GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Yep, well... Showers likely. And lucky us: the highest rainfall amounts are expected in the Connecticut River Valley, with south and central VT and NH seeing more, northern towns getting less. It'll be like this throughout the day and into the night, with highs maybe reaching 60, low 50s overnight.Huck Cormorant. A double-crested cormorant lights out for the Territory—or, at least, floats in style down the Connecticut, past Margaret Johnston in Lyme.Hey! Henry's back! Or, actually, this week it's Lydia. Veteran Daybreak readers will remember that for about a year, nationally known author and illustrator D.B. Johnson (Henry Hikes to Fitchburg), who's a local, ran a cartoon strip here, Lost Woods. He went on hiatus for a while, but he started back up in March and now it's a pleasure to be able to write that Lost Woods is back in this newsletter. If you're a newcomer, here's an intro to the strip. And here's an easy way to catch up on the latest round. It'll run in this spot each Tuesday.Hartford may need to tear down over half of high school. In all, school facilities manager Jonathan Garthwaite says, 60 percent of the high school and the attached career and tech center are contaminated with PCBs, including in cinder-block walls: “These are areas we have to demolish. There’s no way around it." In the Valley News, Liz Sauchelli dives into the issue and where the money might come from. "None of us in this building chose to have this building built when it was built, and we sure as hell didn’t choose to have contaminants used in its building,” Hartford High Principal Nelson Fogg told the school board.How one Dartmouth prof turned back (some) online hate. It began last May, when the trailer for the video game Assassin's Creed Shadows debuted with a Black samurai in 16th-century Japan. Angry gamers from all over the world piled on Japanese culture prof Sachi Schmidt-Hori, a narrative consultant—even though the character, writes the AP's Holly Ramer, was based on a real person. Instead of ignoring it all as gamemaker Ubisoft suggested, Schmidt-Hori engaged her critics both online and in one-on-one Zoom calls. It was "pretty brilliant in...stopping that toxic train in its tracks" says a UVM prof.SPONSORED: You can help someone right now! Hearts You Hold is a locally based nonprofit that supports immigrants, migrants, and refugees across the US by asking them what they need. Right now, we've got requests from a Dominican immigrant in Lebanon trying to get his feet under him, farmworkers in Grafton and Orange counties who need clothing or gear like gloves and boots, and young and expectant mothers in Vermont who need diapers and other basics. At the burgundy link or here, you'll find people to help from all over the world. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.Porcupine pups. They're entering the world right about now, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog: "eyes open, incisors and premolars erupted, quills present and functional (after they dry)." They can't climb trees, so their moms leave them at the base of the trees in which they feed, "traveling down to the pup to nurse it. Young pups remain with their mother until fall, when the breeding season arrives, at which time they disperse."
SPONSORED: Celebrate spring & community-supported agriculture with Honey Field Farm! Choose from flexible Free Choice CSAs, curated Meal Kits (Omnivore & Vegetarian), Cut Flowers, and organic Produce Shares. Don’t miss your chance to sign up for a CSA by May 15! And join us for the Mother’s Day Plant Benefit with the Norwich Public Library, May 10–11, 10am–4pm at 55 Butternut Road, Norwich. A portion of all plant sales supports library programs. It’s a great way to celebrate moms and community! Support local farms, eat well, and grow something beautiful! Sponsored by Honey Field Farm.“You are NOT just a name on this wall!” That's written on the back of a photo of a young man from Michigan who died in Vietnam in 1968, part of an exhibit at the NH State House of items that were placed at the foot of the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall when it was displayed in NH in the summer of 1990, writes Steven Porter in the Globe's morning newsletter. Hosted by Secretary of State David Scanlan and State Archivist Ashley Miller, it'll be up through Memorial Day. “We don’t want these people to be forgotten,” Senate Pres. Sharon Carson told colleagues last week.In NH, loons and moose duke it out. For license plate real estate, anyway. InDepthNH's Paula Tracy reports on a proposal for a new loon plate—and why Fish & Game isn’t wild about it. For one