GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, warm. Guess this is going to be of those spring whiplash weeks. After yesterday's cool weather, today (and to some degree tomorrow) we get the warming benefits of air flowing in from the south as we bask under high pressure—until it collapses tomorrow night. Still: Highs today into the 60s, mostly sunny skies, down into the mid or upper 30s tonight. Enjoy the moment!All's quiet at the bird feeder. From Sharon, JoAnn Webb sends in this little drama-in-a-still-photo. It began with a barred owl dropping in and perching. For a long time. While that little spot of color in the background—a cardinal—paid very close attention and stayed very much in the background, until the owl finally swooped to the ground after prey. Then the cardinal moved in.Point of clarification. This morning at 10, Woodstock's village trustees will sit as a "jury" in a hearing on the municipal manager's bid to demote the police chief. The hearing will take place in a sheriff's department conference room; yesterday's item about the location change linked to a Standard story citing the room's capacity—once it's set up for the hearing—as just 30. But Woodstock Selectboard member Laura Powell writes that there will actually be room for 55 spectators, plus press, the parties to the hearing, the jury, etc. It'll be on Zoom, so you can watch it all without crowding. Details at the burgundy link.Former Lalo's owner moves over to Dunk's—adding street tacos, tostadas and quesadillas. The last we saw Eddie Moran, he was shuttering his spot on the Lebanon Mall. Now, reports Marion Umpleby in the Valley News, he's been named kitchen manager at Dunk's, the Hanover sports bar—after owner and Blue Sky Restaurant Group exec Tony Barnett noticed he'd applied for a job at Jesse's. Meanwhile, Umpleby reports, Gusanoz' is working its way through bankruptcy, Moran is once again sourcing masa from S. Royalton's Moon & Stars, and Black Magic Mexican is moving into Lalo's old spot.Norwich cartoonist among this year's VT Book Awards finalists. Writer Miciah Bay Gault, who oversees the awards given jointly by Vermont Humanities and the state Department of Libraries, announced the finalists yesterday on VT Public. Norwich's Emma Hunsinger is one of three finalists in children's lit for her middle grade graphic novel, How it All Ends. Nonfiction finalists include forester Ethan Tapper and novelist Lucy Ives, fiction finalists include MT Anderson and GennaRose Nethercott, and poets include Julia Alter and Alison Prine. Full list of writers and nominated works at the link.SPONSORED: Celebrate community with We the People Theatre. As he rehearses a production of Salome in 1960s Dublin, Alfie Byrne, a bus conductor, struggles with his own suffocating secret…and uncovers the power of art and love. You don’t want to miss We the People Theatre’s production of A Man of No Importance, opening March 28. By playwright Terrence McNally, with music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, the visionary duo behind Once On This Island, Seussical, and Ragtime. Get tickets now for another uplifting hit from We the People Theatre! Sponsored by We the People."Take one completely invented thing, drop it into an otherwise normal reality and see what plays out." That's how fiction writer Karen Russell works, writes the Yankee Bookshop's Kari Meutsch in this week's Enthusiasms. And in her new historical novel, The Antidote, that one completely invented thing is an ability held by certain women on the Dustbowl-era Plains to serve as "memory banks"—literally. You deposit your memory, get a slip, and go on about your life until you want to visit it. It's a book rich in ideas, Kari writes, adding that she "cannot wait to talk about it with anyone who reads it."After delivering over 900 babies, Hanover midwife highlighted as one of four "Remarkable Women" in VT/NH/NY. ABC22 and FOX44 are taking part in their parent company's initiative to honor women "who inspire, lead and forge the way for other women." Yesterday, they aired a profile of Katherine Bramhall, who runs Hanover's Gentle Landing Birth Center. Bramhall came to the profession through her own experiences giving birth: “Inasmuch as I grew up in a time when women didn’t have a voice—or were just beginning to have a voice," she tells the stations' Lily Sakaniwa, "I knew I didn’t want my daughters to have that same group of options that weren’t there.”SPONSORED: Looking for a moment of peace amid the day's news? Join us for Choral Evensong at St. Thomas this Sunday at 5 PM, featuring Herbert Howells' powerful and majestic St. Paul's setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. This captivating music will lift your spirits. Learn more at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Hanover.Dartmouth advises international, immigrant students and others to make sure they're carrying all needed papers when they travel in US or abroad. "Given possible future travel