GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Some sun! High pressure's headed our way, but it'll still be cool out. Bright sunshine all day, highs in the low or mid 40s, winds today from the north. We'll be down into the mid or upper teens tonight under mostly clear skies.Still mornings. You people are out early! But it's sure been peaceful out there.
Here's a panorama of the fog in E. Thetford, from Tom Monego.
And the view from Hopson Rd. in Norwich. "The sun had just broken out, the clouds moving quickly, mist rising and the birds went wild," writes Andrew Garthwaite. "I think they recognized the moment."
And here's Margaret Johnston's watercolor of a photograph of the Connecticut River the other morning, looking south from near the Lyme/Hanover line.
KUA student dies in single-vehicle crash near Rutland. Macy Piersiak, a 17-year-old from Needham, MA, died early Sunday morning after her pickup struck a guardrail in Shrewsbury, VT, then ran head-on into a tree. She was remembered this week as "an outgoing senior with a spirited personality," John Lippman reports in the Valley News. “Her energy was always of uncommon generosity, spirit, and kindness,” Head of School Tyler Lewis wrote the Kimball Union community in an email. Counselors from other Upper Valley schools "without hesitation, immediately stepped in to support our students and employees," communications director Tricia McKeon tells Lippman.In Sharon, a "quiet, secluded" road. Except when it wasn't. Anthony Ciardelli grew up in a house on a back road in town that his parents bought in 1985. Not long after they moved in, his dad got into one of those conversations: "Oh," the other person said after figuring out where they lived. "The drug bust house!" That was a huge 1979 VSP raid. Then there was the 1966 drop-in by TV and movie star Brandon deWIlde, musician Gram Parsons, and other '60s Hollywoodites. And up the road, Suntreader Studios (and Foghat). Ciardelli's got a new podcast out about it all: True Stories from an Old Dirt Road.Speaking of Sharon, where does it draw the line? Or Norwich, for that matter. In the VN, Emma Roth-Wells details an ongoing boundary discussion—dispute is too strong a term—over the border between the two towns. As Roth-Wells writes, "Nearly the entire length of the border between Norwich and Sharon overlaps, according to the state’s online parcel viewer. More than 20 parcels contain land that is considered to be in both Sharon and Norwich." Which has proven burdensome for several landowners at tax time. Two Norwich listers want to clarify the borders; the selectboards seem uninterested.SPONSORED: Support Willing Hands with a donation this fall! Reduce food waste, expand equitable and reliable access to fresh food, and strengthen our community by making a donation to Willing Hands. Your generosity keeps plates filled with fresh food this holiday season. Sponsored by Willing Hands.In a book that never came to be, Octavia Butler wanted to rescue humanity. Celebrated writer Jeff Sharlet has never shied from daunting tasks, and in his debut piece for Enthusiasms, he tackles another one: writing about a book that doesn't exist. Parable of the Trickster was to be science fiction writer Octavia Butler's third in the series that began with Parable of the Sower. But she died in 2006, and it was only seven years later that researchers discovered she'd actually started it. Multiple times. Jeff writes about Butler herself, her unsettlingly prophetic series, and about what power does to the imagination.Connecticut River Conservancy lands $11.5 million for watershed restoration in New Hampshire. The federal grant is the largest in the organization's history, the CRC said in a press release yesterday, and it will go primarily toward helping farmers and private landowners "manage and enhance aquatic and forested ecosystems on their properties," with an eye toward restoring degraded streams and forests that ultimately affect the Connecticut River. Stabilizing stream banks, removing dams, replacing culverts, planting riparian buffers—it'll all make the river healthier, the CRC says.SPONSORED: Dive into a winter of discovery with Osher at Dartmouth! Featuring dozens of courses, Osher offers a fantastic way to learn for pure enjoyment. From history and literature to science and the arts, there’s something for every interest! Featuring both in-person and online courses, Osher is the perfect place for those who are eager to explore new subjects or take a closer look at familiar topics. Don’t miss this chance to join a vibrant community of lifelong learners! Winter term registration opens December 3, and courses begin January 6. Sponsored by Osher at Dartmouth.There's still green out there. But, other than evergreens, you'll need to be looking at the ground. Out in the woods this second week of November, Northern Woodlands' Jackson Saul writes that you'll find striped wintergreen—no relation to true wintergreen, but pretty nonetheless, and more easily found on the NH side of the river; partridgeberry, a snack for ruffed grouse, wild turkey, red fox, raccoon, deer, and humans; and sphagnum moss, which can also host snow fleas. Which, it turns out, are handy little moss reproduction helpers—but also prey for, among others, barn funnel weaver spiders.How do river otters prep for winter? Their coat thickens. Unlike other mammals that put on pounds of fat before hibernating or denning, writes Mary Holland on her latest Naturally Curious blog, river otters are pretty nonchalant about the whole winter's-coming thing. They like fresh food, and they can find it year-round—though in winter, their diet shifts from fish, frogs, turtles, aquatic insects, crayfish, aquatic vegetation, fruits and berries, birds, eggs, snakes, and small mammals to just plain fish.Killington preps for winter, too. Probably no one was happier about the sudden drop in temperatures this week than the resort, which is staring down the Women's World Cup on Thanksgiving weekend. As Greg Gleason, Killington resort’s snowmaking manager, tells VT Public's Nina Keck, the race trail needs at least four feet of snow by Nov. 21 for the competition to go ahead. That's—checks watch—eight days from now. Yesterday morning, crews fired up the mountain's 250 snow guns. It doesn't take much: On a 20-degree day, the resort can cover two acres with a foot of snow per hour.So that's what this is! A "flash drought". There have been multiple brush fires in NH and VT in recent days, and on his Granite Geek blog, David Brooks writes that although "flash drought" sounds like an oxymoron, "it doesn’t take long to go from not-bad to very-bad even in usually damp New England.” As the Northeast Integrated Drought Information System, they're “the rapid onset of intense dry periods that can follow a period of normal to above-normal precipitation.” Which—remember? of course you do!