GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
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Chance of showers, cooler. We’ll be spending the day in the 40s, so as this storm settles in, any precipitation today and (more likely) tonight will be coming down as rain. When it’s not rainy, it’ll be mostly cloudy. Winds from the southeast with gusts this afternoon in the 20 mph range, overnight temps about the same as during the day, until a cold front arrives maybe around dawn.
The big concern, given rain and remaining stream and river ice, is flooding. Here’s what the weather folks say: “Anyone who lives, drives, or works along area rivers and streams should remain alert for rapidly changing water levels through mid week…River ice can break up very suddenly, and water can rise rapidly if jams do occur. River ice is very unstable and it is absolutely not safe to approach ice jams or walk on the ice. And even if rivers and streams remain within their banks, the water will be running high and fast and it will be very cold.” You can keep your eye on the NOAA river and stream gauges at the burgundy link. Right now, it’s looking fine around here.
Kind of like a bunch of ice cubes floating in the river. On Monday, Plainfield drone artist William Daugherty was out with his drone, and caught these kaleidoscopic shots of the ice chunks in the Mascoma and Connecticut rivers.
“Just like the Cheshire cat whose face faded slowly until only a smile remained.” That’s photographer Jim Block talking about the moment during last week’s lunar eclipse when the sky had lightened enough that the moon itself was barely visible. He caught the whole thing in a stunning set of photos in his latest blog post, as the moon went from full-on in the night sky to the faintest crescent after dawn. Also in the post: cedar waxwings galore and winter scenes around the Upper Valley.
NH municipal election results start coming in. Though some communities still have floor decisions to make, there were plenty of questions decided by ballot yesterday.
In preliminary results in Lebanon, voters re-elected Tim McNamara to one of two at-large City Council seats and chose Planning Board member Kellen Appleton to replace outgoing councilor Erling Heistad for the other. Realtor and farmer Eric Cole defeated incumbent George Sykes for the Ward 2 seat, 435-336, and Lori Key won the Ward 3 seat over a write-in challenge from Max Terzano. Andrew Faunce was unopposed in Ward 1. Voters also backed a petitioned charter amendment to impose a cap on budget increases, voted down Keno, and supported the creation of “social districts” for the consumption of alcohol outdoors. All results at the link above.
Voters in Canaan approved expanding the town’s selectboard from three members to five, 318-297 (Article 20). Full results here.
In Claremont, reports ABC22/FOX44’s Ben Breen, voters passed the proposed $42.9 million school budget, agreed to sell the shuttered Bluff Elementary School, allowed open enrollment students from other districts to attend Claremont schools, and rejected a school budget cap.
And in its initial roundup of results from NH towns around the region, the Valley News reports that voters in Grantham approved all articles except one discontinuing a land preservation fund and elected Thomas Shemanske to the selectboard; Haverhill voters elected Ronald Fournier and Ronald Hurlburt to the selectboard and Michelle Reagan to the school board; and voters in Croydon approved a new Growth Management Ordinance and elected Amy Freak and Shawn Douglas to the selectboard. Results from other towns will show up at that link as the day goes on.
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It’s Route 5’s turn in Fairlee to get shut down because of a rock slide. Early yesterday afternoon, Fairlee Police Chief Wayne Briggs got a call from dispatch that a piece of ledge had come down just south of the Bradford town line, in the area known as “The Ledges.” It was “about half the size of my vehicle” and blocked the northbound lane, he told the VN’s Liz Sauchelli; no one was injured, and no vehicles were damaged. VTrans crews cleared the debris, but the road will remain closed between Sawyer Mountain Drive and Mountain Road “for an extended period” according to a VTrans post last night; you can track it on this New England 511 page.
At new Leb roundabout site, Phnom Penh’s digs bite the dust. Work began yesterday morning on demolishing the building fronting the intersection of High, Mechanic, and Mascoma streets, reports the VN’s Clare Shanahan (with fine photos by Alex Driehaus), and is expected to last into today. The restaurant itself closed in February, and is moving farther down Mechanic Street; its WRJ spot is unaffected. Construction on the $3.86 million roundabout itself is scheduled to begin Monday, April 27, continue until a winter shutdown at Thanksgiving, then pick up again next spring with an eye toward finishing in May, 2027.
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In a slim 40-page book, a philosophy of being. What were humankind’s earliest inventions? Spear points? Hammer stones? Maybe instead, the great writer Ursula K. Le Guin suggest in The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, it was a container of some kind: “something to carry and store food,” the Norwich Bookstore’s Emma Kaas writes in this week’s Enthusiasms. Novels should be that way too, Le Guin thought: "A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us”—and if we change the way we tell stories, Emma notes, “the narratives we play out as humans are also likely to change.”
“I’m a little lopsided, lumpy and perhaps slightly sleepy, but I’m still full of adventure and spirit.” So says Oatmeal, a knit-horse stuffy who’s part of Kate Niemczyk’s 200-strong Bunny Bin collection at her home in Woodstock. Laid off from her job at NBC’s “Today” show a few years back, Niemczyk returned to her home town and launched her startup, which collects, repairs, and then finds new homes for stuffed animals that otherwise might have headed to a landfill. In Seven Days, Cathy Resmer profiles the effort (whose motto is, “Where Toys Become Real Again”), including Niemczyk’s certificates with the stuffies’ real or imagined backstories.
