GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny again. And this time it'll be warm. But don't get used to it! It'll feel downright sultry after yesterday, as winds from the south bring us into the 60s in the valleys and upper 50s higher up, with not much in the way of clouds overhead. Until late today, anyway, as a low starts moving in and brings with it a chance of rain overnight. Low tonight in the lower 40s.Loons checking out ponds, geese sorting out territory... Must be spring. Despite the weather. Newbury photographer Ian Clark has been to the ponds up his way, and in his latest blog post he reports on the osprey and bald eagle he found, the loons that are making themselves newly at home, the Canada geese trying to make themselves at home—"This requires lots of honking, hissing and wrestling," he writes—and a variety of other birds hanging out. Oh, and a trio of otters. Plus a farm tractor spreading manure. Definitely spring.Dartmouth plans $500 million over five years on decarbonization. The initiative, labeled the "Dartmouth Climate Collaborative," was announced yesterday and aims to cut carbon emissions on campus by 60 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050, President Sian Beilock said in an Earth Day message yesterday. The plan calls for a set of infrastructure improvements—focused on energy efficiency, transitioning from steam to hot water heating, and installing geo-exchange borefields (here's an explanation from Princeton) and high-capacity heat pumps. There will also be educational and research pieces."The nicest man on any field he's working." That's how Hanover baseball coach John Grainger describes Pete DePalo, who for the last four decades has officiated countless soccer, basketball, baseball, and softball games around the Upper Valley. In the Valley News, Tris Wykes profiles DePalo—raised first in Brooklyn, then in West Leb, where he reffed his first game at 18. “The people in the stands yelling, most wouldn’t know the rules and their correct application if you asked them,” he says. “They’re cheering for someone.... With the coaches, as the bible says, a gentle answer turns away wrath.”SPONSORED: Unleash your festive side at the Montshire! On May 3rd, see the Montshire transformed with two main floors open for delicious food and drink, interactive experiences, and an exciting live auction! Join us for an evening of celebration, community, and philanthropy, all to support the Montshire’s mission of forging and empowering a community of lifelong learners through engagement with science. Sponsored by The Montshire Museum of Science.Word of the day: myrmecochory. That refers to ant-based seed dispersal, and it's just one of three fine additions to our vocabularies that Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast tosses off this week. The reason ants come into it is that bloodroot, trillium, and other spring ephemerals produce seeds attached to fatty, sticky structures called elaiosomes, which ants seem to dig—they carry them back to their nests, eat the elaiosomes, and leave the seeds. Which then sprout. And also: It turns out that bloodroot are nyctinastic—they close up at night, and may not even open on cloudy days. Kinda like a lot of us.Pump-er-lunk. If you had to transliterate an American Bittern's "I'm here!!!" call it could look like that. Sort of. Bitterns live in marshes, surrounded by dense vegetation, which makes their calls their chief means of communication, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog. "These calls are made at a very low frequency which allows them to be audible at great distances," she adds. To make that particular call, the Cornell Ornithology Lab writes, the male "inflates his esophagus by way of almost violent body contortions—opening and closing his bill as if lunging for flying insects—and then uses the stored air."SPONSORED: It's graduation portrait season! Capture authentic and connected images of your graduate and the family members who have supported them with Britton Mann Photography. Book a family photo session in May, and graduation portraits will be included in the package. Sessions are relaxed, enjoyable, and efficient. You’ll come away with vibrant, beautiful photographs that capture and preserve this exciting time in your family’s life. Sponsored by Britton Mann Photography.Welcome to town! About a year ago, some Thetfordites launched an effort to create a "user's manual" for newcomers and visitors to town. Well, it's out—most easily reachable, interestingly, on YouTube (you'll need to stop and start it to read), as well as hard copies for sale and at the town's two libraries. It covers everything from how town government works and who's who on committees and community groups (with photos) to spots to gather, businesses, and much more. For any other towns interested, organizer Cynthia Shelton says get in touch for tips and pitfalls ([email protected]).As NH legislators consider medical aid in dying, Upper Valley residents and lawmakers have plenty to say. Legislation that would bring medical assistance in dying to terminally ill patients—as is already the case in VT and ME—passed the House last month and is now in the Senate. Exploring the issue in the VN, Liz Sauchelli talks to a range of people in the region, including Hanover's Susan Gillotti, whose husband Al used VT's law in 2018—"His dying was so sweet, serene and peaceful,” she says; Leb state Sen. Sue Prentiss, a supporter; state Sen. Ruth Ward, an opponent; and APD primary care doc Brian Lombardo, who has helped patients across the river using VT's law.Border Patrol reports record apprehensions in March for Swanton Sector. That's the sector that includes upstate NY, VT, and NH, and Canada's National Post writes that Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia took to social media to report 1,109 apprehensions last month (which can include multiple apprehensions of the same person), including 408 people from India, 323 from Bangladesh, and 170 from Mexico. WMUR adds that according to the Customs and Border Protection website, "encounters were 47 percent higher than in the same month in 2023 and were 18 times the total from March 2022."NH education commissioner has "used his platform to pursue conservative grievances against the education system and individual educators." That's the conclusion that NHPR's Sarah Gibson and American Public Media's Chris Haxel come to after conducting scores of interviews and wading