RABBIT RABBIT, UPPER VALLEY!
Here it is, the start of May, and we've got a mostly cloudy day. With a slight chance of showers this morning and afternoon. Otherwise, we're looking at temps maybe reaching 60, light winds from the southeast, maybe some breaks in the clouds toward the end of the day, but mostly they'll linger through the night. Low in the mid 40s.Bobcats two ways.
Out for a stroll in Plainfield, from Sarah Berman.
Caterwauling in Hanover—or as Lisa Grose writes, "Looking for love💕" You'll want the sound up.
Dartmouth grad students go on strike this morning. "Find us on the picket line at the Dartmouth Green," GOLD-UE—the grad students' union—announced after voting Monday night to go ahead with a strike, arguing that the college "still refuses to meet members' most pressing demands." These include, among other things, boosting the graduate student living stipend, expanding healthcare benefits, and access to the college's childcare center, The Dartmouth's Charlotte Hampton reports.
In a lengthy set of FAQs, the provost's office counters, "While we respect our students' right to advocate for their needs, we also recognize that a strike may not be the most effective means of resolving areas of disagreement." The FAQs lay out everything from what the college has proposed to what the strike might mean for grad students, undergrads, faculty, and staff.
In search for reasonable housing, Lebanon aims to become a developer. Its first proposed project gets an airing at the city council tonight, writes Patrick Adrian in the Valley News, when members consider discontinuing the end of Barrows Street, which divides two city-owned lots, so that the city can create a "pocket" cluster of five small homes it would sell to employees at below the city's median home price. The city is also considering affordable housing clusters on Seminary Hill Rd. and on nearly 2 acres on Hanover St. Extension.Former office manager for The Dartmouth pleads guilty to embezzling $223K. Nicole Chambers worked for the student-run newspaper from 2012 to 2021, when she resigned after students uncovered missing funds and reported their concerns to the Hanover police. A news release from the US Attorney's office yesterday reports that an FBI investigation found Chambers had used the paper's Paypal and Venmo accounts to “make unauthorized transfers to accounts she controlled.” A plea deal requires Chambers to repay the full amount; she faces a suggested sentence of zero to 15 months, The D reports.SPONSORED: “What A Rich Way To Live Life.” Billy Cioffredi, PT: If you have ever had a renovation done, or worked on one yourself, you quickly learn that there is a plan, but it never goes in a straight line... But my carpenter friend, Terry, embraces such a life of solving problems and creating new solutions. There’s a lot you can learn from a friend like that. Sponsored by Cioffredi & Associates Physical Therapy Stretching the truth with "not quite snark, but often just this side of it." That's how Liza Bernard describes the storytelling with of Amor Towles, which is on full display in his new collection, Table for Two, she writes in this week's Enthusiasms.Though the stories and a novella have his trademark memorable characters and quick dialogue, they also explore greed and generosity, truth and fiction, families, and political ideology—including through Evelyn Ross, a character in his first novel, Rules of Civility, now transplanted to Hollywood.Killington looks to expand. Really expand. For all the resort's size, it's never had a retail and residential center, writes Kevin O'Connor in VTDigger. That would change if Canadian housing giant Great Gulf meets its goal of building a 450-acre commercial and condominium village on land it bought last year at the base of the resort. Starting with a new lift lodge, retail space, and housing, the company hopes to add up to 2,300 housing units over the next few decades. There are plenty of hurdles in the way, but the town is in its corner. O'Connor outlines the history of failed efforts and what may lie ahead.SPONSORED: One week only! Northern Stage presents brand-new stage adaptation of THE GREAT GATSBY. In this hour-long, one-person adaptation of The Great Gatsby by Literature to Life (LTL), Kelvin Grullon (adaptor and director) and Bryce Foley (performer) breathe new insight into this timeless story about privilege, identity, and the price of the American Dream. Join us for a discussion about the book and performance after every show! Learn more about LTL here. Sponsored by Northern Stage.NH Fish & Game asks for information about missing Massachusetts man. William Donovan, 65, hasn't been seen for two weeks; his car was found at the Crawford Path trailhead in Carroll, but it contained "several pieces of hiking gear that would have been beneficial if he was planning a hike in the White Mountains," the agency says. With "little information regarding Donovan’s history, capabilities, gear, or intention," officials have called off a search until they can learn more about where he might have headed. They're asking anyone in the hiking community who might have information to get in touch.In NH, demand for police officers "is outstripping supply." Pretty much everywhere you look, reports Roberta Baker in the Union Leader, law enforcement agencies face shortfalls—and some smaller departments have shrunk by 30 to 50 percent. The state police have 73 openings for troopers—out of 362. Part of the problem is that older officers are leaving, fewer people are interested in signing on, and demands on departments are growing. Claremont cut three officer positions so it could boost wages; Lebanon is offering a $30K signing bonus... which drew a police officer from Claremont.Patients in NH hospitals are staying much longer than necessary. That's not by