GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, warmer. After last night's clear skies we're starting out cold this morning, but those same clear skies will help us get well into the 30s by noon, then into the lower 40s later in the day. Warmer air's arriving from the south and low pressure's headed our way, which will bring clouds in the afternoon and a chance of rain and maybe some snow this evening. Lows around freezing.Yesterday it was patterns on wood. Today: patterns in ice. Because it's still out there.
Here's what Highland Lake in Andover, NH looked like a few days ago. "The sky was beautiful and the ice is melting on the lake. Tempting spring to arrive in full force...," writes Janice Fischel.
Meanwhile, on Lake Morey, ice along the shoreline has been melting on warmer days then refreezing at night. "Occasionally, (very occasionally), this refreeze takes place when there is essentially no air movement and things are very still," writes Smith Reed. The result: some lovely ice patterns.
Hanover High, police investigate drugs after three students hospitalized. In a message to families earlier this month, Principal Julie Stevenson said the students were hospitalized after taking pills that looked like the anti-anxiety med Xanax. The Valley News's Nora Doyle-Burr reports that Hanover police confirm a student who "was involved" in the case has been identified and charges are pending. “The Hanover Police Department is aware of an increase in issues regarding some Hanover High School students’ consumption of drugs,” the HPD says in a statement, including edible cannabis and prescription drugs.In bid to create more housing for locals, Woodstock considers paying owners to turn short-term rentals into long-term rentals. The program, which was approved by the town's Economic Development Commission and now goes to the selectboard, would give $3,000 to property owners who sign a one-year lease with renters, and $7,000 for a two-year lease, reports Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days. Modeled after a similar effort in Big Sky, Montana, the goal is to boost the odds that teachers, firefighters and others priced out of the market might be able to find housing."It sounded like somebody was hurling pianos across the room upstairs.” That's yoga instructor Lisa Gleeson talking to the VN's Liz Sauchelli about the moments before the ceiling above the Perkinsville Community Church's sanctuary collapsed on Monday evening. Class participants, who were in the basement, "all locked eyes with each other and said we need to get out and fast,” Gleeson says. No one was injured, Sauchelli reports, and the church remains closed. “Until they are able to get the building shored up it’s really unsafe to go in there,” says W. Weathersfield Fire Chief Joshua Dauphin.SPONSORED: Here’s the skinny! The Norwich Women’s Club isn't selling bathrobes for its Sunday, April 3 Bathrobe Gala. Instead, you pay us to stay home! Ingenious, no? With a pandemic tying our hands, this is how we hope to fund the Scholarship Program ($35,000 or so) and the Community Projects Fund (another $35K). Get dinner at Carpenter and Main that night, pick up a growler at the Norwich Inn, and snag a pair of commemorative go-cups from Mascoma and Ledyard banks all weekend at the drive-thrus. Then get on your sofa and wear your favorite cozies to help the cause! Sponsored by the NWC.VT officials advise against letting CDC metrics whipsaw local Covid measures. As you may remember, Windsor County is one of three counties in the state where the federal agency says Covid levels are "high." But at a press conference yesterday, Gov. Phil Scott, health commissioner Mark Levine, and education commissioner Dan French all pushed back on the notion that the CDC's figures should guide Vermonters, reports VPR's Peter Hirschfeld. This is especially true for schools, French said. In a small state, Levine argued, "the difference between a count or a color on the map can literally be a few cases.”Hartland man arrested for string of burglaries. The VT State Police yesterday said that they took 34-year-old Shawn Currier into custody in Hartford. They'd originally searched Currier's home on March 15, finding "multiple items that were reported as stolen" in a series of burglaries along the Route 12 corridor in Hartland beginning in January, and asked the public's help finding him. A VSP release says he's being held on $10,000 bail for "multiple counts of Burglary into an Occupied Dwelling, Grand Larceny, Petit Larceny, and Unlawful Mischief."Grafton County takes another step toward universal broadband. In particular, reports Amanda Gokee in NH Bulletin, it's using $3.8 million in federal funds to do what's called "final engineering" for all 39 towns, identifying everything from specific poles where wires will be strung to drafting a final plan with building costs. "We’ll know exactly where it’s going to go, how much it’s going to cost, whose permission we need," Bristol town administrator Nik Coates tells Gokee. In addition, the county broadband committee plans to advise each town on the fine points of applying for grants. "It feels like I'm an orphan." Yuliya Ballou's mother is Ukrainian and her father is Russian, and the Hanover High teacher, who teaches Russian and German and runs the high school's Slavic Club, has been finding the personal cross-currents kicked up by the war difficult to navigate. “My home country is tarnished forever as an aggressor,” she tells VTDigger's Ethan Weinstein and Peter D'Auria. Others are struggling, too: Up in Montpelier, Russian Life has shut down entirely. "It’s really not a good time to be writing about the great Russian language or culture,” says editor Paul Richardson.