GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny and warm. But change arrives tonight. First, today: Temps will hit the mid or upper 70s again, but we're also going to get gusty winds from the south—especially this afternoon—ahead of a cold front that's headed our way. With very dry air and the long dry spell we've had, fire weather concerns are rising. Meanwhile, tonight, there's a chance of showers as the front arrives; winds will continue overnight and into tomorrow. Lows in the low 50s.Not your usual fall photos...
"This bird is eating us out of house and home," writes Debra Jayne from Hanover.
And here's Mt. Cube—not straight on, but reflected in the cabin at the Upper Valley Land Trust's Mountain View Farm Conservation Area in Orford. The area "is beautiful, with an unobstructed view of Mt Cube," writes Sharon Wight. "It has quite a history, but most people do not seem to know about it."
Yesterday morning at about 8, Hartford police got a tip from their colleagues in Springfield, VT, that an allegedly carjacked vehicle had been seen near the VA. When officers arrived, they arrested one suspect, but another backed the car into a patrol vehicle then sped forward, crashing through a guardrail and going airborne before landing at the foot of a steep embankment—with another passenger still in the rear seat. As Eric Francis reports for Daybreak, the driver then took off on foot across the highway—tracked by K9 Atlas. Full story and photos at the link.
Peter Griggs, 69, of Norwich, who regularly makes deliveries for the nonprofit, had stopped his box truck by the Exit 12 off-ramp on I-91 in Wilder Monday and was outside the vehicle when a car driven by Hartford resident Joe Trottier hit the truck. The impact pushed the truck into Griggs, causing “serious bodily injuries,”
The Valley News (burgundy link) reports that as of yesterday afternoon, Griggs was
in fair condition—"meaning his vital signs were stable and he was conscious with favorable health indicators." Trottier, a GOP candidate for VT state rep, suffered minor injuries.
As Kevin O'Connor writes in VTDigger, trails in the 85-acre park have seen growing numbers of hikers and bikers—and the park itself is bordered by residential neighborhoods. That led the selectboard back in August to ban the use of firearms there, which in turn ticked off townspeople who'd used the land for hunting, some for decades. "Never had an incident,” one told the board. They've gathered enough signatures to put a repeal question on the Nov. 5 ballot, O'Connor reports.
SPONSORED: This weekend, silent films with live music! It'll be fun for the whole family! This Friday, Oct. 25, gear up for Halloween with TWO classic films with live music, professionally projected on a huge screen. Legendary Boston-based organist Peter Krasinski improvises a soundtrack in real time for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring Lon Chaney, and Buster Keaton's 1921 short, The Haunted House. No tickets required. At the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College in Hanover—shows at 6:30pm (The Haunted House) and 7:00pm (Hunchback). Sponsored by CCDC.With its solar-powered parking-lot EV chargers, Norwich's Solaflect appears to have a hit. As you might remember, the first ones went up in Dartmouth's Maynard Lot last December. Now, reports Kevin McCallum in Seven Days, they can be found at Hypertherm and Middlebury College, with more going in shortly at Williams College and DH's Cheshire Medical Center in Keene. The idea is to make it easy for employees to charge up while they're at work. “This is a lower-cost, super-simple, fast installation solution that hits the employer-commuter range anxiety question head on,” says COO Rob Adams.From WRJ, Vermont's food scene gets an app. For years, Rocket, the former Hartford selectboard member, has been building an Instagram following around Eat Vermont. "In videos posted almost daily," writes Jordan Barry in Seven Days, "the 32-year-old champions farmers and restaurant owners, giving them about 45 seconds to share their stories." Now, she reports, a new app has gone live, with AI-generated recipes and plans not just to highlight food and farm, but to include listings for every restaurant, general store, co-op, farm, and food business in VT. Rocket tells Barry he's looking for funding: "I'll be broke by the end of November, but I'm sprinting to the cliff with a smile."SPONSORED: Trumbull Hall Troupe presents Heathers The Musical: Teen Edition. The darkly delicious story of Veronica Sawyer, a brainy, beautiful teen misfit who hustles her way into the most powerful and ruthless clique at Westerberg High: the Heathers. But then she falls in love with the dangerously handsome new kid, J.D... And when Heather the Almighty kicks her out of the group, J.D. gets involved. Nov. 1-3 at the Lebanon Open House. Tix at the burgundy link or here. (Note: Heathers is a dark comedy with mature themes. Parental guidance is recommended.) Sponsored by Trumbull Hall Troupe.For pumpkin season, picture books about pumpkin season. "This is the time of year I find myself wanting to read childhood classics about harvest season," writes Still North Books and Bar's H Rooker in this week's Enthusiasms. So H revisits a couple—Pumpkins: A Story for a Field, by Mary Lyn Ray, with its 461,212 pumpkins in a field; and the runaway pumpkin in Tasha Tudor's Pumpkin Moonshine. "Whether you have children to read them to or not," H writes, "I recommend grabbing a cup of hot cider, sitting outside in the glorious fall evening light," and giving them a read.Husband of Grafton County sheriff candidate faces charges for alleged harassment. James Myers III, of Lisbon, NH, is one of a group of four charged by the Lisbon police with misdemeanor counts of harassment and disorderly conduct after a September incident in which they allegedly "insulted, taunted or challenged" Robert Thomsen, a Lisbon man with a criminal record. As the VN's John Lippman reports, Myers is married to Jill Myers, the Littleton police officer who is the Democratic candidate for county sheriff. Lippman details the case and yesterday's court action in a civil case brought by Thomsen.Otters on the hunt. "Every year at this time," writes Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast, "we find at least one family of otters (mother and this year’s young) in the same shallow stretch of river. They appear to be feeding on crayfish as well as spending lots of time wrestling with each other." Alongside: Tig Tillinghast's photo of a mother otter rippling through the reflection of a sugar maple in its full glory. Also out there this week in the woods: the unsettling fungus known as Dead Man's Fingers, and the not-in-the-least-unsettling oyster mushroom, which is both tasty and can clean up diesel oil contamination.How do you rescue a 600-pound calf from a swimming pool? Well for starters, you need a sling. And the Tilton/Northfield fire department. And neighbors. All of whom helped get Charlie out of a Northfield, NH pool after he "somehow gained access, bypassing necessary authorization and ignoring the seasonal inappropriateness," as the town's police department put it on their FB page. Owner Ken Lowrey was out of town; Charlie was discovered by his son Mike and daughter-in-law Liz when they went to check on him. "You can imagine that call and not being able to do anything," Ken tells WMUR.In Concord, little apparent appetite for impeaching Supreme Court justice. Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi's indictment last week on felony charges of attempting to influence an investigation of her husband, ports director Geno Marconi, has raised questions about her place on the bench, reports NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt. The only way to remove her, though, is impeachment, which has happened to a justice in NH just twice: in 1790 and 2000. DeWitt explores the questions and gets no clear answers from legislative leaders.
