RIBBIT RIBBIT, UPPER VALLEY!
We get a break today: Gradually clearing. There's high pressure building in for a couple of days, though things are going to be on the cold side. It'll be gusty all day, with winds from the northwest, but clouds will part over the course of the morning, and we'll be looking at mostly clear skies this afternoon and part of tonight. Highs today only around 40, lows in the low 20s.Ice. Wow, people! Yeah, there was that whole power outage thing, but at least this past weekend was highly photogenic. Thank you to everyone who sent in photos. I'm going to run a taste today and tomorrow.
Like this eastern bluebird in Etna, probably not feeling especially lucky, from Coraline Mann;
And then there was this impenetrable bird feeder in Springfield, NH, from Steve Rutledge;
"Everything is covered in ice," wrote Brian Meyette from Cornish. "But on the concrete front steps, it’s forming all these odd and beautiful little glass balls."
Schools in the Mountain Views district were closed yesterday, reports Clare Shanahan in the
Valley News
, with fallen trees across roads in the district making bus travel a challenge. More than 600 customers were without power in Barnard, and roads were closed in Canaan, Sunapee, New London, Springfield NH, Norwich, and elsewhere. In all, some 6,700 customers were without power yesterday in VT (
), while NHEC reported 2,580 outages yesterday, including more than 900 in Sunapee, and Eversource 3,500, including almost 950 in New London.
Also closed yesterday: Pico Mountain. Okemo had to shut down on Sunday, as did all of the Killington resort. “This is very unusual, where the entire resort has to shut down," the resort's communications director told the Times Argus's Keith Whitcomb Jr. "A lot of times it’s segmented where a portion of the mountain might be down but we can continue to run the rest of the mountain. It’s very rare to have ice storms of this magnitude.”
And yet: After early brush fire, Upper Valley fire departments gird for a long season. The small mid-March fire drew a response from the Canaan and Grafton departments and was quickly put out, writes Shanahan in the VN. Even so, says Enfield fire chief Phil Neily, "It does appear that there are more opportunities for brush fires.” Part of the reason, VT Forest Fire Supervisor Dan Dillner says, is that there is “more precipitation in fewer events,” with longer dry periods in between. One real challenge: a lack of volunteer firefighters means no single department can fight a big brush fire.SPONSORED: Upper Valley Music Center presents a concert with Apple Hill String Quartet this Saturday, April 5 at 4 pm. The quartet’s eclectic and dynamic concert programs reflect the diversity of Apple Hill: pieces amplifying new voices in classical music; compositions representing the quartet’s global travels; and music from the historic canon. This concert features music by Germaine Taillaferre, F. J. Haydn, Claude Debussy, and Meredith Monk. Tickets and details at the link. Sponsored by Upper Valley Music Center.Also this weekend, a Handel masterpiece that's "like a variety show." That's the celebrated Boston soprano Amanda Forsythe, who'll be appearing in Upper Valley Baroque's performances this weekend of Handel's L’Allegro (the Happy Man), Il Penseroso (the thoughtful man) ed il Moderato (the moderate man). On VT Public Classical yesterday, host Helen Lyons talked with Forsythe and with conductor Filippo Ciabatti about the work—which sets poetry by John Milton to music—and was written by Handel at a time when his opera company had failed and he was reinventing himself with an eye on oratorios.On the Lebanon Mall, the New England School of the Arts takes root. It's only got eight students at the moment, writes Marion Umpleby in the VN, along with two full-time teachers in addition to founder Jennifer Chambers, and six part-time instructors. But Chambers and her husband, Carl, are convinced that over the next few years it will grow, as students are drawn to its vision of "an integrated curriculum where the artistic disciplines [aren't] siloed, but [are] the fabric connected to what we consider the typical core academic subjects." Umpleby profiles the new school and some of its students.SPONSORED: Pink Talking Fish brings its signature fusion of Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, and Phish tunes to the Lebanon Opera House stage on Saturday, April 12. This acclaimed band celebrates three of the world’s most beloved bands and creates a unique treat for fans. No two shows are ever the same. In honor of the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, they play the album in its entirety – from "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" and "Have a Cigar" to "Welcome to the Machine". Sponsored by LOH.Just a quick reminder if you didn't happen to encounter it yesterday: I-91 northbound's Exit 10A—the one that leads to I-89 southbound—closed yesterday and will remain closed through tomorrow, while crews shift the southbound lanes crossing the Connecticut. The detour takes you up to Exit 12, then back down to 10A southbound. Meanwhile, the I-89 southbound Exit 20 off ramp will be closed Thursday and Friday this week. The detour will take you down to Exit 19 to reverse course.At the Briggs, a play that is by turns "sweet and somber, funny and sad." We the People Theatre opened its production of A Man of No Importance this past weekend, and Artful's Susan Apel was there. It's "a play within a play, it features Irish music, and it is a quiet and reflective piece about belonging and inclusivity. It works on all counts," she writes—calling out in particular performances by Richard Waterhouse, who plays the lead character, Alfie, a Dublin bus conductor directing a community production of Oscar Wilde's Salome, and Jenn Langhus as Alfie's "long-suffering" sister, Lily.Cotton Exchange will bring new retail and restaurants to Upper Valley. That's the headline atop Sara Sanchez's El Paso Inc. piece about Riverbend Development's investment in the Doniphan Drive site—an extension of the "vibe" at the Substation next door, Riverbend president Will Harvey tells Sanchez. It'll include indoor/outdoor patio spaces, family-friendly dining, some office space, and Gozo’s, the ice cream shop