One fisher’s 80-mile journey to find a spot where she could settle down. Back in 2024, UNH researcher Rem Moll’s team found a young fisher on campus who became known as F003, and put on a GPS collar. When she lit out for the territory, they tracked her: to the Great Bay, back to Durham, then to Maine, across Lake Winnipesaukee last winter, and finally to Lincoln, NH—the longest documented dispersal journey for a fisher, reports NHPR’s Mara Hoplamazian. She died in December, maybe killed by a bobcat. “They’re doing these incredible things that we would have no idea [about.] We just happened to have a GPS collar on this individual,” says Moll.
VT and NH: Aerospace giants? Well, no, not really, but some interesting things are happening.
For one thing, VT Public’s Derek Brouwer reports, the feds are going to allow Burlington-based Beta Technologies to run medical and cargo flights in Vermont later this year “as part of a new program intended to fast-track the emerging electric aviation industry.” The US Dept. of Transportation says the project will “create one of the largest real-world testing environments for next-generation aircraft in the world.” Customers including UPS and Air New Zealand have placed “firm orders” for nearly 300 aircraft, Brouwer reports, even though Beta’s planes aren’t yet FAA-certified.
And for another, GE Aerospace plans to invest $42 million in its existing Rutland facility to add “the next generation of forging and precision machining equipment, additional inspection technology and upgrades to its buildings.” That brings the total the company has committed to Rutland over a three-year period to almost $100 million, reports the Rutland Herald’s Gordon Dritschilo. Meanwhile, NH will also see GE money: It’s putting $12 million into its Hooksett facility, which produces engine components used in civilian aircraft, military fighter jets, helicopters, and ships.
VT State Police spokesman: “Wind is the worst thing to exist, ever!” Of course, Adam Silverman isn’t speaking with his VSP hat on; he’s speaking as a photographer, with a parka’s thick hood over his head, out on a frozen Lake Champlain. Silverman has been photographing Vermont for decades, has tens of thousands of followers (here’s his website), and is the latest Stuck in Vermont subject for video storyteller Eva Sollberger. She accompanies him on his shoot on the frozen lake, where they talk equipment, his career, and why he loves it. “If it all went away tomorrow,” he says of the public acclaim, “I would still be out here and I would still be taking pictures.”
A “vest-pocket history of the Police Department”—one badge worn by seven officers. In NYC, police officers receive a badge at the start of their career and hand it back in when they’re promoted or retire. The shield is then pinned on another new officer. In the NYT (gift link), Michael Wilson traces one shield—and the seven officers who wore it— across a century. Joseph M. Smith had it first, from the 1920s into the ‘50s. In 1963, it went to Michael McCrory and saved his life. Down in the subways, up on high rises, through Prohibition and 9/11, Wilson tracks the history of the city through one small badge.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak. If you’re new to Daybreak, this is much like the Wordle, only it’s no random five-letter word. It’s a random five-letter word that happened to be in Daybreak yesterday.
HEADS UP
"Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives" at the Hood Museum. The exhibition of the same title, which explores slavery’s impact and legacies, is in the middle of its time at the museum (it closes in July), and at 12:30 pm today, Dartmouth profs Trica Keaton and Nicole Maskiell will present a conversation focused on the exhibition’s items and resonances.
Steve Long at the Springfield VT Town Library with “Thirty-Eight: The Hurricane That Transformed New England”. Long, one of the founders of Northern Woodlands and a consummate writer with a career-long interest in forests, has made a special study of the Hurricane of ‘38 and the destruction it wrought. He’ll be talking about it in a VT Humanities presentation at 5:30 pm.
All-District Jazz Night at Lebanon Opera House. Band students from Grantham, Plainfield, Lebanon Middle, and Lebanon High Schools with a wide-ranging jazz concert, ending with a performance by the musical directors alongside the East Bay Jazz Ensemble. 6:30 pm.
An evening of mysteries at the Norwich Bookstore. Julia Spencer-Fleming and Paula Munier, both writers of long-running mystery series, will be talking about their latest novels: Spencer-Fleming’s At Midnight Comes the Cry sends its five protagonists into the Adirondack High Peaks after a police officer who’s disappeared; Munier’s The Snow Lies Deep is set in Northshire, Vermont, “where a man playing Santa Claus is found murdered during the town's Solstice Soirée.” 7 pm.
At the Chandler, the Grand Kyiv Ballet presents Giselle. The roving and displaced Ukrainian ballet company returns to the Chandler with the classical French ballet and its story of a peasant girl who falls in love with a nobleman disguised as a commoner. 7 pm.
Valley Improv at Sawtooth Kitchen. The improv troupe returns for an hour of… improv. 8 pm.
And for today...
Bruce Hornsby and Bonnie Raitt first joined up back in 1991 for Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me”. Now, Hornsby’s got a new album coming out, and he asked Raitt to join him for one of its signature pieces: “Ecstatic”, inspired by a chant he heard for years as an AAU basketball parent, with the video’s camera trained on the LSU Tigers women’s team (and filmed at Louisiana State, where his son Keith played college ball).
See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
Thank you!
