GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly cloudy, colder, chance of snow showers north. We're still in the grip of arctic air, and while temps today look like they might reach the mid-teens, steady winds from the northwest along with gusts this afternoon will definitely make it feel colder. If it snowed where you live yesterday, odds are decent it'll do it again today. Tonight, down into the mid single digits.So this seems like a good time for some brightness. Etna's Jim Block titles his latest blog post "Fall turns to winter," but it could just a well have been "Color when you're not expecting it." His photos, shot mostly on the NH side from stick season through last week are a little jolt for the eyes on a gray day, starting with a 20-photo sunrise panorama of Mascoma Lake and the walls of the downtown Leb tunnel to snowy landscapes punctuated by red barns or pink skies to clouds over Ascutney. There's lots more, too: landscapes, old structures, runners, sledders, and, of course, some stunning bird shots.At Hanover High, Rob Grabill out as soccer coach. It's a huge change, reports Tris Wykes on his Octopus Athletics blog (which he revived last fall after leaving the Valley News): Grabill, a minister and the former education director at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College, "guided the Hanover High boys soccer team for 19 seasons and to seven of its 19 state titles since its 1964 inception." "This was not my choice," he wrote Wykes in a text last night. School administrators, “as is their right, chose not to offer me a contract. They want new directions.... I got word a few day before Christmas."Bats in the attic: Newport, NH's Richards Elementary closes for a day after staff member swooped. That incident occurred last Thursday, reports the VN's Liz Sauchelli, before kids had returned to school; district Supt. Donna Magoon ordered the school closed Monday for an inspection: “If someone ever got hurt it would not be OK. I would be devastated," she tells Sauchelli. Though Monday's inspection found no bats and the school reopened yesterday, hundreds were discovered living in the school's attic in December after staff began reporting respiratory problems. One-way doors will be installed in March, before the bats awake from hibernation and head out to look for food.Change coming to 12A as franchises ready to move in. In addition to the big boxes, over the past two years, J.Crew Factory, Planet Fitness, Jersey Mike's, and others have all filled storefronts that had been emptied even before the pandemic. Now, reports Marion Umpleby in the VN, Jersey Mike's is getting new neighbors: Crumbl Cookies and Tropical Smoothie. The two, Umpleby writes, "will fill parts of a space formerly occupied by Pier 1 before the company’s bankruptcy in 2020." Crumbl Cookies is hoping to open this spring, Tropical Smoothie at some point this year.SPONSORED: Help someone right now! At Hearts You Hold, the locally based nonprofit that supports immigrants, migrants, and refugees across the US by asking them what they need, we're flooded with requests for sweaters, jackets, gloves, and other cold-weather clothing. At the burgundy link or here, you'll find people from all over the world who need a hand getting set up and are looking for everything from diaper bags to mattresses and bed frames to gas and laundry cards through LISTEN. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold."If any condiment has the power to change one's life, well, this is it." Usually, Enthusiasms is about books. But it doesn't have to be, and this week, confirmed bookseller Carin Pratt goes far afield. To chili crisp. "I use it on everything: eggs, pork, avocado toast, fish, pasta (we eat chili crisp pasta at least once a week—highly adaptable and delicious)," she writes. She'll even go for the occasional unadorned spoonful (chomper beware). She does work in a link to a chili crisp cookbook, but mostly it's the stuff itself she's into. With one so-far untried twist that... well, she can tell you.Bookstock, on the other hand, is still about books. And though the main event is later this year, the Woodstock-based festival of words has a teaser evening on Jan. 17. As Susan Apel explains in Artful, it brings together two neuroscientists: novelist Lisa Genova, who wrote Still Alice—the book on which the 2014 Julianne Moore film was based—and now has More or Less Maddy on the shelves, focused on a young woman with bipolar disorder; and Columbia U neurology prof (and novelist, and Woodstock resident) Melodie Winawer. Susan gives the background on both, along with event details. SPONSORED: Great teachers and leaders are the heart of great schools. Are you an educator or thinking of becoming an educator? The Upper Valley Educators Institute will engage, inspire, and challenge you through our graduate-level licensure and degree programs in teaching, school leadership, and literacy. Register for an information session next Monday or later this spring, read about what some of