A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU AGAIN, UPPER VALLEY!
And for today: Mild, patchy fog, a chance of showers. There's a front stalled off to our west that's bringing us a daylong (and nightlong) chance of rain. Some spots could see temps around freezing first thing that might yield some freezing drizzle, but we're headed quickly toward the upper 40s or low 50s. Otherwise, mostly if not entirely cloudy, lows tonight in the upper 30s.Snow patterns. However you felt about Saturday's storm, it left a feast for the eyes, including:
This is not an egg carton. But the bridge over the Pompy off Buzzell Bridge Rd. in Thetford Center produced this familiar-looking set of shapes when Sally Duston and Dean Whitlock were snowshoeing by;
And this tree in Hanover, projected on the snow by the full-on moonlight the other night, from Janice Fischel.
Heads up next week on 12A bridge in Claremont. NHDOT is planning daytime closures of the bridge over the Sugar River beginning next Tuesday, April 2, at least through Thursday and possibly lasting through Friday. The closures will be from 7 am to 7 pm, to allow workers to install new structural steel girders in the southbound lane. "A signed detour will direct motorists around the closure," they add."I understand the crisis the post office is in, but this doesn’t seem like a good decision—to send stuff down to Hartford [CT] and back." That was former Leb mayor Georgia Tuttle last night at a public forum held by the USPS to discuss its plan to shift outgoing mail processing for about 150 towns in VT and NH from its WRJ mail facility to its Hartford, CT facility. The postal service's director of mail processing operations for New England, Christine Brisk, argued the move would build "economies of scale" and save money, in part by cutting up to 20 positions, reports NBC5's Tyler Boronski. In addition to last night's meeting, you can submit comments through April 10 here.Hanover considers becoming next UV town to expand day care. As you may remember, Lebanon's already got plans to build a child care center for up to 200 kids. Now, reports Patrick Adrian in the Valley News, Hanover Parks & Rec is proposing a smaller program—12 kids to start, growing to 35—for town employees and residents at the RW Black Center. The move is driven by the town's own experience losing employees over the lack of affordable child care—and, Adrian writes, the selectboard seems sympathetic. “I’m losing physician and nursing colleagues because of this exact issue,” says chair Athos Rassias.SPONSORED: Dartmouth Health adopts robotic-assisted technology to aid in joint replacement surgery. At DHMC and APD, we have some of the most experienced joint surgeons in the region. Our hip and knee specialists perform thousands of replacements every year and are now using robotic-assisted surgical tools and enabling technologies. These technologies can make joint replacement more customized to each patient, shorten recovery times, and make replacement joints feel more ‘natural’ to the patient. Hit the burgundy link or here to learn more. Sponsored by Dartmouth Health."She really made me see how special it is to take care of the town and its people.” That's Lyme's new town clerk, Emily Shepherd, talking about the woman she just replaced: Patty Jenks, who spent nearly three decades as clerk, and another decade before that as an assistant. And as Liz Sauchelli writes in the Valley News, for Jenks, taking care of Lyme's residents didn't just mean overseeing elections or doing vehicle registrations. She also listened to their problems, brought meals to people who needed them, and the like. "“I want them to...go away from my space feeling like someone cares about them.”In Fairlee, potential eateries "derailed by the inability to get rid of some wastewater." On his Brick + Mortar Substack, small-scale developer Jonah Richard sums up his latest post in its subhed: "Decentralized septic is crushing small-scale developers' efforts to build up our rural Main Streets." He cites three examples in Fairlee of why septic regs are making it tough to revitalize town cores—by eating up land, blocking things like restaurants or bakeries, and driving sprawl rather than adding density to downtowns.Stories of "the monstrous, magical, or just plain weird" from "a master of the form." That's the Yankee Bookshop's Kari Meutsch writing about the latest from VT author and folklorist GennaRose Nethercott, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart. It's a collection of short stories—"an entire world in just a few pages," as Kari puts it—that veer from the odd to the uncanny: a sinister tourist trap, a quasi-medieval bestiary of, yes, 50 imaginary beasts. All while examining universal themes in what Kari calls Nethercott's "luxurious" writing. "It might be just the kind of thing to get you out of your mud season ruts," she says.SPONSORED: Early childhood educators help the Upper Valley grow! And you can show your appreciation at the free Week of the Young Child Kick-Off Celebration, Saturday, April 6, 10 am to noon in Colburn Park, Lebanon. Fun activities for all ages, plus special treats for early childhood educators! Rain date Sunday, April 7. Hosted by the Early Care and Education Association, Vital Communities, and the City of Lebanon’s Recreation, Arts, and Parks. Pre-register (optional) at the burgundy link to help us plan and update you. Sponsored by Vital Communities.Out there this week: turkey vultures "circling tired snowshoers as they struggle up snowy inclines." Okay, maybe Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast is being tongue in cheek. But turkey vultures are showing up right now—along with flocks of robins and northern cardinals (which decades ago didn't tend to visit northern New England but are now regulars). Unlike robins and cardinals, Elise notes, a lot of people don't like vultures (looks, table manners), but they also have several "cool adaptations," like soaring with wings in a V, "which allows them to take advantage of even the slightest updrafts."Skunk cabbage in heat. Remember how skunk cabbage that are starting to flower have the remarkable ability to generate their own heat? On her Naturally Curious blog, Mary Holland writes about this; it doesn't just help them melt snow, but "benefits the few pollinators such as flies, springtails and beetles that are active now, providing them with both food (pollen) as well as a mini-warming hut." But what's at the burgundy link is the coolest part: an infrared photo of what it looks like sent her by a couple of readers.