GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
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Mostly sunny, still cool and dry. There’s high pressure above, and with sunny skies and just a light wind, it’ll be a pleasant day even though the high won’t be much above freezing, if that. Tonight’s low under mostly clear skies will be around 20 or a bit below—but one thing you probably won’t notice: At some point, winds will shift to start coming from the south, moderating temps during the day tomorrow.
Still, we’re not done with the cold yet. Or maybe it’s the other way around?
The mighty wind that ushered in our current cold snap Monday night and yesterday didn’t just bring down trees; it also brought down the contents of the public bulletin board in Norwich, leaving event notices and service offers strewn around the puddles at its base. Amy Stringer sends along a photo of something you never see: a (nearly) bare board.
Meanwhile, the sap’s flowing—and, sometimes, freezing. Here’s an on-tree maplesicle Brian Rich noticed in Lyme.
And out along the Brook Trail in Eastman, Rebecca Spaulding came upon this icicle “clothesline” in the brook.
”This is our pulse, our life, our breath.” How Jim and Heidi Peyton keep their namesake spot running. Peyton Place first opened beneath the post office in Bradford, VT in 1993. As Corin Hirsch writes in a new Daybreak profile, back then Heidi stuck candles in wine bottles and hung red fabric over the fluorescent lighting. In 2002, they moved to their current 250-year-old spot in Orford, where they’ve persevered through financial crises and the pandemic, serving what Jim dreams up and reaping the loyalty of customers charmed by the food and Heidi’s front-of-house charisma. Corin traces the ups and downs behind an uncommon restaurant success story.
Speaking of Bradford, its town administrator will resign. Danielle Kingsbury, who’s worked for the town since 2011 and was appointed to the newly created administrator role in January, 2025, notified the selectboard last Friday and will step down April 6, reports Alex Nuti-de Biasi in the Journal Opinion newsletter. "This decision has not been made lightly," she wrote to the board. "However, following my recent experiences, I have not been happy in my position as Town Administrator, and I feel it is in my best interest to step away from my role at this time." She declined to elaborate to a JO reporter.
SPONSORED: One-day language refresher from Dartmouth’s Rassias Center. Join the Rassias Center on Saturday, April 25 for a one-day language refresher in French, Spanish, or Italian. Learn specific grammar or refresh a previously studied language. This brief but intense program packs a punch and is appropriate for intermediate and above speakers of French, Italian, and Spanish. Sponsored by the Rassias Center.
Would it have to change its name from Lucky’s Coffee Garage? Café, landlord in face-off over lease. If you’ve been there the past week, you’ve no doubt seen the “For Lease” sign put up by developer Mike Davidson’s Ledgeworks, which owns the former downtown Leb auto shop that Lucky’s inhabits. It’s part of an ongoing dispute: Ledgeworks wants to hike Lucky’s owner Deb Shinnlinger’s lease to $7,300 a month, a 60 percent increase from the five-year lease she signed in 2022, reports Marion Umpleby in the Valley News. The proposed lease also gives Ledgeworks the right to relocate Lucky’s. Shinnlinger says she’d like to stay: “It’s been eight years of a really great community, and so I really want to make it work,” she tells Umpleby.
“A debut poetry collection is exciting because you don’t know what to expect.” So writes Left Bank Books’ Rena Mosteirin in this week’s Enthusiasms, and it’s fair to say that she was more than rewarded when she picked up Rogue Astronaut, the debut poetry collection by Mitchell Jacobs and a finalist for the prestigious Miller Williams Poetry Prize. It is, Rena writes, “a book I will surely go back to again and again,” in part for its range of themes—including a poem about his father’s alien abduction as a teen, which Rena includes. Sadly, she doesn’t include the poem titled, “My Own Private New Hampshire”—but encourages you to find it and read it.
SPONSORED: Experience an afternoon of beautifully inspired music at St. Thomas this Sunday, March 22 at 3pm. Enjoy an intimate duet performance of Pergolesi’s beloved Stabat Mater, brought to life by superb Upper Valley artists. The program also features luminous settings of Ave Maria and Pie Jesu by The Voices of St. Thomas, creating a moving celebration of Marian music. Admission is free. Donations are welcome and support David’s House—making this an uplifting concert that helps our community. Sponsored by St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
Hypertherm alerts consumers, states to data breach. It’s part of a larger national breach affecting a previously unknown vulnerability in Oracle's E-Business Suite (EBS) software, which the local engineering firm uses; a ransomware group in November revealed on the dark web that it had obtained Hypertherm’s data, and in February, the company determined that it affected social security numbers and other data for individuals, reports the website ClaimDepot. It began notifying people last Friday, as well as state AGs’ offices. So far, the numbers are small: 334 in TX, 166 in NH, 74 in MA, and 31 in ME. Vermonters are also affected, but it’s not clear how many.
