GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Oh well. That was a day, yesterday, eh? Today, not so much. Low pressure moving in from the Great Lakes is bringing a warm front with it, but temps are going to drop anyway: With mostly cloudy skies and a chance or likelihood of showers all day, we'll only reach the mid 50s. Chance of showers overnight as well, lows only in the low 40s. Before the snow completely disappears... Just some reminders of what things looked like just a few days ago:
"Spring sneezed." That's the tongue-in-cheek title Jane Masters gives her pic from West Lebanon over the weekend.
And a view of Mink Brook taken from the River Trail in Hanover last week in the early stages of Thursday's snowstorm, by Daniel Chamberlain. (Remember the storm? Over a foot...?)
And speaking of that storm, it also produced this friendly little snow spiral on the windowsill of Mary McCuaig's barn at Top Acres Farm in S. Woodstock. "Our barn is close to another big barn," she writes, "so I’m thinking the wind funneled in there with all the new snow to form them."
When he was a police officer, Claremont state rep threatened to shoot fellow officers, kill the city's police chief and rape the chief's wife. Those allegations are contained in GOP state Rep. Jon Stone's police department employment records, which Stone fought for years to keep secret but the NH Supreme Court ruled last month could be made public. Their contents were first revealed Friday night in InDepthNH by Damien Fisher, the journalist who fought to release the documents. Events have been moving fast since then:
Here's Fisher's original story. The documents, he writes, "portray Stone in 2006 as an out-of-control and unstable man who made colleagues worry about their safety." He was being investigated that year for an "inappropriate relationship" with a 16-year-old Stevens High girl that began when she was 15, and that investigation "brought out a violent and deranged side of Stone that had other officers scared," Fisher writes. Stone left the department that year.
On Monday, Fisher reported that the state agency in charge of police standards and training knew about the allegations, but did nothing—or, as Fisher puts it, "passed on holding Stone to account." He adds that "Stone’s internal affairs reports were sent to Sullivan County Attorney Marc Hathaway as well, but Stone was never prosecuted. Hathaway was not available for comment on Monday."
Also on Monday, the VN's John Lippman followed up on Fisher's story, talking to Stone's attorney, Peter Decato, who told him, "Jon Stone’s personnel records go back 17-plus years. They are full of unproven ‘factual allegations.' Whatever is disclosed should have a very large asterisk next to it.”
Not surprisingly, in the closely divided NH House, this has quickly become a political story. Yesterday, NHPR's Josh Rogers reported that House Democratic Leader Matt Wilhelm has asked that Stone be removed from his spot on the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. “Whether this behavior occurred last week, last year, or last decade, it is clearly beyond the pale for an elected official,” he said in a statement.
Haverhill roiled again. "As the world turns, there is more change in Haverhill," the Journal Opinion's Alex Nuti-de Biasi writes in yesterday's newsletter. Monday evening, selectboard chair Phil Blanchard resigned from the board. In a statement, he said he was "spread too thin" as a result of the town's decision to jettison its town manager and switch to using a town administrator while leaving all governing decision in the selectboard's hands. Blanchard, who is also fire chief and runs an auto repair business, told the board, "I cannot maintain other obligations" while serving on the newly empowered selectboard.SPONSORED: Your voice matters in shaping the future of public transportation in our region! Last fall, Advance Transit expanded service to include evenings and Saturdays. AT wants to hear from you about your experiences and thoughts. Whether you're a regular rider or someone who's yet to hop aboard, your feedback is invaluable. By completing a quick survey, you'll play a crucial role in improving the transit experience to better serve our community. Take a few minutes to share your insights and ideas! Learn more here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by Advance Transit.$16.25 an hour. That, writes Marc Novicoff in The Atlantic (gift link), is what Dartmouth's basketball players are looking for as part of their union bid—the wage paid student employees. Novicoff, a recent Dartmouth alum, offers a concise overview of the national stakes in the players-as-employees standoff. But he also wonders what it might mean for Dartmouth sports. "If the basketball players are employees, so too are the squash players, rowers, and field-hockey players," he writes. The college could opt to pay them all minimum wage—or "it might prefer to get out of the niche-sports business altogether.""I found a community full of love, support and people who could actually understand what I was going through." Like a lot of colleges, Dartmouth has a Camp Kesem—a free summer camp for kids who have a parent with cancer. For her "Tell Me a Story" podcasting class, senior Ari Morris—who spent years as a Kesem camper—profiles the local camp, and some of the people involved, including siblings Mav, Avocado, Egg, Prime, and Marshmello—their camp names. "For a week," explains director Sara Pickrell, "you don't have to be Jennifer who's the only kid in her grade whose mom has cancer."SPONSORED: Finding Our Stride is searching for its next executive director! After 13 fulfilling years leading Finding Our Stride (FOS), Jenny Williams will retire later this year—though she'll help with the search and transition to a new leader and remain an active volunteer. FOS is a dynamic organization boosting physical and mental health for K-8 youth in the Upper Valley through free afterschool running programs, mostly in under-served communities. It's looking for a seasoned leader who can drive the vision and direction of a growing organization. Sponsored by Finding Our Stride.The moon been on your mind? Allie Levy's, too. Still "basking in the afterglow" of Monday's eclipse, she writes in this week's Enthusiasms, the Still North Books & Bar owner has been "looking for ways to relive the experience with my baby. Luckily, there's a picture book for that." Many of them, in fact, but there are three in particular she finds herself returning to over and over. There's Moonbear and his quest to find out what the moon looks like, a baby sloth's discovery of the world around him, and a "peek-through" picture book about the moon in which "every page is a work of art," Allie writes.NH and VT heave a sigh of relief, start looking at how things went. No one knows yet how many visitors actually showed up for the eclipse—those numbers may come out today—but on the day after, a picture's starting to emerge.
