SO GREAT TO SEE YOU AGAIN, UPPER VALLEY!
Partly sunny, still warm, maybe some rain. So, the big news is that a cold front arrives today to horn in on this nice little paradise we've had going. We'll mostly feel its effects tonight, tomorrow, and especially tomorrow night, but for today, it's just bringing a slight chance of rain late this afternoon and into the evening. Mix of clouds and sun before then, temps hitting the low 70s. Upper 30s tonight. Oh, and high-level haze from the Alberta wildfires is back.A feast for the eyes. Flowering trees have to be one of the great gifts of spring.
In Hartford village, writes Linda Milman, "Every year I look for this tree—and then overnight, it came to life."
And not to be outdone, here's a magnolia in Bradford VT, from Gary Moore.
Alleged ValleyNet embezzler found, charged. The VT US Attorney's office yesterday announced that John Van Vught, 72, was arrested on Friday in Brunswick, GA. You may remember that last year, ValleyNet, which used to operate ECFiber and Lyme Fiber, discovered that Van Vught—an accountant working as a contractor—had allegedly taken $561,000 over a period of years. He was reported missing by his family last summer and hadn't been seen since. The indictment, unsealed yesterday, charges him with using the money to buy properties in GA and FL, reports VTDigger's Alan J. Keays.SoRo diner to close. After 32 years of owning and running 108 Chelsea Station, Kristen Strong has announced she's closing, reports Kassie Tibbott in the Herald. Faced with staffing shortages and other challenges the past few years, she's been getting in by 4:30 a.m. to do food prep and baking, she tells Tibbott, as well as serving as cook and dishwasher. "Sometimes," Tibbott writes, "she is also the server for the three booths, seven tables, and six bar seats." "I am one person and there are only so many hours in a day,” Strong says. She'll sell her equipment, unless a buyer for the business comes along.WRJ musical chairs. In the Valley News over the weekend...
John Lippman reported that the Haven is considering turning the vacant 25,000 Gifts building on N. Main Street into a "low-barrier" homeless shelter. The building is currently owned by CraftStudies, which has put it on the market. The proposed shelter would accommodate around 20 individuals, and would have an open-door policy for those in need of a bed, including people with active addictions. Rebuffed in its effort last year to create a similar program on its own campus after neighbors' opposition, Haven officials are meeting with nearby residents and businesses before beginning a formal town review process.
Meanwhile, CraftStudies had planned to renovate the 25,0000 Gifts building and move into it, but it "would have required extensive and costly renovation to meet the organization’s needs," Alex Hanson writes. Instead, the crafts organization is renting part of the old Kibby Building, after Funkalicious closed and Standard Company Tattoo moved to N. Main. It's got pottery, jewelry-making, and fabric studios set up.
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Both Fire Chief Scott Cooney and Police Chief Gregory Sheldon tell WCAX's Adam Sullivan that many of the calls their officers respond to these days involve multiple issues—like, Cooney says, "Domestic disturbances that also involve an overdose or substance use disorder or a mental health situation.” So, reports Sullivan, the town is looking to conduct a public safety review to "identify where more resources are needed...[and] identify local agencies that are already equipped with the skills to help."From sheep to wool to yarn. That's what a pile of students at Norwich's Marion Cross School got to watch the other day at the Norwich Historical Society, as Plymouth VT-based wool shearer Fred DePaul and his grandson, Calum, brought some sheep and a pen and showed how it's done—followed by Miriam Horowitz showing how to spin wool into yarn. Demo Sofronas was there for his About Norwich blog, and he and Mary Brownlow documented the whole thing with their cameras. Meanwhile, here's a video tutorial by DePaul (starting with how to tell a sheep's age) at MA's Hancock Shaker Village.The nuances of No Mow May. Seems like such a simple idea, right? Help pollinators, reduce emissions. What could be bad? In Sidenote, Li Shen takes a look at the question. For instance: it turns out that dandelion pollen—which wild bees like—is good for neither bee colonies nor native wildflowers. And, as Li notes, not mowing for a month and then shearing everything off "leaves pollinators with nothing, while probably killing the majority of insects that had moved into the unmown vegetation." She's got advice, including a reduced yearly mowing schedule that leaves a portion of lawn unmowed each time.