“You can’t monetize soil bacteria, but you can monetize ‘organic.’” Small-scale organic farmers face a host of tough challenges, not least the weather. But you can add to that list the way the market for their goods is being reorganized—or, as Li Shen puts it in Sidenote, "the nationwide consolidation of the food industry that is hollowing out the organic movement and re-defining the meaning of organic." Dave Chapman of E. Thetford's Long Wind Farm is a key player in the effort to keep small organic farmers in charge of their own destinies; he's helped put together a "symposium" via YouTube of his interviews with a range of players. Li gives an overview and links to it.The power of a Tuckerman Ravine avalanche. Sometime last week, the ravine saw its first really powerful avalanche of the season—it threw trees well out of the debris field. When observers skinned into the ravine, they later wrote, "In talking with folks—long standing forecasters and past caretakers—it was clear we had observed a 1:(~)20 year avalanche." Observer Rob Benton posted what it looked like to Instagram (burgundy link). Right now, the Mt. Washington Avalanche Center is warning of dangerous avalanche conditions above 3,000 feet throughout the Presidentials.NH has a new poet laureate. Or, rather, it will soon. Last Friday, the Exec Council confirmed the nomination of Jennifer Militello to the post; she starts next month and will hold the position for five years. Founder of the NH Poetry Festival and head of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at New England College, Militello tells the Globe's Amanda Gokee (paywall) that she wants to focus on connecting young people and teachers interested in poetry, creating "an online space that potentially formalizes an archive of New Hampshire poets," and reviving an annual poetry festival in the state.And Vermont has a new education secretary straight outta Florida. Or, rather, it will soon. Zoie Saunders, appointed by Gov. Phil Scott, takes over April 15; the post has been vacant almost a year. Saunders has spent the last few months as chief strategy and innovation officer for Broward County Public Schools, writes Seven Days' Alison Novak, served as chief ed officer in Ft. Lauderdale—and spent seven years as an administrator at a for-profit schools provider, Charter Schools USA. Saunders says she'll begin her tenure with a 90-day "listening and learning tour" of the state.How VT is responding to call by Canadian Abenaki to rethink recognition of state tribes. It's kind of all over the map, says VT Public's Elodie Reed in a conversation with colleague Mitch Wertlieb. Reed's earlier reporting found that families making up the largest state-recognized tribe "have not or cannot demonstrate their Abenaki ancestry"—a standard that many Indigenous communities apply to themselves but that, Reed tells Wertlieb, some VT Abenaki and their backers in the legislature believe is overblown. She dives into how VT politicians, nonprofits, and others are dealing with the controversy.Well, if you were getting fed every four or five hours around the clock, you'd be growing, too. Remember that crying month-old bear cub who was found on his own in Bristol, VT by a hiker recently? He's been named Ira, and since arriving at the Kilham Bear Center has packed on a pound. "All in all, he seems like a happy, healthy boy,” the center's Ethan Kilham—Ben Kilham's nephew and the guy who's doing the cub-rearing—tells NBC5's John Hawks. At the moment, Ben Kilham says, the center's got 18 cubs in its charge.It's a safe bet that in Lyme, black bears don't get to play around on giant plastic swan boats. In England, on the other hand... In recent weeks, apparently, there's been a lot of rain at Woburn Safari Park in Bedfordshire. So much, in fact, that a large pool of water appeared in the enclosure where the park keeps its North American black bears. And a pond, thought keeper Tommy Babbin, requires a swan paddle boat. So he brought one in. The bears took to it immediately. Video at the link.The Wednesday Vordle. If you're new to Daybreak, this is the Upper Valley version of Wordle, usually with a five-letter word chosen from an item in the previous day's Daybreak. Today, though, it's from last Friday's Daybreak. A word game—but local!
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Starting today and running through Friday, Sustainable Woodstock and Pentangle Arts host an online screening of Regenerating Life. John Feldman's 2023 feature-length documentary argues that climate change is rooted in humanity's destruction of the natural world, and goes on to find people who are working to restore forests, fields, wetlands, oceans, and soils to reinvigorate natural cycles. No charge but you'll need to register.
At 6:30 this evening, Hanover's Howe Library hosts a conversation about the April 8 eclipse with Sarah Peery, a grad student in Dartmouth's Department of Physics and Astronomy who studies, among other things, the physics of solar plasma. She'll be talking about the science of the Sun-Earth system, the orbital mechanics of how and why eclipses happen, and some of the scientific discoveries facilitated by eclipses past and present. In-person in the Mayer Room as well as online.
Also at 6:30 pm, Strafford's Cabin Fever University hosts a talk on "Your House, Your Energy" by Matt Christie. He'll be talking the basics of building science, energy conservation and efficiency, and home-electrification—plus things like how insulation works, how heat pumps work, and, as they put it, "what the heck induction stoves are"—all with an eye toward helping you figure out how to reduce energy costs and lower your home's carbon footprint. At the Newton School in S. Strafford.Here's a link to the entire Cabin Fever U schedule.
And also at 6:30, the Etna Library hosts Jackson Penfield-Cyr, who runs Upper Valley Integration Therapy in Hanover, talking about pain—and in particular, how recent advances in fields such as neurophysiology, brain imaging, immunology, psychology, and cellular biology can help transform the experience of pain.
And to ease us into the day...
If you've encountered Còig, the Cape Breton band that's graced the stage at the New World Festival, the Lebanon Opera House, and elsewhere around the region, then you're familiar with fiddler Rachel Davis and what-instrument-doesn't-he-play? Darren McMullen. They've got a new duo album about to come out, and the first single from it just dropped.
, by renowned Scottish troubadour Archie Fisher.
(Thanks, MM!)
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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