GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, warming up. We're in for blue skies, drying air, and highs reaching the mid or upper 40s. Modest winds from the northwest, and with mostly clear skies tonight, we'll be down into the mid 20s.Sun dog. Not a yoga pose, but a trick of the light late the other afternoon, as Cynthia Crawford was on Route 14 in WRJ looking west across the White River. The light, the clouds, the bare branches...For some skiers, the backcountry is always the first choice. But now, there's also uphilling. In low-snow, rainy winters like this one, writes Beatrice Burack in the next-to-last article in her Daybreak series on NH skiing in the age of climate change, backcountry enthusiasts sometimes "have no choice but to ‘uphill’ on groomed trails and manmade snow." It's not the same, they tell her—and there's always the hope of a big snow dump—but it'll do. Bea also talks to Zachary McCarthy about bringing newcomers into the sport in a low-stress way via uphilling. Tomorrow: the conclusion and the future.In Orford voting today, hopes for an end to contentiousness. Though given that both selectboard seats on the ballot have contested races, we'll see. As Christina Dolan writes in the Valley News, one race pits selectboard chair John Adams against longtime resident Larry Taylor. The other features the two men at the center of much of the town's recent drama: former fire chief and former planning board chair Terry Straight, and incumbent board member Kevin Follensbee, who once expressed interest in becoming fire chief. Dolan reports that a campaign sign in Straight's yard was recently hit by birdshot.Windsor County State Sen. Dick McCormack to retire. The Democrat, who's held the post for more than 30 years, alerted constituents last week and tells VTDigger's Sarah Mearhoff, “You want to leave while at least some people will be sorry to see you go." McCormack has had a hand or played a major role in key issues the legislature still confronts, including policy on climate change, Act 250, and 1997's Act 60 education funding law—an issue that's front and center this year. "Our school funding system is a mess," he tells Mearhoff. "And it happened on my party’s watch, and there’s no getting away from that.”"If you forfeit your voice, your presence and your participation, your town will be the poorer, and so will you." Town meeting season is winding down, but as it was revving up Vershire's Suzanne Lupien issued an argument via VTDigger for the virtues of showing up to floor meetings, informational meetings, whatever. Open discussion, she writes, "takes time and practice, and depends on strengths not called upon elsewhere in our lives." Not just to speak, but also to listen, which can be frustrating but also "illuminating, thought-provoking... and sometimes hilarious. It is always an education."SPONSORED: “You don’t do it alone.” Billy Cioffredi, PT, shares insights on countering anxiety through connection and confidence: “Have you ever known someone who simply seems to hold themselves with certainty? Not a know-it-all, but someone who just seems comfortably self-assured that they can handle whatever comes their way in life. My wife, Ruth, is like that...” Sponsored by Cioffredi & Associates Physical Therapy.VT State Trooper hit "highway speed" before Bethel crash; fire truck probably totaled. The medical condition of Cpl. Eric Vitali, whose cruiser hit a Bethel fire truck on Friday as he was on his way to first-aid training, remained unknown yesterday, reports John Lippman in the VN. As the investigation continues, police say the force of the impact suggests Vitali was traveling at high speed, and Bethel fire chief David Aldrighetti tells Lippman the crash may have disabled the truck for good. "We had it custom built with four-wheel drive. It gets us everywhere in the back hills in the middle of winter," he says.“He touched way more lives than we had realized." That was Plainfield's Craig Lamzin reflecting on the death of his 41-year-old son, CJ, in January. CJ was born with "a severe form of spina bifida," writes Patrick Adrian in the VN, but despite a lifetime of health challenges and the predictions of doctors that he'd never be able to speak, he went on to become for 20 years a mainstay at the front desk of CCBA in Lebanon, "where he would greet or chat with guests or sometimes give rides to children in his wheelchair," Adrian writes—as well as play power wheelchair soccer in the gym. "He didn’t have an unkind bone in his body," one of his sisters says. "He was excited for life."SPONSORED: One day only! Morrill Homestead Art Exhibit and Online Auction. Don't miss this chance to own one of 31 beautiful paintings by Greta