GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
System to the east of us, system to the west, here we are... stuck with warmer and maybe wetter weather. The winds are from the south, bringing us temps into the upper 30s today, with a slight chance of snow showers in the morning changing to rain in the afternoon and back to snow overnight, little if any accumulation. Gusty around mid-day, mid-20s tonight.But hey, at least there was Monday's stunning sunset to herald yesterday's sun...
From Sunapee, by Bo Hopkins
And Grantham, by Mark Arnold
Trail vandalized at Norwich's Parcel 5. Late last week—possibly Thursday—someone drove several hundred yards up the popular walking and xc trail. "Looking at the tire impressions left, I would guess that it was both an ATV and a full-size truck," Norwich Trails Committee member Jim Faughnan writes. They left a swath of damage, including deep tire ruts in ground that hadn't frozen. "At the moment we're at a loss as to how to investigate because there were no direct witnesses," says Norwich Police Chief Simon Keeling. "I’d very much like people to come forward if they have any tidbits of information." Photo at link.Dog on I-89 bridge over Connecticut leads police to crash site. Monday night around 10 pm, NH state troopers and Lebanon police officers responded to reports of a German shepherd in the middle of the bridge. As they tried to corral the dog—whose name, it later turned out, is Tinsley—he ran back into Vermont... where officers found a pickup that had rolled off the highway; the occupants, including Tinsley's owner, "had been ejected from the vehicle and were hypothermic and seriously injured," according to the NHSP. Tinsley was unhurt, and both men are expected to survive, reports WCAX's Adam Sullivan.SPONSORED: Experienced interior designers wanted. Sargent Design Company would like to add both a Senior Interior Designer and a Mid-Level Interior Designer to our team. We are a Vermont-based architecture and interior design firm. Our current clients include a 5-Star resort, Yellowstone Club residence, Coast of Maine compound, and many family retreats in New England. Full job listing for the senior designer here, and for the mid-level designer here. We look forward to hearing from you! Sponsored by Sargent Design Company.Veteran Valley News editor moves to Dartmouth. John Gregg started at the paper 18 years ago as a staff writer, wrote the "Primary Source" political column for all but one of those years, and served as political editor and, for the last nine years, news editor and pinch-hitting writer. He announced his job change in an email to contacts and longtime sources yesterday, his last day at the paper; he starts Monday as the news director and managing editor in the college's communications office, following fellow VN alums Susan Boutwell and Anne Adams. Gregg's is the second big masthead departure in less than a year: Editor Maggie Cassidy moved to VTDigger last March.Despite spike, Dartmouth sticks with in-person classes. Active cases have risen sharply in on-campus testing—the college yesterday reported 144 student cases and 47 among faculty/staff, the highest numbers ever on its dashboard—as well as in pre-arrival testing. Even so, The Dartmouth reports, in-person classes are going ahead and there are no changes to current community guidelines, which include grab-and-go meals and cancelled non-academic events. In a campus email last night, interim provost David Kotz and executive vice president Rick Mills encouraged students to “act responsibly.”"A novel to get lost in." February looms, the Norwich Bookstore's Carin Pratt reminds us in this week's Enthusiasms, and to get you through she's got a suggestion: Still Life, by Sarah Winman, "an incredibly charming, beautifully written, and somewhat meandering tale of a set of, well, eccentrics, who form a family of sorts." Over four decades in London and Florence, the members of this chosen family navigate life, love, war, floods, art...and one another. It is, Carin writes, one of those rare novels "you read slower to prolong the finishing."A peek at If I Could Ride. You may remember that last fall, a film crew was at work around the Upper Valley—including the Green Mtn. Equestrian Center in Woodstock, White's Dairy Farm in N. Hartland, Bashon Brook Farm in Windsor, Windsor House, and elsewhere. Well, the trailer for the film—directed by Shawn Welling, who directed last year's action film Narco Sub—is out and whoa, the Upper Valley sure looks nice. The film itself will debut locally at LOH sometime this spring.A Dartmouth student fires up pottery from antiquity. If you wander the Norwich side of Ledyard Bridge and think you’ve stumbled on a clay kiln from the Bronze Age, no need to call the state archeologist. Charlotte Albright writes in Dartmouth News about anthropology major Anne Johnakin’s research project: replicating the ceramic-making process of the ancient Greeks. Her hands-on learning hasn’t been easy: “I sprained my wrist mixing the clay.” But because of the challenges of the old techniques (like using horse manure as fuel), she says, “I’ve got a better appreciation for how much work was involved.”VTrans, Vermont Rail drop opposition to rail merger. In separate federal filings on Monday, VT Rail Systems said it "can now support" and VTrans said it now "takes a neutral position" on the proposed acquisition of Pan Am Railways by CSX. Both were worried that the merger would reduce competition, especially with CSX's plan to reduce the freight carriers linking to VT Railways in WRJ and Bellows Falls from two to one. Now, however, a complex agreement gives VRS access to the network, reports NH Business Review's Michael Kitch. Amtrak and the Justice Department still oppose the acquisition.