GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Clouds and sun, some rain, probably some smoke. This time it's wildfires in Ontario that are bringing in the haze, and we may see (or smell) some of it this morning, before winds pick up. Otherwise, we're looking at partly to mostly cloudy skies, temps about like yesterday (upper 60s to 70), winds from the northwest, and a chance of showers all day and night. Around 50 tonight.Not your usual crew race water hazard. Win Piper, one of Hanover High's crew coaches, was monitoring the northern end of the course on the Connecticut River Sunday during the Hanover Invitational when he noticed something bobbing in the water, headed from VT to NH. It turned out to be a young black bear. He managed to stay well away, but still got this video.A small stretch of land that "has suffered numerous conservation injustices." That's how a group of volunteers on Woodstock's Ottauquechee River Trail describe the riverside trail next to East End Park that's currently enmired in a set-to over efforts to clear it of invasives—which, a recent VT Standard article suggests, may cost it state funding for conservation efforts. In last Thursday's Standard, the various groups involved weigh in with letters to the editor that lay out the history of the disputed stretch—riprap berm, sewer conduit, town snow dump—and try to clear the air.Dartmouth launches new AI-focused center for "precision health." The idea, writes Harinia Barath for Dartmouth News, is to explore how the flood of biomedical data that can now be gathered—through genomic sequencing, molecular testing, imaging techniques, wearable monitoring devices, and more—can be used to personalize health care "by tailoring treatments and disease prevention strategies to a person’s unique biology—their genes, medical history, lifestyle, and environment." The center will be under the dean of the med school and advised by representatives from throughout the college.“When I get to a point where I feel I can’t continue, I know there’s nothing more painful that what I experienced and it pushes me to go further." That's Lebanon High senior and student-athlete Anna Numme, talking to the Valley News's Tris Wykes for a profile about how, in sports and school, she's found a refuge from years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by a male relative. From a 2019 suicide attempt, a stay at a treatment center, and years of therapy, she's become a standout rower, wrestler, and AP student. "She seems to rise to every challenge," one of her teachers tells Wykes.SPONSORED: You can better someone's life right now! Hearts You Hold is a VT-based nonprofit that supports immigrants, migrants, and refugees in a concrete way, by taking the time to ask them what they need. There are many requests waiting to be funded for people who are trying to build their lives: boots and clothing items for newly arrived migrant workers in VT, a laptop for a Ukrainian refugee, laundry cards for LISTEN to supply to Upper Valley families... Hit the burgundy link above or here, pick something to fund, and make a difference now! Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.Lake Fairlee gets a loon cam. It's trained on the loon nesting raft that VT's Loon Conservation Project installed back in 2017, after a raccoon got to a pair's nest near the mouth of Blood Brook. It's been maintained since then by volunteers from the Lake Fairlee Association and the cam—which went live last Thursday and is the first of its kind in Vermont, the association says—will help researchers monitor and the public keep track of the nesting pair. You'll find the livestream at the burgundy link (with running commentary on the side), and more about the project here. A bite that can liquefy an insect. That's what the robber fly's got, and in "This Week in the Woods," Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast reports that the first one of the season just showed up, perched on a trailside fern. They're insect and bee predators that inject their prey with enzymes, then... well, never mind. Also out there this early-June week: some signs of hope for trees whose fragile early leaves got clobbered by last month's frosts, a porcupine going to town on raspberry leaves, and blue-eyed grass, which, Elise writes, is neither blue-eyed nor a grass, but a "gorgeous little wildflower."“I half figured that I would either find this butterfly or die trying." Fortunately for us and for Bryan Pfeiffer, it turned out to be the former. After two decades of making his way to some of Vermont's remotest bogs, the VT Center for Ecostudies writes on its blog, Pfeiffer—a writer and entomologist—found what he'd been searching for: a bog elfin, "one of the smallest and most elusive butterflies on the continent," which spends most of its life high up in black spruce trees and is only detectable for a few weeks in May and early June.SPONSORED: Opera North returns! And it starts with their signature mash-up of "arias and acrobats" when Cavalcade (July 7-9) opens the Summerfest 2023 season. This dazzling circus parade of acrobats and artists pairs spectacular feats and equally stunning voices! Performed under the big top on the great lawn at Blow-Me-Down Farm in Cornish. July 7 at 7 pm. July 8 at 2 pm and 7 pm, July 9 at 2 