Newman in support of community programs at the Morrill Homestead in Strafford! You can see and bid on the paintings now at the burgundy link and in person at Barrett Hall in S. Strafford on Saturday, March 16th, 10am-3pm; online bidding closes at 4pm on the 16th. They are elegantly framed, under glass, and ready to hang. Preview the Homestead's 2024 events here. Sponsored by Friends of the Morrill Homestead.A cure for mud season blues: red maple stems and male woodcocks. Cut a few red maple stems and put them in a jar of water, suggests Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast: "Cut stems in a warm house will flower relatively quickly." Also out there in the woods this week: the "lovable oddballs" known as American woodcocks. Among other things, Elise writes, the males are known for their dance moves: they choose "a patch of open space and bob up and down to impress the females, rocket high up into the sky, and perform twirling, twittering 'dances.'" You know where this is going, right? To Uptown Funk.Also out there: the first little fuzz of pussy willow flowers. "These soft silver tufts—as well as the plant itself—are named for their resemblance to tiny cats’ paws," writes Mary Holland on Naturally Curious. "The soft, silvery hairs insulate the emerging spike of flowers, or catkin, within a willow flower bud." In particular, they trap the sun's heat and help warm male catkins' center, promoting the development of pollen.NH AG offers plan to deal with legislators who might have moved from their districts. By now you know the problem: GOP Rep. Troy Merner moved out of his legislative district, which in NH means he ought to have resigned. Instead, the GOP House leadership let him keep voting for nine months while the AG's office investigated; Merner's was a hinge vote on at least one key piece of legislation. Now, reports the Globe's Steven Porter in its NH newsletter (no paywall), Attorney Genl John Formella says his office will expedite reviews of moving allegations, then let the leaders of both parties in a chamber know.On the ballot in 22 NH towns: Voting machines vs. hand counting. The statewide effort to require that ballots be counted by hand is being led by members of the conservative group New Hampshire Patriot Hub, who argue that machine counts are "hackable," writes Amanda Gokee in the Boston Globe (paywall). They've put the question on the town meeting warrant in an array of towns, including Newbury and Plymouth (which vote tomorrow) and Walpole (which votes March 16). Voting rights groups argue that machines, such as the AccuVote scanners many Upper Valley towns use, are more reliable.It was already a wretched mud season for dirt roads. Then came this storm. You don't even have to go on social media to see what dirt roads are looking like—just go find one. The warm winter, with fewer frozen days as part of the freeze/thaw cycle, has wreaked havoc. But now, reports Babette Stolk for VTDigger, the storm we just went through has made things worse, with wet snow seeping into the already rutted surface and road crews unable to plow. “The dirt is so soft,” says Mark French, road foreman for Hyde Park, VT, that a normal plow would “stick into the mud.” Meanwhile, thinning ice is changing the Squam ice harvest. For well over a century, Rockywold Deephaven Camps has used ice blocks cut and hauled from the lake in winter to fill the (literal) ice chests in its cabins each summer day to keep guests' perishable items cold. It's "one of the few places left in New England" to do something like that—and now, reports NHPR's Mara Hoplamazian, the practice is at risk. The teams of cutters, many of them volunteers who learned from previous generations, waited until mid-February this year for the ice to grow thick enough. Hoplamazian delivers an ode to the tradition's history and current practice, with plenty of photos by Zoey Knox.Skier who died at Tuckerman's was UVM student, ROTC member. Madison Saltsburg was a junior landscape design major from Pennsylvania, reports the Globe's Travis Anderson (via MSN, no paywall) who joined ROTC to pay for college. "She had more moxie than anyone I know," her mother tells Anderson. Saltsburg, who "wanted to save the world with sustainable landscape horticulture," her mother says, and last year was UVM ROTC's “highest ranking female” for the Army Combat Fitness Test, died after falling hundreds of feet in unusually icy conditions on Mt. Washington on Saturday.Remove bird feeders by April 1? Forget it. Jaclyn Comeau, Vermont Fish & Wildlife's bear biologist, tells VT Public's Lexi Krupp the date when bears are active has been getting earlier and earlier, and this year, she says, "we've been getting