GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, dry, quiet. For one more day, anyway. High pressure today is bringing us mostly clear skies, highs around 20, and modest winds from the northwest. We'll be getting back down to around 0 or just above tonight, even though the skies will be clouding up as a winter storm makes its way toward us from the Great Lakes. We could see some snow by daybreak. More tomorrow.On the wing and on the hoof.
"There are easily over 100 mallard ducks along the NH side of the Connecticut River in Plainfield," writes Carol Majewski. "They've been there daily for a few weeks now." And though it's hard to get a clear view of them all, here's a beautiful shot of one.
And at Hogwash Farm in Norwich the other morning, Leslie O'Hara got this view of her pigs just as the sun was peeking through after a snowstorm.
Bradford missing person case now deemed "suspicious." When the VT State Police were first called in Jan. 18 after the disappearance of 43-year-old Corey Crooker, they reported there were "no indications" that he was "in immediate danger or missing under suspicious circumstances." But in a press release last night, the VSP now says that further investigation has "developed evidence that indicate the circumstances are potentially criminal in nature." Yesterday, state police searched a property on Old Post Road in connection with the case, and will continue today. Crooker was last seen by family Jan. 9.“I’m hoping we fill the Opera House." That would be 800 people that Claremont resident Rebecca MacKenzie is hoping to draw to the downtown venue, which is hosting a state-led public hearing tomorrow evening on a Massachusetts-owned company's proposal for processing construction and demolition material. The company, Recycling Services, wants state permission for up to 70 trucks a day carrying 500 tons of material to its facility, reports Patrick O'Grady for the Valley News. Residents have been fighting it since it was first proposed in 2019. “There is a lot at stake here," MacKenzie says. A small Claremont farm seeks safety in crop diversity. Winter Street Farm has just two acres devoted to its vegetables, writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog, but 30 different types of crops. Which has been vital as weather whiplash becomes a thing. “If we were doing 50 acres of just potatoes," co-owner Abigail Clarke says, weather fluctuations would put the farm at risk. Instead, “we usually assume that one or two of them aren’t going to go well … so we depend on others. Maybe it’s a year with a drought and we get really good melons.” What else? Pollinator habitat, no-till agriculture, wetlands.SPONSORED: The Importance of Being Earnest. Being sensible can be so boring. So let’s throw in a few false identities, secret engagements and a touch of Victorian wit with Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. The Hop is screening National Theatre Live’s hilarious reimagining of the celebrated comedy on February 28 at the Loew auditorium. Don’t miss this joyful and flamboyant masterpiece full of laughs, wordplay and the delightfully absurd. Get tickets today! Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth.Drunk robins? Well, maybe. As Northern Woodlands' Jack Saul writes in "This Week in the Woods" for the first week of February, sugars in fruit—like crabapples—ferment over the course of the year. It's a wintertime hazard for some birds, since it "can lead to collisions with obstacles, failure to avoid predators, or even death by alcohol poisoning." Meanwhile, wild turkeys are out there foraging and roosting in single-sex flocks (and probably depending on fern fronds and scattered agricultural grains right now). Plus: red bark phenomenon and boreal oakmoss.Meanwhile, snow may be a challenge for wild turkeys, but for river otters, it's play time. "Nothing screams exuberance in the winter quite so much as the galloping and sliding impressions of North American River Otters as they traverse snowy land, traveling straight from one body of water to another," writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog. Partly, she notes, it helps save energy and speeds up travel. But also: "it just has to be fun."SPONSORED: Organ concert by a master. At 7 pm this Friday, Feb. 7th at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College, Brink Bush, a leading interpreter of German Romantic organ music in the world today, will perform works by J. S. Bach, Georgi Mushel, Scarlatti, José Lidón, Saint-Saëns, Karg-Elert, Gerard Bunk, Boëllmann, Vierne, and Mulet. He had his New York debut at Trinity Church Wall Street and his German debut at the Berliner Dom, he was featured on public radio's "Pipedreams" in a program titled "Bach, Bush and Middelschulte". Free and Open to the Public! Sponsored by CCDC.The weight of the words we lose. "I could rehearse for you the ebb and tide of art and political favor within authoritarian regimes," Jeff Sharlet writes in this week's Enthusiasms—but he's after something deeper. He starts with Elif Batuman's The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, and a section in which she takes on the lost—actually, confiscated, maybe