GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
A bit cooler, back to rain showers (probably). A surface cold front is coming through today, which will keep us comfortably in the upper 60s this afternoon. Chance of rain pretty much all day, most likely around midday. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, winds from the south. Down to the mid 50s overnight.Yweow! Or maybe it's "Skeow!" Whichever, it's a green heron call—"a distinctive sound of the wetlands," writes the Cornell Ornithology Lab. In Kevin Peterson's video from Bedell Bridge State Park in Haverhill the other day, you can see the heron call, but you'll need to listen carefully for it amid the riot of other bird sounds.More on the WRJ weathervane: "We always knew it would show up." In the Valley News, John Lippman digs into what's known—and what's speculated—about the theft 40 years ago of a train-and-tender weathervane from atop the town's train depot. He talks to former depot owner Byron Hathorn—“We always assumed it was in the house of a railroad collector or Americana collector because weathervanes are like their pride and joy,” Hathorn tells him—and to others about rumors at the time, and to VTrans' Judith Ehrlich about how it was recovered. VTrans is still considering where to give it a home.Woodstock aims to pay landlords to rent to local workers. The program, "Lease to Locals", is a one-year pilot, reports the VN's Liz Sauchelli, funded by $60,000 from the town's local option tax. Its goal is simple: In an expensive market filled with short-term rentals, to woo homeowners to rent longer-term to people who work at least 25 hours a week in Woodstock or surrounding towns. “Teachers can’t find anywhere to live,” Jill Davies, a member of the town's Housing Working Group, tells Sauchelli. “We’ve had firefighters and police asking us for help. It’s everybody.”SPONSORED: Discover adventure at Whaleback Mountain Summer Day Camp! Enroll your child aged 5-10 in a summer of fun and learning at Whaleback Mountain! Our camp offers outdoor adventure & education, arts & crafts, and sports activities, all under the supervision of our trained, compassionate staff. Embrace a summer filled with growth and joy in a safe, supportive environment. Flexible registration for single or multiple weeks available. Secure your spot now and give your child a summer to remember! Sponsored by Whaleback Mountain."Perhaps my only job here is to tell you to read him, as soon as you can." Him in this case is the essayist Hanif Abdurraqib, and in this week's Enthusiasms, the Norwich Bookstore's Sam Kaas declares himself at a bit of a loss in describing just how great Abdurraqib is. Only, of course, Sam's not at all at a loss. "His command of language will wash over you like a tidal wave and the minute, unassailable truths he can find...will cut right through to the bone, lodge inside you, and live forever." He points us to Abdurraqib's latest, There's Always This Year: basketball, but also about having and loving a community.UVM team using AI to improve floodplain maps. It's well known by know that FEMA's are out of date. So in the age of climate change, how do you make maps better—to help with planning, mitigation, and emergency response? In a VT Public video, Mikaela Lefrak reports on a UVM team that's identifying where water has flowed in the past, then using that data to train a computer model to predict where flooding will go. "You know, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I can predict the future," says one of the researchers, "but the best we can do in this type of work is to take the evidence we have and push it as far as we can."
SPONSORED: Have some fun this summer with Osher at Dartmouth! Osher’s 2024 Summer Term is now open for registration. Study Leaders are offering courses on fiction writing, drawing, woodworking, summer films, economics, and more! Become a member today to enjoy Osher courses year-round. Check out our website at osher.dartmouth.edu for more information. Sponsored by Osher at Dartmouth.New NH measure allows victims of domestic and sexual violence to break their leases. “My hope is that this increases the boldness of people living in these abusive situations and that they know if they leave, there will be a path forward for them," the bill's sponsor, state Rep. Ellen Read, tells NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt and Stateline's Robbie Sequeira. It's part of a national trend to give abuse victims more rental protection; Gov. Chris Sununu signed it yesterday. Read's bill stalled in committee last year over objections from landlord groups; landlord and tenant advocates worked together on this year's. In VT, health insurers seek big jump in premiums. In all, reports VTDigger's Peter D'Auria, the two companies that sell through the state exchange—Blue Cross Blue Shield and MVP—are seeking premium hikes of 9.3-11.7 percent for MVP, and 16.3-19.1 percent for BCBS. The companies say they need the money "to meet rising costs for hospital services, drugs and an increase in people seeking health care after the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic," D'Auria writes. The Green Mountain Care Board, the state's health care regulator, will consider—and possibly cut—the requests later this year.A VT "toolkit" for infill housing. In the world of people who pay attention to how buildings affect community life, it's known as "missing middle" housing—the range of housing types from small in-law units to duplexes to small-scale apartments that make housing more affordable. Exactly the housing that many VT (and NH) zoning regs made illegal in the 20th century. Now, writes VT community planner Amy Love Tomasso for the Congress for the New Urbanism, the state has launched a guide for small-scale home builders, investors, and others to encourage housing for an array of income levels, family sizes, and lifestyles. She describes the toolkit, its genesis, and its launch.Trying hard to be long. For your next party trick, memorize the spelling of pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. At 45 letters, it’s the longest defined word in any dictionary: “a pneumoconiosis caused by inhalation of very fine silicate or quartz dust.” It's also, says Erin McCarthy on Mental Floss, “a word created simply to be long.” McCarthy notes that there are longer words out there. Some are German compound words (like the 63-letter word for “the law for the delegation of monitoring beef labeling”) and some are chemical names, which, according to the Oxford Dictionaries, aren’t “genuine words in the sense of meaningful items of vocabulary.” I'm just the messenger, chemists.Yikes! It's a Red Bull video, so you have to expect some amped-up insanity. Still, you don't see two guys in wingsuits diving out of a helicopter and soaring at 153 mph through London's Tower Bridge every day, now, do you? As always, a shout-out to the unsung camera-person trailing behind.
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Just in time for spring, two additions to the Daybreak swag store. We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
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know what's good! Strong Rabbit's Morgan Brophy has come up with the perfect design for "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Plus, you'll find the Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, as well as sweatshirts, t-shirts, a fleece hoodie, and, as always, the fits-every-hand-perfectly Daybreak mug. Check it all out at the link!
"Perhaps the idea of a harmonica quartet might evoke some kind of music-hall novelty act," the British musician Andrew Cronshaw wrote recently, "but Sväng is a combo of amazing skill and creativity making a big, fat, complex sound using only harmonicas." Yep to all of that: Sväng is just four Finnish musicians, but they do everything from tango to blues to Balkan with a richness that makes them sound like a bigger band than they are. And while they range musically far from their roots, they also come back home from time to time.
—basically a tribute to the dance music popular among Finnish immigrants to the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere during the great migration wave on either side of the turn of the 20th century. It may start slow, but it definitely does not end up that way.
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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