NH Supreme Court strikes down key evidence in Logan Clegg conviction for 2022 double homicide. As NHPR’s Todd Bookman reports, the justices unanimously ruled yesterday that cell phone location data police used to track down Clegg shortly before he was scheduled to board a plane to Germany was improperly obtained. The decision doesn’t free him. Instead, the justices ordered a lower court to decide whether that data, which was obtained without a warrant, could reasonably have been secured another way; after that, the justices will decide whether or not to order a new trial. Clegg is serving a life sentence for the murders of Stephen and Wendy Reid.
In NH, “It’s hard to get people to vote yes on a warrant article about tech support.” Which, says Alyssa Rosenzweig, who helps run the Overwatch Foundation in Concord, is a problem. The nonprofit helps NH towns and cities with online threats, and school districts face a big one: Last year’s big national security breach at PowerSchool, an education software provider, exposed the data of 9,000 Granite Staters, including students. “In 10 years, when they go to apply for their first loan, then it will show up,” Rosenzweig says. “Criminals are very patient.” On his Granite Geek blog, David Brooks describes what Overwatch is doing about it—and why it’s tough.
Tuckerman skier triggers slab avalanche. And, luckily, seems to have made it through intact, but as the video of Sunday’s incident makes clear, it’s got to have been a hair-raising few moments. The event hasn’t been detailed yet by Mt. Washington Avalanche Center staff, but you’ll find their preliminary report here.
Of the three people detained in S. Burlington ICE raid, one has been released, one is being sent to immigration court, and the third has an initial hearing Friday. On Monday, a US District Court judge ordered the immediate release of one of two Ecuadorean sisters who were taken by federal officers after last week’s raid on a house in S. Burlington in search of a man who wasn’t there; the other sister has her hearing on Friday. Meanwhile, report VTDigger’s Alan J. Keays and Emma Green, federal judge William K. Sessions III yesterday ordered a bond hearing within five days for Cristian Humberto Jerez Andrade to clear up whether he has any outstanding active warrants.
Now this is some Vermont cross-promotion. Earlier this month, when Burlington electric plane manufacturer Beta Technologies announced it was partnering with Burlington-based J Skis on a limited-edition ski, it wasn’t obvious what the tie-in might be, other than whim and what Beta’s Katie Clark called “a really fun side project.” But this ad makes it all clear: It’s about skijoring! Behind a plane…
How do you make claymation when there’s no more clay? The distinctive figures in Wallace and Gromit films require a specific clay—pliable, but without wax, which melts under hot lights. For years, that clay came from a small company called Newplast. Then Newplast announced it was closing down. So WSJ goes behind the scenes at Aardman Animations, the stop-motion studio that makes the Wallace and Gromit films, which had stockpiled supplies that would, eventually, run out. Panic! But they figured it out at Aardman, where each clay figure has a character all its own: “It’s not breathing, but it’s kind of living.” If you like their films, this is a glimpse of how it’s done.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
At Sunapee’s Abbott Library, Linda Magoon and Live Free and Hike: Finding Grace on 48 Summits. The essayist and outdoors enthusiast will talk about her highly personal book about rediscovering herself as she hiked NH’s 4,000-footers, the survival technique to short-circuit panic known as STOP, hiking safety, and more. 5:30 pm.
The Center at Eastman presents “Maple Syrup and Factors Influencing Maple Grades”. UNH Extension forester and maple syrup expert Steve Roberge will offer up a syrup tasting from Golden to Very Dark and talk about the biology of maple, how syrup’s made, and what influences grade and taste. In the Draper Room at 7 pm.
The Norwich Bookstore presents an online evening with Four Way Books writers. They’re Sarah Stone, with Marriage to the Sea: Linked Novellas; Daniel Tobin and his collection Dusk, Empire: New and Selected Poems 1987-2024; Daniel Barban Levin and his journalism/memoir poetry collection Worms, Dirt; and Aiden Heung’s debut poetry collection, All There Is to Lose. 7 pm, and you’ll need to register for the link.
A comedy crossover at Hanover’s Sawtooth Kitchen. First, it’s standup, with several local comedians doing their sets. Then Valley Improv takes over, with their brand of comedy building off the comics’ material. 8 pm.
And for today...
Noah Kahan’s fourth album, The Great Divide, comes out next month, and the second single to drop holds some local resonance. “Porch Light”—which has made its way into a few of his live set lists—is “inspired by the emotional weight Kahan believes he placed on his family by opening up their lives throughout his creative narrative and lyrical storytelling on Stick Season,” his label says. The song is written from his mom’s point of view, filled with the quiet worry of a parent watching her son contend with a tidal wave of fame: “I hope you tell me that you’re winding down / That you’ve lost the taste to face the crowd / That whatever made you famous made you sick / That you can only do what pain allows / It ain’t up to you to make it out / And there ain’t no shame in callin’ this thing quits…. I’ll leave the porch light on/ Heartbroken each morning when it’s me that turns it off.”
Oh, and if you’re keeping track, the new Netflix Noah Kahan documentary premiered Monday at SXSW and debuts online April 13.
See you tomorrow.
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