That may be because they've read a piece by the Boston Globe's Steven Porter, who asked former state public defender Julian Jefferson how strong the prosecution's case actually is. In the Morning Report newsletter (no paywall), Porter outlines Jefferson's review of the indictments and his belief that there are at least two weak spots: Hantz Marconi's conversation with Gov. Chris Sununu about her husband "is 'absolutely problematic' as a matter of judicial ethics, but it doesn’t necessarily mean Hantz Marconi committed a felony," Jefferson told him. And one misdemeanor charge is based on a statute that "has the potential of being found unconstitutionally vague."
Longtime independent Rep. Laura Sibilia, who represents a stretch of rural Windham County, announced yesterday that she is running because “too many voices are going unheard, both of Vermonters and of legislators, and important work remains unfinished." As Sarah Mearhoff reports for
VTDigger
, this puts her on a collision course with incumbent Speaker Jill Krowinski. In an interview, Sibilia tells Mearhoff that while Krowinski is widely liked, "there are significant numbers of members who are really concerned about our inability to get work done.”
Start here if you care about [fill in the blank] in Vermont's 2024 election. VT Public has centered a good bit of its election coverage this year around issues listeners identified as their top concerns. It's all coming together with a suite of guides on housing, taxes/affordability, climate/environment, education, and health care. In each, reporters walk you through the basic issues, recent changes by the legislature and governor, ways in which elected officials can act and how that might affect your vote, and what candidates are saying this year. Burgundy link goes to housing; you'll find links to the rest right near the top.So, you think you can do jigsaw puzzles fast? Remember YouTube star Mark Rober? Yeah, the squirrel-obstacle-course guy. More recently, he's gotten deep into robotics—in fact, he's joined up with NH inventor Dean Kamen's FIRST robotics program that works with schoolkids globally. At his own Crunch Labs, he's creating all sorts of robots. Including one that can solve jigsaw puzzles 200 times faster than a human (as long, he points out, as you don't include the three years it took to create it). At the link, he walks us through what it took. Including figuring out how a robot picks up a puzzle piece...
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
we
know what's good! Strong Rabbit's Morgan Brophy has come up with the perfect design for "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Plus you'll find the Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, as well as sweatshirts, tees, a fleece hoodie, and, as always, the fits-every-hand-perfectly Daybreak mug. Check it all out at the link!
Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center brings in the prominent Pennsylvania Democrat for a conversation about policy and the country's polarized political environment with prof Charlie Wheelan, Dartmouth Conservatives president Alexander Azar, and Dartmouth Democrats president Bea Reichman. 5 pm, live in Filene Auditorium as well as online. Registration required.
At the Center at Eastman: "The Wonderful Work of Local Nonprofits". It's an evening dedicated to learning about nonprofits around the region
who work on everything from family support and scholarships to land preservation, protecting lakes, and more.
From 6:30 to 8 pm.
In
Within Flesh
,
Salehi, a Persian-American poet and entrepreneur, and Schweitzer, a writer and scholar from a Brooklyn Jewish family, "use Emily Dickinson’s incomparable poems written during the mid-nineteenth century as entry points for their own meditations on still-pressing issues of color, fairness, the police and courts." 7 pm.The Hop presents The Lone Bellow. The Nashville-by-way-of-Brooklyn Americana trio—
Zach Williams, Kanene Donehey Pipkin, and Brian Elmquist—rolls into Rollins Chapel tonight at 8 as part of their By Request Only Tour. It's listing as sold out, but it's always worth calling the box office
at 603.646.2422 to check for stray tix.
And this morning...
Some Beethoven. Sort of. Jon Batiste has his first solo piano album coming out in a few weeks, and the title says it all:
Beethoven Blues
(though there's also gospel, jazz, and more.) It's Jon in conversation with Ludwig, and the lead single's now up:
Just sit back, relax, and let them take you where they go together.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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