Daybreak Wednesday 11/24/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

A reminder: No Daybreak the rest of this week—because it's time for the basics: Pie and family. You, too, could use a break, I imagine. In the meantime, you'll find this week's Lost Woods and Hiking Close to Home posts below.Sunny, dry... a tad warmer. That high pressure's in place into tomorrow, so today we get full-on sun, though temps are still running a little below normal: Highs today in the upper 30s. Winds from the northwest, around 20 tonight.Looking back... Among the many things to be thankful for are the Upper Valley photographers who've helped us look at the sights around us with fresh eyes. As always, the two Daybreak albums—Daybreak Where You Are and Fall Photos—have been filling up with photos that don't run during the week. By now, there's a lot in there, so poke around at your leisure. And also as always, the homepage of the Fall album attributes everything to me, but don't believe it. Click into any photo to see who actually took it."Getting lost can be good." It's hard to believe, but this is Week 52 of Lost Woods. That's right: For a year, Lebanon author and illustrator DB Johnson has been chronicling the doings in his favorite patch of trees. If you haven't checked it out because you're reluctant to dive in right in the middle, I say Bosh! Just hit those three red little lines at the top right, then The Archives, and you can spend some quality time catching up with the rest of us.SPONSORED: Massage therapy, cupping, and acupuncture at APD! Integrative Medicine options have expanded at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital. Integrative medicine is an approach to health that addresses the full range of physical, emotional, mental, social, and environmental influences that affect your overall well-being. Call (603) 442-5660 to book a massage, cupping therapy, or naturopathic consultation. Learn more here. Sponsored by APD.Toxic contaminants found in loon eggs in Grafton Pond, Sunapee, Squam, other NH lakes. In a report released yesterday, the Loon Preservation Committee found several toxic chemicals in failed loon eggs, reports the Valley News's Claire Potter, including PFAS, PCBs, and flame retardants. “One of the issues is that once they’re in our environments, especially in sediments, lake bottoms, they stay,” LPC biologist Harry Vogel tells Potter. “The best way to keep them out of our lakes is to never let them in there.” The danger, he says, is their concentration as they move up the food chain.Dartmouth numbers spike as students leave for holidays. In the past seven days, notes The Dartmouth, there have been 75 new active cases identified, compared to just 10 the week of Nov. 7. Students who've tested positive are in isolation, spokesperson Diana Lawrence tells them in an emailed statement, and "may not travel by public conveyance but can travel home via private conveyance." She adds that it is "difficult to know if these cases are related to waning immunity." The college is encouraging students to get boosters while on break and is drawing up plans to offer more boosters to students locally."It does have a mind. It makes decisions. Some fires have personalities." Kevin Goodan, a poet who lives in Meriden and teaches at Colby-Sawyer, joined a "hotshot crew" to fight fires out West when he was 18. He's got a new book of poems out, about the experience. And even now, years later and on the other side of the continent, he still thinks about wildfire—which is becoming a less remote possibility here. "People think, 'Oh, these trees are beautiful...'" he tells NHPR's Rick Ganley. "And I think, 'Well, this is where a fire will probably burn through much more rapidly than this area over here.'""Little Women invites you to create rituals." In this week's Enthusiasms, Left Bank Books' Rena J. Mosteirin explains why, year after year, she returns to Louisa May Alcott's classic. In case you're new to it, Enthusiasms is a weekly write-up from a rotating cast of locals who've got stuff they really want you to know about. "I invite you to give the book a read if you never have, a re-read if it’s been a while, or give it as a gift for the holidays," Rena writes at the link.Hiking Close to Home over Thanksgiving: The Helen Woodruff Smith Bird Sanctuary. The Upper Valley Trails Alliance's suggestion for Thanksgiving week offers a relatively easy, 1.6-mile trail network in the village of Meriden, NH. Several paths wind through the 32-acre site. It's managed by the Meriden Bird Club, which was the first in the nation to own and maintain a sanctuary for birds, thanks to a gift from Helen Woodruff Smith that enabled the purchase of the Watson Farm in 1911. Park in the village in the roadside spaces located in front of the stone church green."For most of the 20th century, turkeys were missing from much of New England." In VT, for instance, they'd been wiped out by the late 19th century, writes Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast, and weren't reintroduced until 1969. But this particular fourth week of November, they're sure out and about, she notes. Also out there: rock pigeons, bears clawing trees, mock oyster mushrooms (it's been a warm fall), and rose-colored jellies, a type of fungus.Baying hounds. That, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog, is what thousands of snow geese on the move sound like. They've been headed from the high Arctic to their wintering grounds along the Atlantic—spending time in stopover hot spots at Rouse's Point, NY, just south of the border on northern Lake Champlain, and the Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area in Addison, VT.Facing surge, Sununu makes it easier for hospitals to expand capacity, announces at-home testing program. "Unfortunately," he said at a press conference yesterday, "the trends I’m looking at (show) at least two, three, or four more weeks of increasing rates.” With his new executive order, reports NH Bulletin's Annmarie Timmins, hospitals will be able to use non-traditional spaces for acute care; the order also provides new resources so the state can speed up medical licensing. Sununu also announced a statewide "Booster Blitz" and a program to let the public order rapid tests online."Our children are watching how we behave, and we don't want to continue to create generations of mistrust." Writer Anthony Payton's new podcast project, The Common Ground Initiative, is what its name implies: an effort to find common ground on race and diversity in a diversifying NH. He's trying, he tells NHPR's Peter Biello, to get past assumptions—what the white guy with an American flag believes, what the Black athlete who kneels for the national anthem thinks. "if you have the right people, you can exchange ideas and views and still be civil and still show up at each other's barbecue," he says.UNH lab aims to help build a “blue economy” with ocean energy. Offshore wind power gets the attention, but a dedicated few wonder, “Why not offshore water power?” Granite Geek’s David Brooks digs into the new UNH-led institute, the Atlantic Marine Energy Center, that just received federal funds to “finally move wave power and tidal power from potential to reality.” Researchers will leverage UNH’s unique testing equipment—like the data-collecting “Living” Bridge floating beneath Portsmouth’s Memorial Bridge—to provide useful insights to tech developers hoping to send a new kind of current to the grid.“The first time I heard about [New Hampshire], I start searching through Google. And in the Google map, it looks like a green place.” Over the last two weeks, over 60 Afghans have arrived in the state, some on flights that get into Manchester late at night. They're met by staffers and volunteers with the International Institute of New England, who set them up in a hotel as they scramble to find apartments. Last week, NHPR's Sarah Gibson spent a few days with new arrivals and the people helping them, and yesterday went up with her report.VT Supreme Court chisels a chink in Act 250. In a unanimous recent ruling, writes Emma Cotton in VTDigger, the justices decided that developers pursuing projects on land that totals an acre or more in towns with minimal zoning no longer must get an Act 250 permit; instead, they only need one if the project will physically disturb an acre or more of land. The court has opened the decision for reargument, and several groups have filed briefs in opposition to the decision, arguing that it's "an open invitation to design projects that physically disturb less than one acre for virtually any type of construction or development."New restaurant fills a foodie void in downtown Montpelier. When one door closes, they say, another opens. Sometimes, the same door reopens. Early next year, the Montpelier building that housed the New England Culinary Institute—which closed last spring after 40 years—will find new life as Hugo’s, a farm-to-table restaurant and cocktail bar, reports Melissa Pasanen for Seven Days. Its owner, novelist Thomas Christopher Greene, who recently closed his own door as founding president of VCFA, is excited about making something new and “bringing back a historic building that’s been a restaurant since 1880.”"I'm not sure that any of us in the community got an answer about what actually happened that night." That's Norwich's Chris Jacobsen, talking to VPR's Josh Crane and Myra Flynn in the latest episode of Brave Little State. What he's talking about? The mystery behind how Royalton's much-loved Eaton's Sugar House burned down Halloween night in 2019 after catching fire not once, but twice. Flynn digs into the evidence and the rumors, and in a surprisingly rollicking episode tells the story, talking to Royalton Police Chief Loretta Stalnaker, fire officials, and above all, Eaton's owner Connie Poulin.You'll be like this at first snow too, right? You can think of the Kuusamo Predator Centre as Finland's answer to Lyme's Kilham Bear Center. Back in May, a three-pound cub (eventually named Aina) was found in the yard of a home, its mother nowhere to be found; she was brought to the Centre, which takes care of orphaned wildlife. Not long ago, now 60 pounds, she got her first taste of snow. Seems fair to say she liked it. (Thanks, CP!)Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. 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Things have quieted down ahead of the holiday, but a few items you might want to know about...

I'm thinking you probably don't need an introduction to Jackson Browne. Here he is last year with guitarist Greg Leisz, who's played and toured with pretty much everyone you've ever heard of,

Browne's 2014 version of a song by the Cuban singer-songwriter Carlos Varela, who's miraculously built a devoted following in both Havana and Miami.

Have a fine and reinvigorating few days. See you Monday.

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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt         Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter    Poetry editor: Michael Lipson  About Rob                                                    About Tom                                 About Michael

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