GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Watch the roads this morning. Though colder air is moving in aloft, raising the chance that whatever comes down might be snow, there's still some chance of rain and, depending on where you are, freezing rain. Whichever form it takes, it should be done by late morning; the rest of the day will be cloudy, with an early-afternoon high near 40. Down into the mid-20s overnight.Migrants and residents: birds of early winter. Etna photographer Jim Block has been out in the cold and not-so-cold, capturing images of species from away (primarily Evening Grosbeaks and Bohemian Waxwings) along with a bunch of locals (like the Cedar Waxwing that thoughtfully perched near a Bohemian Waxwing, giving Jim a chance to point out how to tell them apart). Also, catch the European Starling. That is one decorative bird!Hartford police: Dead woman found at Casella recycling facility. The department was called out to the waste management company's spot on Route 4 yesterday after a report of "a body located within the Casella recycling processing center"—unverified reports say in the cardboard recycling room. Their press release provides no details other than that it was a "deceased female" and that this "appears to be an isolated incident." There is no risk to the community, they add. The VT State Police are joining the investigation, and an autopsy will be performed at the state medical examiner's office in Burlington.Interested in the region's EV charging infrastructure? Here's your chance to weigh in on what it should look like. Lebanon, Hanover, and Hartford, along with the Upper Valley/Lake Sunapee Regional Planning Commission, are looking for area residents' input on locations that would make the most sense for EV charging sites. The idea, they say, is to help them plan "so that we may collaborate for grants and funding instead of compete." Link takes you to a map where you can propose sites—and get a look at existing ones, though this map is temporary and there are better apps for route planning.Newbury NH police warn of multiple car break-ins at Mount Sunapee Ski Resort. Reports of break-ins in various parking lots at the ski area began coming in late afternoon on Monday, the department says in its press release—and asks anyone who saw anything suspicious that day to get in touch. They add: "The Newbury P.D. staff would like to remind members of the public when parking to remove valuables from sight or leave them at home if not required, and to ensure all access points to your vehicle are fully secured."SPONSORED: “...by far the most life changing week of my life.” Help the high schoolers you know find their community! The Governor's Institutes of VT offers summer programs on college campuses for Vermont 9th, 10th, and 11th graders, with sliding scale tuition starting at just $10. Applications are now open for Arts, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, Environmental Science, Global Issues & Youth Action, Health & Medicine, Mathematical Sciences, and Technology & Design. NH students from border schools like Hanover and Kimball Union are welcome to apply! Sponsored by The Governor’s Institutes of Vermont."Elegantish." "Feversome." "Paperoverspilling." Moriel Rothman-Zecher "reads like a queer Jewish James Joyce," writes Rena Mosteirin in this week's Enthusiasms, alive to the playful possibilities when you mash English words together, mix in Yiddish, and, in Before All the World, puts it in service to telling the story of a shtetl all but two of whose residents are killed in a single grim day. Those two wind up in 1930s Philadelphia, where each befriends a black, Yiddish-speaking translator... But as Rena makes clear, the narrative almost takes a back seat to the free-flowing, exuberant language.A whimsical exhibit that chases away whatever gloom the weather dishes out. That's Susan Apel's take on “Barn Windows and Folk Art,” the exhibition by Isa Oehry that you can find in DHMC's Faulkner Gallery on Level 3 through the end of March. Oehry began painting on old single-pane windows after abandoning a greenhouse project. She uses bright colors and gives her farmyard animals and birds a personality. "Free from the constraints of more formal style, Oehry says, 'I can with good conscience give a pig a smile, or put a twinkle in the eye of the goat,'" Susan writes."People really show up for maple." Well, yeah, when it's mixed into a maple-walnut éclair, how could you not? That's just one of the baked goods Kelsey Wolfe is turning out at her Windy Lane Bakehouse in the former Belmain's in Randolph, writes Jordan Barry in Seven Days. Wolfe had been baking at home, but tells Barry, "It got to a tipping point where I outgrew the kitchen." She moved into her new space in November. "I enjoy the fact that baking is not a necessity in life," she says. "It's purely for joy, pleasure, nostalgia, comfort and all those parts of being human."At the center of a nebula, a "fireworks-like burst of thin filaments." That's the image captured by Dartmouth physics and astronomy prof Robert Fesen in the dense region of illuminated gas, dust and other material known as Pa 30, writes Dartmouth News's Morgan Kelly. It appears to be the remnant of a collision between two white dwarfs dating to 1181—which is when Chinese and Japanese astronomers observed "a very bright star that suddenly appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia" and then slowly faded, Kelly writes. "I have never seen any object...that looks quite like this," Fesen says.SPONSORED: Tickets available for Cindy Pierce's Sunday matinée only. Renowned comic storyteller Cindy Pierce will perform her new solo show, KEEPING IT INN, at the Briggs Opera House. Friday and Saturday shows are sold out, but a NEW show has been added on Sunday, Jan. 22 at 2 PM. Cindy plays her mother during the final six decades of her life, exploring love, family and what holds in our memories over time. Buy tickets and read more about the show at the burgundy link. And here’s a video with reactions to the show from Cindy’s family members. Sponsored by Pinzer Productions LLC.Hop everywhere. Closed for the next few years for renovations, the Hopkins Center for the Arts is turning to venues around campus—including the newly renovated Rollins Chapel, the Church of Christ at Dartmouth, and the Hood—to host performances, as well as to collaborations with community arts organizations like Upper Valley Music Center and the West Claremont Center for Music and Arts. In a writeup from the college's communications office, Hop director Mary Lou Aleskie also takes pains to reassure Hanover