run by the El Paso Community Foundation, which employs people with disabilities. “I like infill development and not tearing down and replacing everything with new stuff," says Harvey.Leb board okays one-year site plan extension for River Park. The mid-March move came after "months of delays, back-and-forths and testy exchanges between the developers and city representatives," writes John Lippman in the VN. The 4-3 vote by the city's planning board followed a discussion of whether the extension should be one year or two; the board majority opted for a single year. The vote gives developers David and Chet Clem a year to build infrastructure "in advance of construction of the building on the site," Lippman writes.In Peterborough, community members have lots of questions about four restaurant workers detained by federal agents; no one seems to have answers. The four were taken from Mi Jalisco, a Mexican restaurant in town, back in February. And at a recent town meeting, reports WBUR's Anthony Brooks, residents turned out to ask "how agents could show up, remove four people and not explain why." The town's police chief says he's in the dark; the selectboard knows nothing; ICE isn't talking. " I think the mystery around the whole thing was what really set people off," says the selectboard chair.Are women in the NH legislature at a disadvantage? Certainly numerically: They may make up just over half the state's population, writes Claire Sullivan in NH Bulletin, but hold just 35.8 percent of the seats in the two legislative chambers. Beyond that, though, Sullivan found disagreement on what it actually means to be a woman legislator: some who argue it requires both working harder and finding support at home, others who say “'we’re way past that' in terms of women facing obstacles in politics." Dartmouth's Anna Mahoney argues women change not just legislation, but "the institution itself.”In VT, Phil Scott extends motel stays for families and people with medical needs. Homeless Vermonters using motel vouchers faced a "cliff" today, reports Carly Berlin on VT Public, when the voucher program’s winter rules expire. Dems had proposed a three-month extension, which Scott opposed; on Friday, Senate Republicans blocked a bill giving an extension to all 2,300 people in the program. Then, a few hours later, Scott granted the extension to some 400 out of 1,439 households. The rest will be subject to time restrictions.VT: "where public education is really in trouble these days." Costs are rising, the school-age population is declining, taxes are a struggle... you know the drill. But as journalist Jennifer Berkshire tells non-Vermonters on her Have You Heard podcast, "All of the things making public education so challenging in Vermont now are probably coming to your state next." In a wide-ranging look at how the state got here, she talks to Norwich school board member Neil Odell—"Our financing is so complex that average Vermonters don't understand it; what they do understand is that their property taxes have shot through the roof"—and others about ed history, reform proposals, and private schools.The Monday jigsaw on Tuesday. The Norwich Historical Society's Cam Cross writes: "This puzzle features an airport lookout tower formerly located on Old Coach Road in Norwich. The tower was part of the World War II Aircraft Warning System, which established towers on both coasts and relied on volunteers to watch for enemy aircraft. On the East Coast, these towers stretched from northern Maine to the tip of Florida and extended inland as far inland as the Appalachian Mountains. Another tower stood on Gile Mountain."The Tuesday Wordbreak. With a word from Friday's Daybreak.
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You may know the Springfield, NH grower as "The Dahlia Lady" at the Norwich Farmers Market, and the Hanover Garden Club is hosting her both in-person and online at the Montshire for a talk about growing dahlias, start to finish: "where to buy the tubers, what to look for in a tuber, where/how to plant them," and plenty more. 1 pm.
As Stone describes it, it's "a trip into speech science research from both an engineer’s and a phonetician’s perspective. We will explore how humans produce speech, how we scientifically describe speech sounds, and how engineers translate them into technical systems to learn more about this amazing human ability." 7 pm at Putnam's in WRJ.
It features three academics—Alex Aviña (Arizona State), Benjamin Smith (U of Warwick), and Adela Cedillo (U of Houston)—who've just published one of the first scholarly assessments of the now-dominant Morena Party. They'll be talking about its rapid rise to power and how President Claudia Sheinbaum might manage the influence of cartels and defend Mexican sovereignty. 4:30 pm in Filene Auditorium and on YouTube.
The poet, essayist, and children's book writer is the poetry chair at Georgia Tech and the author, among other things, of is the author of
The Trees Witness Everything
and
Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief
. She'll be in the Sanborn Library at 4:30 pm today as part of the Cleopatra Mathis Poetry and Prose Series.
It's one of a few public talks that are part of this week's residency of Buddhist monastics from Deer Park Monastery in CA. The talk will introduce the legendary Zen Buddhist master, who founded the Plum Village Tradition of Engaged Buddhism "and is world-renowned for his spiritual leadership and body of work as a scholar, poet, peace and environmental activist." Rollins Chapel, 5 pm.
The NH storyteller and
host of Our Hometown on NHPBS has a book out on town meeting, and will be—as you'd expect—telling stories about
the rituals, traditions, and history of town meeting, "including the perennial characters, the literature, the humor, and the wisdom of this uniquely New England institution." 6:30 pm in the Mayer Room and on Zoom.
The Tuesday poem-in-prose.
I feel that a man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees.
— William Blake, from an August 16, 1799 letter to Reverend John Trusler.
"Nowhere does Blake’s singular genius and orientation of spirit shine more brilliantly," she writes.
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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