GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Hot, humid... then rain. That stuffy air mass is still in place for most of today, but there's a cold front moving in from the west and an associated low pressure system that will eventually displace it. So first we get fog, then sun, then clouds moving in and highs around 90, then a chance of showers starting up late this afternoon and a likelihood overnight, along with possible thunderstorms all night. Lows in the mid-60s.Our insect friends...
Like this monarch caterpillar caught in the midst of becoming a chrysalis, sent in by Norwich's Josh Lewis;
And a beautifully backlit spider's web up on Five Corners Road in Thetford, from John Pietkiewicz.
Police accuse Hartford man of setting Sunday's W. Leb fire and breaking into Lou's. The blaze, to which fire crews from seven towns responded, destroyed a maintenance building at the MeadowBrook Village apartments early Sunday morning. About a half hour after it began, a surveillance camera caught a man, whom police identify as 37-year-old Micah Bouton, of Hartford, breaking into Lou's Restaurant in Hanover and stealing cash. Bouton, a former maintenance worker at MeadowBrook, was arrested at home later in the day and arraigned yesterday. Eric Francis reports.End-of-summer water-quality check-in. VT last week issued cyanobacteria alerts for parts of the east and west sides of Lake Morey (and a "low alert" for the town beach at its southern end). Lake Fairlee, meanwhile, gets a "generally safe" rating. In NH, the most recent samples at Lake Tarleton, Post Pond, Mascoma Lake, and Kilton Pond all "meet standards."SPONSORED: Upper Valley Circus Camp presents Fall Fest! On Sunday, Sept. 11 enjoy a fun-filled, relaxing day of workshops, music, local food, face painting, adoptable animals and a live performance at CCBA in Lebanon! UVCC is teaming up with Cirque Us to present their revival of One Man’s Trash: Acrobats, high-flying aerialists, and quirky clowns welcome you to their junkyard adventure as this repurposed circus turns trash into treasure. Dive into their dumpsters to see how they recycle, reuse, and reinvent rubbish into a circus extravaganza. Sponsored by Upper Valley Circus Camp, LLC.Fourth inmate this year dies at Springfield VT prison. Ronald Roy, 71, of Errol, NH, was found unresponsive on Sunday; he'd been detained for allegedly violating conditions of release after a conviction for heroin distribution. State police on Sunday said the death "does not appear suspicious," reports VTDigger's Alan J. Keays. In all, 12 of 15 VT inmate deaths over the past five years have been at Springfield, Keays writes. The prison "is our largest facility and it also houses our most medically at-risk and vulnerable populations,” a corrections spokesperson says.Brookfield's Fat Toad Farm sold to Barre's Butterfly Bakery. The goat's-milk caramel maker, founded in 2007, has a growing national presence. In a press release yesterday, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont, which began as a bakery but has since become known for its hot sauces, announced the sale. The owners of the two small firms first met at the Montpelier Farmers Market 15 years ago, where they had nearby booths.“He had a great life, Jere Daniell did.” The late Dartmouth scholar and longtime professor of New England history, who died in May, “rarely did anything he didn’t enjoy,” says his wife Elena. Alex Hanson’s fine "A Life" in the VN describes a man whose boundless curiosity for this place led him into every nook and cranny of it. As much as Daniell taught—New England’s colonial period through industrialization and beyond—he seemed to learn from his students and those he met in the more than 300 towns where he gave lectures. It’s possible the extent of his knowledge of our region may never be surpassed.Cue the Liberty Mutual jokes. So... That llama in Norwich? Turns out it was probably the emu that was wandering around Strafford. "It always looked like it was standing on its hind legs," Norwich's Joyce Childs said in an interview. "I've never seen an emu before." The wayward bird was spotted yesterday morning on the Gile Mountain trail in Norwich and yesterday afternoon on Chapel Hill Road, and several people, including Childs, have been in touch with the owner to report its meanderings. Says one, on the Upper Valley VT/NH Facebook group, "Hopefully, he can be caught. It doesn’t sound like an easy task…"Lost animal stories. In response to yesterday's emu/llama items, Thetford's Tig Tillinghast writes: "Back when I was selectboard chair, we found a donkey wandering around. For reasons I can’t recall, we had a list of donkey owners in town: 21, if I remember right. So I called every donkey owner in town to see if one was missing a donkey. Turns out, the donkey wasn’t a Thetfordite, but in the course of talking with all those people I was offered their donkey for free in maybe a dozen cases. I don’t remember the exact number, but more donkey owners offered me their donkey than didn’t press me to take it off their hands."Coming soon: Your guide to big trees. Though "big" is relative. "The state champion common baldypress, for example, is only 21 feet tall. You could stack five of them on top of each other and the state butternut champ would still look down on them," writes David Brooks in the Monitor. The guy who really knows is Kevin Martin, coordinator of NH's Big Tree Program, part of a national effort to identify the biggest tree of each species in each state. This fall, Martin is self-publishing a guide to the big trees of northern New England, Short Hikes to the Biggest Trees. One's nearby: a giant honeylocust at Saint-Gaudens.VT GOP has a Treasurer nominee: its Secy of State nominee. If you're keeping track, you'll remember that first H. Brooke Paige won primaries for four statewide offices, then rescinded all but the nomination for secretary of state so the party could name replacements. But they were unable to find anyone for treasurer, so now they've re-nominated Paige, reports VTDigger's Sarah Mearhoff. “It's kind of like you're trying to hire the crew on the Titanic after it hits the iceberg,” Paige says of the state GOP's candidate travails. “And I'm the only one that's soldiering on here, like we're going to save the boat somehow.”What makes the Webb telescope so cool? Let’s ask Bill Nye. Because who better than Nye to take the raw materials of hard science and make it inspiring? Since NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope began returning jaw-dropping images of distant galaxies, black holes, and nebulae in July, the scientific community has been agog over how fast our understanding of the universe is changing. Yes, the images are thrilling, but why? Enter the Science Guy, via this Wired video, to explain—like why the JWST shoots in infrared and how it’s able to detect the gases and elements present on distant planets.The Tuesday Vordle. With a word from an item in yesterday's Daybreak.
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Weather permitting, at 6:30 pm it's time for Fairlee's last Concert on the Common of the season: Maple Run Band, a Lamoille County-based country/country-folk foursome that runs from intimate acoustic to hard-driving rock.
Also at 6:30 the Thetford Arthouse Cinema continues its summer/fall 2022 run with David Lynch's 2001 Mulholland Drive in the Martha Rich Theater at Thetford Academy. The week's films also include Ernst Lubitsch's wartime dramedy To Be or Not to Be, with Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, on Friday at 7 and Jimmy Stewart and his invisible buddy in Harvey on Saturday at 10 am. Link takes you to the season brochure: Scroll down for film descriptions from organizer Arthur Kahn.
And the Tuesday poem...
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.Inaction, no falsifying dreamBetween my hooked head and hooked feet:Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.My feet are locked upon the rough bark.It took the whole of CreationTo produce my foot, my each feather:Now I hold Creation in my footOr fly up, and revolve it all slowly -I kill where I please because it is all mine.There is no sophistry in my body:My manners are tearing off headsThe sun is behind me.Nothing has changed since I began.My eye has permitted no change.I am going to keep things like this.
— From "Hawk Roosting" by
. This finishes the poems for August, about which poetry editor Michael Lipson writes, "
August, the month, was named for Augustus Caesar, the Roman Emperor. The month's name brings to mind the grandeur that was Rome—hence the Edgar Allen Poe "To Helen," original source of that term. Our other three poems this month have been about hawks, the grand raptors often visible at this season, whose elevation and power recall imperial might."
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 Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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