GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly cloudy, showers this morning. Or maybe all day. This rain will probably last at least for the next few hours, then there's a chance the rest of the day. At some point we move into a dry slot, but just overnight. Temps will be cooler today, with a high around 70, winds from the east. Mid-50s tonight.Here's something you don't see driving through downtown Hanover every day. Early Friday morning, a 77-foot-long, five-ton, 160-year-old white pine log got trucked from the Oak Hill ski area—felled as part of the ski trail project—to the Mink Brook preserve's gate at Brook Road, part of a Hanover Conservancy effort to replace a log crossing over the brook. It took tight choreography (loggers, truckers, the Hanover Police, a Chippers crane crew) to make it happen. "Probably the first time such a thing has moved through Hanover since the days of King George III," Conservancy director Adair Mulligan writes. Ezra McGinley-Smith's drone view at the burgundy link, a writeup on it all here.“We don’t only want to win the pay. We want to create an environment that shows student workers have power here." That's Sheen Kim, a just-graduated Dartmouth student talking about the first of three union organizing efforts the campus has seen over the past few years: the Student Worker Collective's successful bid to organize student dining workers. In The Dartmouth, Amadea Datel talks to Kim, and writes about the grad students' organizing efforts—they won their union bid in April—and the library workers' ongoing bid to forge common ground between professional and technical staff.Weekend fuel oil spill closes Sunapee Harbor; it's expected to reopen tomorrow. The Valley News's Frances Mize reports that during the refueling of a boat operated by Sunapee Cruises, about 70 gallons of diesel fuel were discharged into Lake Sunapee. “They knew they made a mistake and stepped up quickly and took steps to fix it," the NH DES's oil spill investigator tells Mize. DES and Sunapee Fire Department crews spent the weekend working on containment, and Saturday night a cleanup company "used a vacuum truck to suck 3,000 gallons of contaminated water from the harbor," Mize writes.Dartmouth scientists launch study of PFAS effect on food webs in six NH lakes. The study, funded by the state, the college, and the USGS, is aimed at understanding how the ubiquitous chemical compounds move from water and sediment into fish and other organisms—and, potentially, into humans. “The reason that PFAS is on everybody’s radar these days is because there’s a real emerging literature on the human health effects based upon toxicological studies,” study coordinator Celia Chen tells NH Bulletin's Amanda Pirani. They'll be conducting field studies this summer and hope to have a report next June.SPONSORED: The Quechee Balloon Craft and Music Festival will brighten the skies over the Upper Valley this Father’s Day Weekend, June 16 -18. Enjoy five scheduled flights, balloon glows on Friday and Saturday evenings, and tethered rides throughout the weekend. Plus: musical performances by Ida Mae Specker, Prydein, Ali T, The Outcrops and Mamadou, along with comedy magician Robert Clarke, skydivers, Frisbee Dogs, and Kids Zone will entertain spectators of all ages! Eighty craft and commercial vendors, 15 food trucks, along with a beer and wine garden. Sponsored by the Hartford Area Chamber.Bread "is nourishment and above all, pleasure." And, as it happens, it's also the theme of Susan Apel's latest Artful post. She writes about a recent Buns and Rolls class at King Arthur—"know that people 'from away' yearn for these classes"—and name-checks Lou's English muffins, Katie's Cookies' croissants, Muriel's Doughnuts, and above all, Fire Dog Breads in Keene. "Bring home everything," she writes. Oh, and also: That was an actual giant loaf of rye that threatened to take out Lucille Ball on a famous I Love Lucy episode. Susan's got the snippet as a reminder.SPONSORED: Get back to it. All of it. Feeling better isn’t just about minimizing pain. It’s about getting back to what you love. Family outings. Long walks. Home improvement projects. Dartmouth Health is here to help you get back to all of that and more. We offer the most advanced, personalized treatment plans developed by providers you can trust. Some patients may even be able to go home the same day as their surgery. Wherever you are, Dartmouth Health’s expert orthopaedic care is there for you. Make an appointment and get back to it. Sponsored by Dartmouth Health.Word of the week: Precocial. Which is pretty much what it sounds like: It's used to describe bird hatchlings that leave the nest a few hours after leaving the egg—and in the case of the young wood duck in Elise Tillinghast's third-week-of-June writeup for "This Week in the Woods," began eagerly going after insects. She also links to Chris Rimmer's article comparing precocial birds to altricial species (songbirds, hummingbirds, kingfishers, and woodpeckers), which are helpless for weeks. Also out there now: deer growing antlers, chipmunklings out of their burrows, cinammon fern, and the lovely foam-flower.How does a snake swallow prey that's larger than its mouth? That's the question Mary Holland asks on her latest Naturally Curious post, and no, they don't dislocate their jaws to do so. Rather, a snake's lower jaw is made up of two mandibles, attached by a stretchy ligament, that can move independently of each other, "slowly inching the prey into the snake’s throat." At the same time, she writes, "the snake’s head 'walks' forward in a side-to-side motion over the prey’s body, so as the prey is levered backward the head moves forward." Heck, you could get a whole Muriel's doughnut down that way.We're not even halfway through the month, and Mt. Washington's already had its snowiest June on record. Snowfall on Saturday sent the total for the month to 8.4 inches (right, that's not all that much for the mountain, only...we're talking June). By yesterday, most of it was gone, but they point out that cold air on its way could up the total this week.Trial for suspect in Concord murders postponed to October. Logan Clegg's trial for the murders of Steve and Wendy Reid last April was due to begin next month. But, reports Maureen Milliken in Manchester Ink Link, the defense wants more time to review new DNA evidence, which is being analyzed at an out-of-state lab. That decision comes after Merrimack County Superior Court Justice John Kissinger last week rejected a defense bid to suppress cellphone data used to track Clegg to Vermont, as well as his conversations with police after his arrest.In VT, Gov. Phil Scott signs one bill, allows another to become law without his signature.