consistent reports since we hit March.” They're not going back to sleep. “These bears that are up now are staying up for the rest of the season,” says Comeau. “This is just the reality we're all going to have to get used to with climate change.” You know what this means: bird feeders down, rake up spilled seeds, secure garbage, protect bees and chickens with an electric fence.A generation of snowmobilers: "We’ll meet at Marty’s and go from there.” On the latest Brave Little State, Howard Weiss-Tisman answers a reader’s question about the economic impact of snowmobilers riding the VAST trails. It’s hard to talk about that impact without talking about Marty’s First Stop, the Danville market where riders stock up on fuel, snacks, and corn chowder. Less snow means fewer trail passes sold—half as many as a couple of decades ago, according to the nonprofit Vermont Association of Snow Travelers (VAST), whose volunteers maintain about 6,000 miles of trails. That in turn means less income for tour companies, Airbnbs, restaurants, and markets like Marty’s.VT, NH both among top states for aerobic exercise. First the caveat: this is based on a Brigham and Women's Hospital study tracking people who use Apple watches, which means a) they can afford one; and b) they probably lean toward fitness conscious. As Carly Mallenbaum writes for Axios, the study looked at the percentage of tracked users who got at least 150 minutes a week of aerobic exercise. MA (67.2 percent), NY (66), CT (64.1), and CA (62.3) topped the list. VT came in at 61.6, NH at 61. Map of the country at the burgundy link; here are Brigham & Women's stats."There's not much to think about, except trying not to die." Skijoring around here usually involves a dog. But in Leadville, CO every year, it's been a horse-with-rider-towing-a-skier competition since 1949, and as the AP's Thomas Peipert writes, skiers "can top 40 mph over jumps as high as 8 feet and around obstacles as they try to lance suspended hoops with a baton, typically a ski pole that’s cut in half." Peipert's article is hair-raising enough, but really, it's the video: skier's-eye-view, horse's-butt view. "It's pure adrenaline."The Tuesday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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At 5:30 this afternoon, VINS presents a virtual talk by Rolf Diamant, "Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea". Diamant, a UVM historian and former National Park Service park superintendent (including at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller), will trace how the idea of a national system preserving land for everyone's use developed in the years around and after the Civil War. Register for the link.
If you've ever found yourself wondering what it would be like to coach youth lacrosse, the Friends of Hanover Lacrosse are running a free clinic at 6 this evening in the Hanover High gym. HHS varsity coaches Sarah Martin and Sean Murphy will tackle you how to plan and run a practice, teach the fundamentals, and teach basic drills. No link, but you can find out more or RSVP to [email protected].
At 6:30, the Howe Library and Hanover Conservation Commission present an in-person and online conversation on "assisted forest migration"—the effort by foresters and others to help tree populations speed up their natural rate of migration in response to climate change. Dartmouth forester Kevin Evans, who oversees the college's 40,000 acres of woodlands, will talk with UVM forest ecologist Peter Clark and Dartmouth political scientist and NH state Rep. Russell Muirhead about what the research shows, and about a collaborative planting project between Dartmouth and UVM and Dartmouth in the college's Second College Grant property in northern NH.
And at 7 this evening, the Norwich Bookstore hosts the renowned novelist Margot Livesey, in person and in conversation with local essayist and fiction writer Peter Orner, who also directs the writing program at Dartmouth. The topic for the evening is Livesey's latest, The Road from Belhaven, about a 19th century Scottish farm girl (and then young woman) who gets premonitions, filled with period and local Scottish detail—but the conversation is sure to drift toward writing and the larger questions that both Orner and Livesey, who teaches at the Iowa Writers Workship, routinely weigh.
And speaking of Victorian Era Scotland, the Tuesday poem:
Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde:Hae mercy o' my soul, Lord God; As I wad do, were I Lord God, And ye were Martin Elginbrodde.
— Fictional epitaph in
's 1863 novel,
David Elginbrod
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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