GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
We interrupt this regularly scheduled spring... To bring you another knob of Arctic air rolling through. Which happens to be arriving on the tail of the weather system that showed up last night. The result is highs on either side of 50 with a chance or likelihood of rain for much of the day, and then temps dropping this afternoon toward their overnight low in the mid 20s. Which will bring some spots a brief chance of snow mixing in late.And even so, spring's out and about. Like, for instance...
This black bear, out for a stroll in Sharon, which "patiently allowed me to take a few pictures when he saw me on the deck," JoAnn Webb writes.
And these star magnolia blossoms from Janice Fischel in Hanover, which at least got some glory before freezing temps overnight.
Bradford-Fairlee stretch of I-91 southbound due to close today. The reason, of course, is to give crews a chance to stabilize the Palisades rock ledges without worrying about cars passing by underneath. Southbound vehicles will once again be directed off the highway in Bradford and down Route 5 to Fairlee. In good news for businesses along the way, there's no end date set yet, and as the Valley News reported earlier this month, the work could last through the summer. I-91 northbound will remain open.And speaking of traffic, those two closed lanes in Hanover will re-open soon. For now, at least. The closures, at the intersection of E. Wheelock and College streets and at the intersection of S. Main and Lebanon streets, have been aimed at allowing town officials to study the effects of lane closures on pedestrian safety (especially at the intersection by the Hop) and on traffic flow. Along S. Main, the town is eyeing widening sidewalks and adding bike lanes. Public works director Peter Kulbacki tells the VN's Patrick Adrian that officials will move carefully. “We don’t want to push vehicles into the neighborhoods and create a problem somewhere else,” he says.SPONSORED: Artistree is proud to present LUNGS: a touching journey intertwining artistry and environmental stewardship. LUNGS, by Duncan Macmillan, co-directed by Matthew Robert and Jade Evangelista, and starring Sara Giacomini and Bradley Nowacek, is a sharply witty play that delves into a couple's tumultuous deliberations on parenthood amid global turmoil and rising temperatures. The play poignantly portrays the lifecycle of their relationship, capturing both its highs and lows. It runs from Friday, April 26 to Sunday, April 28 at Artistree's Grange Theatre in Pomfret, VT. Sponsored by Artistree.Carved out of laughter and let loose. Miriam Darlington uses that line from a poem on the "watery nature" of otters in her memoir of a year spent immersed—literally and figuratively—in a search to understand the elusive water-borne animal. In this week's Enthusiasms, Jared Jenisch writes that Darlington's journey is "immersive, tactile, saturated with experience and sensation," as she explores the wetlands, rivers, and lochs of Scotland, Wales, England's Lake District, and Cornwall, describing both the otters she sees and their history in the landscape. It is a "river of prose" that's refreshing to fall into, Jared writes.The results are in on emergency winter shelters in Lebanon, Claremont. Both were needed. The Lebanon shelter, which opened in late January on Mechanic Street, "kept 53 individuals warm and dry" during the 82 nights it was open, reports the VN's Patrick Adrian, with most of its users coming from Hartford or Lebanon and 60 percent of them between the ages of 21 and 40. It closed April 15, but the city plans to reopen it in November. In Claremont, Trinity Episcopal Church saw seven to 10 people a night in its temporary shelter; it's now looking for permanent space and a partner to help run it.SPONSORED: Invest in furniture that stands the test of time! Every day, Americans dispose of 66 million pounds of furniture. But not ours. At Pompanoosuc Mills' workshop in Thetford, we've been crafting timeless, sustainable furniture for over 50 years. Our pieces are built to last a lifetime, not just a season. Discover our Legacy Sale this week and enjoy savings of up to 30 percent on new and in-stock items. Sponsored by Pompanoosuc Mills.Bradford is now home to four fast EV chargers. At a ribbon-cutting yesterday, state and federal officials launched the first chargers in VT funded under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program. The four charging stations can simultaneously charge 180 kilowatts per hour, the state says. They're located in the municipal lot known as Denny Park, a bit north of Colatina Exit, and were installed by Norwich Technologies. "This provides people the confidence coming up 1-91 that there is going to be a place for them to charge along the way,” the company’s Berrett Walter tells WCAX.You might see a familiar face around Hanover next week. Dartmouth said yesterday that George Takei—still best known for his role as USS Enterprise helmsman Lt. Hikaru Sulu on Star Trek even though he's had a long career as a writer and activist since the show ended in 1969—will be on campus May 2-4 as a Montgomery Fellow. He'll be spending time with writing and theater students and with members of the college's Asian American Pacific Islander and LGBTQ communities, and will get an award from the Dartmouth Film Society. He'll also be giving a public talk next Thursday, May 2.Buyer misses deadline for state land in Laconia. NH reopens bidding. After rewriting state law in 2021 to make selling the 220-acre former Laconia State School campus easier, Gov. Chris Sununu and the Exec Council settled on developer Robynne Alexander, who offered $21.5 million for the land. The deal had already come into question after reporting by NH Bulletin's Annmarie Timmins found a history of problems with Alexander—who's now under investigation by the state—and on Monday, Timmins reports, Alexander missed a deadline to close the deal. The second-place bidder is still interested.Northern Forest Canoe Trail, which crosses both NH and VT, looks to make itself more accessible. The 740-mile trail, which begins in Old Forge, NY and winds up in Fort Kent, ME, has launched an online survey for people with mobility challenges, reports VTDigger's K. Fiegenbaum. “We want to know where folks like to paddle and what kinds of improvements would make certain paddling