GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Chance of showers, still pretty warm. Especially compared to tomorrow. There's a cold front coming through that'll drop temps a bit from yesterday, but even so we should get into the high 50s or lower 60s—with a chance of showers pretty much all day. Down into the low 40s tonight as another, stronger cold front makes its way in our direction.Too bad "ahem" only has four letters. In place of a photo today, some sweet news. You know the Vordle, the Upper Valley version of Wordle? Well, today it becomes a daily Daybreak feature. Each morning, Kevin McCurdy—he's also the guy behind the weekly News Quiz—will have a word picked out that relates to an item in the previous day's Daybreak. Just hit the maroon link. Starting tomorrow you'll find it at the bottom of the news section. Now, what do we call it? Dordle? Vordle? Cavordle?...First Wilder. Then the Upper Valley and the world? A new type of real estate venture is taking aim at the region's affordable housing crisis, writes Sidenote's Li Shen. The Livable Real Estate Cooperative grew from a bid to convert the N. Thetford Church into housing and has begun a demo project to build, lease, and manage an accessory dwelling unit in a Wilder home, sharing proceeds with the owner. Its board includes former Thetford SB member Nick Clark, state Rep. Jim Masland, Leb Councillor Karen Liot Hill, NeighborWorks staffer Conicia Jackson, Woodstock Community Trust president Jill Davies, and Fairlee developer Jonah Richard.“Pretty dark for a rosé, and full-bodied, with cherry, raspberry, vanilla and spice flavors." Reviewers take note: That's from a Dartmouth AI system. And wine and beer is just the start. For the last few years, the computer science team of Keith Carlson, Allen Riddell, and Dan Rockmore has been training the system to write "opinionated text about vast product classes," Dartmouth News's David Hirsch reports. They succeeded. Then they headed over to Tuck to see what they could do with it. The consensus from the business profs: They can disrupt the online review marketplace."Why voluntarily submit to experiencing a 27-centuries-old conflict in your free time?" That's the question White River Valley Herald theater reviewer Charlie McMeekin asks about going to see An Iliad at Shaker Bridge Theater. The reason, he says, is that it's a tour de force by solo actor David Bonanno, who holds the audience in thrall for 90 minutes. "Bonanno deftly uses all the skills of performance: timing, facial expression, genuine eye contact with the audience, movement, physical commitment, intentionality, and silence," McMeekin writes—still impressed by the long standing ovation Bonnano drew.SPONSORED: HACTC Tech Camp coming in June! The Hartford Area Career and Technology Center (HACTC) is holding its Summer Tech Camp June 20-24 for students entering grades 7, 8, and 9 in the fall. They will explore ten hands-on activities in one week! Past activities have included photography, creating edible centerpieces, basic welding, changing a tire, basic first aid, and more. The camp registration fee is $50. Hit the maroon link for more info and a camp application. Sponsored by the HACTC.Police, family of slain Concord couple appeals for public's help. As you may have seen, the bodies of Djeswende and Stephen Reid were discovered on a trail last week with multiple gunshot wounds. Steve Reid grew up in Concord and had a 30-year career in international development; Wendy Reid, who grew up in West Africa, helped recently arrived refugees resettle in this country. Police are asking anyone with video surveillance systems in areas where the Reids walked to provide footage. NBC Boston has a helpful rundown of what's known so far.Signing bonuses, job fairs... Is this the new normal for NH school districts? Facing "an unprecedented number of job openings" for the 2022-23 school year, reports NHPR's Sarah Gibson, districts are trying desperately to rebuild staff—and using some of their newly won federal funds to do it. Though needs run the gamut—from "paras to plumbers,” as one superintendent put it—a lot of teachers are leaving. “It’s hard to understate the cumulative effect of abuse, and I don’t use that word lightly,” says one Hollis-Brookline social studies teacher, of the political pressure teachers have been under.NH's $100 million affordable housing plan on hold. That's because last week, the Executive Council voted 5-0 to put off approval for Gov. Chris Sununu's proposal to use federal funds for low- and middle-income rental housing. Council members, reports NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt, were concerned about a lack of "concrete guarantees" that the money would go to affordable housing. Now, Sununu and business commissioner Taylor Caswell are trying to reassure them—but refusing to restructure the program, arguing that it needs flexibility to be effective.Here be dragons. But on snowboards? Yep, on a 1994 trail map from King Ridge, the Sutton NH ski area that shut down the following year. "I just can’t get enough of this wacky medieval-steam-punky artwork that the artist has so eloquently created," writes the all-things-ski site Unofficial Networks. "I feel like [map] should have kept that place afloat for years to come alone."VT cannabis growers, waiting for state licenses, are losing patience. And at the rate that the cannabis control board is reviewing license applications, VT’s October launch of a legal weed marketplace is increasingly in doubt. According to Seven Days’ Sasha Goldstein, of 83 applications sent in, so far only two are under review. Licenses were expected to be issued by May 1—and won’t be. And the growers, who need to start growing now if they hope to have product by fall, are getting testy with state officials. Adding to the delay, the FBI has rejected VT’s request to conduct applicant background checks.Chair chooses fine moment to remind owner that law requires tying down loads. So this Vermont state trooper was tooling along the highway behind a pickup on Thursday with dashboard cam running when an unsecured chair lifted out of the bed in front of him—and flew right into his windshield. "Luckily, no one was injured, but the cruiser sustained significant damage," the VSP writes on its FB page accompanying the video. The pickup driver got a ticket.Where does plastic go after it’s recycled? Not where you’d expect. A thorough report in the UK by Bloomberg’s Kit Chellel and Wojciech Moskwa pulls back the curtain on “a netherworld of contractors, brokers, and exporters” who profit handsomely off the single-use plastic waste that retailers recycle. To find out what happens after supermarket chain Tesco ships off the bags and wrappers its shoppers have returned for recycling, the reporters placed digital trackers inside a few plastic items. From London to a Polish waste-broker facility…to a cement factory? It’s not all as green as we’d like to believe.