merchants and restaurateurs "that our audiences will be as vibrant as ever.” No longer a curiosity, ChatGPT may reshape education and other fields in NH. That's the conclusion David Brooks comes to on his Granite Geek blog after spending time with the AI program. In fact, he writes, state education commissioner Frank Edelblut gave a presentation to the state board of ed about it last week. “We need to update our [learning] models for the 21st century,” he said. Brooks notes that visual artists, journalists, and others are paying close attention, too—and suggests you ask ChatGPT to write a column on its own impact on NH and send him any "comically bad" results.Study finds that creating an affordable, well-functioning childcare system in VT would cost state $179-$279 million. The report by the RAND Corporation was commissioned by the legislature in 2021 as it set out to overhaul what are widely considered to be the broken economics of funding quality childcare in the state. The study, writes Alison Novak in Seven Days, looked at the key questions of how much it would cost to pay educators fairly and ensure families pay no more than 10 percent of their annual income for tuition, and then how to pay for it. The study looks at five scenarios for subsidizing tuition, as well as options for raising new revenue.VT news orgs take legislature to task after reporters turned away from hearings. In a letter to House Speaker Jill Krowinski and Senate President Phil Baruth yesterday, editors and news directors from the Valley News, VTDigger, Seven Days, WCAX, VT Public and other outlets objected after at least three incidents last week in which reporters covering committee hearings were told to leave because of pandemic-era capacity limits. “You have had nearly three years since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic to come up with a plan to accommodate the public and the press in a fully in-person legislative session,” the letter notes. VTDigger's Shaun Robinson explains the back and forth.In bid to address housing crisis, VT lawmakers look to zoning reforms. This will be one of the big ongoing debates during the legislative session, and is worth checking in on early. In VTDigger, Lola Duffort looks at what may be the key reform vehicle, a bill to require towns to allow at least a duplex wherever single-family homes are allowed—and to permit three- and four-unit homes in areas served by water and sewer. That measure is likely to become part of an omnibus housing package, Duffort writes—probably joining moves to reform the Act 250 process affecting downtown development.Did you even know there’s a North American Sauna Society? Yup, there is, and their folks are among the experts Anne Wallace Allen speaks to for a Seven Days piece on home saunas in VT. “Sweating is very important for humankind,” says Eero Kilpi, president of the group. Turns out Vermont’s climate, like those in other northern US states, is ideal for the stress relief offered by a steamy sauna followed by an icy plunge. Purists insist on windows, specific woods, the right fuel, and a defined temperature range. And absolutely no infrared saunas. “Junk,” says Kilpi.“Barely the size of a walking boot.” That’s BBC Earth’s description of the Fennec fox, the world’s smallest wild canine. Improbably, their home is the Sahara desert, with its brutal temperatures, arid landscape, and multiple predators. The Fennec has adapted, though, with camouflaging color, furry paws that handle the sand, and ears that would look silly if a child had drawn them, but in fact serve as air conditioners. The four-minute video might prompt both “aww” and “yikes.”The Wednesday Vordle. If you're new to Daybreak, this is the Upper Valley version of Wordle, with a five-letter word chosen from an item in the previous day's Daybreak.
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Sweatshirts, hats, and, of course, coffee/tea/cocoa mugs. It's all available thanks to Strong Rabbit Designs in Sharon. Check out what's available and wear it or drink from it proudly! Email me ([email protected]) if you've got questions.
At 1 pm today, the Bugbee Senior Center in WRJ and the Quechee Library host Hartland writer Sarah Stewart Taylor, author of separate mystery series featuring Sweeney St. George and Maggie D’arcy. Taylor will be reading from her latest D'arcy novel, The Drowning Sea, in which the Long Island detective once again finds herself in Ireland, there for a long summer's vacation—until human remains wash up below the cliffs of the remote peninsula where she's staying. In-person at Bugbee, but you can also go to the Quechee Library, which will Zoom it in.
Today at 5:30 pm, Dartmouth's English Department hosts a reading and discussion with Zambian writer and Harvard English prof Namwali Serpell. Her 2019 debut novel, The Old Drift, was a speculative history of her native country, in what the NYT called "electric" prose, told in part through a chorus of mosquitoes. Serpell will be reading from her newest novel, The Furrows, set in this country, an exploration of grief through the experiences of a woman whose little brother died—maybe—in her care when she was 12. And Q&A and signing will follow the reading. In the Sanborn Library.
This evening at 7, online only, it's the third installment of the Vermont Historical Society's four-week "Winter Trivia" series (with a championship round in February). Tonight it's Vermont Symbols.No cost to watch or participate in these initial rounds (though if you're playing, you'll need two screens).
And at 8 pm, Valley Improv takes over the stage at Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover with its made-up-on-the-spot comedy sparked by prompts from the audience.
And music to start the day...
John Dowland was an Elizabethan-era composer for the lute, born a year before William Shakespeare, known especially for his 1604 collection of court dances,
Lachrimae or Seaven Teares. "
Despite being a Catholic at the wrong time in English history and a man with a rather difficult complaining character," Nigel North wrote for Naxos Records some years back, "Dowland's genius still brought him praise and honour from his contemporaries." Ieva Baltmiskyte is a Lithuanian guitarist and lutenist, now living in Brussels, who can go contemporary but likes to be as period as possible when traveling back in musical time.
(like the pavanes that make up much of Dowland's collection, the Galliard was a dance), played on an 8-course (or pairs of strings) lute.
Whew. So many definitions!
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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