GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Clouds and sun. There's a low pressure system that's well to our south, which will produce some clouds over the course of the day, especially in southern parts of the region. But mostly, it'll be a nice, quiet day, highs getting into the mid-50s, winds from the southeast. Enjoy it while it lasts: There's a system headed our way, with a chance of rain starting up after midnight. Down to the upper 30s tonight.🎵If you go down to the road tonight...🎵 Well, actually, don't do it tonight, because it's too dry out. But as you know, right now on warm, wet nights, frogs and salamanders are on the move, and the other night Woodstock Union teachers Anna Megyesi and Sarah Allen were out in the Quechee/Hartford area watching the passing parade...including one fine-looking spotted salamander. "Note: road safety is REALLY crucial, as is letting the neighbors know ahead of time that you'll be out at midnight with a flashlight," Anna writes.Hanover won't get to vote on a leash law after all. At least, not this year. The selectboard last month had opted to give voters at Town Meeting a chance to weigh in on a state statute enabling a leash law. But on Monday, writes Darren Marcy in the Valley News, they decided the state language is too "murky" and opted to withdraw the question from the warrant. "I sit here and read this, and I don’t know what the heck it’s saying," said board secretary Joanna Whitcomb. "I would say pull it.” The board agreed, and asked for a draft town leash ordinance first, with a possible vote next year.In Bradford, Copeland Furniture almost doubles its manufacturing space. The new 51,000-square-foot space sits across the parking lot from the high-end furniture company’s current 64,000-square-foot facility, writes Bobby Dalheim in Furniture Today, and includes a custom box-making machine. “We’re beginning to bring goods over to the new site now for packaging,” says sales and marketing director Ben Copeland. “The idea is to keep machining and manufacturing in our old space and assemble and finish in the new.”“They’re full of humor and hijinks, the gamut of emotions. So that’s a fun thing to be around.” That's Ethan Kilham, Ben's nephew, who helps take care of larger bears at Lyme's Kilham Bear Center. For his latest "radio field trip," NHPR's Rick Ganley visits the center—arriving in time for the cubs' midday feed. He catches the cubs in various moods, including the sort of purring that Ben Kilham calls "chortling." "I label it the sound of contentment,” Kilham says. “Because you go and take them for a walk in the woods and they’ll take a lady slipper blossom and suckle on it and make the same sound.”SPONSORED: How can we invest in our planet—and a more resilient and equitable Upper Valley? That’s the focus of Vital Communities’ Earth Month April campaign, a round-up of ways to put your time and money toward a better future for all. Week one focuses on energy efficiency, followed by farms & food security, transportation, locally owned businesses, and renewable energy! Listen for daily tips and ideas on 92.3 GLX-FM and visit Vital Communities’ Earth Month page (at the link above) for inspiring ideas and ways to take action! Sponsored by Vital Communities."A moment when we were truly in the presence of greatness." That's Kari Meutsch, co-owner of Woodstock's Yankee Bookshop, remembering a standing-room-only reading by the writer Ocean Vuong. Vuong has just released a new poetry collection, Time is a Mother, which officially debuted yesterday. In this week's Enthusiasms, Kari writes, "Anyone who has read his work before will know that the topics he deals with are never easy, often brutal"—in this case, the loss of his mom and the grief that followed. "I cannot wait to dive into these pieces and experience Vuong’s genius anew," she adds.
“Words make you think. Music makes you feel. A song makes you feel a thought.” Those words from librettist Yip Harburg open Patricia Norton's latest episode of A Breath of Song—and her last from the Upper Valley. Later this morning, she leaves her home of 22 years to move up to Burlington. Through A Breath of Song and the Juneberry Choral Program, Patricia has brought song into the heart of the Upper Valley, and this episode, which introduces you to “One Day At A Time" by the Scottish songwriter Penny Stone, is no different. Patricia will continue her series from her new home.NH residents are reporting more rude behavior by legislators—and the legislature isn't equipped to handle it. Complaints about poor behavior both in person and on social media are on the rise, reports NHPR's Josh Rogers, but the legislature's joint ethics committee—which was formed to deal with issues like conflict of interest and dishonesty—is reluctant to add incivility to its docket. House Speaker Sherm Packard told the committee that the bipartisan Speaker’s Advisory Committee tries to address behavior, "but I’m not sure we can expand it to the point where they are meeting five days a week.”NH figures show that the biggest single recipient of Education Freedom Account funds is Amazon—followed by religious schools. In all, reports NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt, $2.4 million has been spent by parents using state funds for private schools or home schooling. The biggest beneficiary has been Amazon, which took in 18.2 percent of the total funds, for computer hardware and textbooks. Then come private religious schools, with Trinity Christian School in Concord, Laconia Christian Academy, Mount Royal Academy in Lancaster, and others taking up the next seven spots. Staples comes in 9th. Citizen wildlife-tracking is a boon for NH... but also a challenge. That's because many of those efforts—turkey flocks, dragonflies, invasive plants, frogs, rabbits—are on different platforms that don't talk (digitally) to one another, writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog. The state tries to track 169 species and has its own portal, but it's got a problem: no funds for an app. It's "barely a step above asking [people returning from a hike] to send it via telegraph using Morse Code," Brooks writes. Which would be okay if the state could get data from all those other sites...but they don't talk to one another.More Vermonters are turning to home organizers. The business is growing in the state, writes Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days, as more people come and go and