Traffic, of course, was epic. "Travelers were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the northern part of [NH] through at least 2 a.m. Tuesday," report the AP's Nick Perry and Kathy McCormack—and people were sleeping in their cars "all over" Route 3, one weary traveler tells them. There were reports of 11-hour overnight journeys from the Northeast Kingdom to get back to Boston.
On the other hand, reports John Lippman in the VN, gas station and convenience store owners were delighted. “I wish I got a dollar for every bathroom toilet flush,” Tom Frawley, chief executive of Summit Distributing, jokes to him, before reporting that there were “30-plus percent sales increases across the whole group of [Summit] stations that were close to I-91 and I-89.”
NHPR's Kate Dario checked in with businesses and civic leaders in Colebrook, where all the gaming things out ahead of time—extra cash for ATMs; extra food supplies at local diners; and he fuel stockpiled at gas stations—appears to have paid off with a trouble-free day.
And in VT, write VTDigger's Erin Petenko and Juan Vega de Soto, two things seemed clear: "A whole lot of people came to Vermont. And although outbound traffic was significant... no major crises had befallen the state." “People were very patient, respectful, rolling down their windows to say thank you to us,” says Newport's police chief. One interesting item of note: one of the biggest traffic choke points the VSP noted was right here—the I-89/I-91 interchange.
One other cool eclipse thing. An aerial timelapse from 300 feet up of the moments either side of totality, looking out at Burlington, Lake Champlain, Mt. Mansfield and Camel's Hump, sent in to VTDigger by Gabe Strand.Oh, and this guy. Though it's kind of hard to watch totality when you're skiing down Mt. Mansfield.VT's Goddard College to close. The decision was announced yesterday by the Plainfield school's board, reports Seven Days' Anne Wallace Allen. The move "was prompted by low spring enrollment numbers at the struggling school," Allen writes—though president Dan Hocoy told her in an interview yesterday that Goddard "has been struggling financially for 50 years, since enrollment reached a high of around 1,500 in the early 1970s." The school, founded in 1938, will sell its campus, which was built on a 117-acre estate.Creating the biggest, most beautiful, most detailed map of the world… from at home in a monastery. Fra Mauro, a cartographer and monk who lived in Venice in the 15th century, was the genius behind the Mappa Mundi, a strikingly detailed image of the world. The map is gorgeous, yes, but also exceptionally detailed, with more than 3,000 notations, says the BBC. And it’s remarkably accurate—the first map to present Japan as an island and Africa as circumnavigable. Fra Mauro in essence crowdsourced his masterpiece; Venice was a bustling, international city, and Mauro tapped the worldly experience of traders, travelers, and refugees who came to the city."He seems to be very particular about his living situation." That would be the mountain goat sighted on the support pillars of a bridge in Kansas City, MO on Monday. It was a tense rescue: a driver, reports the AP's Heather Hollingsworth, got a rope around the goat's neck, but when firefighters tried to rappel down to him, he spooked and the rope caught; he was hanging by the neck until rescuers undid the snag and he fell onto padding below. A family about two hours away believes he may be their pet goat Chug, stolen back in February. They find out today. Here's TV news coverage with video. 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. A word game—but local!
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Today at 4 pm, Dartmouth's Dickey Center hosts NYU political scientist (and Dartmouth grad) Kanchan Chandra for her talk, "2024 Elections in India: Can a Hindu Homeland Be a Democracy?" Chandra will be taking a look at the upcoming elections, in which Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) currently leads all other parties, and explores what impact the elections will have on national policy, whether the BJP will use the elections to continue turning India into a Hindu Homeland, and what it will all mean for various minorities in the country. In Haldeman 41 as well as livestreamed.
At 6 pm, the Dartmouth Political Union hosts a debate on gun control between David Hogg and Spike Cohen. Hogg, who survived the 2018 shootings at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, has gone on to become a prominent activist on behalf of gun violence prevention. Cohen is a Libertarian activist and was the Libertarian Party's vice presidential nominee in 2020. In-person in Filene Auditorium (there's a waitlist) and livestreamed.
At 7 this evening, the Hartford Historical Society hosts a Vermont Humanities lecture, "Justin Morgan’s Horse: Making an American Myth". Amanda Gustin, the public programs coordinator at the Vermont Historical Society, will delve into what's known about the first Morgan, "a mystery stallion named Figure, owned by singing teacher Justin Morgan in the late 18th century." Along the way, she'll talk about the stories that have developed over the centuries since, as well as how they touch on Vermont identity, the relationship between humans and animals, American myth, and more. At the Greater Hartford UCC.
Also at 7 this evening, Thetford speculative fiction writer Dean Whitlock will give a reading at the Peabody Library in Post Mills. He'll be reading from his latest novelette, Deep Blue Jump, first published in the Sept/Oct '23 edition of Asimov’s SF Magazine. which will be followed by a Q&A and then more reading. Available via Zoom as well (email [email protected] for the link).
At 8 pm, Valley Improv will return to Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover, where its plucky performers will take the ideas you toss them and turn them into laughs.
And to take us into today...
Miko Marks grew up in a musically active family that liked to play blues-tinged gospel at church conventions—and had a Mississippi-born grandmother who leaned to story-driven songs that, as the young Miko grew, keyed her into country music. She made a foray to Nashville back in the 2000s along with other Black musicians, but left to go back to California after she discovered, as the
Tennessean
put it a few years back, that "opening doors for more than one Black artist at a time was still considered an 'innovative' notion." That was then. These days, Marks is on a roll in country circles—though it's hard to say where the country starts and the gospel and blues leave off.
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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