our alumni have been doing in schools across Vermont and New Hampshire, or use the maroon link above for general information. Sponsored by Upper Valley Educators Institute.Here's something I bet you didn't know: Saffron is not only resistant to cold, but it likes to be buried under thick snow cover during the winter. Which is why, unlikely as it seems, Calabash Gardens—which began with 2,000 plants in 2018 and a few years later had ramped up to 120,000 plants growing over two acres—can make a go of it in Newbury, VT. For UVM's Community News Service, Spencer Robb spends time with Calabash owners “Zaka” Chery and Jette Mandl-Abramson, getting not only into the workings of the farm, but the workings of saffron—and what it takes to harvest it.And something else you might not have known: Occasionally, black bears hibernate outdoors. On her latest Naturally Curious blog, Mary Holland points out that this is more common farther south, but she's got a pic of a plein air den in "the middle of a thick stand of spruces in Vermont, with little else but spruce branches to shelter the bear from the snow and the cold. Some branches were removed from the trees by the bear to serve as bedding." Hey, when you're ready for a long nap...Lichens, maple buds, and clubfoot mosses. It's the second week of January, and though the woods are hardly as busy as they'll be six months from now, as Northern Woodlands' Jackson Saul points out, there's still plenty to see. Starting with pink earth lichen—which get their name from their color—and, writes Jack, survive the winter months by swelling on damp days and going dormant on dry ones, then bursting back into photosynthesis "when wintry conditions lapse even temporarily." Also, the difference between red and sugar maple buds, and a quick look at clubmosses.NH ports director retires under cloud of criminal charges. The announcement that embattled Ports and Harbors Director Geno Marconi (husband of equally embattled state Supreme Court Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi) has filed his retirement paperwork came at a meeting of the Pease Development Authority board yesterday, reports InDepthNH's Paula Tracy. Marconi, director of the ports division since 2002, has been on administrative leave since April, when he was charged with allegedly sharing the confidential motor vehicle records of a Pease authority member.In NH House, a set-to over public hearings on bills. The legislature has long prided itself on its accessibility, and under its rules, every bill introduced by a member gets both a hearing and a vote on the House floor. But that may change after today: As Ethan DeWitt reports in NH Bulletin, House leadership wants to give committees the ability to strike down bills without a hearing, mostly in the name of efficiency—as long as 75 percent of its members agree. That guarantees bipartisan approval, but Dems argue it would undermine citizens' ability to get a bill introduced and then testify on its behalf. Stay tuned.Union Leader lands new investors, reshuffles ownership. NH's largest newspaper announced Friday that former Merchants Auto president Bob Singer and SF-based investor Greg Wendt have taken minority stakes—and, as Aidan Ryan and Amanda Gokee write in the Globe (sorry, paywall), the nonprofit Loeb School of Communications is giving up its 25-year-long majority stake, though it will remain a shareholder. The move came as the paper closed on a $1 million state loan to help pay down pension costs that required an additional $1 million in new investment. Here's the Union Leader's story (possible paywall).How "duck curve days" show that 2024 was a banner year for solar power in New England. That label is what ISO New England, the regional transmission agency, calls days when energy demand drops in the middle of the day. And last year, there were 106 of them, the first time it's ever recorded over 100, reports Maine Public's Molly Enking—a sign that solar power usage is growing, says ISO-NE's Mary Cate Colapietro. "This is happening because of the adoption of what's called behind-the-meter solar," she explains—"these smaller-scale systems that often are on folks' rooftops."You couldn't pay me enough. But hey, sitting in a chair watching 20 seconds of Norwegian skier Eivind Aanensen's point of view as he hot-dogs a couloir at night with nothing but a headlamp to show him the way? That I can do.
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Believe it or not, the British folk band The Unthanks are not named for some churlish gesture, but for sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank, who grew up in a village in Northumberland, the daughters of two folk singers. Their current band has five members, including its manager and arranger (and Rachel's former husband), Adrian McNally.
filmed performing the
take that opens their recently released album, The Unthanks In Winter.
You're welcome. 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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