opportunities safer and more enjoyable for a range of bodies, from those with creaky knees and stiff hips to people in wheelchairs and everyone in between,” the group said in a press release.Let's see... Emerald ash borer in Thetford and Norwich, Hemlock Woolly Adelgid in Windsor... VT's Dept. of Forests now has a map tracking five invasive pests and the towns where they've been found. The ash borer's all over (including Hartford, Pomfret, and Woodstock, as well as the towns above); the woolly adelgid is concentrated in the southeast from Windsor down. There's also Elongate Hemlock Scale, found in Springfield (and elsewhere), as well as the Elm Zigzag Sawfly, found in the northwest of the state, and Beech Leaf Disease, in the far southeast. (h/t to the JO's Alex Nuti-de Biasi)As bald eagles make their comeback, great blue herons are in decline. The two appear to be linked. It's not that bald eagles are killing herons, the dean of UVM's environment school tells Olivia Wilson, a reporter for UVM's Community Service, but that "they are bullying and harassing them out of their territories in Vermont.” In 2011, the Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge reported a peak of 410 great blue heron nests. The first bald eagle nest showed up there the following year; last year, there were 25 heron nests. There's a ray of hope, though: Herons in the Northwest rebounded after building nests close to eagles' nests, since eagles keep other predators away.VT reports measles case. It's the state's first since 2018, and involves someone visiting as part of an international program, health officials announced yesterday. The person was among a group exposed during an international flight to Atlanta, reports Colin Flanders in Seven Days; health officials learned of the exposure April 10 and asked the group to quarantine. "While the risk to members of the public remains low," Flanders writes, health officials are asking anyone who was inside the Hampton Inn in Colchester last Wednesday before 3:45 p.m. to confirm they’ve been vaccinated and to monitor for symptoms.“Submarine cable work occupies a lonely branch somewhere between heavy construction and neurosurgery.” Some 800,000 miles of cable run along the ocean floor; about 200 times a year, one breaks. That the world’s communications, governments, and commerce don't grind to a halt is thanks to the people on 20 ships stationed around the world, who fix cables snapped by earthquakes, fishing, shipping, and technical failures, writes Josh Dzieza on The Verge. But the repair vessels and the people aboard them are aging. Dzieza lays out the challenges of a profession that is unseen, underappreciated, requires months at sea, and—weirdly—has lousy internet.You try getting tech support when you're 15 billion miles away. But, unbelievably, NASA engineers figured out how to get Voyager 1—launched in 1977 and now well out into interstellar space—back on track. The problem began in November, when the craft's data stream turned to gibberish. Engineers eventually figured out it had to do with a faulty chip, reports Smithsonian's Will Sullivan, and managed to relocate some of the code it contained. Over the weekend, Voyager gamely reported on its status. "Sounding a little more like yourself, #Voyager1," JPL tweeted on Monday.
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At noon today, Upper Valley Music Center guitar teacher Tristan Bellerive will offer up a free lunchtime concert of music for solo guitar. At UVMC in Lebanon.
At 5:30 pm today, the Etna Library (taking over Trumbull Hall) hosts former Hanover High teacher and Marion Cross principal Bill Hammond for "Following My Father's WWII Footsteps in Fila Sneakers". Last fall, Hammond and two of his brothers retraced their father's travels through war-torn Europe with his regiment, based on a trove of letters he'd written his mother. The trip, Hammond writes, was "a way to honor my father, to recognize his and his fellow soldiers' sacrifice, and to reinforce a bond with my brothers. This talk will focus on the marvels of the excursion and the serendipity in finding things we didn't think possible."
Also at 5:30, Sustainable Woodstock hosts wildlife ecologist Desiree Narango for a talk on "Key Steps Toward Creating Year-Round Pollinator-Friendly Gardens". Narango will describe how "small changes in landscaping behaviors can benefit pollinators at home, from raking the leaves to lawn mowing. She will also discuss the ecological and evolutionary relationships between plants and pollinators and highlight recent research on why native plants are an essential component of pollinator-friendly gardening practices." At Woodstock Union High School, whose CRAFT program is a co-sponsor.
At 6:30 this evening, the Woodstock History Center hosts Middlebury geosciences prof emeritus Ray Coish for "A Tale of Ancient Volcanoes and Oceans". He'll be talking about VT's ancient geological history, when what's now the state was covered by ocean and volcanoes (think Ascutney) "erupted in spectacular fashion on islands in that ocean." He'll be taking questions, too.
This evening at 7, the Norwich Bookstore hosts three VT poets: Amy Allen, Mary Elder Jacobsen, and Kim Ward. They'll be reading from their collections Mountain Offerings, Stonechat, and Fire on a Circle, respectively, all published by Montpelier's Rootstock Publishing.
What is it about Mongolian head bangers?
Metal got its start there in Ulaanbaatar in the mid-1980s, but it was a purely underground scene. As a member of the country's pioneering metal band Ayasiin Salkhi once put it, "The way we were behaving on stage, with the head-banging, our look, and our singing style—for most of the people in the audience, it was very nightmare-like, almost like we were evil.” Things had changed enough by a decade ago that the country's first heavy metal festival drew eight local bands. And now? Well, The Hu have had a lot to do with Mongolian bands going global, but these days the country's producing metal bands like Nashville produces country. Formed in 2021, Uuhai is definitely one to watch: Its seven members combine traditional clothing, instruments and styles (throat-singing, long song) with electric guitars and on-stage antics. Which has landed them a European tour this summer.
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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