GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Fog in the valleys to start, then sunny. That cold front moved through overnight, leaving behind cooler, drier air for a couple of days. Plenty of sun today, highs in the lower 70s, down to 50 or so tonight.
Found art. Both works are in Norwich, one usually on the wing, the other definitely not.
“We used to have a parking area across the street on our property,” writes Cheryl Lubin. “Last year, we dug the gravel out and restored some top soil. My husband, Dave McNally, researched and planted over 30 varieties of native pollinator plants last fall. It’s starting to fill in and the pollinators are loving it!”
And Tony Luckino writes, “I pass these two trucks every day on Route 5. If someone were to remove the blue tarps and cut the grass, could it be considered art/sculpture? They are pretty cool, especially the red Ford. They’ve been there for years!”
“I can hear you looking.” It’s back to DB Johnson’s Lost Woods, where Lydia’s painting en plein air and Henry’s filled with curiosity, admiration, and just a smidgen of snark.
For E. Barnard, a custom-built public privy. It’s outside the E. Barnard Church, which was built in 1834 and is facilities-free indoors. “I don’t know the last time there was a privy outdoors, but I’ve lived in the village since I was an infant and I’m almost 70,” Randy Leavitt, the composting outhouse’s creator, tells Robert Shumskis in the VT Standard. “That means that once people go to church, they don’t have a bathroom. We have tens of church services there in the summer, we’ve had two memorial services, we’re having two weddings there this summer…but no bathroom.” It’ll have a stained-glass window, 1834 moldings, and white clapboards. “It’s like building a dollhouse, in a way,” Leavitt says. A really welcome one.
As budget cuts continue, Claremont school board meeting gets testy. Facing mounting deficits, last week the board decided not to approve 19 new teaching positions. Then, at a public meeting last night, reports WMUR’s Maria Wilson, it authorized cutting 20 more jobs, including support staff. And, attorney Jim O’Shaughnessy told the audience, "If people don't come forward with money, there are not going to be fall sports, winter sports or spring sports.” The crowd was angry. “You knew we were in debt and you're not doing anything until now when we are literally in the hole," said Stevens High senior Lilianna Clarke.
SPONSORED: The Kearsarge Food Hub seeks an executive director! A nonprofit serving the greater Kearsarge region, we envision a resilient, connected community where everyone can access healthy local food, farmers are supported, the land is nourished, and all share a common sense of place. We’re looking for an Executive Director who is strategic in mind, grounded in values, and leads with the heart. If you’re a strategic thinker, a people-centered leader, and are passionate about the local food system, education, food security and community … then we would love to connect with you. Details at the burgundy link. Sponsored by the Kearsarge Food Hub.
Redevelopment marches on in Fairlee. In his most recent Brick + Mortar newsletter, small-town developer Jonah Richard lays out a series of projects he and his business partners are pursuing as they bring new housing and retail space to the town. Tomorrow night, they’re bringing to the development review board a proposal for two, three-story mixed-use buildings on the site of the former Colby Block, a commercial block that burned down in 2007. “We have a dearth of commercial space and this will help take the pressure off of it,” the town’s zoning administrator tells Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News. In addition, Richard outlines the town’s first affordable housing project and a potential new four-unit apartment—if he can install septic under the parking lot
Dartmouth proposes two new residence halls on W. Wheelock closer to river. They would sit at 43-37 W. Wheelock and offer mostly “four-bedroom, apartment-style units for nearly 400 juniors and seniors,” writes Emma Roth-Wells in the VN. The college is already well on the way to a new residence hall on a site just up the hill, Russo Hall, a five-story apartment-style structure that will add 285 beds. As Roth-Wells notes, along with the renovation of existing housing and 21 new units across from Sachem Village, the college will be well on its way to its goal of 1,000 new beds if this latest project is approved. It goes before Hanover’s planning board this evening.
Leb PD credits community tips in drug, weapons busts. The cases were in West Leb, where a Piermont man was arrested Aug. 15 for possessing and transporting crack and other drugs, and on Saturday a tip led police to a West Hartford, CT man with cocaine and weapons. But as Chief Phil Roberts tells WCAX, the shout-out to the public comes against a backdrop: “With illegal drug activity, you also see the increase in violence. And that is what we are starting to see locally here in Vermont and New Hampshire, and right here in the Upper Valley, over the past few weeks. So, our message to the public is, here in Lebanon, we ask for the public’s help,”
VT State police release details in last week’s police shooting of Newport, NH man in Springfield, VT. The incident involved Vincent Franchi, a Springfield police officer, and Bryan Jalava, a Windsor County sheriff’s deputy, who were standing outside their vehicles Thursday night as part of an investigation when James Crary, 36, started driving toward them. Both men fired at Crary; an autopsy report released Saturday revealed they struck him in the head. Both officers are on leave as the VSP investigates. As VT Public reports, it’s the second fatal police shooting in southern VT this summer.