choice, writes Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin. It's because insurance won't cover ongoing care or there's no one at home who can help or step-down facilities with staffing shortages can't take them. A new report from the state hospital association found that on a single day in early March, 129 patients who could have been discharged had remained in hospitals for an extra 10,140 days altogether. On the other hand, fewer people in March were still in the hospital because of homelessness than was the case last September.VT Senate rejects nominee for education secretary, but she'll take the post anyway. It was an interesting day in the saga of Zoie Saunders yesterday. In all, 19 senators voted against confirming her as education secretary, and just nine supported her. But then Gov. Phil Scott announced he'd named Saunders interim secretary—complete with a plan for her first 100 days. In floor debate, reports VT Public's Lola Duffort, senators spoke about the sheer volume of opposition they'd heard from constituents—including Hartford's Becca White, who found herself weighing 520 years of public school experience from her correspondents "against three months of recent public education experience."“As soon as it started with the pipes I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, what is this?’” John Butler was a teenager in Dublin the first time he heard uilleann pipes, rattling his world over the radio. That night set him on a course to becoming one of just three dozen or so makers of uilleann pipes—the more introverted Irish cousin of the bagpipe. The craft almost died out, writes Larry Gallagher in Craftsmanship, but Butler has helped revive it, handmaking each instrument, often with an array of tools he also had to make. Gallagher dives into the history, art, craft, and dark nights of the soul involved. With craft and music videos. Where you can hear how "uilleann" is pronounced.Pretend you could fly a drone through a Phish concert. In the Las Vegas Sphere. What would that look like? Pretty freakin' out of this world, actually, because that's what filmmaker Jay Christensen just did: in the entrance, up the escalator, through the psychedelic hanging artwork, above the crowd, onto the stage... Yes, you want the sound on.
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Run by Dartmouth's Thayer School, this is the event's 18th year, with teams of students from all over the US and Canada competing on design, acceleration, handling and endurance of their high-performance cars. The event's going on all week, but today's the best day for spectating, they say, with autocross and acceleration events running from 10 to 3:30.
Namm, a former US foreign service officer, is
executive secretary of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, part of the Organization of American States. He'll be talking about the impact of illicit drug cultivation and trafficking on health and public safety in the countries of the western hemisphere
. In Haldeman 41 and livestreamed.
At 5 pm today, Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center brings in Texas Tribune reporter James Barragan for a talk, "No Time for Apathy: Why the American Public Must Fully Engage in Democracy".
As a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Barragan—who covers politics for his well-regarded statewide nonprofit news organization—has been studying "democratic backsliding" both in other countries and in the US, as well as ways to reverse it. In Hinman Forum as well as online.
It's part two of a three-part series on declining biodiversity in Upper Valley forests, and it features hunters and wildlife experts—locals, VT and NH wildlife biologists, the VT Center for Ecostudies's director of conservation science—talking about the impact of deer, how hunting rules can reduce deer density, and how landowners can help reduce deer pressure on the forests. In the Mayer Room and livestreamed.
Plainfield's Taylor, former NH ag commissioner and all-around historian, will talk about the history of the state's highway projects, where the roads wound up going and why, and their lasting impacts on the landscape, culture, economy, and society of New Hampshire.
(
not
in Lebanon, as yesterday's brain-freeze-moment Heads Up section mistakenly noted). The ensemble's four members began as a group at Juilliard and in 2022 won Canada’s prestigious Annual Banff International String Quartet Competition—not something young quartets usually even apply for, let alone win on their first time out. As a result, they've been touring extensively. They'll be playing works by JS Bach, Billy Childs, and Beethoven.
. The production's by Literature to Life, which has its roots at NYC's American Place Theatre and believes, as its tagline runs, that "a book can transform a life." This two-person production (directed by Kelvin Grullon, performed by Bryce Foley) retells F. Scott Fitzgerald's Roaring 20s classic, with Foley playing all the characters. Runs through Sunday.
And to take us into the day...
Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour has a new album coming out in September, his first in nearly a decade. Many of its lyrics were penned by his wife, novelist and short story writer Polly Samson, and they've got a throughline: "
It’s written from the point of view of being older; mortality is the constant," she says. Which, given Gilmour's age—he's 78 (she just turned 64)—isn't surprising, though he did just announce he's headed back out on tour. The first single dropped the other day. Here's "The Piper's Call." Though, it has to be said, while there's a youth choir and an orchestra and very fine solo work by Gilmour—oh, and let's not forget his dog—there's nary a uilleann pipe to be heard.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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