thing, NH’s longstanding moose plates have raised a boatload of money—around $34 million—for the five agencies that benefit from the program, including Fish & Game, and a loon plate might eat into that revenue. Plus, the funds that loon plates raise wouldn’t actually go to any of those five agencies, but instead to fighting the blue-green cyanobacteria that’s wreaking havoc on New Hampshire lakes.Turns out, solar panels are valuable enough to steal. That's what the Sycamore Community Garden in Concord discovered last week, writes Catherine McLaughlin in the Monitor (via Granite Geek, no paywall). Ordinarily, garden board president Ruth Heath says, groundhogs are the biggest menace. But three years ago, the garden installed a small solar array to power a system delivering water to its 168 plots—and now it's gone. "I thought, ‘Who would come all the way out here and take these?’” Heath says. “I was proven wrong.” The garden's on state property, so the NH State Police are investigating.VT's climate Superfund law gets a new challenge: from 24 other states. Last week, the US Dept. of Justice sued the state over its first-in-the-nation bid to make oil and gas companies pay for the costs of climate damages. That suit parallels one filed by the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—and now, reports Olivia Gieger in VTDigger, a coalition of states led by West Virginia has joined the API/Chamber suit, arguing that the federal Clean Air Act preempts the state law. Gieger outlines the issues raised by the suits, and checks in with two lawyers who back the VT law.Ethan Allen's image problem. The 250th anniversary of the Green Mountain Boys' capture of Fort Ticonderoga is on Saturday—and somehow, the question of whether their leader was "a hero or a humbug," as one 1892 writer put it, still hasn't been settled. Racist and slaveowner? Abolitionist? As Kevin O'Connor writes in VTDigger, you can find both assertions online—but as Angie Grove, executive director of the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum, tells him, “nobody has any sources for them" because the actual research is paltry. O'Connor looks into the claims, counter-claims—and need for good scholarship.Wait. People do this? It's called "indoor skydiving" and it requires an enclosed wind tunnel. Fun and mesmerizing all on its own. And now, of course, there are world championships—for, among other things, what amounts to synchronized aerial dance, which is officially known as Dynamic 4-Way. Here's the Singapore team's gold-medal-winning routine from last week.The Tuesday Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Reynolds, a "reformed" landscape designer who lives in (and will be talking from) Ireland, is both the creator of a group and a book called "We Are the ARK", which aims to "restore the Earth’s native plant and creature communities 'patch by patch.'" 1 pm today at the Montshire as well as online.
The final VT Center for Ecostudies' monthly talk for the season at Putnam's vine/yard in WRJ features Dailey, a restoration ecologist, talking about the impact of man-made dams on Vermont's rivers and about four recent dam-removal projects. 7 pm (you might want to get there closer to 6:30).
The former VT poet laureate, who lives in Putney and teaches at Providence College, reads from and talks about his two newest collections,
One as Other
and
Westminster West
.
The last of three talks in conjunction with the Howe Library, tonight's talk will look at bat behavior through the seasons: when they take to the skies; how insects' fluctuating populations affect their behavior; and the like. Dartmouth PhD students Jessica Jones and Pooja Panwar will also recorders to listen for bats, and sheet lights to check out the moth community there in the skies. 7:30 pm, rain or shine.
The Tuesday poem.
"If you sit here a long time and are realquiet, you just might get to see one of thoseblue antelope," I said to Cora. "I'd do any-thing to see a blue antelope," she said. "I'dtake off all my clothes and lie completely stillin the grass all day." "That's a good idea,"I said, "taking off the clothes, I mean, it'smore natural." I'd met Cora in the library thenight before and had told her about the blueantelope, so we'd made a date to try and seethem. We lay naked next to one another for hours.It was a beautiful, sunny day with a breeze thattickled. Finally, Cora whispered into my ear,"My God, I see them. They're so delicate, sograceful. They're like angels, cornflowerangels." I looked at Cora. She was disappearing.She was becoming one of them.
— "Rapture" by
.
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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