GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny then cloudy, faint chance of snow tonight. This morning's high pressure will give way to a weak low pressure system moving our way, and clouds associated with that low will build in this afternoon. Still, highs will be in the mid or upper 30s on winds from the south and southeast. Upper 20s tonight, slight chance of snow and maybe rain before midnight.Think you could use a bit of color? Thought so. Rich Cohen is a Norwich photographer who specializes in portraits of flowers. In particular, he uses a technique called "focus stacking," which builds a composite of dozens of individual photos, to give flowers as sharp a focus as possible. So when an Amaryllis his wife, Anna, got as a gift last Christmas bloomed last week, he happily set it up on his light table.With turmoil in Orange County sheriff's office, Randolph aims to restart its own police department, Fairlee hires officer. Randolph, reports Ethan Weinstein in VTDigger, is moving to hire four officers and one administrator after the sheriff's office, which is down to a fraction of the deputies it had in November, was forced to drop its policing contract with the town. And Fairlee, anticipating that its contract might be dropped, hired former sheriff’s department corporal Wayne Briggs, who patrolled the town for the sheriff’s department, as a town employee; he'll take on extra hours after the chief retires in March.Accused Newport NH surgeon released to home from pre-trial detention. Dr. Thomas Marks, an orthopedic surgeon who'd been affiliated with Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont, had been ordered held after a charge of sexual assault in one case and several other accusations alleging misbehavior, writes John Lippman in the Valley News. Yesterday, however, Superior Court Judge Martin Honigberg agreed with Marks's defense lawyer to allow Marks to be confined at home under conditions restricting his mobility, including surrendering his passport and driver's license.SPONSORED: You can improve someone's life right now! Hearts You Hold is a VT-based nonprofit that supports immigrants, migrants, and refugees in a concrete way. We believe that only the individuals themselves know what they want or need and that it is critical to take the time to ask them. Currently, there are many requests waiting to be funded for people who are trying to rebuild their lives in the US. Needs include everything from laptops to a sofa to winter clothing to workboots. Hit the link above, pick an item (or more) to fund, and make a difference now! Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.At Junction Fiber Mill: "They see this magnificent wool and they’re just always like, ‘Holy mackerel!’” WCAX's Elissa Borden made the trek to WRJ to talk with Peggy Allen and Amanda Kievit, owners of the two-year-old effort to turn the region's raw wool into high-quality yarn, for the station's "Made in VT" series. One of the mill's strengths, Kievit tells her, is its machines: "Without going in the weeds too much," she says, they produce "yarn that has the fibers all in alignment, which can really bring out some of the wool’s unique characteristics, like luster.”After chance encounter over Upper Valley Food Co-op checkout counter, cashier is headed to NYC's Outsider Art Fair. Last summer, Kishka Gallery founder Ben Finer, who works nearby in WRJ, noticed some sketches that Co-op clerk Denver Ferguson was working on. Ferguson, reports Vermont Public's Lexi Krupp, "draws colorful, bizarre creatures on the back of old scrap paper from the store" and Finer—like a lot of Ferguson's customers—liked the results. The two worked together on a book of the sketches, Ferguson brought by more of his work for Finer to see—and now, the two are headed to NYC next month.After 41 years, Lebanon High's xc ski coach will retire from program he built from 20 to 50 or more skiers. Part of the reason for the sport's popularity at Lebanon High, writes Tris Wykes in the VN, is that longtime coach Les Lawrence is both serious about building competitive skiers and serious about doing it in a "supportive, low-key and cheerful" way. “For a lot of kids, this team’s social aspect has them switching from other sports,” says senior Francis Calandrella. “They leave super competitive basketball where only five kids are on the court, for skiing where everybody can participate.”SPONSORED: Help a Dartmouth lab studying “face blindness” understand it better—and get a view of your brain in action. The Prosopagnosia Research Center is looking for individuals who have typical face perception and are between ages 18 and 55 to serve as participants in two fMRI scans. Participants will receive $80, and after we analyze your data, we’ll send you images of your brain and face processing network. Please click the burgundy link or email us: [email protected]. Sponsored by Dartmouth’s Prosopagnosia Research Center.Whew! Winnipesaukee ices in. Thanks to this past weekend's cold and winds, the lake is now officially ice-covered—but, says Dave Emerson of Emerson Aviation, who's been over-flying the lake for half a century, “This is probably the latest and thinnest I've ever seen it," reports NHPR's Jeongyoon Han. Usually by this time, the ice is at least a foot thick, and sometimes two or three feet. At the moment, it's more like two inches. “I would not venture out on it for nothing,” Emerson says.In annual report, NH Child Advocate mixes anecdotal successes with "grim" statistics. The positives, Annmarie Timmins writes in NH Bulletin, included bringing a child who'd been placed out of state for care back to NH. But the statistics