Vermonters discover that "someone can help them use their space more effectively or take away items they don't want anymore." She talks to several organizers-for-hire about their work, including Thetford's Renata Watts—who decries the perfect-home images that show up on social media. "I want to take away the burden from my clients—not give them new, unreasonable standards to live up to," Watts says.As home construction grows in VT, something holds it back. And you probably won't guess what it is: a shortage of land surveyors. The state society of surveyors has fewer than half the number it did two decades ago, and Anne Wallace Allen (she's been busy) writes in Seven Days that younger people just aren't going into the field—in part because only one degree-granting program is left in the region and it's in Maine, and in part because the field lacks glamor. What people don't know, says surveyor Rebecca Gilson, is that the work requires "a little of everything — being inside, being outside, math, history, art."You know what early spring means, right? Time for pond-skimming. Do they do this in other places? Over the past couple of weekends ski resorts have set up pools of water and then invited skiers—often costumed—to take a run down a slope and try to make it across. Which some manage to do. The Burlington Free Press has rounded up some fine skimming moments from around social media, including one skier's-eye view.The little island where banned books are free to be read. Controversial books have lately been on the chopping block in politically divided school districts around the country. But if a small library on a remote island off of Maine has a say, no books can be canceled completely. As Smithsonian mag’s Emily Williams reports (based on Bangor Daily News), the Matinicus Island Library, serving a community of 100, is determined to be a haven for literature that some find profane or inappropriate. Says a library volunteer, “If you don’t want it in your library, we want it in ours.” Now if only that library were easier to get to.This man can speak some 24 languages, but who's counting? There’s a term for a person with Vaughn Smith’s amazing ability: hyperpolyglot. And you might expect that someone who can toggle effortlessly between English, Russian, Mandarin, and Portuguese—and who lives in DC—works for the UN. But Smith cleans carpets for a living. WaPo’s Jessica Contrera sought him out to better understand his propensity for other tongues, even making a trip to MIT to scan Smith’s brain. His “secret”: simply the joy he gets from a different language and the chance to connect with someone new.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
At 4:30 pm, Dartmouth's Dickey Center hosts Ambassador Keith Harper, who served as U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council from 2014-17 and was the first Native American to be named a US ambassador. He'll be talking with Dickey Center director Victoria Holt about "Promoting Human Rights in an Increasingly Challenging and Autocratic World." In-person in Haldeman Hall 41.
At 5 pm, DHMC presents Dr. Aaron Bernstein, the keynote speaker for this year's online Schumann Lecture, on "Climate Change & Health Equity: A Pediatrician's Prescription for Effective Climate Action." Bernstein teaches pediatrics at Harvard Med School and is also interim director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the university's school of public health. He specializes in the health impacts of the climate crisis on children’s health and on finding ways to improve the health and well-being of children around the world.
At 5:30 today, Still North Books & Bar is hosting novelist (and holder of a masters in comp lit from Dartmouth) Torrey Peters, author of the bestseller Detransition, Baby, for a talk about the craft of writing, followed by a social hour and book signing.
If you've ever heard Tuvan throat-singing, you know you'll never forget it. And if you never have—or want to hear it again—here's your chance: At 6:30 this evening the Lebanon Opera House brings in the Alash Ensemble, a trio gifted at singing multiple pitches at the same time—and at blending contemporary song with Tuvan tradition. No charge, but you'll need to reserve a seat (and can donate to LOH as you do).
It's the first Wednesday of the month, and at 7 this evening Vermont Humanities returns with its First Wednesdays series—for the first time in a long while with a mix of in-person and online talks. One of those digital events is hosted by the Norwich Public Library and the Norwich Historical Society: Three poets—Eli Clare, Judy Chalmer, and Toby McNutt—reflecting on the ways disabled poets write about natural and supernatural spaces. You'll also find online talks on the history of women in ornithology, a reading by Vermont poet Jay Parini, contemporary and traditional Abenaki songs, and a talk on Walt Whitman and how his poetry summed up what it is to be an American.
Bradford, VT is in the midst of its annual, PoemTown celebration, in which poetry goes up on local storefronts town-wide. And this evening at 7, it's screening Nora Jacobson's film on poet Ruth Stone, Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind, at Bradford Academy. A Q&A with Jacobson follows.
And a non-poetry event at 7 pm: Artistree in S. Pomfret is holding an informal get-together for anyone interested in performing, directing, choreographing, working backstage, or becoming part of the theatre scene there. It's a chance to talk and share ideas with the theater's new programming artistic director, Josh Smith.
You wouldn't want to say that Andrew Bird has taken the easy path to fame. Sure, it's not
that
unusual to find indie folk/rock musicians who play the violin (though how many started at the age of four?). But the glockenspiel? Or who make whistling a musical centerpiece? Bird aims for music that's verdant, listenable, and complex, with emotional depth and commentary on issues you don't usually expect songs to address.
: "It was the first time I had dealt directly and flatly with the evidence of atomization, the proof that things fall apart." Didion, Bird explains, “was updating W.B. Yeats for the fractious ’60s. This song takes it to the pixelated present." Whatever. You'll find yourself humming it.
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.
Want to catch up on Daybreak music?
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! You can subscribe at:
Thank you!