GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Yuck. Seriously? Here's the deal: During the day today, high pressure is going to build into the Northeast up high, bringing warm air in aloft. But close to the ground, we're looking at cold air. So this storm that began as snow last night will shift, with snow ending at some point, a lull, then rain, freezing rain, and sleet taking over. There's a good chance of ice accumulation tonight and the weather folks are warning of hazardous travel tomorrow morning. Highs today and tonight around the freezing mark before temps start warming tomorrow.Here are the snow and ice forecasts for...
And speaking of snow and ice..
"Type A mouse," writes Carin Pratt about these prints left in the snow in Tunbridge. Ted Levin adds that it's "likely a white-footed mouse, tracks like sewing machine stitching. The line in the middle is the long tail dragging behind."
"Floating frost fern," writes Carol Orgain about the lacy filigree that just appeared on her window in S. Strafford.
Recent Upper Valley fires in Canaan, Bradford.
On Saturday, a fire at the Thomson Fuels property in Bradford—it's next to Oakes Bros. and across from Farm-Way—destroyed an outbuilding and a small garage, reports Alex Nuti-de Biasi in the Journal Opinion newsletter. The propane tanks, Fire Chief Ryan Terrill tells him, were not at risk. A JO reader sent in a photo.
And early Monday morning, the Valley News reports, four people made it out safely from a burning mobile home on Orange Rd. in Canaan; the fire appears to have begun in electrical wiring inside the walls. The four people who'd been living there are being helped by the Red Cross.
Conducted by Kathy Sherlock-Green and accompanied by Jeanne Chambers, the Cantabile chorus celebrates the diversity and cultural richness of Northern European and Canadian music. Concerts are on Saturday, Jan. 27 at the Norwich Congregational Church, and Sunday, Jan. 28 at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon. Both concerts start at 3 pm. WIth enthusiasm, we invite you to join us!
or at the burgundy link.
Sponsored by Cantabile
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Killington's 23-skier rescue: What happened? That's what Outside's Frederick Dreier wonders about the weekend incident in which 23 skiers and boarders needed rescue in frigid temps. He called up Drew Clymer, the search and rescue coordinator for the VT State Police, who tells him that four different groups ducked the ropes atop a lift and headed into the backcountry, dropped down a gully—and discovered getting out would require a 2.5-mile "boot-pack" out over steep, icy terrain. “These were all front-side resort skiers,” Clymer says. “We were rescuing skiers in the backcountry, but that doesn’t mean they were backcountry skiers.” One was a Killington employee, who was fired.The huge pleasure of a small book. Not long ago, Left Bank Books' Rena Mosteirin was in Cambridge, Mass., where a bookseller thrust a little book of poems into her hands. The collection, a "chapbook", is Ex Machina, by the Alaskan Inupiaq poet Joan Naviyuk Kane. "I never imagined I would love the book as much as I do," Rena writes in this week's Enthusiasms. That's in no small part because Naviyuk Kane "blends humor and beauty in a way that few poets can." But it's also, Rena writes, because chapbooks offer "a full dose of the music and magic of poetic language" while you have your morning coffee.Did you know that the Baker Library bells at Dartmouth take requests? Well, not the bells, but Rodrigo “Roy” Martinez, a grad student in the music department's sonic practice program, who is the current bell-ringer—though as Vivian Wang explains in The Dartmouth, he's really more of a programmer. The bells are controlled by software and a keyboard, which Martinez uses if he needs to program in a song that's not already in the system. On a tour, Wang requested "Dancing Queen", which turned out to be a little hard to recognize. That's because the bells' shape make every note “its own world of chaotic harmonics,” Martinez tells her. Wang dives into the bells' history and use.Daniel Banyai might be nowhere in sight, but his court case carries on. The owner of the Slate Ridge gun training facility in Pawlet left Vermont at some point last month facing fines and an arrest warrant. Yesterday, his lawyer and Pawlet's lawyer were up before the VT Supreme Court, as Banyai challenged a state environmental court's arrest order, the fines it levied, and its ability to allow Pawlet, as VTDigger's Ethan Weinstein writes, "to bring his property into zoning compliance." Pawlet's lawyer, Merrill Bent, countered by asking whether Banyai was free to “defy court orders” and “endlessly litigate.”Phil Scott proposes keeping VT's general fund spending to under 3.6 percent. That's compared to 13 percent growth in last year's budget, but as Peter Hirschfeld and Lola Duffort report for Vermont Public, the plan VT's governor laid out to the legislature the annual budget address yesterday "reverts to pre-pandemic norms" after several years of historic growth. The proposed budget includes "modest" investments that would expand VT's opioid treatment system, expand skilled nursing facilities, and a few other smaller programs. Now it's legislators' turn to start editing."Rib-sticking food [that] could power you to the moon, with maybe a pit stop on the couch." Okay, this is up in Winooski, but if you read Melissa Pasanen's Seven Days writeup on five Chittenden County spots that offer the "magical food" that is fried chicken, it's hard not to figure you need to check out Harmony's Kitchen, run by 2021 UVM grad Harmony Edosomwan, what with its fried chicken, mac and cheese, collards, and corn bread. Or Burlington's Devil Takes a Holiday, what with its spicy fried chicken or mushroom sandwiches. Or Maple Wind Farm's wings buckets in Richmond. Or...