GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Maybe some lingering snow, then skies gradually clearing. A quick-moving disturbance came through last night and dropped what you see this morning. It's leaving just as quickly, but there's cold air behind it and things will be brisk today, with winds from the northwest gusting into the 30 mph range. Highs today in the mid or upper 20s, lows in the mid teens.More color! This time on wings—or, actually, perching on a branch. "For the last few weeks, a trio of Eastern bluebirds has been hanging around our yard in Lyme, one male and two females," writes Meg Maker. "They swoop onto the feeders a couple of times per day to hoover the dried fruit in the seed mix." Here's a shot of the male—or, as Meg writes, "the Bluebird of Climate Change. I’ve rarely seen them at this time of year; earlier this week I started seeing American robins, too. I know bluebirds may overwinter at the southern edge of our range, but it’s arresting to see harbingers of spring so early."Dartmouth gets a bit more time to appeal men's basketball ruling. As you'll remember, the college wants to appeal a ruling by the head of the National Labor Relations Board's Boston office declaring that members of the men's basketball team can unionize. On Monday, the NLRB's national office agreed to push back the college's deadline for filing its request from Feb. 22 to March 5, the AP reports. That happens to be the same day members of the team will be voting on whether to unionize. As the AP writes, the whole case "could have wide-ranging implications for the definition of amateurism in college athletics."School bus driver faces DUI, other charges after Corinth crash. The incident happened Monday around 5 pm, when the 25-year-old driver crashed the minivan-style school bus she was driving, owned by Pierson’s Transportation, near Chelsea and Eagle Hollow roads. Troopers "observed signs of impairment" and later learned she'd been transporting children beforehand, the VSP says in its press release, adding, "No children were involved in the crash." The driver was charged with DUI, negligent operation, reckless endangerment, and cruelty to a child.SPONSORED: Dartmouth Health adopts robotic-assisted technology to aid in joint replacement surgery. At DHMC and APD, we have some of the most experienced joint surgeons in the region. Our hip and knee specialists perform thousands of replacements every year and are now using robotic-assisted surgical tools and enabling technologies. These technologies can make joint replacement more customized to each patient, shorten recovery times, and make replacement joints feel more ‘natural’ to the patient. Hit the burgundy link or here to learn more. Sponsored by Dartmouth Health.After months of looking and two rounds of interviews, Canaan hires full-time town administrator. Chester “Chet” Hagenbarth spent 11 years working for the town of Killington, reports Christina Dolan in the Valley News—first as public works director, then as town manager. Hagenbarth replaces Ned Connell, who'd taken the spot long occupied by Mike Samson but then left last May after less than a year in the post. "In a tight labor market for municipal administrators," Dolan writes, "the town went through a lengthy search that included two rounds of candidate interviews." Hagenbarth starts Feb. 27.Mt. Ascutney School Board rescinds budget, will bring revised version to voters later. The board, which oversees schools in Windsor and W. Windsor, is expecting that the VT legislature will pass a measure allowing school boards to delay their budget votes as it reworks school funding policy set under Act 127. “We can’t present to voters something that we approved under completely different rules,” board chair Davis McGraw said Monday. Many boards, including Mt. Ascutney's, anticipate they'll need to trim budgets they've already approved before bringing them to voters, writes the VN's Christina Dolan.Love can happen in the strangest places. Like the dining hall. Four years ago, Tammara Wood and Scott Gerlach, who work at Dartmouth, were each prodded to attend the annual employee anniversary and service awards meal. She was celebrating ten years at the college, he’d been there 15. They sat next to each other and zing. Though love may have arrived more slowly. For one thing, Wood didn’t think Gerlach’s bowler hat was very fashionable. “That was almost a deal-breaker,” writes Charlotte Albright in a Dartmouth News profile. Wood has come to see the charm, and they'll be married on Leap Day.