The first is the annual transportation bill, which includes $140 million for paving projects, $18.2 million for bike and pedestrian-related projects, nearly $49 million for transit, and $43 million for rail. It also allows the state to sell or lease the Caledonia County Airport in Lyndon—which, reports VTDigger's Sarah Mearhoff, Burlington-based electric airplane manufacturer Beta Technologies is said to be eyeing.
Meanwhile, reports Digger's Emma Cotton, Scott allowed a bill setting statewide goals for land conservation to become law, after vetoing a similar measure last year. The new law sets a goal of conserving 30 percent of the state's total land area by 2030, and 50 percent by 2050—but also, Scott noted, makes the Agency of Natural Resources "the clear lead in the effort to achieve our conservation goals with the understanding future growth is necessary and inevitable in Vermont."
In its 10th anniversary "Vermont Atlas of Life" report, issued yesterday, the Norwich-based organization noted that only a quarter of the state's land is conserved and that as configured, this "may not be adequately protecting at-risk species." The group expects that current conservation lands will protect about 11 percent of species’ ranges by 2100, down from 13 percent today, and that the number of species found in Vermont will decline by at least 6 percent.
Sneaking Cheez-Its into the press "box" in the VT House chamber. That word "box" is in quotes because it's actually just defined by some sheets of paper with the word "media" on them—and you're not supposed to eat there, VTDigger's Sarah Mearhoff explains to colleague Sam Gale Rosen. In a vastly entertaining "Deeper Dig" podcast, Mearhoff takes him and photographer Glenn Russell behind the scenes—where they talk over the rules for reporters, why some people jeer at Peter Shumlin's gubernatorial portrait, secret doors, what the rooms look like, switchel in the cafeteria... and carpets. Lots of carpets.Stick with me, baby. Via Aeon, a KQED Deep Look video plumbs the depth of gecko feet to explain why the creatures have such an astonishing grip. It’s not suction cups or sticky stuff, but instead layers (hum along: lamellae connected to the... satae, satae connected to the... spatulae) that lead to the atoms that are the secret source of geckos’ ability to walk on almost any surface at any angle. Those atoms sync with the atoms of the surface in what’s known as Van der Waals force, and release as soon as the gecko lifts its toes. Scientists at Stanford are working on a tape that can do the same thing.The Tuesday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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Lost Woods
mug from DB Johnson for you? Or maybe a Vordle t-shirt? Or, of course, Daybreak tees, long-sleeve tees, and mugs. Check out what's available and wear it (or drink from it) proudly! Email me ([email protected]) if you've got questions.
Today at noon, VT Law and Grad School is offering an online "hot topics" talk, "Surviving the Megadrought" by Warigia Bowman, who's a summer scholar at VLGS and teaches water and natural resources law at the University of Tulsa.
Also at noon today, Vershire's Matt Hongoltz-Hetling—former Valley News reporter, author of A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear, about the Free Town Project in Grafton—will be on VT Public's Vermont Edition to talk with Mikaela Lefrak about his new book on fringe medicine, If It Sounds Like a Quack—and about VT's connection to medical quackery.
This evening at 7, online, the Mt. Washington Observatory's "Science in the Mountains" series continues with Jordon Tourville talking about "Plant Responses to Shifting Climate Across the High Elevation Areas of the Northeast." Tourville is a forest and climate scientist and a post-doc research fellow with the Appalachian Mountain Club who's been studying how climate change is affecting the distribution of plants, and in particular of the alpine treelines, as well as how the changing climate is affecting plant behavior.
Also at 7 this evening, the federal EPA is holding a public meeting in Vershire to discuss the planned Superfund cleanup of the Ely Copper Mine. It's been on the list for 22 years, and actual remediation work is scheduled to begin next year. Here's the EPA's page on background, what's been done so far, and a bit of what lies ahead. At the Vershire Town Center, 27 Vershire Center Road.
And the Tuesday poem...
What You Missed that Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade
Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listento the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She tookquestions on how not to feel lost in the dark.After lunch she distributed worksheetsthat covered ways to remember your grandfather’svoice. Then the class discussed falling asleepwithout feeling you had forgotten to do something else—something important—and how to believethe house you wake in is your home. This promptedMrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailinghow to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughtsare all you hear; also, that you have enough.The English lesson was that
I am
is a complete sentence.And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equationlook easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,and feeling cold, and all those nights spent lookingfor whatever it was you lost, and one personadd up to something.
— by
. Here's Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama
on his podcast
Poetry Unbound
, part of
On Being
.
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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