GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Weather? What weather? Kinda like yesterday never happened, eh? High pressure's building in and the sky will bluer and the day sunnier as the morning goes on. It'll still be cooler than normal, with highs topping out somewhere around 50. Moderate winds from the west, and mostly clear skies tonight with lows in the 20s.Spring on the farm.
There are 39 new lambs who've joined the herd of Jacob Sheep at Hogwash Farm in Norwich—and as she was driving by the other day, Karen Harris caught some of them chowing down. "Jacobs are a very old heritage breed that thrive on taking care of themselves. Every lamb was born unassisted," writes Hogwash's Leslie O'Hara. The first came into this world March 23. The farm also has 3 Cotswolds lambs, another old breed—but new to the farm.
Meanwhile, living up to their name, glory-of-the-snow at Fat Rooster Farm in S. Royalton just laughed off yesterday's weather. From Jenn Megyesi.
And speaking of farms, the Norwich Farmers Market is looking for a new manager. Thetford's Steve Hoffman, who has run the market for the past 12 years, will be stepping down in June. Whoever replaces him will be "stepping into a really, really strong market," says NFM board chair Geo Honigford, who until last year owned and ran Hurricane Flats Farm in S. Royalton. "Steve's been a big part of that." A brief Daybreak story, including a link to the job description, at the link.On first flight beyond testing facilities, Beta Technologies plane stops over at Leb Airport. The all-the-rage battery-powered aircraft was on its way to Manchester on Friday, reports Claire Potter in the Valley News, accompanied by a helicopter and chase plane keeping tabs on how things went. After hitting 140 mph on its way down (it has a max speed of 170), Potter writes, it "looped over the Connecticut River before it touched down with a whisper."SPONSORED: VINS Earth Day Celebration. Join us on Saturday, April 23 for VINS’ 50 Year Anniversary kick-off with an Earth Day Celebration! The day will include stories, games, live raptor programs, Stream Table exploration, geocaching, and more. The event will take place all day, 10 AM – 5 PM, and is included with General Admission. Sponsored by VINS."The novel we still need, to show us that we—our lonely selves and our uncertain nation—are as we have always been." That novel, William Craig writes in this week's Enthusiasms, is Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter's 1939 short novel about star-crossed lovers during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Reading it, Bill writes, is to discover an America that bears a startling resemblance to today's, and to understand why "resentment and delusion turn even everyday crises into catastrophes." His compelling argument for why this is the right book right now is at the link.Ladybroad Ledger, women's comics newspaper, relocates from Burlington to WRJ. And more specifically, to the Center for Cartoon Studies. Many of its founders have left VT, cartoonist and neuroscience illustrator Annabel Driussi tells Susan Apel in an Artful email interview, and bringing in new cartoonists from CCS "was the best shot" to revive it. "We strongly believe that there are not enough spaces for lady-identifying, lady-presenting, or lady-adjacent people to make and share comics," she writes."A lot like the chaotic gobbling from a group of rowdy turkeys." That's how Dartmouth bio prof Ryan Calsbeek describes a chorus of wood frogs—a sound we were hearing a lot until it got cold again. The challenge for researchers, Calsbeek tells Dartmouth News's David Hirsch, has been to identify a single frog's call to build a better picture of how it relates to mating. Now a team working with acoustic "cameras" on ponds in Hanover and Norwich has found that male choruses attract females to a site, and then "individual songs play a role in positioning the male frogs within that site," says Calsbeek.As local food producers try to build regional markets, meat processing remains a bottleneck. There are just four slaughterhouses in NH and three facilities in all of New England to process poultry from New Hampshire, reports NHPR's Mara Hoplamazian. That's a snag as local-food advocates look to strengthen the regional food system. Jeff Backer and Dave Viola, who raise pigs in Northwood, NH, are building a new facility in Kennebunk, ME, that they hope will let them “develop strong partnerships with other producers in New England who are kind of similar in size to us," Viola says."A big meddling in local affairs, and that is not something we do in New Hampshire.” That was Lebanon state Rep. Laurel Stavis arguing in committee on Monday against a bill passed by the Senate to bar municipalities from imposing restrictions on short-term rentals. The committee voted 17-2 to send the bill off for further study, reports Michael Kitch in NH Business Review—and though the full House still has to vote, the move likely ends any chance the measure will pass this year.As landfill-gas bill moves forward in NH legislature, environmental groups raise objections. The measure, which passed the Senate and is now before the House, would allow natural gas utilities to use methane captured from landfills—much like the gas-to-energy project at the Lebanon