GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny and warming up. High pressure's settling in, winds are calm, and temps today will get to a very seasonable low or mid 80s. We'll see partly cloudy skies tonight as a warm front lifts into the region, lows in the upper 50s.Kids these days. Young birds doing what they do:
Juvenile mergansers at the Grist Mill (Blow-Me-Down Mill) in Plainfield, from Carol Majewski
And a young barred owl hanging out in a tree in Pine Park, from Anna Steele.
So far, reports Ethan Weinstein in
VTDigger
, four staff members there have "experienced heat stroke-like symptoms during the warm start to this summer." Correctional officers work in the prison's concrete buildings, state employees union head Steve Howard tells him, in “very heavy” uniforms. Like four of VT's six prisons, Springfield has no air conditioning; the legislature has allocated some money for climate control system-wide. Facilities like Springfield "were built to warehouse people, they were not built with rehabilitation and healing and transformation in mind," says a state official.
You probably think of it as a scythe, but in the
Valley News
, Steve Taylor sets us straight: "While the word scythe is the generic term for the tool, correctly the word only applies to the metal blade that cuts the crop." The sinuous handle holding the blade is the snath. There was a time, of course, when scything was how hay got cut. But that ended with mechanization, which, Taylor writes, is how scything contests—in Sullivan County, at the North Haverhill Fair, and in VT's Addison County—got started: "to showcase the old ways and to bring mirth and amusement to rural folks."
SPONSORED: “People have been blown away...” After ACL reconstruction surgery, Sarah Hils worked hard on her recovery and is feeling “stronger than ever”—back to catching fly balls, hiking, biking, and all the –ings! Read her story, “Where I Am Today” to see photos and results of all her hard work via the link above. Sponsored by Cioffredi & Associates Physical Therapy.Summer's second act. Suddenly, Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast writes, "butterflies seem to be everywhere." And not just monarchs: Great spangled fritillaries are out there, too, especially in patches of violets. And what else this first week of July? Indian cucumber, with its "funky multiple whirl growing pattern (did Dr. Seuss encounter these, when he was at Dartmouth?)"; chanterelles; red elderberries (their leaves, by the way, are laced with cyanide; and those aforementioned violets with their cool seed propulsion habits.Over at Sy Montgomery's house in Hancock, NH: paintings, books, an octopus beak, and a plastic tub with three turtle hatchlings. Blanding's turtles, to be exact—along with box turtles and a few others, they're endangered. And Montgomery, a nature writer, naturalist, and children's book author is kind of fostering them—helping them grow without having to worry about being eaten by frogs or raccoons or birds. Dave Anderson and Chris Martin, hosts of NHPR's Something Wild, visit Montgomery in the first part of a three-part series on her work and on the turtles... "bless their little hearts."SPONSORED: Oak Hill Music Festival returns next week with three exciting chamber music concerts. Oak Hill Music Festival brings together star musicians from across the country to present stunning programs featuring masterpieces by Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven, and Dvorak. Hear “Folk Music” Wednesday, July 10 and “The Romantic Virtuoso” Friday, July 12, both at 7:00 pm at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon, and “Landscapes” Saturday, July 13 at 7:00 pm at the Norwich Congregational Church. Tickets here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by Oak Hill Music Festival.Fatal fires in NH on the rise; officials point to need for smoke alarms. In all, the state's Division of Fire Safety reports, there have been 13 fire victims in the state so far this year, from 11 unintentional fires. That compares to 12 victims in all of 2023, and nine in 2022. "Investigators have noted a concerning trend where nearly three quarters of the incidents did not have working smoke alarms or didn’t have an adequate number of working smoke alarms," the state's press release notes. The fatalities spanned the state, including two from a June 6 fire in Charlestown.VT expands mandatory battery recycling. In 2016, VT’s battery recycling law—the first in the US—went into effect and the results were huge: 64,000 lbs of single-use batteries collected compared with 3,350 the year before. But recycling rechargeable batteries, like in power tools, was voluntary. No longer, reports Corey Dockser for VT Public. As of July 1, all single-use and rechargeable batteries must be brought to a waste collection center. The law considers safety as well as the environment; fires caused by lithium-ion batteries in waste facilities jumped 3,000 percent in just seven years.For some Vermont flood survivors, FEMA was the second major disaster last year. That headline atop Peter Hirschfeld's VT Public investigation puts it as succinctly as possible. Interviews with flood survivors, officials, and FEMA employees past and present show "a pattern of administrative bloat at a federal agency that, to many Vermonters, often seemed less interested in providing assistance than in finding ways to reject requests for aid," Hirschfeld reports. Including administrative costs of $78.3 million for $43 million handed out and a process so labyrinthine people think it's designed to make them give up.Woman busted for trying to smuggle eastern box turtles into Canada by inflatable kayak. Remember how box turtles, like Blanding's, are protected? They're also highly prized on the Chinese black market, reports the AP's Lisa Rathke, selling for as much as $1,000 apiece. Last Friday, Wan Yee Ng, a visitor from China, was arrested as she was about to get into a kayak on Lake Wallace, which straddles the border in the northeast corner of the Vermont; she had a duffel bag with 29 eastern box turtles individually wrapped in socks. Ng's criss-crossing of the border had attracted officials' attention.How does your garden grow? It still seems like a miracle that a fully-formed plant is packed into a minuscule seed. In a captivating time-lapse video, a gardener—and skilled photographer—in Finland films the growth of 39 plants from pip to pepper, seed to strawberry. It's 15 years of growing time in a 30-minute video. Each plant goes through its own astonishing transformation, so pick a favorite (the list is in the video’s description) and dip into whichever ones interest you. The lotus may be the most exotic, but don’t miss the humble tomato and lacy carrot. It's way more fun than watching grass grow.Oh, and you should check out the various winners of the 24th annual Hampton Beach Sand Sculpting Classic. Over on the Seacoast last week. (Note: if you're using Firefox, it may block the images, which People mag is pulling from FB.)
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
we
know what's good! Strong Rabbit's Morgan Brophy has come up with the perfect design for "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Plus you'll find the Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, as well as sweatshirts, tees, a fleece hoodie, and, as always, the fits-every-hand-perfectly Daybreak mug. Check it all out at the link!
The market, at Chapman's Place, will run on Tuesdays from 4-8 through the summer, with craft foods, produce, food trucks (including Green House Pizza Truck and Loaded Totz today) and artisan goods.
—the band that came out of a regular Monday night jam in Burlington led by alto saxophonist Dave Grippo—when musicians touring with R&B bands coming through town often stopped by to sit in.
Jean Duvivier 1937 film stars Jean Gabin as the king of the Algiers underworld—"assuredly one of the darkest and most stylish French films of the 1930s, French film noir at its most vivid and intoxicating," a reviewer for
frenchfilms.org
wrote. 7 pm in the Martha Rich Theater at Thetford Academy.
And the Tuesday poem...
This dream the world is having about itselfincludes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,a groove in the grass my father showed us allone day while meadowlarks were trying to tellsomething better about to happen.I dreamed the trace to the mountains, over the hills,and there a girl who belonged wherever she was.But then my mother called us back to the car:she was afraid, she always blamed the place,the time, anything my father planned.Now both my parents, the long line through the plain,the meadowlarks, the sky, the world’s whole dreamremain, and I hear him say while I stand between the two,helpless, both of them part of me:“your job is to find out what the world is trying to be.”
—"Vocation" by
. Who, in a 1970 essay, wrote,
A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.
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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
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