the "regional religious reckoning" around Palmyra touched off by the construction of the Erie Canal, and ultimately the visions Smith reported experiencing as he walked in the woods when he was just 15.Talking about a local cow "that likes to show," the World Dairy Expo... and cannoli. Remember how Meriden teen Sara Forman and her Guernsey, Sassy, brought home two ribbons from the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin? VT Public's Jenn Jarecki sat down with Sara and her mom, physician and ricotta-maker Angela Toms, to ask about the experience—"You are on the shavings and you are only focused on the judge, your cow, and yourself," says Sara; about Guernseys and Sassy in particular—she's "incredibly kind"; and about the guests at pizza Fridays: "It's not to hang out with us, it's only to get the cannoli."Uphilling takes hold at NH ski resorts: "It’s like going for a nice hike in the woods, and then the trip down is a little more fun than hiking down." That's Paul “Coz” Teplitz, executive director at the Granite Backcountry Alliance, talking to the Globe's Amanda Gokee (paywall) about the sport of hiking up ski hills on skins and then whooshing down. Ski areas used to be resistant, but thanks to the efforts of Uphill New England—created by UV locals Ed Warren and Josie Fisher and others—that's in the past: 19 resorts in New England now participate, including the Skiway, Whaleback, and Killington.In NH, artificial Christmas trees now outpace the real ones. Two decades ago, reports NHPR's Todd Bookman, "it wasn’t all that close: residents of New Hampshire opted for real trees over artificial trees by a three-to-one margin." Now, a new UNH survey finds that 44 percent of Granite Staters are going artificial this year, with 29 percent headed out to find a real one. A quarter won't put up any tree at all. Why? UNH's Andy Smith suspects it's because the state is aging: "People are just going to be less inclined to have natural trees, to go through all the trouble of getting trees,” he says."Why do people like to hunt so much?" Alex Larrabee is a high school sophomore at the Danville School in the Northeast Kingdom, and though she doesn't hunt, she's surrounded by people who do almost religiously. So when she asked that question of VT Public's Brave Little State, Lola Duffort answered the call, heading out into the Addison County woods with a trio of hunters—"To hunt something successfully, you kind of have to develop a reverence for the animal you’re killing," says Duffort—and talking women hunters, "hipster hunters," and more with an anthropologist and VT's hunter ed coordinator.From prison, a story of hope. You may not have time today, so save this for the break. In Mother Jones, Adam Hochschild starts with a pair of numbers: In the US, the likelihood that a released convict will return to prison within five years is 45.8 percent. For the graduates of a California program known as Guiding Rage Into Power (or GRIP), the figure is 1.71 percent. Hochschild wanted to find out why, so he headed to a prison in Vacaville. The key? Emotions. “Think of [traumas] as like having a barrel of fuel. And if you haven’t processed that stuff, that barrel is there," says a group leader."This is an American story": The history of slipping on banana peels. No, it's not a myth. YouTuber Jon Bois, who runs Secret Base, an offshoot of sports website SBNation, knows this is true because it happened to him. But while he tells that story to start off, he's after much bigger game: documented banana peel slips throughout the US, starting in 1860. He limits his investigations to the US because there are so many examples around the world (like the stuntman who survived going over Niagara Falls in a barrel only to die of an infected leg after slipping on a banana peel in New Zealand) he had to stop somewhere.
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Fleece vests, sweatshirts, head-warming beanies... Strong Rabbit has updated the Daybreak page to keep up with the changing weather. Plus, of course, the usual: t-shirts, long-sleeved tees, the Daybreak jigsaw, those perfect hand-fitting coffee/tea mugs, and as always, "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Check it all out at the link!
The Tuesday poem.
Not one care in mind all yearI find enough joy every day in my hutand after a meal and a pot of strong teaI sit on a rock by the pond and count fish—
by the Zen monk Shiwu, known as Stonehouse, who lived from 1272–1352, during China's Yuan Dynasty.
And some voices to close things out.
In most of the past few years, the last music of the year has been a selection from Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's masterpiece version of
The Nutcracker
. This year, we're going to stray... but only a bit:
four inventive minutes of celestial harmony.
And now... If you're celebrating Christmas or the first night of Chanukah tomorrow, or Kwanzaa starting Thursday, or waiting to head into the night or onto the trails to mark New Year's, or just hanging out and appreciating family or friends or this place we all live, I hope your next two weeks are filled with warmth, peacefulness, community, good food, plenty of time outside, and a promising start to the new year.
And maybe some more snow?
See you Tuesday, Jan. 7.
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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