GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
A cold, foggy start to the day, then sun. There'll be frost and fog in spots first thing, but at some point it'll all go away and we get a clear day with mostly full-on sun. We're due to reach the mid-50s today but not much above that. Winds today from the south, down into the low 30s again tonight.Fall continues... Great photos keep coming in, so we'll just run through some of them over the next few days.
"Coming or going, fall is beautiful," Jane Masters writes, of her clever double view between Quechee and Woodstock;
And the evening glow on orange leaves, from Peter Spiegel in Hanover;
And the "Alpen glow" on Tucker Hill Road in Thetford Center, from Nicky Corrao.
Hanover to require regular inspections of all rental properties. The selectboard voted unanimously Monday to approve the new ordinance, which gives the town "the tools and authority" to enforce existing health and safety regs, Patrick Adrian writes in the Valley News. The move requires inspections every three years, with the cost charged to the property owner. Surveys of student-occupied units found missing fire alarms, windows painted shut, and other violations, Adrian reports. The town will need to hire new employees for inspections, notes Selectboard Chair Peter Christie.Advance Transit wants your thoughts. Every five years, the transit agency revamps its "Transit Development Plan," which essentially guides its services and helps it respond to community demand. The last time it did this, in 2018, it made several changes to routes, including increasing the frequency of bus service between Hanover and Lebanon. Now it's getting ready for the next version, and is looking for community feedback on everything from where people travel in the region to what it could do to make you more likely to use it to whether you'd make use of "transit on demand" services. Survey at the link.At Dartmouth, "the largest Ukrainian academic community in the state of New Hampshire" takes shape. It's actually just a handful of scholars so far, writes Aimee Minbiole for Dartmouth News, but since the war in Ukraine began earlier this year, a group of professors, deans, and program directors has worked to ease the way for Ukrainian academics to arrive on campus. As they settle in to teaching, studies, and highlighting life in Ukraine, says German studies prof Yuliya Komska, "random offers of help and home-cooked meals” would be welcome. “I think the bigger the support network, the merrier.”Former Windsor principal, school board settle lawsuit. Tiffany Riley, who was fired in 2020 after posting comments about Black Lives Matter on social media and then sued the board and supervisory union for wrongful termination, has settled out of court, reports John Lippman in the VN. The case began in 2020 in Windsor Superior Court and was eventually moved to federal court. Terms of the settlement "have not been made public," Lippman writes, and a round-robin of officials and their attorney declined to provide details.A forgotten writer "able to find comedy pretty much anywhere." It took a New York editor coming across one of Bette Howland's books in a Manhattan bargain bin for the Chicago writer to get rediscovered, essayist and fiction writer Peter Orner says in this week's Enthusiasms. He quickly became a fan. "Howland writes about race and class and religion...with candor and beauty and a kind of self-effacement that doesn't call attention to just how good her prose is," he writes. Orner, whose new collection of essays has just hit bookshelves, calls Howland a master at capturing the feel of a place in a few strokes.New England 511 gets an upgrade. If you've been a Daybreak reader for a while, you know that the website—a joint NH, VT, ME project managed by the NH DOT— is invaluable for getting a bead on construction projects and other conditions affecting highways and state roads. Now, NHDOT says, it's gotten better: It's been optimized for cell phones and tablets, so that it's actually useful on the go; has added weather reports; and now lets users create routes and then get alerts on construction or crashes that would affect their trip. VT has added EV charging stations, ME scenic byways. NH is still pondering.Soil-judging in NH sees “the return of serious subsurface student scrimmaging.” Granite Geek’s David Brooks clearly couldn’t help himself with that line. Even for a science guy, a little poetic license seemed to be called for, as Brooks found himself reporting from UNH’s research farm in Madbury at this year’s high school soil-judging contest. Similar contests are held around the world, and competitors’ analyses of the soil—which is way more varied than meets the eye—allows them to draw conclusions about land use, important to anyone from road builders and foresters to septic installers.In VT state treasurer's race, EB5 scandal isn't much of an issue—but some defrauded investors think it should be. That's because Democrat Mike Pieciak, who is widely expected to win the post, was a key player in detecting the scheme surrounding development at Jay Peak. In a long look at the case, VTDigger's Alan J. Keays writes that supporters of Pieciak—who was deputy commissioner of financial regulation at the time—contend he was vital to untangling it; investors say he should have gone public with what he knew. Keays talks to Pieciak and former Gov. Peter Shumlin about their decisions.Behind VT's fall foliage reports: The Leaf Squad. That's the name of the team of volunteers who photograph leaves, report conditions, and highlight local foliage-related events for Vermont.com and the state tourism department. Samantha Watson, of UVM's Community News Service (here via Vermont Public) reports that it's documentation and marketing, to be sure, but for the team's members, it's also fun: "I drive around, wherever I’m going, and I just keep looking for the best trees, the best scenery," says one. "When I tell people that I do it they always smile — '"The Leaf Squad",' that’s so cute!'"