—we had not long ago.Judge in NH youth detention center civil trial moves to cut amount awarded to plaintiff. By, like, a lot. The sprawling investigation of sexual and physical abuse by staff at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester was touched off in 2017 by David Meehan, and in the years since, over 1,100 suits have been filed. In May, a jury awarded Meehan $38 million in damages, to be paid by the state. But now, reports the AP's Holly Ramer, the superior court judge who oversaw that trial, Andrew Schulman, has issued a preliminary order cutting the amount to $475,000—the cap for a single "incident."Man charged with shooting three Palestinian students in Burlington found competent to stand trial; hate crime charge "unlikely." At a hearing yesterday morning, reports Derek Brouwer in Seven Days, Jason Eaton's public defender told a judge that a psychiatrist who evaluated Eaton has concluded that he's competent to stand trial. Afterward, Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George told reporters that investigators have found no evidence that would support a hate-crime charge. Judge John Pacht has set a May 31 deadline for both sides to finish up witness depositions.To Vermont's workforce shortage, add another one: clergy. “I'm having a hard time bringing pastors to churches," the Rev. Jill Colley Robinson, district superintendent for the United Methodist Church in the state, tells VT Public's Nina Keck. With congregations shrinking, the funds to support clergy drying up, housing costs prohibitive on a limited salary, and religious leaders aging, those still in the field are juggling multiple jobs and multiple congregations, Keck reports. It's also affecting "pastoral care, in chaplaincy, working in prisons, all the places where clergy hang their hat,” Rabbi Jan Salzman tells her.Skiing or snowboarding in Vermont? You'll need to eat, too. And as it happens, there are new or re-thought spots in Stowe, near Sugarbush and Mad River Glen, by Smugglers' Notch, and close to Bolton Valley and Cochran's. Seven Days' intrepid food duo Jordan Barry and Melissa Pasanen headed out to try them: the Stowe beachhead of NC-based Nocturnal Brewing; Waitsfield's pan-Asian Scrag & Roe; Lot Six Brewing by Smuggler's Notch; and Hatchet Tavern in Richmond. The pair check out the food, the drinks, and the vibe.There's slacklining. There's extreme slacklining. And then there's whatever this is. A mile-and-a-half in the sky, suspended between two hot air balloons. Which is how veteran slackliners Friedi Kuehne and Lukas Irmler, both Germans, set a new world slacklining altitude record on Saturday. Some tense moments in there, despite safety lines... You can forgive the yelling.
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!
The Enfield Public Library hosts Jackson Penfield-Cyr, who runs
Upper Valley Integration Therapy for a talk on how the "secrets" to aging gracefully "exist within the routines of daily life." He'll be talking biology, health, and an understanding of aging that "
includes adaptive, productive, vital years." 2 pm.
This is the fourth annual rural-entrepreneurship pitch event hosted by the Hartland-based Center on Rural Innovation. Five startups from all over the country will take their turns before
a panel of investors judging them on the product itself, their business model, and more. Winner gets $10K and bragging rights. Reception to follow. 5 pm, both in-person and livestreamed.
A panel of foresters, academics, and carbon-offset specialists will tackle the ins and outs of conserving forest land and taking advantage of carbon markets. The Howe writes, "Families and individuals collectively own the largest portion of American forests, making them essential players in the fight against global warming." Moderated by Dartmouth political scientist Russ Muirhead. 5:30 pm, in-person in the Mayer Room or online via Zoom.
The town's Housing Commission hosts a forum this evening at 6 pm in Wheeler Hall at Colby Sawyer College to explore housing challenges, how uncertainty about the municipal water supply and groundwater contamination has affected housing projects, what ongoing studies of land use regs, demographics, and existing housing show, and to get public input on all of it. New London Rec will provide childcare.
The longtime winter sports, skiing, and Olympics broadcaster will be at the Center at Eastman at 6:30 pm talking about Dartmouth's role in expanding the world of American skiing and his own career calling races, ski jumping, and more at decades-worth of Olympics, World Championships, and World Cups.
Morris, who is also a psychoanalyst in Montpelier, has a new collection out,
Nothing Happened Last Night.
Culver, who splits his time between Burlington and central PA, also has a new collection—of uncollected and new poems, haiku and senryu, and renderings into English of classic Chinese poetry. 7 pm.
They're back for another night of off-the-cuff, impossible-to-predict comedy. 8 pm.
Today, an electrified medieval instrument.
It's a little hard to imagine an eight-year-old saying, "Hey, Dad, I want to learn the hurdy-gurdy"—or, in this case, "Hé, Papa..." But that's when Frenchman Guilhem Desq began learning the instrument, which is still a force in traditional French music. It's a little unclear who first called him "the Jimi Hendrix of the hurdy gurdy," but whatever: He's a hurdy gurdy master. And he drums along. And it's hard to believe that one guy is producing all that sound: harmony, melody, rhythm...
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.
Want to catch up on Daybreak music?
Want to catch up on Daybreak itself (or find that item you trashed by mistake the other day)? You can find everything on the Daybreak Facebook page
, or if you're a committed non-FB user,
.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob 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! Subscribe at no cost at:
Thank you!