“Letter to the Horse You Rode In On." "Letter to a Cockroach, Now Dead and Mixed into a Bar of Chocolate.” Those are some of the poems, disguised as letters, in VT poet Matthew Olzmann's latest collection, Constellation Route. In this week's Enthusiasms, Still North Books' Allie Levy writes that this is poetry for the poetry-averse. "Olzmann’s humor and directness could lull readers into a false sense of security," she says. "But despite the humor, these are not lighthearted poems. They are heavy-hitting and deeply perceptive. Olzmann delivers hard truths wrapped up in humor and imagination."Dartmouth skier brings a bit of the Big Green to the Beijing Winter Games. When Julia Kern landed on campus as a freshman in 2015, she was already bent on making the Olympics. A Nordic skier, she designed her courseload to allow her to take winter terms off and commit entirely to training. And it paid off. Kern shares her story with Dartmouth News, and takes us with her into the Covid-secure “closed loop” of Olympic Village and a laid-back intimacy that hearkened back to life in Hanover. And when it was time to strap on the skis—Kern says “competition days were like exam days in college.”NH ranks among least-stressed states. VT? Not so much. That's according to a new ranking of "2022's Most and Least-Stressed States" on the personal finance site WalletHub. They crunched a variety of metrics related to work, family, money, and health and safety to come up with their list. Which is all fine, but seriously. NH being just a tad more stressed than South Dakota we can accept. And less stressed than North Dakota? Okay. But VT is more stressed-out than Connecticut? New Jersey? Rhode Island? And Massachusetts?NH releases "Laurie List." The list—which was partially redacted—contains the names of 174 current and former NH police officers "with misconduct on their records that raises questions about their credibility," reports NHPR's Todd Bookman. It includes eight current or former state troopers, at least a dozen officers added for use of excessive force, and some officers involved in notable cases, including former Claremont officer Ian Kibbe, who served time in jail for illegally searching a suspect's room and falsifying records. Bookman also delves into the history of how the list became public.If you want to stay in the same temperature band as the climate changes, you have to move 30 feet north a day, or about 20 miles over a decade. That's a climate scientist talking to PBS's Maiya May for a segment on the climate changes pushing people out of their homes and the safest county in the US to move to. Once you factor in a non-coastal location, low wildfire risk, no extreme heat, and several economic measures, it turns out to be...Lamoille County, VT. May asks Tasha Wallis of the county's planning commission, Is it ready? "We have a lot of work to do," Wallis responds. (Thanks, SB!)Practice your morning meditation in Beatrix Potter’s backyard. The beloved creator of Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, and all their tales of mischief has been feeding children’s imaginations for more than a century. One of many characters not to be overlooked: the idyllic, unspoiled landscape at the heart of Potter’s world. And a place as real as anything. Part of a new London exhibit honoring the author’s legacy, this short film sweeps you into Potter’s countryside: the magical Lake District that inspired her for years—a canvas of birdsong, bunnies, foothills and falling waters, sunrise fog and whistling wind…
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Today at 5:30, the Hartland Library hosts Michael Freed-Thall for an online reading and conversation about his book, Horodno Burning. Freed-Thall, a former teacher and principal in South Hero who now lives in Fletcher, VT, modeled his first novel on the history of his own family, telling a love story that begins in Russia's Pale of Settlement set against a background of rising anti-Jewish fervor and violence under Tsar Alexander III.
At 6 pm, also online, the Shelburne Museum offers up a webinar on Luigi Lucioni, the Italian immigrant who in 1937 was dubbed "Vermont's Painter Laureate" by Life after settling in Manchester, VT and making the state his muse. Shelburne curator Katie Wood Kirchhoff will talk about Lucioni's life and work as the museum launches an online exhibition and new book ahead of a June in-person exhibition.
And at 7, also online, the Vermont Studio Center hosts a visiting-artist talk by Philadelphia-based artist Karyn Olivier. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Olivier creates monuments, memorials, and visual-art installations, including the 2017 piece, The Battle is Joined, in which she encased the 20-foot-tall Battle of Germantown Memorial in Philadelphia’s Vernon Park in reflective acrylic, so that the memorial could mirror its present-day surroundings and passersby.
The title says it all.
A new joint album,
Carry Me Home
, is coming out next month.
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 and writers who want you to 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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