GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Warmer, mostly sunny, maybe a thunderstorm this evening. With cooler air north, warmer air south, and the front dropping south from the international border today, the big weather question is whether thunderstorms develop this afternoon and, if so, how strong they are. While we're waiting to find out, we're looking at more sun than clouds, temps reaching toward 80, winds from the south. Showers and thunder possible tonight, lows in the high 50s.Grafton Pond down under. It's been a while since Peter Bloch posted one of his nature videos, but he's back—and more meditative than ever. For those of you new to his work, he likes to put together freshwater stream-and-pond videos from above (by drone), on the surface (by kayak), and underwater (an iPhone in a scuba dive case). He's also slowing down the speed to give the result a "smooth, languid feel." He was out on Grafton last week to make an underwater-only film. This one isn't long, but wait until you're not in a hurry.Coming to 12A: Cold Stone Creamery, Planet Smoothie, and Happy Dumpling. Plus, Pearce Jewelers, Planet Fitness, and J. Crew Factory. In the Valley News, John Lippman details the changing food and retail landscape on the strip, which had been stagnating but now is filling up again. The three food spots—Cold Stone and Planet Smoothie are owned by a Canadian franchiser, Happy Dumpling by Michael Liu and Jaycee Yu, a Massachusetts couple—will go into the former NH liquor store outlet space. Meanwhile, locally owned Pearce Jewelers is leaving its Glen Road spot for space next to Target.Stolen WRJ weathervane returns to VT. The copper steam locomotive and coal tender, made in 1910, sat atop the train station until its disappearance 40 years ago. "Theft of weathervanes [is] very common," says VTrans in a press release, "as they are outside and easy to remove since they sit on a spindle to enable them to move in the wind," Recently, though, an estate consigned it to Sotheby's to be auctioned off, and that's when an organization that checks auction items against a theft database discovered it had been stolen. It was returned to the state last week. Here's the Sotheby's page for it.SPONSORED: Upgrade to timeless with the Memorial Day Sale—our biggest sale of the year! Say NO to throwaway culture and join Pompanoosuc Mills in our commitment against the 66 million pounds of furniture discarded daily in America. Enjoy spectacular savings of up to 30% on all new orders and as much as 50% off in-stock pieces. Visit us at our Upper Valley showrooms in Hanover and Thetford. Celebrate over 50 years of investing in Fewer, Better things this Memorial Day! Sponsored by Pompanoosuc Mills.This week in the woods: scarlet tanagers, way up at the top of the canopy. The strikingly colored birds like to nest and forage near the top of tall trees, writes Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast. Which means that the chance to see them easily is ending, as trees leaf out. In this week's installment, there's drama up high, as a male scarlet tanager trawls vocally for females, which attracts the attention of male rose breasted grosbeak, who dive-bombs the tanager and chases him out of the tree. But relax, the tanager gets the last laugh. Or, at least, the geometrid moth caterpillar.And speaking of males and females... Mary Holland's got a lovely close-up of a gray treefrog, atop a brief piece about how the males sing more often and for longer when they can actually see a female. "This is a good thing," she adds, "as research has found that female Gray Treefrogs choose mates on the basis of advertisement calls and prefer long calls to short calls." You can hear all sorts of frog calls at the link she includes.Look out for turtles in roadways. It's peak breeding season, VT Fish & Wildlife says, and there's a decent chance they'll be trying to cross roads, especially ones near ponds, rivers, and wetlands. In an interview with VTDigger's Sophia Keshmiri, biologist Luke Groff says it's okay to help them across the road—though it’s important to make sure it's in the direction they're headed: “We don’t move them to what we think is a better spot. We move them across the road and trust that they know best," he says. But err on the side of caution if it's large or lacks colorful markings—it may be a snapper.SPONSORED: Free music festival in downtown Lebanon this weekend! Join Upper Valley Music Center May 18 & 19 for Sing & Play Festival, celebrating our local music community with music by each other, for each other. Enjoy performances, jams, dancing, a sing-and-play-along at Harmony Park, buskers performing on the street, arts & crafts, and an instrument petting zoo. Visit uvmusic.org or the burgundy link for a full schedule and to sign up for your own slot in the busking tent! Sponsored by Upper Valley Music Center.Body of missing Mass. hiker found in NH river. Rescue teams had been looking for 65-year-old William Donovan off and on ever since his vehicle was found in the Crawford Path parking lot on April 28, but with no clue where he'd gone, were unable to direct their searches. That ended over the weekend, when hikers found gear and a jacket in the Dry River, part of the Dry River Wilderness. Yesterday morning, reports Boston's WCVB, searchers found Donovan's body stuck beneath a large boulder. Officials speculate he'd been forced off the ridge above due to high winds or bad weather.