in the 2022 report, Timmins reports, paint a glum overall picture. In all, 29 children aged 17 and younger died, most of them under the age of 1. On any given day, an average of 16 are waiting in emergency rooms for a psychiatric bed. And over 1,000 NH children and youth "require placement outside their home because of an imminent safety concern," Timmins writes.VT state archivist: It's time to change laws on access to foster care records. In particular, Tanya Marshall argues, it makes no sense that state law says that state officials, law enforcement, parents, attorneys, even someone alleged to have abused or neglected a child can request access to records on people who've been in foster care—but people who were actually in foster care cannot, even as adults. "It literally is a file about us, and about our lives, and about what we went through," one tells VT Public's Howard Weiss-Tisman. "So I feel like it's just common sense that we should have access to it.”Royalton church among VT historic preservation projects to get state funding. In all, the state is handing out $321,363 to 20 communities to preserve and restore historic buildings. Congregational churches in Royalton, Peacham, and Westminster landed three of them—in Royalton's case the church, built in 1839-40 and facing structural damage, continues to serve an active congregation. Other grantees include the water tower at Fort Ethan Allen in Essex and the 1879 firehouse in Chester.As winters warm, VT ski areas look to adapt. The Craftsbury Outdoor Center can make snow, store it over the summer, and haul it out to its xc trails in trucks come late fall, writes Cora Smith, part of UVM's Community News Service, in the Rutland Herald—but only if the ground freezes early enough. Trapp Family Lodge is positioning itself for winter activities that don't require snow. Killington has vastly expanded its summertime mountain biking. Still, Craftsbury's Sheldon Miller tells Smith, there's only so much one place can do in the face of climate change. “It’s a bigger problem than just changing a light bulb," he says.Questions you never thought to ask. So, you know the compliment, "You're the bee's knees"? Which raises the eminently sensible but nonetheless obscure question: Do bees actually have knees? On LiveScience, Joanna Wendel looks into the question, helped by a fine chart of bee anatomy. Let's not spoil the answer except to say that bee's legs actually have five parts (the coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia and tarsus, in case you're curious), and that before its current meaning, Wendel writes, "the bee's knees" was used to describe something that doesn't exist. Oops, sorry about that.I’m living... in a jet plane. Apologies to John Denver, but this is way more fun than that song. “If Scotty beamed me to inner Mongolia, erased my fingerprints and forced me to live in a conventional structure, I'd do what I have to do to survive -- but otherwise, it's a jetliner for me,” says Bruce Campbell. For 20 years, home for Campbell has been a grounded 727, writes Jacopo Prisco on CNN Travel. Campbell is not alone; flightless planes in Mississippi, Texas, Florida are now permanent residences, though it’s not always easy. When the seatbelt sign is turned off, you are free to walk about your house.The Tuesday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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At 7 pm, "Suds & Science" is back in-person at the Norwich Inn. The VT Center for Ecostudies' popular monthly talks were Zoomed last year and the year before, but host Jason Hill "is ready for science live and in person," VCE writes. Tonight's talk features VCE wildlife ecologist Michael Hallworth on how understanding animal migration can help with conservation efforts. This month only, the talk will be down in the Inn's wine-tasting room—and it will also be Zoomed.
Also at 7, Dartmouth's Dickey Center and Political Economy Project host a webinar with University of Hong Kong humanities chair Frank Dikötter. The Dutch historian is known for a long career of work on modern China, and tonight's webinar focuses on his recent book, China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower, in which he chronicles China's economic transformation from the end of the Cultural Revolution, arguing that far from an organized, reform-driven drive toward prosperity, the decades before Xi Jinping took power were marked by "contradictions, illusions, and palace intrigue, [with] disasters narrowly averted, shadow banking, anti-corruption purges, and extreme state wealth existing alongside everyday poverty."
And also at 7, the venerable open mic night for musicians at Bradford's Colatina Exit has returned after a pandemic hiatus. It's hosted upstairs every Tuesday from 7-9 by Tom Masterson, and as Colatina says, "Just bring your instrument and your voice and step on up to the mic."
And the Tuesday poem...
Don’t bother the earth spirit who lives here. She is working on a story. It is the oldest story in the world and it is delicate, changing. If she sees you watching she will invite you in for coffee, give you warm bread, and you will be obligated to stay and listen. But this is no ordinary story. You will have to endure earthquakes, lightning, the deaths of all those you love, the most blinding beauty. It’s a story so compelling you may never want to leave; this is how she traps you. See that stone finger over there? That is the only one who ever escaped.
—
by
.
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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
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