landfill—as part of their gas mix. "We believe this is going to be a cornerstone to carbon-free energy going forward,” says a Unitil spokesman. But, writes Amanda Gokee in NH Bulletin, environmentalists argue that the bill doesn't account for leaks or transportation in calculating benefits, and that it will do little to lower emissions.Storm closed roads, caused power outages. Route 132 between Tucker Hill and Miller Pond roads was closed, writes Talia Heisey in VTDigger, but for the most part the storm's biggest impacts—2-6 inches of snow in the Greens and the Champlain Valley, power outages throughout northern VT—were felt beyond the Upper Valley. The storm also claimed two lives after a pair of kayakers who weren't wearing life vests launched from a protected cove on Seymour Lake in the Northeast Kingdom into windy, choppy, and icy conditions and capsized. A VSP scuba team recovered their bodies last night.VT's transit providers, Burlington Airport, will no longer require masks. Following Monday's federal court ruling axing the national mask mandate for public transportation, "We continue to recommend masks but there will be no enforcement or requirements to wear one,” the state’s public transit program manager tells VTDigger's Jack Lyons. At a press conference yesterday, state health commissioner Mark Levine said, "While multiple airlines and Amtrak have already stopped requiring masks, this does not change our current guidance...But this is a recommendation, and not a mandate.”Super Bowl wins by country. Electricity consumption in Europe in 1507. Dry as a bone, the sense of humor behind TerribleMaps, on a social media platform near you. But so much fun! There's the railway map of Antarctica, for instance. And the world's countries mapped proportionately to their sheep...
And the Dartmouth numbers...You'll remember that the college now reports only active cases within the previous 7 days—but at least is now reporting them on Tuesdays and Fridays. So... As of yesterday, there were 525 active cases during the previous 7 days, compared to 339 the week before. The college reports 317 undergrads (+121), 123 grad and professional students (+20), and 85 faculty/staff (+45) had active cases over the past week.
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Today at noon, it's the Family Place's 11th annual "Force for the Future" luncheon, online only and focused this year on how the pandemic has affected children’s mental health and early development and revealed vulnerabilities in childcare and education systems. Talking this through will be former VT Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe, Dothan Brook Principal Rick Dustin-Eichler, and two Family Place staffers: clinical director Tonya McMurray and physical therapist Amber Hewston. Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Also at noon, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller hosts "Planning to Plant: A Virtual Introduction to Tree Planting," with forester Bill Musson and Ron Rhodes, who directs restoration programs for the Connecticut River Conservancy, talking about species selection, habitat selection, how to source stock, and how to maintain trees once they're happily ensconced. There's a followup hands-on workshop on 4/30.
At 5:30 pm, the Hartland Public Library hosts an online slideshow and talk by outdoors author Michael Tougias, "400 Miles Down the Connecticut River." He'll be talking natural history, social history, environmental history—and pointing out his favorite sections of river to paddle, fish, and camp. You'll find the description and registration link on the library's calendar under today's date.
This evening at 7, the Fairbanks Museum presents a lecture and live, interactive online conversation with astronomer Wanda Diaz-Merced. Blind since her early 20s, she studies light from gamma-ray bursts using "sonification," which allows her to transform light waves into sound—and to find patterns that were hidden in visual representations, thus becoming a leader in her field. She'll be talking with Mark Breen, the museum's planetarium director, meteorologist, and producer of "Eye on the Night Sky."
Also at 7 and also coming online from St. J, the St. J Athenaeum hosts artist, poet, and VPR producer Shanta Lee Gander for an evening of poetry. She has a collection coming out next year, Black Metamorphoses.
"Guitar virtuosity seems like it's so rarely used to create something that's peaceful and tangibly hopeful,"
Afropop Worldwide
producer Ben Richmond said last year in his intro to a conversation with guitarist Yasmin Williams. Williams burst into the music world's consciousness with her second album, last year's
Urban Driftwood
, for which she taught herself to play the
kora
, and with her adventurous approach to guitar-playing, which includes drumming, using a bow, even tap "dancing" while she plays to add rhythmic complexity. There's also her backstory: She started out by playing the video game
Guitar Hero
, eventually beat it, and asked her parents if they could get her a real one. She says that the mechanics of playing the game informed her style now. "Video games get a bad rap," she says, "but
I
recommend it."
(Thanks, CJ!)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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