GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Don't blink. Yeah, so, spring in northern New England: Today we get sunny, calm weather with a high near 50. Winds will be from the southwest. Tonight, on the other hand, we get a likelihood of heavy rain changing to snow showers with, the weather folks say, "embedded snow squalls and locally near white-out conditions." That's thanks to a cold front coming through, and temps will drop from the low 40s around dusk to around 20 toward dawn. There won't be much accumulation, though there could be some flash freezing after midnight.Got a moment? I'd like to point out the maroon "Yes, I count on Daybreak" button down below. It's simple: Daybreak exists only because 1 in 7 of you keep it going. If you find your day or week doesn't feel complete without the photos or the Vordle or the news or the news quiz or the stuff to talk about with your friends and family and colleagues and you'd like to see it persevere and grow, hit the burgundy link at the start of this item or the button below and check out the options. The rest of Daybreak will wait patiently. If you can't afford to contribute, please don't fret: It's a pleasure to have you as a reader.Look up! Usually, Jim Block writes in his latest blog post, he tells photography students to "eliminate the sky"—at least, when it's featureless. But as he roved the Upper Valley in the last month of winter, he found plenty of reasons to ignore his own advice: sun dogs, fog, the moon, some truly stunning sunrises (and let's just say that Cardigan looks captivating in the early-morning light)—plus, lowering his sights, a whole lot of birds.Police identify man struck by Dartmouth Coach bus. He was 47-year-old Vishwachand Kolla, of Lexington, MA. Kolla was at Logan Airport to pick up a friend and standing beside his SUV when “the middle of the bus made contact with Mr. Kolla and dragged him along the driver’s side of his SUV," according to the police report. Police have not released the name of the driver, writes Boston.com's Melissa Ellin, other than to say that she is a 54-year-old woman, and that she's cooperating with the investigation.Dartmouth discovery of native remains in its possession prompts changes, soul-searching, formal apology. “The history of human skeletal acquisitions is ugly,” Provost David Kotz says in a thoroughgoing exploration of the issue put out yesterday by the college. Ancestral remains and other artifacts were often donated by alumni and not always well documented. Though the college inventoried items in 1995, a recent re-examination found the remains of 15 individuals identified as Native American, some used unknowingly in the classroom as recently as last year. “I am deeply saddened by what we’ve found on our campus,” President Phil Hanlon says.Hartland selectboard puts town manager on paid leave. The move came after a closed-door meeting Monday night, the Valley News reports, and took effect yesterday. Neither board chair Phil Hobbie nor David Ormiston, the Hartland manager, would comment, but Ormiston has faced criticism for his interactions with both town staff and some members of the public. Matters came to a head after a board meeting last week, at which Town Clerk Brian Stroffolino said he had "personally experienced and witnessed abusive, aggressive, disrespectful...and vulgar behavior" in town hall.SPONSORED: Everyone Eats is ending, but there's still help finding food in the Upper Valley. The Vermont program and its local hub’s activities end this month, as do pandemic-related “emergency allotments” of SNAP programs in VT and NH. However, the need for food support remains. At the burgundy link, you'll find a resource list from Vital Communities to connect with and support local food shelves and food access programs, community initiatives, and the NOFA-VT and NH Farm Share programs that strive to make high-quality food available to everyone. Sponsored by Vital Communities.Former Springfield VT, Woodstock police officer facing allegations of sexual misconduct, neglect of duty. Shaun Smith, who served as a corporal in the Springfield PD, resigned in November, 2020, then worked for a few months as an officer in Woodstock, will go before VT's Criminal Justice Council next month, Ethan Weinstein reports for VTDigger. The hearing stems from the discovery by other Springfield officers in 2020 of sexually explicit messages on an office computer from Smith to the victim of a past sexual assault investigation. The hearing notice also "alleges that Smith would regularly disappear for long periods of time while on duty," Weinstein writes.Mascoma Community Health Center pursues partnership. The move by the fast-growing Canaan clinic to join up with Franklin, NH-based HealthFirst Family Care Center would expand services and bring some federal help, including grants and higher Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates, reports the VN's Nora Doyle-Burr. Those changes are "critical for our sustainability and critical for our patients,” Mike Samson, Mascoma’s interim executive director, tells her. The agreement still has to be approved by both clinic boards, the state, and the federal government.SPONSORED: Valley Improv and Burlington's Big Boy Sweater Club come to Artistree's Grange Theatre Saturday, April 1 at 7pm! Come celebrate April Fools with the funniest tomfoolery around! The Upper Valley’s own Valley Improv troupe will be joined by Burlington’s Big Boy Sweater Club for an evening of short-form and long-form improv, all based on audience suggestions! Don’t miss it—this comedy show has never been seen before and never will be again! Sponsored by Artistree.A dive into "the technologies that shape and change the way we see, how we