GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Still some snow. As yesterday's system starts moving out, we'll likely see snow showers throughout the morning, though things will probably wind down by sometime this afternoon. Temps today around or slightly above the freezing mark and winds from the north will continue until evening, with gusts crossing the 30 mph line. Clouds will let up overnight, temps into the mid-20s.Reviving the snow curl tradition. If you were a Daybreak reader a year ago, you might remember the outstanding collection readers created last year of snow cornices/curls on Upper Valley roofs (plus, of course, the granddaddy cornice-pic of them all sent in by Jed Williamson, of Mt. Denali). Well, the first one of the 2023 season came in last week from Nan Carroll in Norwich. With this most recent storm, surely there'll be others. If you've got a good one from this winter, send it along!The power's still out in lots of places. The heaviest damage was in the southern half of both states, and at one point last night some 80,000 were without power in NH, and some 30,000 GMP customers in VT.
Here's GMP's current outage map. Outages continue in several area towns, with the several hundred customers out in Hartland, Woodstock, W. Windsor, and Weathersfield, and over 1,000 in Springfield and towns to the south.
On the NH side,Eversource is reporting many customers out in towns south and east of Plainfield. NH Electric Cooperative's outages in this region are also concentrated in the same area. Liberty reportsabout 380 affected in Plainfield.
And you'll also want to check the roads, which you can do at New England 511. If you're going to be on the highways, you can get a preview on the states' various webcams here (search by state and roadway).
Despite the snow, many NH towns vote. And the Valley News has begun compiling the results. In Croydon, school board chair Jody Underwood—who supported last year's ultimately reversed effort to slash the school budget in half—lost heavily to challenger Angi Beaulieu. In Lebanon, Jessica Saturley-Hall eked out a school board win by a single voter over Tia Winter; the city also approved four zoning amendments to making housing development easier. Enfield voters approved six zoning amendments with the same goal in mind. Several towns delayed voting because of yesterday's weather; in others, the floor portion of town meeting still lies ahead.Including Cornish, where what to do about the library has divided the town. As Jim Kenyon writes in the VN, the disagreement centers on a plan by a group called the Cornish Community Initiative to renovate the town's old general store and turn it into a new home for the Stowell Library, which now occupies a 1910 building with no plumbing. Meanwhile, the members of Save the Stowell want to do just that: modernize the current building. Kenyon talks to Colleen O’Neill—the general store's owner and writer J.D. Salinger's widow—about how her offer of the store for the library's use unexpectedly split the town.SPONSORED: Join the Upper Valley Music Center for the Faculty Showcase Concert! UVMC teachers donate their performances in this annual fundraiser for tuition assistance. The program includes classical, jazz, fiddle tunes, original compositions, musical theater, country, and more. Reserve tickets here for the concert this Sunday, March 19 at 3 pm in Lebanon, or watch the online broadcast from home. Sponsored by Upper Valley Music Center.Mid Vermont Christian will appeal sports decision. MVCS on Monday was barred from the high school sports league overseen by the VT Principals Assn after forfeiting a girls basketball game against a school with a trans athlete. In a statement attributed to head of school Vicky Fogg yesterday, the school responded, "Cancelling our membership...does nothing to deal with the very real issue of safety and fairness facing women's sports in our beloved state," reports Seven Days' Derek Brouwer. The school, he writes, is "one of at least two religious schools testing a state law that requires private schools to follow the state's anti-discrimination law" in order to receive public money.Another inmate dies at Springfield VT prison. A 34-year-old Putney man, Alexander Kelley, was found unresponsive in his cell early yesterday morning at Southern State Correctional Facility, the state police reported. He'd been in custody since the beginning of March; his health "was being monitored by prison staff, and he was alone in a cell,” the VSP said. Six inmates at the prison died last year; Kelley's death is the second so far this year. The state's public defender tells VTDigger's Alan J. Keays that the corrections department has suggested it "might be some sort of medical event.”A "month of battles between warm and cold, between winter’s refusal to leave and spring’s insistence on coming." The spring equinox may be arriving Monday, but as the VT Center for Ecostudies writes in its "Field Guide to March 2023," the weather has other ideas. Yet prep for the warm months is well