And the numbers...
On Friday, Dartmouth reported there had been 580 active cases during the previous 7 days, compared to 525 last Tuesday. The college reported 347 undergrads (+30), 127 grad and professional students (+3), and 106 faculty/staff (+21) had active cases over the previous week. Updated numbers tomorrow.
NH cases continue to rise,with a 7-day average now of 296 new cases per day, versus 284 on Thursday. The state reported 425 new cases Friday, 333 Saturday, 414 Sunday, and 173 yesterday, bringing it to 308,446 in all. There were 3 deaths reported during that time; the total stands at 2,475. Under the state's rubric of reporting only people actively being treated for Covid in hospitals, it reports 22 hospitalizations (+5 since Thursday). The NH State Hospital Association reports 85 inpatients with confirmed or suspected cases (+11 since Thursday) and another 34 Covid-recovering patients. Meanwhile, the state reports 225 cases in Grafton County (-93 since Thursday), 99 in Sullivan (+1), and 180 (-8) in Merrimack. In town-by-town numbers, it says Hanover has 121 (-78); Lebanon 26 (-10); Claremont 25 (no change); Plainfield 21 (-2); Newport 11 (-3); Enfield 9 (-4); Charlestown 13 (+1); Grantham 11 (+1); New London 6 (-2); Lyme 7 (+1); Haverhill 5 (no change); Newbury 7 (+2); Sunapee 5 (no change); and Piermont, Orford, Rumney, Canaan, Springfield, Wilmot, Cornish, Croydon, and Unity 1-4 each.
VT's case numbers continue to rise. The state reported 337 cases Friday, 372 Saturday, and 251 Sunday, and 179 yesterday, bringing it to 122,341 total and up to a 7-day daily average of 282 compared to 261 Thursday. There were 3 deaths during that time; they stand at 629 all told. Hospitalizations are holding roughly steady: As of yesterday, 52 people with confirmed cases were hospitalized (+2), with 5 in the ICU (+2). Windsor County has seen 65 cases reported since Thursday and 217 over the past two weeks, for 9,035 overall, while Orange County gained 37 cases on the state's tally: It's at 4,986, with 116 in the past two weeks.
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Heads Up
This evening at 6, Northshire Books hosts an online conversation with science writer Riley Black about her new book, The Last Days of the Dinosaurs—which is more about the days and years and millennia after the last days of the dinosaurs. She takes readers to Hell Creek in what is now Montana 66 million years ago and what dinosaur life was like at the time...until, on what some scientists have called "Earth's worst day," an asteroid slammed into our planet. The heart of the book, though, is what happened afterward, as some species of plants and animals survived and adapted and, eventually, produced the ecosystems we know and love. Oh, and us, too.
And at 7 pm, Here in the Valley's Tuesday Jukebox is back, this week with former New Yorker and now Wilder-based singer, songwriter, actor, composer, and musician Tommy Crawford. You may remember him as Paul McCartney in the Northern Stage world premiere of Only Yesterday or as Eamon in Northern Stage’s Once, but he's also the music director and a founding member of the NYC-based band and theater collective The Lobbyists, which landed a Drama Desk award nomination for their environmental musical, SeaWife. He and HitV's Jakob Breitbach will be both livestreamed and in-person at Speakeasy Studios.
At 7:30 this evening, the Hop brings back trumpeter, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar and his 17-member ensemble Rivers of Sound as part of their first US tour since the pandemic. They'll be performing selections from their 2021 release, The Other Shore, as well as Emergence, a new piece co-commissioned by the Hop. Rivers of Sound lives up to its name: 17 musicians from a range of traditions playing the Middle Eastern oud, buzuq, santur (hammered dulcimer), jowza (spike fiddle) and percussion, along with piano, bass, drums, trumpet, saxophones, oboe, strings, and voice.
And anytime, you can check out CATV's highlights this week, including the Green Mountain Mahler Festival's performances of works related to Ukraine, including Mussorgsky's "The Great Gate of Kyiv"; dancer Marie Fourcaut and filmmaker Carla Kimball's smow-melt-stream response to a call from the Vermont Dance Alliance for videos on the theme of "Water"; and links to upcoming jamLABs—hands-on media workshops to help you up your game as an interviewer, digital musician, television writer, filmmaker...
Why was it, again, that Aprilis the cruelest month?Why was it that the wings of deathpassed over certain householdsin this particular time of year?And what is it exactly we the livingare supposed to dowith our ravaged, resurrected lives? With snow melting around crocuses,with the long days stretchingacross matted leaves, andhalf-frozen forgotten toys,April becomes those possibilitiesfirst revealed as lossin the melted clarity of the equinox,in the wandering scent of hyacinths,in the birthing of lambs in our midst.For this God passed us by, for this.I want to feel the lossesand in the midst of the terrible passagehave the courage to wave the cometon her infinite way.
— From "April," by
And with that, we bring April's poems, with their portent of disaster as well as hopeful promise, to a close. Next Tuesday it's on to May and... a theme you'll have to figure out.
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 and writers who want you to 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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