“We would like more tests and would use them!” That comment by Crossroads Academy head of school Dan Morrissey in a Zoom call with NH education commissioner Frank Edelblut pretty much sums up the sentiment at schools around NH. As cases rise and principals and superintendents struggle to keep schools open, writes Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin, "every strategy to fight the virus—including those recommended by federal authorities—depends on the availability of rapid tests." And those, of course, are in short supply.Especially, it turns out, for kids in child care. Different state, same problem. While VT made 87,000 rapid tests available to parents of K-12 students last week, children in preschool or child care weren't included in the giveaway. “People are sharing tests with each other—like, ‘I have an extra one at my house if you can come get it,’” one at-home provider tells VTDigger's Mike Dougherty. Says a parent, "I think there are a lot of assumptions made about, ‘Oh, well, mom can stay home, or grandma can come over.’ And I think that there are a lot of working families...that that’s obviously not the case.”Camel's Hump, the Pemi loop... Backpacker mag is out with a list of the "best trail in all 50 states," and though you can quibble with the concept, it would be hard to turn down a chance to do either a day on Camel's Hump or the 31-mile Pemigewasset Loop, which includes Franconia and Garfield ridges. Or to draw inspiration from suggestions like the 192-mile Ouachita Trail in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania's 327-mile Mid State Trail, the backcountry of Waimea Canyon on Kauai, or the Maah Daah Hey Trail through the North Dakota badlands.We can only look on in envy. Monday's snowstorm may have brought the mid-Atlantic to a standstill, but at the National Zoo, 16-month-old giant panda cub Xiao Qi Ji took to his second winter of snow like a veteran belly-slider.Like Auld Lang Syne, but with clothespins. And bubbles. For the obvious reason, a lot of us rang in a low-key New Year. But a smaller celebration doesn’t have to be less fun, and maybe all you need to make magic is what you can find in the broom closet. At least, that’s the vibe from Zurich filmmakers Zita Bernet and Rafael Sommerhalder (aka Crictor), whose New Year’s tradition of releasing a short film of some clever, whirring contraption—made out of things like a hairdryer, shirt hanger, and paper streamers—manages to be joyful, silly, and a little bit wistful all at once. Like the New Year itself.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
The Hood Museum's "groundbreaking" new exhibition, This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, opens today. Drawing entirely from the museum's own collection, it is the Hood's "first major installation of traditional and contemporary Native American art set alongside early-to-contemporary art by African American, Asian American, Euro-American, and Latin American artists," the Hood writes in its press release. The works explore everything from environmental degradation to various artists' close observation of nature to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny to individuals' and communities' connection to the natural world. Runs through July 23.
It's the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's time for Vermont Humanities' slate of First Wednesdays lectures. Tonight you can dig into the life and times of Sherlock Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with wide-ranging scholar Barry Deitz, presented by the Norwich Public Library and the Norwich Historical Society; explore magical realism, Latin American literature, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez with Amherst prof Ilan Stavans; learn about "Slow Democracy" and efforts by ordinary people to solve local problems locally—and bridge divisions while they're at it; and much more. All lectures are online, and all begin at 7 pm.
You know what the Fibonacci numbers are, right? Yeah... I had to go look it up, too. It's the sequence of numbers—0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13...—in which each number is the sum of the two that precede it. They're kind of magical, not least because seed heads, pinecones, and various fruits and vegetables that display spiral patterns actually express Fibonacci numbers when the spirals are counted. But that's way above my pay grade.
by the magical-in-his-own-way Hungarian pianist Peter Bence. He doesn't actually explain the relation (though there are a couple of attempts in the comments) but it doesn't matter: The musical spirals pull you in all on their own.
(Thanks for the nudge, KK!)
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.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
Want to catch up on Daybreak music?
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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!