underway: It's peak breeding season for skunks, a few hardy bumble bee queens may start showing up in a couple of weeks, silver maple blooms and Coltsfoot are emerging south to north, wood frogs will be migrating soon, and Canada Jays—which over-winter here—are starting to nest. All at the link."How can you investigate a murder in a time of incipient civil war?” That's what Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in the Protestant-led Royal Ulster Constabulary during Northern Ireland's Troubles, finds himself wondering around the midpoint of Adrian McKinty's mystery series set in Belfast. In this week's Enthusiasms, the Norman Williams Public Library's Liza Bernard writes that, as complicated as Duffy's personal life may be, and as unsettling as the murders he investigates are, "the setting and the culture are main characters," every bit as crucial to McKinty's novels as the central mystery itself.Puppets, ice-skating, chamber music, and Abdullah Ibrahim: Hop announces spring schedule. Even before the Hopkins Center itself shut down for renovations, it began using the tagline, "The arts are everywhere!" Next month, that includes Thompson Arena, where the Québecois ice choreography troupe Le Patin Libre will appear with their show, Murmurations. Also up: a Sicilian puppetry troupe, a New Zealand troupe that uses puppets, Indian tabla master Sandeep Das, South African jazz icon Abdullah Ibrahim, the Apple Hill String Quartet, the New Music Festival, and plenty more.In NH, Gov. Sununu, mental health advocates at odds over hospital plan. Their disagreement stems from a surprise request by the governor in the House budget bill forcing hospitals to provide more emergency psychiatric beds if the state needs them, and extending the time the state can hold someone in an emergency room for involuntary admission, writes Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin. The hospitals say the plan will "only enshrine a broken system”; the advocates say community-based care needs more funding. Sununu? Hospitals "should be ashamed" for trying to sidestep emergency mental health care.With lawsuit settlement, CT woman becomes first non-Vermonter who can use VT's aid-in-dying law. Yesterday, 75-year-old Lynda Bluestein of Bridgeport, CT reached a legal settlement with the Vermont AG's office that will let her take advantage of the state's law allowing people who are terminally ill to die of their own accord. "I was so relieved to hear of the settlement of my case that will allow me to decide when cancer has taken all from me that I can bear,” Bluestein tells the AP's Lisa Rathke. The legislature is considering a bill that would allow other non-residents to use the law, as well.Former Vermont Sports owner named VTDigger CEO. Sky Barsch, who started as a reporter at the Burlington Free Press and the Times Argus, has a long history in both VT and national media: She ran VT Sports until she sold it a decade ago, served as associate publisher at Vermont Life, and then became VP for sponsorships and marketing at the highly successful online education news site Chalkbeat. She'll begin in her new role next month, Digger says, filling the role vacated last year by founder Anne Galloway.“You get them in an environment like this, and they shine.” That’s Josh Fox, special education teacher at Hazen Union in Hardwick, talking to Seven Days’ Melissa Pasanen about students in the school’s A Recipe for Human Connection class. The kids make themselves a "family meal" each week, of course, but have also been feeding the rest of the school, neighbors, town meeting, local events, and a boys' soccer Senior Night game last fall just after the school's athletic director died by suicide. "Everybody gets closer when you make food for people," says one student.It’s looked at clouds from both sides now. Up on Mars, the rover Curiosity has been busy sending photos back to the Earthlings at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. One particularly beautiful image—taken on the 3,724th Martian day—looks like an iridescent feather, but is, in fact, a cloud just after sunset. The iridescence tells scientists about the cloud’s structure and Mars’ atmosphere, temperature, and wind. The JPL's other sunset shot gives you a sense of what things would look like if our clouds were made of dry ice.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.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
And to start the day off...
We'll turn to Idaho-raised singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell, who likes to tread the line between blues and country—
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.
Want to catch up on Daybreak music?
Want to catch up on Daybreak itself (or find that item you trashed by mistake the other day)? You can find everything on the Daybreak Facebook page
, or if you're a committed non-FB user,
.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt About Rob About Michael
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! Subscribe at no cost at:
Thank you!