see, and what we see." That, writes Rena Mosteirin in this week's Enthusiasms, is what a new history of the development of computer vision technology offers. Dartmouth English prof James E. Dobson's The Birth of Computer Vision (he's "a pioneer of what’s known as the digital humanities," Rena writes) delves into the Cold War-era surveillance and reconnaissance systems whose influence remains embedded in the algorithms governing facial recognition and other visual technologies affecting us today.One of these days, you might be able to cross VT and NH on a trail. That, at least, is the dream of the Twin State Railroad Rails-to-Trails working group, which hopes to connect the recently completed Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, which runs from western VT to St. Johnsbury, to the Cross Adventure New Hampshire Trail, which ends in Woodsville. The working group is eyeing a set of old rail corridors that run east from St. J then south in NH. Meanwhile, Alex Nuti-de Biasi wrote in yesterday's Journal Opinion newsletter, Haverhill residents have approved funds to improve a rail trail that runs south from Woodsville."I’m proud to say my love of the outdoors was born on the White Mountains’ relentlessly challenging trails." Though it wasn't always that way. When Maggie Slepian first moved out west from her native NH, she writes in Trailrunner, "I’d stare up at some peak, more than twice the elevation of the tallest mountain I’d ever climbed, and swear I’d never return to my home state’s stubby hills." But then her dad invited her to come back and hike some 4,000-footers—including Franconia Ridge. "I felt tears well up as we reached the famous, sweeping curve," she writes. "I had returned to my home range."Oops. Back in December, Peacham cannabis grower Devon Deyhle posted a video of himself delivering a box of his firm's cannabis products to a retailer in NYC, then posted it to Instagram. The only problem, according to VTDigger's Fred Thys? The store wasn't licensed for recreational cannabis sales—in fact, no New York stores were at that point. Someone reported it to VT's Cannabis Control Board, which fined Deyhle $20,000 for transporting cannabis outside Vermont. “It was a great, great video, but it wasn’t worth it,” Deyhle tells Thys.The multiplication and division of tipping. In Seven Days, Jordan Barry details the struggle to create a fair wage system in the restaurant industry, which segments workers by role (wait staff and kitchen staff) and traditionally depends on the goodwill of customers to make up for low wages. VT restaurants are trying a range of approaches—kitchen appreciation fees, tip pooling, service charges. In Woodstock, Au Comptoir’s customers last summer got a gratuity tacked onto the bill. "The feedback from the majority was that they were happy not to have to figure [the tip] out," says owner Zoë Zilian.“I’ve always been annoyed that I have to twist [Oreos] apart and then push creme from one side onto the other.” In 2021 at MIT, Crystal Owens—who studies how fluids respond to twisting—realized that Oreo creme was not so different from the materials she normally works with. And hey, there was a pandemic lockdown on. In the WSJ (gift link) Aylin Woodward writes about Owens, her team, their advice to the multibillion-dollar food company that owns Oreos, the 1,000 cookies they studied—and their finding that the filling stuck to just one wafer about 80 percent of the time no matter what they did. Lightning streaking upward. At least, it would streak if it hadn't been captured at 40,000 frames per second so that you can actually see it happen. The footage comes from a researcher at Brazil’s National Space Research Institute, who, along with a grad student, caught the strike over the city of São José dos Campos. In the video, you'll see upward bolts emerging from lightning rods and other tall objects—though the downward bolt ultimately hit a smokestack, writes Andrew Marshall on Explorers Web.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:
Today at 3:30 pm, Dartmouth's history department hosts a lecture by Princeton historian Beth Lew-Williams, "John Doe Chinaman: Race and Law in the American West." Williams, who specializes in Asian American history, as well as race and migration, is working on a book focused on how Chinese migrants in the US were policed and legally constrained during the 19th century, especially in the West. In Haldeman 41.
And at 4 pm today, the Howe Library in Hanover hosts a program of readings sparked by participants' responses to a piece of visual art. It's called "ekphrastic" writing, and is sponsored by Clamantis, the literary journal put out by Dartmouth's MALS program. Both in-person at the Howe and online.
And today at 5 pm, Upper Valley Music Center presents a Zoom talk by Vermont Violins' Kathy Reilly, followed by a Q&A, about the use of bows made from pernambuco. String musicians consider the Brazilian wood the only real choice for bows, but illegal harvesting is rampant and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species last November moved to require permits for finished bows. (More background here.) Reilly will talk about what all this means for musicians.
And to get us started for the day...
We'll turn to the Del McCoury Band, along with Sierra Hull and a roomful of other very fine bluegrass musicians, sitting around and
That "rural Hippie anthem," of course, is pretty much synonymous with Canned Heat, but they adapted it from "Bulldoze Blues," recorded in 1928 by Texas bluesman Henry Thomas—who used quills, an early African-American wind instrument similar to panpipes.
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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