GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Cloudy, decent chance of showers. They began making their way this direction last night, and sometime today—when temps are already well into the 30s on their way to a high in the low 40s—they'll appear: a chance this morning, a likelihood by late afternoon. Depending on where you are, they may start as snow and they'll probably end that way tonight. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, winds today from the south, and only low 30s overnight.Mixed messages. "I walked onto the new bridge by VA Cutoff Road on Saturday, looking north up the White River," writes Tom Corindia. "One voice (Spring) seemed to be saying, 'I'm here, opening up the river for the new season!' The other (Winter), simply replied, 'Not yet.'"No mixed message on the Lake Morey skating trail. "With the ice softening up with warmer temperatures the trail will no longer be maintained after today," the Town of Fairlee posted on its skating trail page yesterday. "The trail will still be free to use but will not be groomed. We will post here if it is unsafe and there will be signs. Enjoy it while it lasts!" The Richard Gray Family Ice Fishing Derby sponsored by the Orford-Fairlee Lions is scheduled Saturday and Sunday.A look ahead at town meetings. The Valley News has pulled together previews of town meetings on the VT side and several school district meetings on the NH side—as well as a look at selectboard contests in Hartford and Bradford and the non-contest in Norwich.
In its summaries of town and school meetings, the VN not only outlines the budget basics, but highlights articles of note, from Dresden's question about funding a middle school athletics program to Hartford's on whether to institute a local option sales tax to Royalton's consideration of new floodplain regs to Newburys bond on a new fire station.
Meanwhile, Hartford is looking at filling four selectboard seats next week, with three of them contested. Two newcomers, Ashley Andreas and Patrick Danaher, are facing off to fill the seat left vacant after Sue Buckholz stepped down last fall; incumbent Lannie Collins and newcomers Miranda Dupre and Erik Krauss are competing for two three-year terms (Kim Souza is stepping down); and incumbent Mary Erdei is running unopposed for re-election. Christina Dolan outlines who's saying what about their candidacies. You can also check out their answers to specific questions in the unofficial guide put together by Ally Tufenkjian.
And Bradford's got six candidates running for three seats. "Usually you have to shake the trees to find someone to run," board member Meroa Benjamin tells the VN's Emma Roth-Wells—who notes that the contests come after the resignation last year of two board members unhappy with what they alleged was prejudice in town government, and the decision by the board to remove Marthanne “Marcey” Carver from a variety of town commissions. Carver is opposing incumbent Carole Taylor for one seat, while incumbent Michael Wright is being challenged by Ralph Messenger and Jon Larrabee and Joshua Allen face off the the year remaining on a three-year term. Roth-Wells explains it all.
Finally, turnover's guaranteed on the selectboard in Norwich, where current chair Pam Smith and former chair Roger Arnold are stepping down. In their places, deputy fire chief Matt Swett and newly returned Norwich native Kimo Griggs are each running unopposed. Roth-Wells talks to both about what's motivating them, and outlines some of the tensions that have marked the board over the past year. On his About Norwich blog, Demo Sofronas has photos and interviews.
SPONSORED: Jay Campion: Still in the game. At 74, Jay Campion isn’t ready to slow down. Even after ankle replacement surgery, he’s back on the ice, skiing, and even eyeing pickleball. “I still want to be able to do what I have enjoyed doing, for as long as I am able," he says. Read his inspiring journey and see how he reclaimed the sports he loves. Full story at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Cioffredi & Associates Physical Therapy.Longtime Lebanon Opera House stage manager Lauren"Duff" Cummings dies at 74. Cummings succumbed on Friday to respiratory disease, "one of the very few things that Duff couldn’t fix himself," his obituary notes. Born in Windsor, with a childhood in Hartland, he was a bass player with local bands Frydaddy, Spare Parts, and Reckless Breakfast, served with the Hanover police and fire/EMT departments, and above all, over 56 years at LOH that began when he was a student at Darmouth, "stewarded world-class touring musicians, Upper Valley-based performing arts groups, and thousands of local student-artists." LOH, meanwhile, is collecting "Duff" stories.“He was like democracy itself": Sharon remembers Galen Mudgett, Jr. The town's longtime lister is thought to be the man whose body was found last Thursday after a fire destroyed Mudgett's home, and in the VN Marion Umpleby retraces his life, from growing up on a Sharon dairy farm to his 28-year career in the Air Force— including time in Vietnam during the war—to his pie-making and saxophone playing and Tunbridge Fair produce-judging. But above all, she writes, he was known for his dedication to fairness and attention to the complexities of valuing property during his 27 years as lister in town.SPONSORED: LOL@LOH with the artist hailed by Stephen Colbert as “my favorite comedian on Earth!" On Friday, March 7, Lebanon Opera House presents comedian Maria Bamford, whose self-deprecating humor zigzags between jabs at her dysfunctional family, anxiety, depression, and mental illness. She is the author of a New York Times bestselling memoir (Sure, I'll Join Your Cult), creator of the Netflix series Lady Dynamite, star of four comedy specials, and a prolific voice actor (Bob’s Burgers, Bojack Horseman, Adventure Time). Sponsored by Lebanon Opera House.Birds in winter: Yep, they shiver. They also fluff up their outer feathers, creating air pockets around their inner feathers; stay dry because of oils secreted by a gland at the base of their tails; roost together at night to conserve heat; burrow into the snow to create insulated caves; and pursue other strategies to stay warm, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog. At least, the 30 percent of birds who overwinter in the north do. Like the pileated woodpecker in her photo, which is tucking its head to reduce heat loss and recycle the warm air it’s breathing.NH farmers: "We just feel very uncertain about whether we can bet on the federal government holding up their end of the bargain." Though there have been a few tentative signs that