burned—work of the Soviet writer Isaac Babel. Then Jeff moves on to Babel himself, and his words as Stalin's goons took him away. And then on to Kafka, The Trial, and the "labyrinthine torture of unknowing."NH lawmaker draws bipartisan condemnation for comments on YDC abuse victims. GOP Rep. Ken Weyler, who leads the House Finance Committee, is no stranger to controversy, notes NHPR's Josh Rogers. And that's what he's gotten, after he took exception last week to the amount of money the state has set aside to settle lawsuits in the wake of extreme abuse allegations involving the Youth Development Center. “What are you going to do when you get a pile of money? You’re probably going to spend it on drugs and alcohol,” Weyler said. “Abhorrent and disgusting,” a GOP colleague says.It's been a busy couple of nights for NH rescuers. This time, snowmobilers. Less than a day after NH Fish & Game rescued two hikers from deep snow on Mt. Washington, they got a call from near Day Mountain in N. Stratford, about a half hour south of the border. With daylight gone and almost out of fuel, the two men—from NH and MA—were using old maps and kept encountering loops and dead ends. By 9:30 pm Monday, "the men were down to one cell phone, soaked from hours of heavy snow, and still stuck," the agency says in a press release. Rescuers reached them around 11 pm; one was hypothermic.On his way out the door, former NH Gov. Chris Sununu let Russian vodka back in. As Steven Porter writes in the Globe (paywall), back in 2022 Sununu ordered Russian-made vodka pulled from state liquor store shelves. “The point was made. … We got a national story out of it,” Sununu tells Porter. “We brought a lot of awareness as the importance of the war wore on.” But time moves on, and as he was preparing to leave office, he decided the ban was no longer needed—and it would have been “weird” to leave it for incoming Gov. Kelly Ayotte to deal with, he tells Porter. For VT Lt. Gov. John Rodgers: "Intentional obfuscation" or a campaign finance reporting system that "sucks"? That first quote is from a Democratic complaint about what appears to be a $67,000 discrepancy in Rodgers' campaign filings: He spent more than he took in. But Rodgers' campaign manager says it's “two major errors”: The campaign double-counted expenses related to its media efforts, Seven Days' Kevin McCallum writes. VT's elections director says filings related to media “can be confusing,” but a new online campaign finance filing portal will be able to point out when things don’t add up.There’s time before March Madness, so practice three free throws. Not with a ball, just say it with me: “three free throws.” How'd you do? As Karina Ryan writes on How Stuff Works, tongue twisters challenge speech and improve your communication skills. But really, don’t they just make you laugh? “Near an ear, a nearer ear, a nearly eerie ear.” Or try one of the longer versions, like the one that starts, “I’m a mother pheasant plucker …” Ryan explains why certain combinations are hard to say (plosive consonants and vowel transitions, apparently) and which one MIT scientists say is the hardest.
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Fleece vests, sweatshirts, head-warming beanies... Strong Rabbit has updated the Daybreak page to keep up with the changing weather. Plus, of course, the usual: t-shirts, long-sleeved tees, the Daybreak jigsaw, those perfect hand-fitting coffee/tea mugs, and as always, "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Check it all out at the link!
When Çatak's Academy Award-nominated film premiered in 2023, it drew raves: "A Whole Civilization in the Classroom" (
NYT
), "a provocative, intellectual thriller" (NPR), "glorious" (
RogerEbert.com
). The college's German department is hosting a screening of the film, about a young teacher in Germany dealing with an outbreak of stealing, with a Q&A with Çatak himself afterward. 4:30 pm, Filene Auditorium.
. The documentary, directed by painter, filmmaker, and Dartmouth studio arts lecturer Viktor Witkowski, focuses on his Polish grandmother and her oldest daughter, who live in a village in Poland near the German border and who, over the years, have been buffeted by war, Communism, and the transition to the EU; it's "a meditation on place and landscape, history, loss, and all those moments between laughter, grief, and wonder." Discussion afterward with Witkowski, German prof Yuliya Komska, and U of Montreal social anthropologist Agnieszka Pasieka. 5 pm.
And for today...
Remember Yasmin Williams? Taught herself to play via Guitar Hero and has been making her way up the innovative folk ladder with increasingly virtuosic chops—and not just on guitar. Her latest album also features pieces on banjo, calabash drum, tap shoes, and kora.
And
a finger-tapped double-necked guitar, which brought her to "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" a couple of weeks ago
, off that last album. And in case you're interested, though it's a little shlep,
next Tuesday.
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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
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