The "Department of Nailing Down The Squishy Stuff". It's got a ring to it, Granite Geek's David Brooks thinks. But its actual name at Dartmouth is the Department of Quantitative Social Science—and on his blog, Brooks writes that it specializes in using quantitative tools to tackle "gnarly topics like 'race, incarceration and politics' and 'sociology of mental health'." The challenge, Brooks points out, is that unlike, say, chemistry, "there are almost never clean, straightforward solutions when you’re dealing with the interaction of many human beings." The department strives to use data to get at answers."Investigators believe that inexperience..." Over the last week or so, there have been seven snowmobile crashes in New Hampshire, and that phrase has repeatedly cropped up in NH Fish & Game's reports. WFFF Burlington's Aidan Scanlon outlines a rash of incidents: a New York woman who lost control near the Flume Gorge Visitor Center; a Massachusetts woman seriously injured after crashing into trees near Milan—her first time driving a snowmobile; a Connecticut man stuck under his machine as it caught fire after colliding with a tree on Friday in Stewartstown; a Laconia teen injured near Rumney...Sununu asks lawmakers for $850K to send NH National Guard troops to the Texas border. The move comes after his visit to Eagle Pass, TX earlier this month, where he joined TX Gov. Greg Abbott at a press conference on border security. Border enforcement, reports NHPR's Josh Rogers, "has become a major priority for Sununu, who successfully pushed lawmakers to spend $1.4 million to boost security along New Hampshire’s 58-mile boundary with Canada." If the money's approved, 15 NH National Guard members would be deployed for up to 90 days under the direction of the TX National Guard.Let's see: 100 bitcoin at $49K each... After Keene libertarian activist Ian Freeman was arrested and convicted on charges of money laundering, tax evasion, and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, the government seized 100 bitcoin, and last month was given permission by a federal judge to convert them into US currency. Now, reports NHPR's Todd Bookman, Freeman has agreed to an order that he repay $3.5 million to 29 different victims of third-party scams who'd exchanged their money for bitcoin and deposited it in accounts opened by Freeman. Freeman's attorney said yesterday, "He will owe nothing to nobody from here on in."Well yeah, what about "Con-kid"? As you may have read, a member of the NH House from Concord, Eric Gallagher, has put in a bill to have state law declare an official pronunciation for his home town, so that the second syllable rhymes with "curd" not with "chord". He was up before a House committee to defend the idea yesterday, and one colleague, reports the AP's Holly Ramer, asked if he'd squared the bill with old-timers who say "Con-kid". It wouldn't be a mandate, Gallagher replied. “Even though the state fruit is the pumpkin, you can still grow other fruits besides pumpkins," he noted.At the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, "We are definitely seeing things change." Last month, a tv crew from WCVB Boston's "Chronicle" program spent some quality time in the Northeast Kingdom town known for the outdoor center, Pete's Greens, Sterling College, and more. The results are out in a series of segments that just dropped: chatting up the outdoor center's Judy Geer and biathlon great Susan Dunklee (burgundy link); ice-fishing on Lake Elligo and hanging out with Blackbird Bistro owner Leanne Kinsey; checking in with librarian Kristin Urie in E. Craftsbury, touring the Craftsbury General Store—the Genny to locals—and visiting Pete Johnson of Pete's Greens.Don’t fry this at home. It was exciting enough to find an intact chicken egg in an archaeological dig of 1,700-year-old Roman ruins in Aylesbury, England. Then scientists used a CT scanner to peer inside and found it still held yolk and white. Whoaaa! The BBC's Helen Burchell notes the site held more eggs, but the others, as might be expected, broke during the excavation and, as also might be expected, smelled awful. The whole egg was eventually brought to London. “It was a bit hairy on the Tube—although it was well protected—it's not like I was carrying it around in my pocket," says the archeologist in charge.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. A word game—but local!
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There's a Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, perfect for long nights by the fire. Plus, of course, fleece vests, hoodies, sweatshirts, even a throw blanket. And hats, mugs, and—once you work up a puzzle-piece sweat—tees. Check it all out at the link!
Today at 12:30, Dartmouth anthropology and psychiatry prof Elizabeth Carpenter-Song will give a lunchtime talk about her book, Families On the Edge: Experiences of Homelessness and Care in Rural New England. In the book, Carpenter-Song follows a group of Upper Valley families she first met in 2009 at a Vermont-based shelter she calls Safe Harbor in the book. She worked with them for over a decade, visiting hundreds of times, watching as they moved, were evicted, and dealt with myriad ups and downs. She'll talk about it all in Berry 180-B in the Baker-Berry Library. Reservations required, at the link.
Starting at 6:30 this evening, WRJ's Main Street Museum goes all-in on the day with "Heartburn & Heartbreak". The heartburn comes first: a gumbo cook-off between Mark Bradley, Greg LeBlanc, and Bryan Luikart. Then, at 7:30, the Hokey Pokey's take the stage, followed at 8:30 by Reckless Breakfast, for songs of heartbreak.
This evening at 7, Hop Film screens Céline Sciamma's 2019 Cannes award-winner, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. As the description runs: "France, 1760. Marianne is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent. Because Héloïse is a reluctant bride-to-be, Marianne arrives under the guise of companionship, observing her subject by day and secretly painting her by firelight at night. As the two women orbit one another, intimacy and attraction grow..." At the Loew.
And some music to start the day...
Okay, we're two days late. But really, it's never too late. Monday was the 100th anniversary of the day that George Gershwin's
Rhapsody in Blue
premiered at Aeolian Hall in NYC—with Leopold Stokowski, John Philip Sousa, Sergei Rachmaninoff, actress Gertrude Lawrence, and other luminaries in the audience. The piece was "thunderously applauded that day," Tom Huizenga reports on NPR, though one critic did call it "circus music." Gershwin himself told his biographer he considered it "a musical kaleidoscope of America," with, Huizenga writes, "sounds of Tin Pan Alley, where as a teenager he worked as a song promoter; there are whiffs of Yiddish theatre, Spanish music, the hurdy-gurdies of the Lower East Side and, of course, jazz." What there wasn't was bluegrass, but now Bela Fleck has fixed that with a new album dedicated to
Rhapsody'
s anniversary.
(Thanks, AW!)
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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