At the Chandler in Randolph, Jim Sardonis works that fit indoors. You know Sardonis’s sculptures: The Randolph artist is the guy behind the “Reverence” whales’ tails along I-89 in S. Burlington, the eye-widening bronze “Whale Dance” in Randolph, the “Father and Son” hippopotamus bench in Brookfield, and as the Rutland Herald’s Mary Gow writes, “many pieces in our region’s parks and hospitals.” “Jim Sardonis: Natural Forms” features a half-century of his work, including a bronze model of his “Swimming Retriever” bench (2011) at the North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine, as well as the stories behind many of them. Runs through Sept. 13.
Green Mountain Stage Race to finish this year in… Canaan, NH. The four-day bicycle race, billed by the Green Mountain Bicycle Club as “arguably the biggest stage race in New England,” usually holds its capstone race, the Burlington Criterium, in, well, Burlington, VT. But as NBC5’s Yamuna Turco reports, that city’s streets have been thoroughly disrupted by road construction downtown. So this year, the final stage will be the Canaan Criterium, held at the Canaan Race Track on Orange Road. Organizers are expecting 550 racers for the Labor Day Weekend event from as far afield as Alaska and Europe.
In envelope-filled boxes in Wilder, clues to the past—and maybe future—of bugs and birds. What’s in those envelopes are bird feathers collected by VT Center for Ecostudies scientists over many years atop Mt. Mansfield, and they hold clues to changes in birds’ diets, writes Madeline Bodin in Smithsonian. Those, in turn, will help VCE conservation biologist Desirée Narango and her colleagues as they study the relationship between a worldwide decline in insects and a worldwide decline in bird numbers. VCE is on the front lines of this effort, and Bodin spent time in the field and in the lab with the organization’s experts as they explore the issue.
As summer ends, there’s urgency in the air. Literally. In her two most recent Naturally Curious blog posts, Mary Holland looks at hummingbirds and yellowjackets and their late-summer behavior.
Ruby-throated hummingbirds are prepping to fly thousands of miles to the Gulf Coast or even to Central America. But before they do, Holland writes, they need to store energy: “some individuals almost double their body mass by fattening up on nectar and insects.” And no wonder. “During migration, a hummingbird’s heart beats up to 1,260 times a minute, and its wings flap 15 to 80 times a second…Small wonder that our hummingbird feeders are humming these days.”
Meanwhile, Yellow Jackets are feeling the pressure, too. Which is why you’re more likely to get stung by one right now. Why? Their usual food sources of decaying meat and other insects are dwindling, so there’s more competition. A sugary substance produced by their larvae is disappearing, so they turn to your soda can. And a new, much more aggressive species, the Southern Yellow Jacket, has recently moved into New England. Oh boy.
And urgency on the ground. Though when it comes to Corgi races, it’s not quite as purposeful and uni-directional as, say, a migrating hummingbird. This weekend in Vilnius, Lithuania, Corgis from around Europe got together on Saturday for some racing and posing, then participated in the World Corgi Meetup on Sunday in a live broadcast with their compeers in the US, Ireland, and Poland. France 24 was there.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
THERE'S SOME GREAT DAYBREAK SWAG! Like Daybreak tote bags, sweatshirts, head-warming beanies, t-shirts, long-sleeved tees, the Daybreak jigsaw, those perfect hand-fitting coffee/tea mugs, and as always, "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Check it all out at the link!
HEADS UP
The Conniption Fits in Fairlee. Fairlee Community Arts brings its summer concert series on the town common to a close with the hard-rocking, party-making trio frontman and guitarist Stevens Blanchard, bassist Jamie Hosley, and drummer Titien Tolbert and their covers of ‘80s, ‘90s, and contemporary songs. 6:30 to 8.
“Women in Translation” at the Norwich Bookstore. Norwich essayist and translator Tess Lewis (French, German) joins forces with Brattleboro-based translator Allison Markin Powell (Japanese) and Boston translator Ellen Elias-Bursac (Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian) for a panel on who gets translated, how it happens, and why—along with the new worlds waiting to be discovered in their books. 7 pm.
And the Tuesday poem...
Moving through dawn’s ethereal twilight gray,
as darkness leaches from valley landscape,
passing gold-lit rooms like staged plays; wombs
from which a day’s labor is born, brief havens
for waking—one man with his back to me,
though he doesn’t know it, bent like a lover
to his task, with faith in walls that may not
be all he needs to survive catastrophe—
one man with his hand cupped so tenderly
around a mug, I want to hug him—
maybe contemplating ways to face the day
with faith in compassion—and adversity—
each luminous, breakable neighbor
sipping hot coffee or eating a donut,
wholly in the moments duty soon will co-opt,
but none more—or less divine, than any other.
— “State of the Union Aubade”, by Upper Valley poet, writer, and editor April Ossmann from her latest collection, WE. First definition of “aubade” from American Heritage: “A song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak.”
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.
Or…
Want to catch up on Daybreak itself (or find that item you trashed by mistake the other day)? You can find everything on the Daybreak Facebook page, or on Daybreak’s homepage.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to visit daybreak.news to sign up.
Thank you!