pm. Bring a picnic or purchase Munchie Rollz and ice cream from The Lazy Cow on-site. Tickets and more information at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Opera North.Hands off those spawning sea lamprey! They spawn as far up the Connecticut as the Wilder Dam, as well as along tributaries that include the West, Williams, Black, and White rivers, VT Fish & Wildlife says in a new press release. And, unlike their cousins in Lake Champlain, they're native to those waterways and "play a vital role in the ecosystem" the agency says: filtering detritus from the water in their larval form, serving as a food source in estuaries and the ocean, and "cycling important marine nutrients into freshwater ecosystems" when they die after spawning.NH State Police seek help identifying woman found dead on I-89. Officers found her body shortly after midnight Monday morning, lying in the northbound breakdown lane near mile marker 7.2 in Hopkinton. She's described as white, with fair skin, strawberry blonde-red hair, blue eyes, between 18 and 30 years of age, 5’01”, 111 pounds, with neon green colored finger and toenails and a tattoo on the small of her back "of a bird feather with birds flying out of it." They're looking for anyone who saw a motor vehicle or suspicious person on that side of I-89 in Hopkinton late Sunday night.Phil Scott signs bill aimed at boosting housing in VT. The so-called "HOME" bill legalizes duplexes wherever year-round residential development is allowed, writes VTDigger's Lola Duffort, as well as three- and four-unit buildings if there's water and sewer. It also slightly eases the threshold for Act 250 review in state-designated downtowns, neighborhood development areas, or growth centers. In addition to effectively banning single-family zoning, the new law eases local parking space requirements and strives to steer new housing into areas that are already developed.What VT's legislative session did—and did not—accomplish on youth mental health. Middle and high school students are struggling with mental health issues, especially among girls and LGBTQ+ youth, the state's latest biennial survey shows. But as schools confront growing violence, self-harm, and other student behavior issues, reports VTDigger's Peter D'Auria, mental health resources are "few and far between." The legislature did pass a gun control measure and money for a new youth psychiatric unit, but school superintendents say youth mental health needs "large, structural changes."If you're a Keith Haring fan, you've got until Sunday. To get down to the Brattleboro Museum and check out his subway drawings and a handful of his other works, that is. "I am a little breathless from the experience," Susan Apel writes in Artful. "This exhibition makes Haring’s energy palpable, as if you are there feeling the rumble of the subway, watching over his shoulder (as many subway patrons did) as he quickly creates his drawings on the throw-away black matte paper that was used to cover expired advertising posters." The exhibition closes on the 11th.
“I have to treat every adjudication as if it’s Usain Bolt running the 100 metres.” Even if it’s just an attempt to catch the most marshmallows fired from a catapult. The Guinness Book of Records has been around since 1955, but it’s finding it harder to amaze people when they can instantly be amazed on TikTok and YouTube. The current editor-in-chief says the book is still relevant as “a kind of factchecker of the absurd.” In The Guardian, Imogen West-Knights writes about criticism of GWR’s slide toward commercialism, the people who try to break records—she goes for standing on one leg blindfolded—and the team of adjudicators whose job it is to observe those record-breaking attempts.You know what? I don't care if it was faked somehow. Neither, apparently, does the internet, which now has a crush on this flying squirrel.The Tuesday Vordle. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak.
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This evening at 6, the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock hosts local poets Laura Foley and Sarah Dickenson Snyder as they read from and talk about their latest collections: Foley's It's This and Snyder's Now These Three Remain, both of them contemplative but acutely tuned into the world around. Following the formal reading, the NWPL will open the evening to attendees who would like to share a poem of their own—so come prepared if you're of a mind to read.
And the Tuesday poem...
Why does this light force me backto my childhood? I wore a yellowsummer dress, and the skirtmade a perfect circle. Turning and turninguntil it flared to the limitwas irresistible . . . . The grass and trees,my outstretched arms, and the skirtwhirled in the ochre lightof an early June evening. And I knew thenthat I would have to live,and go on living: what sorrow it was;and still what sorrow ignitesbut does not consumemy heart.
— "Evening Sun" by
.
And a correction from yesterday: The title of Elizabeth Borowsky's song cycle—and of the poem from which it draws its name—is "The Nature of Life," not "The Music of Life." Though nature and life can, of course, both be pretty musical.
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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