“It really gives me a lot of hope to see people sit down and have a civil conversation when they disagree about something." Martha Madsen, who lives in Hopkinton, runs an effort called New Hampshire Together, which aims to bring Granite Staters of diverse views together to hash out possible real-life approaches to the problems confronting the state. In the Globe's Morning Report newsletter, Steven Porter writes about the project—part of a national nonprofit—and what it's up to. Including in-person dialogues (alas, none on this side of the state) and a statewide "Citizens Assembly" in June aimed at boosting voter confidence in elections and reducing polarization.Over on the Seacoast, an old coal-fired power plant could become a wind power staging ground. For seven decades, coal was shipped up the Piscataqua River to the Schiller coal plant. Now, as you may remember, it's one of two NH plants (the other's Merrimack Station in Bow) that is slated to get a huge battery array. But that leaves plenty of room, writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog, and Granite Shore Power, which owns it, has a vision: become a port for the materials and logistics needed to serve the offshore wind industry—which, after years of delay, is starting to gear up.In VT data privacy bill, the seeds of a national "turning point"—and maybe of a veto. The measure, which passed the legislature as its session was winding down, aims to give individual Vermonters the right to sue data brokers that misuse their personal information. Its backers, like Bradford's Monique Priestley, hope that this will give consumers the ability to fight Big Tech privacy abuses. But as VT Public's Peter Hirschfeld reports, that provision is also what gives Gov. Phil Scott—and some VT companies—pause, raising the possibility of frivolous lawsuits. Scott hasn't yet decided what he'll do."Perhaps the most pressing news item of our time": How a tooth got into a Montpelier retaining wall. No, seriously: You'll wnat to listen. On East State Street in the state's capital, there's a wall. And along with a toy dinosaur, some sea glass, and other stuff, there's a molar embedded in it. Elvira Dana really wanted to know how it got there, so she asked VT Public's Brave Little State. Whose Burgess Brown set out, like all true journalist gumshoes, to find the answer. Brown and Dana traverse the city—first question: human or bear tooth?—in their search. Which turns out to lead them to... Tennessee.Hey there, dissectologists! Not what you think. A dissectologist is a person who loves solving jigsaw puzzles, writes Jeff Greenwald in Craftsmanship's newsletter. And if you're a fan of artisan, sometimes devilish puzzles, this is for you. Because among other things, Greenwald spends time with two companies at the apex of that world: WRJ's Stave Puzzles and Colorado's Liberty Puzzles. Stave's pieces are all hand-cut (one reason they're expensive): "Each of Stave’s cutters spends months in training and has a signature style, like handwriting. Colleagues can often tell who cut a puzzle just by looking at the cut pattern," Greenwald writes in his entertaining dive into high-end jigsaws.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
Just in time for spring, two additions to the Daybreak swag store. We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
we
know what's good! Strong Rabbit's Morgan Brophy has come up with the perfect design for "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Plus you'll find the Daybreak jigsaw puzzle (in case you're hankering for the affordable variety), as well as sweatshirts, t-shirts, a fleece hoodie, and, as always, the fits-every-hand-perfectly Daybreak mug. Check it all out at the link!
If you pay attention to northern New England architecture, you've probably run across Hubka's influential 1984 book, published by Hanover's University Press of New England. In it, Hubka detailed how changes in farming led to what's known as the "connected" farmhouses mostly built between 1850 and 1900. He'll be talking about all that—as well as southern VT examples. Register for the livestream, just show up if you want to see him in person.
Though not many, so act fast. The Australian-born acoustic guitar master has a new album out of collaborations with a dizzying array top-flight musicians—but tonight, he's solo, showcasing a style that, as LOH notes, "encompasses the range of a whole band – covering drums, bass, rhythm and lead guitar, and a vocal melody simultaneously. No loop pedals. No overdubs. Just one guitar and ten fingers." At 7:30 pm.
If you're interested, the deadline to apply is a week from today. The story should be no more than 10 minutes, must be true and autobiographical, and you'll be telling it live. Details on how to apply ("don't send essays, poems, folktales, speeches, or stand-up routines. Just tell us what your story is about and what happens in the end") at the link.
So you've got
forever
—or four days, anyway—to pull a team together. Because once 6 pm on Friday rolls around, you'll have just 48 hours to write, shoot, edit, and export an original short film (no more than 7 minutes). You'll get the prompt and film requirements Friday at 5.
And the Tuesday poem.
It was a Maine lobster town—each morning boatloads of handspushed off for granitequarries on the islands,and left dozens of bleakwhite frame houses stucklike oyster shellson a hill of rock,and below us, the sea lappedthe raw little match-stickmazes of a weir,where the fish for bait were trapped.Remember? We sat on a slab of rock.From this distance in timeit seems the colorof iris, rotting and turning purpler,but it was onlythe usual gray rockturning the usual greenwhen drenched by the sea.The sea drenched the rockat our feet all day,and kept tearing awayflake after flake.One night you dreamedyou were a mermaid clinging to a wharf-pile,and trying to pulloff the barnacles with your hands.We wished our two soulsmight return like gullsto the rock. In the end,the water was too cold for us. —
"Water" by Robert Lowell. Last week, it was Amy Lowell. This week, her distant relative (Amy Lowell's great-grandfather and Robert Lowell's great-great-grandfather were stepbrothers).
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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