restrictions and increased screening and enforcement, including immigration enforcement within the U.S., it is important that members of our international and immigrant community be prepared for travel," runs the advisory. It notes that CBP officers can "carry out random enforcement actions" within 100 miles of the border. Details at the link. NHPR's Olivia Richardson reports that UNH does not plan similar guidance.NH sees modest population gains—all from in-migration. The state's population as of July 1 last year stood at 1,409,032 according to new Census estimates, writes UNH demographer Ken Johnson in a policy brief from the Carsey School. That was a gain of 6,800 since the year before, due entirely to 9,200 people moving into the state, who offset a loss of 2,400 more deaths than births. In all, 40,100 more people have moved to the state than left it since 2020, 73 percent from elsewhere in the US. Carroll, Rockingham, and Merrimack counties have been the fastest growing. Breakdown at the link.Amphibian migration season gets off to a big start. At least, it did on Sunday night on a wet, rainy road in Keene, reports Amanda Gokee for the Globe's Morning Report newsletter. In all, over the four hours a team of volunteers stood guard, 365 wood frogs, 518 spring peepers, and a few other species crossed the road on their way to spring pools and other bodies of water. Keene closes that road on warm, wet nights—a step conservationist Brett Amy Thelen hopes other towns will take, too, to keep cars off. When "you see the numbers that are not surviving, it’s pretty stunning,” she tells Gokee.Oh, and bears are waking up. VT Fish & Wildlife says it's begun receiving reports of bears emerging from their dens, they announced in a press release Monday. "Do not wait to take down your birdfeeders and bearproof your yard until a bear comes to visit,” says Jaclyn Comeau, the agency's bear biologist. “You need to act now to head off bear conflicts over the spring and summer, even if you have never had a bear visit your property before.” Bear incidents have been on the rise, and officials believe it's because bears have been "learning to associate people and food over multiple generations."Okay, we'll just have to settle for the maple cake with toasted buckwheat-topped ice cream... It's not just maple season here in VT and NH, but north of the border, too—only in Québec, notes Suzanne Podhaizer in Seven Days, sugar makers don't just stick to fare like donuts and hot dogs: They "have a rich history of offering full meals and boisterous hospitality to those who visit their shacks." So Podhaizer did just that in the Laurentians, visiting spots in Oka (as you might guess, cheese is on the menu, too) and Mont-Tremblant (where you can go vegan and even foraged). Things'll probably last nicely through April.This otter didn't settle at all. Not after scampering into a house in the Shetland Islands after the family noticed him or her outside and went out for a closer look. It was chaos there for a moment—especially in the cupboard—until the otter found the way out again. Remarkably, nothing got broken. The BBC's got the footage. Those guys are fast!This week's Throughlines. We're back!!! It starts with a grid of 16 words, and your job is to link three different sets of four words, each set connected to a different item in today's Daybreak. But beware: those extra four words are decoys, so don't get faked out. We're testing this out, so please send feedback.The Wednesday Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak. If you're new to Daybreak, this is a puzzle along the lines of the NYT's Wordle—only different, because it's not just some random word snatched out of the ether, but a word that actually appeared here yesterday.
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A wildlife ecologist, Timm has written a guide to "fascinating facts about 100 animals commonly seen in the Northeastern US," as his new book's subtitle puts it—from blue jays to black bears to bullfrogs. 7 pm.
This new collection by Upper Valley poet (and radiologist) Herzberg centers on his mother and "revisits a memorable childhood—the trouble, the liveliness, and above all, the language of his mother commenting, often fiercely, on their lives." 7 pm.
And for today, let's groove out on a streetside on Lombok.
You know how sometimes you're in some city and a snatch of music grabs your attention and there are some musicians and suddenly you realize five minutes have gone by and you've been enthralled the whole time? You probably wouldn't expect that experience on a small Indonesian island, but here they are hanging out in front of a café: Pelita Groove, formed in the city of Mataram a few years back by singer Olan with a few of his friends (some Indonesians carry only a single name). And you get to just stand and get lost in it for a bit.
Sure thing. A pleasure. 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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