parts of the federal funding freeze affecting USDA programs may thaw, Granite State farmers are struggling with no-show checks and high uncertainty about reimbursements they'd been promised, reports Amanda Gokee in the Globe (possible paywall). The undelivered payments cover things like thinning stands of hardwoods and paying a forester to help start a firewood business; other farmers are holding off on scaling up. In NH, Ayotte administration wants Medicaid recipients to help pay for coverage. In the governor's two-year budget proposal, reports the Globe's Steven Porter (newsletter, no paywall), there's a proposal for adults with incomes above the federal poverty level to pay up to 5 percent of their income; this would affect upwards of 11,000 Medicaid enrollees. Kids in families earning above 255 percent of the poverty level would also have premiums charged. A single mother of two earning $68K could be charged $283 per month. Some 17 other states have some version of premiums or fees, Porter notes.VT seeing drop in Canadian tourists. Sparked by the Trump administration's threats, reports Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days, Canadians are telling Kingdom Trails they won't be showing up, cancelling trips to Jay Peak, and dropping hotel and inn reservations. This is, not surprisingly, a national issue—Canadian airlines have seen a 25 percent drop in demand for flights to the US, the NY Post reports. VT tourism officials are responding by boosting marketing, though they're avoiding the politics of it. “We can just say, ‘We’re still the same state we were six months ago'," says tourism commissioner Heather Pelham.Trying to separate "the truth from the delirium" on the Zizians. You'd have trouble, too, if you'd been trying to follow and untangle their story for a couple of years, as Wired contributor Evan Ratliff has been doing. It's a long, in-depth piece, tracing their roots in two Bay Area groups and the "effective altruist" movement, the evolution of "Ziz" LaSota—arrested last week in Maryland; the compatriots LaSota attracted; the theories they espoused; and ultimately, how things wound up with six people murdered, "two others presumed dead by suicide, and at least two in hiding." "It's only fair to warn you," Ratliff writes, that "in this story, justice and redemption have so far proven hard to come by."“Brown foods and messy foods are the best foods, and picnics are a nightmare.” Nothing I write here would add to Jay Rayner’s extremely funny (and highly opinionated) observations about food. He sums up 15 years’ worth of findings in his final column for The Guardian, in the UK. Here are just a few: “There is nothing you can eat or drink that will detoxify you; that’s what your liver and kidneys are for.” “If a waiter has to explain the 'concept' behind a menu there is something wrong with the menu.” "Hyper-expensive foods are never about deliciousness; they are about status." Enjoy the rest.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
Daybreak tote bags! Thanks to a helpful reader's suggestion. Plus, of course, the usual: sweatshirts, head-warming beanies, 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!
Cultivating Pollinator & Songbird Conservation with Native Plants". The Montshire, Cedar Circle Farm & Education Center, and the VT Center for Ecostudies are kicking off a three-part "pollinator learning series" today at 1 pm. The next two installments will be in March and April. Today, VCE researcher and conservation biologist Desirée Narango talks about how native plants can transform your garden into "a living landscape that supports insects, birds, and wildlife."
. A former Seattle Times columnist, Guzmán is the author of the 2022 book
I Never Thought Of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times
and, these days, works for Braver Angels, volunteer-driven "
cross-partisan" effort to "bridge the partisan divide for the good of our democratic republic." She'll be a guest of the college's Dialogue Project, talking about it all—and about curiosity—with Dean of Faculty Elizabeth Smith at 5 pm today in Filene Auditorium.At the Howe Library, Bill Hammond and "Following My Father's WWII Footsteps in Fila Sneakers." In 2023, Hammond and his two brothers—using letters home from their father during WWII—retraced his wartime travels through Italy and Germany. It was a way, he writes, "t
o honor my father, to recognize his and his fellow soldiers' sacrifice, and to reinforce a bond with my brothers. This talk will focus on the marvels of the excursion and the serendipity in finding things we didn't think possible." 6:30 pm in the Mayer Room and online.
You know about the longtime Randolph extravaganza. Now, thanks to the Quechee & Wilder Libraries, Hartford—and, specifically, WRJ—is joining in for the first time: In April, businesses around town will display poems submitted by poets living in Vermont or in the Upper Valley (both sides of the river) in their windows. Deadline is March 8, limit two poems of no longer than 28 lines (including line breaks). Details at the link.
Art, antiques, weekend get-aways, hand-crafted artisan items, specialty baked goods, perennials, gift cards to restaurants and other Upper Valley businesses... Bids all go to support the library serving Corinth, Topsham, and surrounding towns. You can check it all out at the link.
The Tuesday poem.
In paragraph form...
Haste and speed accelerate time, which passes more quickly, and two hours of hurry shorten a day. Every minute is torn apart by being segmented, stuffed to bursting. You can pile a mountain of things into an hour. Days of slow walking are very long; they make you live longer, because you have allowed every hour, every minute, every second to breathe, to deepen, instead of filling them up by straining the joints. Hurrying means doing several things at one, and quickly: this; then that; and then something else. When you hurry, time is filled to bursting, like a badly-arranged drawer in which you have stuffed different things without any attempt at order.
But hey, if you insist, here's poetry editor Michael Lipson's versified version:
Haste accelerates time;two hours of hurry shorten a day. Every minute is torn apart by being stuffed to bursting. Days of walking are long.They make you live longer,because you have allowed every hour, every minute, every secondto breathe, to deepen
.
— Either way,
, translated by John Howe.
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.
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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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