“It rides like a freight train....It is the least-aerodynamic thing that I can imagine.“ Erik Binggese decided it was silly to ride around in an empty cargo bike, writes Caley Fretz in Escape. So when the graphic designer quit his job and started cycling the country, he made it count. He collected cans, cashing them in and donating the money to bike charities, using an app to log every street in whichever city he was in. He rode 18,113.7 miles last year. On a bike, he says, “you can’t help but begin to see cities and infrastructure and the very underpinnings of our society a bit differently.” He explains it all to Fretz.Want these kobe beef croquettes? Order now and they're yours... in 2067. Every once in a while, a story comes along that makes you go, Wait. What??!! So it is with the mail-order "Extreme Croquettes" from Asahiya, a family-run butcher shop in Japan's Takasago City. Right now, the wait list is 43 years long. CNN's Maggie Hiufu Wong has the background. But hey, a box of five is only $18.20—and you've gotta figure, if you pay up front that's going to be an absolute steal 43 years from now.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. It's a word game, but it's local.
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Today at 5 pm, Dartmouth's Tuck School hosts the great New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, who also runs their newsletter, The Morning. He'll be in conversation with Tuck Dean Matthew Slaughter about his new book, Ours Was the Shining Future, and they'll be talking about "the essence of the American Dream, tracing its evolution over recent decades and offering a tangible narrative through data and personal stories of key historical figures." In-person at Tuck, and you'll need to register.
At 6 this evening, online, VT Audubon presents photographer, writer, and mycologist Meg Madden for a talk about mushrooms. She's been photographing fungi at the Green Mountain Audubon Center for the last couple of years, and will be sharing photos, lore, and more.
Also at 6, the Royalton Memorial Library hosts VT writer and former Sports Illustrated journalist Alexander Wolff talking about his highly personal 2021 memoir, Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home, which recounts his grandfather's and father's experiences in Germany starting in the early 20th century: his grandfather built a publishing house that included, among others, Kafka and Max Brod; after moving to the US in 1941, he and his wife, Helen, founded Pantheon.
At 7 pm, the Norwich Bookstore brings in two writers: West Leb poet and fiction writer Jeff Friedman, and Keene-based novelist Brinda Charry. Friedman, who's got 10 books under his belt, is the author most recently of the collection of surreal prose poems, Ashes in Paradise. Charry's 2023 novel, The East Indian, has been drawing strong reviews both here and abroad: Based on "the earliest known mention" of an East Indian worker in colonial America, it tells the story of a boy who's shipped off from the subcontinent to Virginia in 1635, tracing his experiences with the region's caste system.
Also at 7, the Dartmouth Political Union hosts Marine Corps Captain Omer Rafiq for a talk on "The Withdrawal from Afghanistan". Rafiq was there, working as aide de camp to the commanding general of the unit that oversaw all evacuation operations in Kabul, then coordinating evacuations after the government fell to the Taliban. As the DPU puts it, he'll be discussing "the crisis of moral leadership surrounding the United States pullout." Online and in-person at Filene Auditorium.
And anytime from today through Friday, you can catch a virtual screening hosted by Sustainable Woodstock and Pentangle Arts of Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island. By new filmmaker Heidi Hutner, who teaches at SUNY/Stony Brook, it tells the story of four women who lived in the area who have been trying for decades to gain public attention—and a day in court—for their belief that not only was the nuclear accident followed by widespread cases of cancer in the region, but that federal and state agencies, as well as the plant's operator, have gone to great lengths to cover them up.
And some music to move into the day...
You wouldn't know it if you follow the average American concert hall, but there are any number of contemporary African composers writing pieces that bridge classical Western and traditional African melodies and rhythms. Broadly, they go under the label "African Art Music", and one of their leading champions is the Nigerian-Romanian pianist Rebeca Omordia. Recently, at the Phillips Collection in DC, she sat down to play Nigerian musical scholar and composer Christian Onyeji's "Ufie, Igbo Dance", which is inspired by Nigerian drumming techniques.
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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