“There’s a level of dedication to these volunteers that’s different from other volunteer groups." That's Lyme's Tom Frawley, who's VP of the Upper Valley Wilderness Response Team, which gets as many as 50 rescue calls a year in NH and VT, writes Frances Mize in the VN. Mize goes along for a training session up at Green Woodlands—and explores why the work's so tough. “When you think about making the personal decision about joining this team, you have to talk to everyone in your world...," Frawley says. “They have to understand what you’re jumping into, and they have to sort of jump with you.”Weekend rescue in the Whites a reminder to hike prepared. "The White Mountains are rugged and unforgiving and can still be icy and snowy this time of year," NH Fish & Game notes in a press release after rescuers carried out a 28-year-old Cambridge, MA woman wearing inadequate footwear who fell on icy patches while trying to climb Mt. Washington Saturday—first on the ascent, injuring one leg, then while trying to descend, injuring the other. It was her first hike in the Whites. The trail was covered in ice and slush and the summit saw 70 mph winds, Backpacker writes. Rescuers reached the base at 9:30 pm.A "sort of inscrutable species." Remember back in 2022, when some excited botanists in VT announced they'd found a site with the small whorled pogonia, a rare orchid that had been missing from the state since 1902? Turns out that next door in NH, they're still rare—but never went missing. They're picky, though, as Hadley Barndollar writes in a profile of the plant in NH Bulletin. They can go dormant for years at a time, and though they're found in average-aged forests with a mix of hardwoods and softwoods—hardly a rarity in NH—they like "very distinct conditions" within that habitat, Barndollar writes.Two weeks after unveiling it, NH removes historical marker on labor activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Flynn was born in Concord in 1890, and went on to organize labor protests across the country, help found the ACLU, and, for a time, lead the Communist Party. It was this last activity that spurred GOP politicians to object to the marker and to call for revising state policy. Which, reports the Monitor's Jamie L. Costa, the state did on Friday, adding language that markers could be amended or removed for reasons including "lack of historical context or references that could be seen as inappropriate.”In NH, a 17-year-old's peer tutoring program for refugee children draws attention. Riyah Patel is "a visionary," former NAMI-NH director Ken Norton tells the Boston Globe's Amanda Gokee (paywall). Patel, who came to this country from India, two years ago founded New American Scholars—which has worked with over 100 kids from all over the world living in Manchester, Concord, the Seacoast, and elsewhere. In many cases, Riyah says, "They’ve had years of disruption in education when they were spending it in refugee camps or if they were just simply moving from country to country,” and her program is finding success at keeping them from falling through the cracks. VT legislature adjourns. Actually, it did so late Friday night, writes Kevin McCallum in Seven Days, after the House and Senate at the last minute found common ground on funding a massive increase in child care funding and a "wrenching" debate over the pending eviction of homeless people from motels. McCallum runs through the major bills that passed—including the budget—and the ones that are likely to face a gubernatorial veto in coming weeks. Legislators will return next month to vote on overriding those vetoes—which will be anything but a slam dunk despite heavy Democratic majorities.A different kind of license plate game. Using federal data, Forbes Advisor has ranked states (worst to best) for unsafe driving based on six metrics, including fatal car crashes involving drunk and distracted drivers. VT comes in just behind DC for safest drivers, and the rest of the Northeast does well, too. Rag on Bay State drivers all you want, but MA ranks two slots better than NH, likely because of the smaller percentage of drunk drivers (per 100K licensed drivers) involved in fatal crashes. Heck, MA ranks better than Utah on that measure. This wasn't part of the study, but NH also ranks last among all states in seat belt use, which is why police agencies yesterday began a crackdown.The Tuesday Vordle. With a word from the region's news, but not from Daybreak.
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This evening at 7, the Howe Library hosts poet and Dartmouth prof Vievee Francis, reading from her new collection, The Shared World, and then taking part in a Q&A moderated by Left Bank Books' Rena Mosteirin. Here are ten questions Francis has already answered about the book and her writing process, from Poets & Writers.
And the Tuesday poem...
The end of springlingers in the cherry blossoms.—
By Yosa Buson, 1716-1783, translated by Robert Hass
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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