The most viral of them all is Morgan Gold of Goldshaw Farms (remember "All ducks go to bed"?); now 20-year-old Kirbie Nichols, the second-youngest of seven children and the only one of her sibs to pick up the family tradition at Speedwell Farms, has joined the ranks, writes Rebecca White in
Seven Days
. Nichols uses her posts to illuminate farm life—like, why you
definitely
don't want the milk from a cow on antibiotics to get sent to the milk tank, which she did accidentally—and to showcase her cows, Shania Twain, Wreck-It Ralph among them.
The Ben & Jerry's barter economy. Or as Planet Money jokes, "pints for pints." For the NPR show, Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi visited B&J to look into the sweet little economy that has grown up around the company's workforce perk: each employee gets to take home three pints of ice cream a day. Which is a lot of pints taking up freezer space. Horowitz-Ghazi does the math: about 400K pints a year. They used to be seconds (say, a run of Cherry Garcia with not enough cherries), though that's changing. But the upshot: Employees trade them for services, beer, even contact lenses. (16:44 or 2/3 of the way down the transcript.) (Thanks, JF!)Massive cheating scandal sweeps Irish dancing world. It’s been a tough couple weeks for niche sports. Ohio fishermen were caught stuffing lead balls into their catch at weigh-in. A chess prodigy is suspected of serial cheating. And in Ireland, a cabal of dance teachers and competition judges has been outed for conspiring to reward certain dancers with higher scores—a culture of misconduct that runs rampant through Irish dancing’s tournament circuit, reports the Guardian’s Rory Carroll. The exchange of (sometimes illicit) favors, according to one teacher, is ripped straight out of a mafia movie.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. Give it a try!
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At 5 this afternoon, the Chelsea Library brings in local author Islene Runningdeer for a reading and conversation about her new book, The Musician Healer: Transforming Art into Medicine. The book takes off from Runningdeer's own Mi’kmaq/Abenaki and French roots to explore the healing qualities of music, how they've been used in cultures far afield and for music therapy at home, and her own experiences with "music as medicine."
This evening at 7, the Norwich Bookstore hosts Rebecca and Sallyann Majoya, reading from and talking about their new joint memoir, Uncertain Fruit: A Memoir of Infertility, Loss, and Love. The book traces events, with flashbacks, after the Majoyas tried for eight years to expand their family—they were already raising two boys from Rebecca's earlier marriage—and then learned that a local high-schooler was pregnant and wanted to give the child up for adoption...then after his birth, changed her mind. "The book grapples with complex emotions in a candid manner, and it raises intriguing questions about how and when someone becomes a mother," Kirkus writes.
Also at 7, online, Good Beginnings of the Upper Valley hosts a lecture by psychologist and writer Madeline Levine, "Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World." Levine, whose previous books are The Price of Privilege and its follow-up, Teach Your Children Well, will be talking about how today’s parenting techniques and educational system fail to prepare children for an uncertain world. "If our children are to thrive in a world that is rapidly evolving and full of uncertainty, they need less structure and more play,” she writes in her new book. “They need to become comfortable with experimentation, risk-taking, and trial-and-error learning."
At 7:30, the Hop launches a three-evening set of performances by two world-renowned musicians: Midori and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. The three-day recital of Beethoven's sonatas for violin and piano is the only performance in the US of the entire cycle, composed when Beethoven was between 26 and 41 years of age—and begun just as he was starting to go deaf. The two artists are performing the 10 sonatas in part to mark the 40th anniversary of Midori's performing career; an album of the works is due out next month.
And at 8 pm, Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover brings in Jungle Room for a night of live music: The band is made up of six Tuck students who've been playing together in various configurations, mostly for Dartmouth events, over their time on campus. Drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals, and...trombone, all riffing on tunes from the '70s to now.
And music for the day...
Leyla McCalla, the formally trained cellist who was once part of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, is a Haitian-American who lives in New Orleans and grew up both in Haiti and the US. Her latest album,
Breaking The Thermometer
, explores Haitian history through the lens of Radio Haiti, the feisty station that broadcast in Creole (rather than the French most stations in the country used) and confronted regime after brutal regime. But the album is also highly personal and chock-full of lovely music—
. "Vini Wè" means "come look" in Creole; the chorus is "Come see the sunrise." "That's such a priceless thing," McCalla said when asked about the song. "No one can take the sunrise away from us."
(Thanks AFG!)
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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