GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, slightly cooler. We start off in the mid-30s today, but with mostly clear skies should be on the way toward the mid 60s pretty quickly. High pressure is settling in, so while winds will still be from the northwest, they won't be as strong as yesterday. Clear skies again tonight, low to mid 30s.From a ruby-crowned kinglet (0.23 oz) to bald eagles (9.5 lbs). Spring migration, writes photographer Jim Block in his latest blog post, "is an exciting time for birds. And bird photography." So he's trying something different: showing off the birds he's photographed over the past few weeks in order of weight. The warblers are pretty light, too, and even kestrels and some of the hawks. Jim doesn't crack a pound until he gets to the mergansers. The big jump is from cormorants and turkey vultures (weighing in at around 4 lbs) to common loons, which, with their solid bones, are a solid 9.Acting to interim: Sammy McCorkle will coach Dartmouth football for 2023. The school made the announcement yesterday in a DartmouthSports.com piece by Rick Bender, as head coach Buddy Teevens continues to recover from the March bicycle accident that cost him a leg. McCorkle, who has coached under Teevens for 18 years, took over spring practice at the start of April; the team's season begins Sept. 16 in this year's Granite Bowl at UNH. Says athletic director Mike Harrity, "Sammy has done a remarkable job leading the team during this challenging time."Faced with rising construction costs, UV Habitat shifts direction with multi-unit proposal in Weathersfield. Traditionally, notes Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News, Habitat for Humanity volunteers have focused on constructing single homes. But with material costs rising, "We can no longer build a single family home affordably,” says executive director Eva Loomis. Now, Sauchelli reports, the group has bought a 2.2-acre parcel along Route 5 from Leb-based realtor Deb Roberts and her son, Sean, aiming to renovate an existing duplex, turn a cottage into a duplex, and build a triplex on the site of an old restaurant.Hanover High students will launch high-flying balloons to collect eclipse data for NASA. HHS is one of five high schools (and a bunch of colleges) chosen by the space agency for the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project during October's "ring of fire" eclipse and next April's total solar eclipse. The HHS team will be launching 12-pound payloads that include live-streaming cameras feeding data to a ground station and back to NASA. Right now, science teacher Kevin Lavigne tells WCAX's Melissa Cooney, the students are learning soldering and other skills, programming software, and testing balloons.SPONSORED: You'll find the perfect Mother's Day ideas at Long River Gallery! From nature guides to gift cards, lavender sachets to adorable trinket trays for Mom things, the options for local gift ideas at Long River Gallery are endless. In honor of Mother’s Day, we are offering one-of-a-kind Amanda Ann Palmer miniature vases for only $20, perfect for a single blossom hand-picked from your Mom’s garden through May 13th. Check it all out at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Long River Gallery.A solar-powered stage, reusable cups and plates, beer and wine from kegs—oh, and a day full of music. That's the Imagine Zero Music Festival coming up this Saturday in Brandon, VT. It's the brainchild of two Woodstock guys, Ben Kogan and Cliff Johnson—who met a year and a half ago, writes Tom Huntington in the Herald/Times Argus, and "became fast friends while discovering a mutual passion for both music and eco-friendly initiatives." The festival aims to be both waste-free and carbon emissions-free; acts include LA rockers Dawes, Kat Wright, Myra Flynn, Kogan's own band, and others.VT Book Awards go to Corinth's Zoë Tilley Poster, three others. The winners were announced Saturday, writes Mary Ann Lickteig in Seven Days. Poster won the children's lit award for The Night Wild, her first picture book, which she both wrote and illustrated. Montpelier novelist Kathryn Davis took home the creative nonfiction award for her memoir, Aurelia, Aurélia, while Caren Beilin's Revenge of the Scapegoat won the fiction award. Poet Bianca Stone won the award in poetry for her collection, What Is Otherwise Infinite.Spider-Verse, Cocaine Bear filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller announced as Dartmouth commencement speakers. The two, both Class of '97, met at Dartmouth, spent a year trying to develop Saturday morning television for Disney—"Well, we pitched a bunch of things that were inappropriate for children,” Lord told the alumni mag in 2019—and then began catching breaks. They'll be joined on stage by honorary degree recipients Gilda Barabino, president of Olin College of Engineering; U of AZ sociology prof Jennifer Carlson, Howard U medical school prof Andrea Hayes Dixon; and environmental litigator Ben Wilson.SPONSORED: A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam celebrates Johannes Vermeer’s enduring artistry with the largest Vermeer exhibition in history. While visitors have flown in from all four corners of the globe to witness it, you can enjoy a private view, guided by the museum director and the curators of the show in a new Exhibition on Screen film at the Hop on Sunday, May 14. Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.With hospital full "almost every day," DHMC opens new patient pavilion. In all, the VN's Nora Doyle-Burr reported over the weekend, the medical center last week opened three wings of its new building, including a 48-bed heart and vascular service and a 16-bed medical specialty care unit—sort of between a regular inpatient bed and the ICU. The building "includes features aimed at reducing strain and increasing safety for employees such as co-working spaces, respite rooms and natural light," Doyle-Burr writes, though its chief impact may lie in relieving some of the stress of bed "tightness.""Black bears often pass close by without people noticing them." So, Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast writes, "if you were out jogging in Lyme this past Friday morning, and you saw a guy in a car aiming a camera in your direction, don’t worry. He wasn’t photographing you. He was photographing the bear behind you." Tig Tillinghast got that photo as a bear was rubbing its head against a telephone pole—probably marking scent. Also out there in the woods this second week of May: bluets, red elderberry, warblers—and look! one of those fraction-of-an-ounce kinglets.Littering by someone else's tree. Unlike woodpeckers and other cavity nesters that just drop the wood chips they've excavated to the ground, black-capped chickadees usually fly a short distance away and then drop them, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog. The birds "typically seek out trees with punky wood that is soft enough for their small beaks to excavate," she writes, and then both male and females go at the wood, taking turns chipping away before emerging with a beakful. The female then takes charge of building the nest inside, laying up to 13 eggs within a day or two of finishing.NH, VT: Not the bottom, but both below average when it comes to paying school support staff. In a state-by-state report, writes Madeline Will in Education Week, the NEA found that nationally, nearly 40 percent of full-time support staff—from custodians to para-educators—make less than $25K a year. The national average is $33,177. New Hampshire averages $30,547, while Vermont also falls short, but just barely, at $33,092. (Hat tip to Stephen Berbeco and his 802Ed newsletter for noticing).Sununu signs law guaranteeing the right to interracial marriage. The measure, the Marital Freedom Act, is an effort to "get ahead of the ball," its sponsor—Democratic Rep. Ben Ming of Hollis—tells NHPR's Todd Bookman. The US Supreme Court made interracial marriages legal nationwide in its 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, but its decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade sent Ming looking to codify the right in the state. “It’s hard to explain to people that aren’t in interracial marriages...what it means to live in a world where there is the possibility that your marriage could be invalidated,” he says.And in VT, Scott signs bill barring paramilitary training camps. The measure prohibits anyone in the state from teaching firearms use or other techniques that can cause injury or death if they know—or should know—that it's "intended to be used in or in furtherance of a civil disorder.” The idea, reports Emma Cotton in VTDigger, is Senate Pres. Phil Baruth's response to the state's experience with the controversial Slate Ridge facility in W. Pawlet, where the state said it had no recourse because no laws were broken. The measure passed the legislature with no opposition from gun rights groups.Struggling with primary care shortage, VT health centers aim to create new family medicine residency. The centers, which include Gifford Health Care, aim to train up to 12 residents a year, reports Nora Doyle-Burr in the VN; the state's only existing program is at UVM and it trains six residents a year, most of whom stay in Chittenden County, Doyle-Burr writes. “It’s hard to recruit for rural family medicine because salaries are less, and rural life isn’t always appealing to new grads,” says Fay Homan, a family medicine doc in Wells River. The consortium has landed a $495K federal grant to gain accreditation.“We are sort of climate witnesses.” It’s hard to know which is more impressive: the isolation that Hilde Fålun Strøm and Sunniva Sorby embraced through 18 months in the Arctic, or the connections they've built around the world. In Sierra, Heide Brandes writes that the two citizen-scientists spent a year and a half in a Norwegian trapper’s hut with no insulation, running water, or electricity, collecting data on climate change for researchers from around the world. Now, through their Hearts in the Ice nonprofit, they connect school children to scientists, educators, and others and “find nondivisive ways... to engage in conversation with those who disagree with what we believe in.”Hey, when you've gotta make snow.... It lasts. Case in point: Some ace tele turns down Killington's Superstar the other day.The Tuesday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Today from 4:30 to 6, Dartmouth's Dickey Center hosts historian, diplomat, and former director of the 9/11 Commission Philip Zelikow, along with Kendall Hoyt, director of the Dickey Global Health Initiative's Pandemic Security Project, for "Lessons from the Covid War." The two are among the 35 practitioners and scholars who co-authored the Covid Crisis Group's new book, Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report, their analysis of how the US failed to respond adequately to the pandemic and how it can prepare better for the next one—compiled after Congress and the White House passed on the idea of creating a commission to look into the issues. At the Hanover Inn as well as livestreamed.
And at 7 this evening, the Norwich Bookstore brings in German-French author and writer and translator Tess Lewis to discuss Weber's new book, Epic Annette: A Heroine's Tale, which Lewis translated into English. Weber's novel in the form of an epic poem in free verse tells the true story of Annette Beaumanoir, who joined the French Resistance in WWII as a 16-year-old medical student, became a neurophysiologist after the war then, in the 1950s, joined Algeria’s separatist National Liberation Front, was captured and imprisoned by the French, escaped, lived in exile—separated from her children—in Algeria then Switzerland, returning to France only after an amnesty. She died last year.
The Tuesday poem.
These pools that, though in forests, still reflectThe total sky almost without defect,And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,And yet not out by any brook or river,But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.The trees that have it in their pent-up budsTo darken nature and be summer woods---Let them think twice before they use their powersTo blot out and drink up and sweep awayThese flowery waters and these watery flowersFrom snow that melted only yesterday.
—"Spring Pools" by Robert Frost.
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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