GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Warmer, waaarrrmer... There's this funny thing that happens when we get into a weather pattern like this: The Weather Service's explanations of what's going on get very short. In winter, it's volumes. Today, barely a paragraph. The high pressure responsible for this unbelievable weather is drifting eastward. A bit warmer today: highs in the mid-80s. Nice and cool again tonight.“A couple minutes later and I don’t think we would have made it.” That's George Akroyd telling the VN's Jordan Cuddemi about the fire in the Sharon apartment he shared with his fiancée, April Melendy, and their 3 1/2-year-old son. The couple hoisted their son down from the burning second-floor apartment, then jumped. Akroyd had minor burns; Melendy fractured a vertebrae. (VN, sub reqd)"If someone is having any kind of hard time — death in the family, bad grades, parent arrested, bad publicity, anything, really — you can always say, 'I’m thinking about you.'" That's Norwich resident Corlan Johnson in The New York Times the other day. The Times asked readers for some of their life's wisdom. Johnson, whose husband died while out for a ski around Norwich on Christmas Day in 1985, makes the collection with "Learn How to Offer Condolences."Don't trust your GPS around the Upper Valley. The VN's Sarah Earle is out with a fun little piece about all the roads -- Class 6 in NH, Class 4 in VT -- that "go from passable to impassable pretty quickly,” as Plainfield SB member Rob Taylor puts it. There are people who try to get over Grantham Mountain to Meriden village, for instance. The snowmobile trails that somehow look just fine on a GPS. The roads running through what turns out to be a swamp. But hey, someone's got to keep the region's towing services in business....French owner of NH's signature yogurt-maker buys VT's signature yogurt-maker. This is sort of in the who knew? category. Stonyfield Yogurt in Londonderry is owned by the French giant Lactalis Group. And it's just bought Green Mountain Creamery in Brattleboro, which was owned by the Bavarian dairy company Ehrmann AG. Head spinning yet?Best state to start a business? Not Vermont. And definitely not New Hampshire. The personal finance site WalletHub crunched a bunch of numbers, including labor costs, accessibility of financing and human capital, and cost of office space, and then ranked states on how well they support business creation. VT? It's 43rd. NH? 48th. Only NJ and RI come in after it. At the top: Texas, Utah, and Georgia.And while we're on personal finance sites with cute names... Smartasset has crunched Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers to find the fastest-growing job in each state. In NH it's Separating, Filtering, Clarifying, Precipitating, and Still Machine Operators, which jumped 188%, to 490 total. These are basically people who operate stills, evaporators, and refinery machines of all sorts. In VT, it was Mail Clerks and Mail Machine Operators not working for the postal service, who also now number 490. NH delays Medicaid work requirement. You may remember that the state's been fretting because it has new work rules for Medicaid recipients, and nearly 17,000 of them had failed to provide proof that they met these new rules. The letters notifying them they'd be losing their benefits were due to go out tomorrow. But yesterday, Gov. Chris Sununu announced a delay until September, giving the state time to send employees door-to-door.VT DMV stopped sharing info with ICE in 2017. Yesterday's blockbuster pieces in The Washington Post and NYT have civil liberties activists up in arms. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for VT Gov. Phil Scott says the state stopped sharing driver's license data in May, 2017 with immigration officials looking for undocumented immigrants. VT is one of three states that issues them licenses.UVM researchers combine with winemaker and farmer to put sheep in vineyards. It's common in New Zealand, where sheep outnumber people six to one: wineries avoid mowing and pesticide use, sheep farmers lower their feed costs. Now Shelburne Vineyard winemaker Ethan Joseph and sheep farmer Mike Kirk have brought the practice here, after seeing an Instagram post about UVM researcher Meredith Niles' work in New Zealand.The Taftsville General Store may have closed, but around VT, other general stores are finding ways to make it. The VT Preservation Trust has been working with groups in Shrewsbury, Albany, Putney, Rupert, and East Calais that are trying to get their stores running again. But it's tough. “Regardless of how loyal your customers are — and they love the idea of having a country store in their town — when it comes to bottom line and looking at your wallet and looking at your disposable income, they’ll by and large go to the better deals,” says one owner. You can't put anything over on alert Daybreak readers. Several of whom pointed out that that was no Luna Moth looking like a sneaker yesterday... though they were stumped on what it actually was. Michael Sabourin, moth specialist and president of the Vermont Entomological Society, comes to the rescue: It's a Big Poplar Sphinx Moth -- which, he says, is one of our larger sphinx moths. Which are already pretty big, as moths go. You learn something every day. SO... A TUESDAY NIGHT...Today's the kick-off for "#SayHerName: Intersectionality and Violence Against Black Women and Girls,” a summer lecture series at Dartmouth. At 4:30, Beth Richie, head of the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice at U of Illinois/Chicago will talk about "Black Feminist Responses to Gender Violence." At 6 she'll be joined by her sister, Dartmouth Board of Trustees Chair Laurel Richie, to talk about their experiences as black women in academic leadership. Full series writeup at the link.You could break out your lawn chairs and a picnic basket and head to the Fairlee Common for some Dixieland with the Steel Pier Jazz Band. The band's led by trombonist Woody Strobeck, a longtime music teacher in NY and then VT, who has decades of playing New Orleans-style jazz on Lake George riverboats under his belt. Starts at 6:30 pm.Or take that picnic to the upper common in Strafford for the Stone Cold Roosters. "If there can be such a thing as a modern old-school country band, [the Roosters] are it," says Seven Days. Led by the multi-talented Colin McCaffrey, with Dr. Burma's Ted Mortimer on lead guitar, the Roosters swing across country, swamp-rock, hillbilly-funk, blues, honky-tonk, western swing.... There's no way you're staying sitting down. Starts at 6.Or you might want to head for the Howe, where Hanover writer Rachel Barenbaum reads from and talks about her first novel, A Bend in the Stars. "It's somehow a history of science, a story of injustice, a romance novel, and an adventure tale all at once," NPR's Ari Shapiro said a few months ago. And it's complicated: Siblings in Russia in 1914, one of them a physicist racing across Russia to photograph that year's solar eclipse so that he can prove that gravity bends light, the other his sister, undertaking an equally harrowing journey fleeing persecution. Starts at 7 pm.And speaking of WWI, which we sort of were, here's Siegfried Sassoon's Idyll to start the day...
In the grey summer garden I shall find youWith day-break and the morning hills behind you.There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings;And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings.Not from the past you'll come, but from that deepWhere beauty murmurs to the soul asleep:And I shall know the sense of life re-bornFrom dreams into the mystery of mornWhere gloom and brightness meet. And standing thereTill that calm song is done, at last we'll shareThe league-spread, quiring symphonies that areJoy in the world, and peace, and dawn’s one star.See you tomorrow.
If you like Daybreak and would like to help it keep going and evolve, please hit the "Support" button below and I'll tell you more:
And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! You can subscribe at:
Thank you!