through public reports about Frank Edelblut's actions while in office. They found support for Edelblut among parents "who say public schools are ignoring concerns about classroom content and policies that conflict with their beliefs," and opponents who believe Edelblut is intimidating educators and schools. After their story ran yesterday, Edelblut responded with an op-ed.Live in VT and looking to save money on weatherizing, EVs, heat pumps, and more? Efficiency Vermont—working with a national nonprofit called Rewiring America—has come up with an easy-to-use calculator that shows the rebates, tax credits, and incentives, both state and federal, that are available. You enter some information, like zip code, your electric utility, and household income, and back comes an organized list: the tax credit for battery storage or rooftop solar, discounts on electric wiring expected in 2025, an upfront discount on a heat pump dryer, a range of state, utility, and federal incentives on EVs...A VT community takes to the barricades over tree planting. Okay, maybe that's a little over-dramatic. But things have gotten tense in Charlotte, where a town-sponsored effort to plant 50 trees along a public road—but on private property—has "turned into a chaotic debacle over process, contracts and how exactly the funds used to plant trees should be doled out," reports The Citizen's Liberty Darr. The town's tree warden has resigned, as have two of his deputies, charging that the "selectboard seems to be more interested in creating barriers than in facilitating our volunteer work." Darr explores the controversy."People accepted walking [during mud season] when I was a kid. They parked and they walked... Today is different." That's because expectations are different, Danville VT road foreman Keith Gadapee says. Ordinarily, VT Public's Brave Little State talks to lots of people. This month, it's just Gadapee—twice over, once in 2022, and once recently, both times as he and his crew were grappling with epic mud seasons. Back then, Angela Evancie relayed questions from listeners—why do people like dirt roads? who decides if a road gets paved? Now, Sabine Poux asks about this year's myriad mudfests.In the age of climate change, humans create shelters for endangered seals. Saimaa ringed seals in Finland used to dig dens in snowbanks to raise their pups. But a warming climate means natural snowbanks—and safe dens—are no longer a given. So Jari Ilmonen, a hydrobiologist, leads teams of volunteers across Finland’s frigid Lake Saimaa to hand-construct snowbanks, writes Matthew Ponsford in MIT Technology Review. They tweak the design each year, based on data collected from a seals’ census. Some 90 percent of Lake Saimaa’s pups are now raised in a human-made shelter.
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Today at 5:30 pm, Dartmouth's Dickey Center presents an in-person-only panel on health care access and health concerns for migrant workers at Upper Valley dairy farms. Panelists include journalist and Dartmouth Spanish lecturer María Clara de Greiff, author of Hands That Speak: Voices from Upper Valley Dairy Farms; Geisel profs Stephen Generaux and Alejandra Martínez; and college Spanish lecturer Douglas Moody. In Haldeman 41.
Also at 5:30, VINS closes out its virtual Birding for Beginners series with a talk and demonstration on "Birding by Ear." As they write, "A spring or summer soundscape...is full of wonderful bird calls, and being able to identify a single bird amongst the many sounds can seem a daunting task. This class will hone your ear to some of the most common bird calls to start building your birding-by-ear foundation." Once you register, you'll get the link.
At 6 pm today, the Norman Williams Public Library brings in legendary hiker, climber, conservationist, and writer Laura Waterman to talk about her new "memoir in essays," Calling Wild Places Home. She'll be in conversation with veteran Upper Valley nonprofit leader Mary Margaret Sloan.
This evening at 6:30, the Howe Library hosts Dartmouth English prof Carolyn Dever for her talk, “'Poets and lovers evermore': The Remarkable Story of Two Victorian Women Writers". Her subject is Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, aunt and niece and a couple, who together were the pens behind the author "Michael Field" and who kept a joint diary that eventually reached almost 10,000 pages and provides, the Howe writes, an "extraordinary story of the love, art, ambitions, and domestic life of a queer couple in fin de siècle England." In the Mayer Room as well as online.
At 7 this evening, the Chandler in Randolph presents MaMuse, the California-based folk-soul duo of Sarah Nutting and Karisha Longaker, along with their backing band. Both women have backgrounds in music therapy and consider music a healing form of art. Or, as the publicity notes go, this will be "an evening of music and song to uplift the spirits and rejuvenate the soul." Good examples of what they mean in videos at the link.
And finally, Leb's City Center Ballet—whose big Nutcracker annual fundraising effort fell victim in December to the Leb Opera House's renovations—is celebrating its 25th anniversay next month and has an online silent auction running through May 5.
And the Tuesday poem:
One afternoon the last week in AprilShowing Kai how to throw a hatchetOne-half turn and it sticks in a stump.He recalls the hatchet-headWithout a handle, in the shopAnd go gets it, and wants it for his own.A broken-off axe handle behind the doorIs long enough for a hatchet,We cut it to length and take itWith the hatchet headAnd working hatchet, to the wood block.There I begin to shape the old handleWith the hatchet, and the phraseFirst learned from Ezra PoundRings in my ears!"When making an axe handle the pattern is not far off."And I say this to Kai"Look: We'll shape the handleBy checking the handleOf the axe we cut with—"And he sees. And I hear it again:It's in Lu Ji's Wên Fu, fourth centuryA.D. "Essay on Literature"—in thePreface: "In making the handleOf an axeBy cutting wood with an axeThe model is indeed near at hand."My teacher Shih-hsiang ChenTranslated that and taught it years agoAnd I see: Pound was an axe,Chen was an axe, I am an axeAnd my son a handle, soonTo be shaping again, modelAnd tool, craft of culture,How we go on.—
"Axe Handles" by
, from his 1983 collection,
.
(Thanks, TM!)
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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