GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Partly to mostly sunny today. There's this west wind bringing moisture across from the Great Lakes, so definitely some clouds up there, but we can enjoy whatever sun we get while we can. Yesterday's gloom is just a memory, tomorrow's polar front hasn't gotten here yet, so for the moment: varying clouds as the day wears on, temps climbing into the low 40s, dropping through the 30s overnight.Dartmouth to hold master plan forum tonight. The college is in the midst of laying out the next 20 years of design and growth. It's taking a look at everything: buildings, landscape, open spaces, infrastructure, local real estate, Moosilauke, the Second College Grant. There'll be a presentation at 7:30 tonight at Alumni Hall in the Hopkins Center, followed by a conversation with campus planners about overall principles and where things stand.Royalton opts not to decide yet on town meeting format. As you may remember, there's a proposal to move to Australian ballot voting for "public questions" (ie, not the budget). At a special town meeting yesterday, voters narrowly (57-49) opted to put off a final decision until March. The pros and cons still got hot debate. “If we vote this in tonight," S. Royalton farmer Geo Honigford said, "look around this room because it is the last time we will meet to discuss a motion like this as a body together.” (VN)Now that's some crib eye candy! The NYT yesterday featured a 10-pic slideshow of the bank-barn-style home of Marc and Lana Reuss in Woodstock. The project started with Marc Reuss's Lego model during a sitdown at Long Trail with Birdseye, the Richmond VT-based architects, who took it from there. The house includes an 8-ton, powder-coated steel staircase that had to be lifted into place by crane before the roof was added.Hey, Hannah Kearney and Sophie Caldwell: Make room for Calvin Willard! He's not as well known, but he's definitely in the pantheon of great Vermont athletes. The Barnet logger and maple-sugarer is a competitive lumberjack — think underhand chop, standing block chop, stock saw, singlebuck, springboard chop, and hotsaw — and placed 7th in the US championship this summer. Oh, and seriously, he has a $5,000 chainsaw that runs on a dirt bike motor.There's a new place to hang out if you happen to be up in St. J. The Central Café has just opened on "rapidly revitalizing Railroad Street," as Seven Days puts it. Across the street from Kingdom Taproom & Table and a few doors down from Cantina di Girardo, it's the brainchild of Jerome Balmes and Robert Larrabee, who used to run Vermont Kingdom Coffee Roasters. "Everything starts in a coffee shop," says Balmes. "It's where people meet up."In a warmer, wetter world... we may be thirstier. That's the upshot of research by Dartmouth climate scientist Justin Mankin and a team from the college and Columbia. About 60 percent of the global water "flux" from the land to the atmosphere goes through plants, Mankin says: They're "like the atmosphere’s straw, dominating how water flows from the land to the atmosphere." Rising carbon dioxide and warmer temps will make plants in temperate climes thirstier, meaning the land will be drier.Claremont among NH towns voting to allow sports gambling parlors. In yesterday's elections, Manchester, Berlin, Laconia and Somersworth also opted to permit them; Nashua, Concord, Dover and Rochester nixed the idea. In the end, the state lottery commission and the company running the halls will decide where they go. Officials are aiming to have the first ones open by March.NH legislators consider imposing ten-cent charge for single-use plastic bags. The House Municipal and County Government Committee has a week to report out a bill if it wants it on the docket when the legislature reconvenes in January. At hearings yesterday, advocates noted that they're now harder to recycle (with the Chinese market gone) and the charge would encourage reusable bags. Opponents say recycling and education would be better.Best ski resorts in the east? Travel + Leisure says Okemo, Killington, Stowe, Bretton Woods, Loon Mountain, Mt. Tremblant, plus Whiteface and Windham in NY and Sugarloaf in ME. Sadly, you'll just have to stew in private — they don't have a comments section.VT makes 1962-64 aerial imagery available. This is mostly for the data geeks among you, but there are some pretty fun examples at the link. Vermont faces $70-$80 million budget gap next year. Basically, the state's costs are rising faster than its revenues, says Gov. Phil Scott. His administration blames rising state employee salaries, growing demands on social services, and teacher pension obligations that were underfunded for years. Scott says he's focused on addressing the gap through "restructuring" and "efficiencies" rather than new taxes. If you could improve public transit in VT however you wanted, what would you do? That's what VPR's Brave Little State wants to know. They've set out to answer a listener's question — "What will it take to create an effective public transit system that enables Vermonters to dramatically reduce automobile use?" — and want your two cents.Vermont bars: no beer pong, no happy hour, but sure, you can take your unfinished wine bottle home. Seven Days' David Holub has an eye-opening guide to "arguably some of the strictest alcohol regulations in the country." He gives an entertaining tour of seven of them, along with their rationales. "Sometimes," he writes, "we need rules to save us from ourselves."
If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
SO WHAT'S ON TONIGHT?
Nora Jacobson and Fern Meyers' Enchanted Hills: Legacy of an Art Colony will premiere at the Loew in Hanover
. The hour-long film (which is free tonight) is about the Cornish Colony and the Gilded Age writers, sculptors, dancers, painters, composers, and naturalists who flocked to join Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Maxfield Parrish and others. It wasn't just about art. Their legacy includes the Appalachian Trail, the National Park system, the Wilderness Society, Audubon bird sanctuaries, public gardens.... At 7 pm.
Meanwhile, over at the Howe, the "Reading Upwards!" book group will tackle The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
. The group meets every first Wednesday to talk about "living, meaning, and belonging in perilous times." Behind the language, Mark Manson's book is really about values, and about figuring out what's actually important to you. "You are always wrong, and growth comes from being a little less wrong each day," he once wrote. At 6:30.
. This month's Vermont Humanities Council lecture is by UVM philosophy prof Tyler Doggett, who'll be exploring the ethics of achievement and opportunity gaps, the different ways parents approach parenting, and your questions. 7 pm at the Norwich Congregational Church.
. Kruppa, a retired engineering prof from Bowling Green State in Ohio, now lives over by the seacoast. He plays guitar, five-string banjo, and baritone ukelele, and these days does some 300 shows a year of all sorts of songs in the folk lexicon. At the Dunbar Free Library at 7:30.
Vermont Overland hosts year-round Wednesday night gravel rides, and with the time change they've switched to riding the Woodstock Nordic trails. Ride leaves at 5:30.
Okay, let's go face that day! See you tomorrow.
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! You can subscribe at:
Thank you!