GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Still pretty darn great out there. Mostly clear skies, temps reaching the low or mid 70s, low humidity, gentle breezes... What am I doing inside? Down to around 50 tonight.Will summer ever come? Not the heat—we've already gotten a taste. But, you know: the ice cream. In Lebanon yesterday, Lola Burke-van Gulden got to decide the destination on her walk and, well, you'll recognize the sentiment.Let's not say it's going to be gridlock, but... Right at the heart of rush hour this morning, around 8 am, a large, empty propane tank is due to be moved from the West Leb rail yards—with police escort. Bridge Street, Main Street, Seminary Hill, and the Miracle Mile out to the I-89 North on-ramp will be affected for up to two hours. Fire Chief Chris Christopoulos says commuters are "encouraged to seek alternate routes." And heads up: It'll happen with a second tank June 1.Now it's Sharon Academy's turn. The high school (though not the middle school) was closed yesterday and will be again today due to staff absences. Head of School Mary Newman writes that three staff members have tested positive for Covid, three are feeling ill but testing negative, and another three have unrelated reasons for missing school. She adds that two of the three staff with Covid contracted it before last weekend's prom. Last week, the Lyme School, Thetford Academy, and Ledyard Charter School faced similar issues.WRJ fire displaces 14 people. The two-alarm fire Monday evening at the former Pleasant View Motel—on Route 4 a bit after it peels off to head out toward Woodstock—damaged two of the 11 rooms, plus the laundry room, at what is now an efficiency complex, reports Darren Marcy in the Valley News. All 14 residents of the complex, though, have been forced to find other places to live for now, due to smoke damage and utility repairs. Crews from Hartford, Lebanon, Hanover, Norwich, Hartland, Woodstock, Windsor and Plainfield all responded and were able to put the fire out quickly.SPONSORED: All new workspace opening July 1 in the heart of WRJ! Save the date for a Friday, June 17 Open House to help celebrate OnTrack Community Workspace’s 3-year anniversary and check out our new space at 35 Railroad Row. We’ll be providing refreshments, giving tours, and having a few of our members talk about the work they do next door at OnTrack 15 Railroad Row. If you’re interested in more Open House details and/or becoming a member, please email us: [email protected]. We look forward to meeting you either way! Sponsored by OnTrack Community Workspace.Bradford police make arrests in string of burglaries. Between late April and mid-May, WCAX reports, police in town fielded complaints of burglaries at the Bradford Veneer Mill, Smith’s Auto Body Shop, Bradford Car Wash, and residences on North Main Street. The first arrest came at the Bradford Motel on May 6; last week, they arrested several other motel residents for possessing stolen property and drugs, then a man from Vershire for possession of property from the various burglaries, then two men from Fairlee for possession of stolen goods. Police believe the items came from as far away as Williston.Woodstock reaches agreement with former municipal manager. You may remember that back in April, the town placed William Kerbin Jr. on paid leave after two years at the helm. Now, reports the VN's Darren Marcy, an agreement between Kerbin and the town states that he resigned the post “for his own reasons, and not because of any misconduct or performance deficiencies,” stipulates that neither side will bad-mouth the other, and gives Kerbin 22 weeks of severance pay. Fire Chief David Green has been acting manager; the town will look for an interim while searching for a permanent hire.Great books "show me the tree growing from the tree." There's an apple tree growing from the crook of an elm in Hanover that Rena Mosteirin had never noticed until someone pointed it out, and is now her favorite thing to look for. In this week's Enthusiasms, she writes that Vincent van Gogh's Dear Theo—a collection of the artist's letters to his brother—is a bit like that: pointing out "truths as meaningful today as when they were first published, in 1914." She offers examples at the link."Losing hope is not an option.” Martin Luther King III spoke at Dartmouth on Monday—to a packed Spaulding Auditorium and another 200 people watching online. In the speech, which came 60 years to the day after his father spoke at the college, the civil rights and human rights activist pressed the case for expanding voting rights and for nonviolence, reports Matt Golec in the VN. “Please accept the challenge of becoming a peacemaker," he said. "Do whatever you can to prevent violence and create a nonviolent society. There is no country on Earth that needs more healers and peacemakers.”I'll see you a rabid bobcat chasing a cat and raise you one frenzied chipmunk being chased by a cat. Of course, one happened last week in Windsor and the other happened 90 years ago in Claremont. Still, given that the chipmunk ran up a guy's overalls and then hung on when he tried to shake it out, the incident was notable enough to make the Eagle—and get clipped by James Lantz's grandmother for her box of memorabilia.As NH parents file right-to-know requests and school staff try to deal, no one's happy. NHPR's Todd Bookman reports that as concerns about pandemic policies and curriculum have grown—while trust in school officials has faded—schools in New Hampshire are facing a huge jump in official requests from parents and others seeking to question policies, forcing already hard-pressed staff to respond, sometimes to the tune of thousands of pages. One supt tells Bookman that parents who once called to ask him a question now "fire off a formal records request instead."And that's not all. High schools around NH are dealing with rising levels of unrest. Skipping classes, vandalizing bathrooms, fighting in the hallways, trash-talking teachers... "It’s just a big, pardon my language, s--- show, is the best way I can put it,” a Keene High student tells NHPR's Sarah Gibson. Though most students have re-adjusted to school, Gibson reports, mental health problems, depression, and the simple lack of predictability and stability at home and school are eating away at behavior and social norms in classrooms and hallways. It'll be a key issue as things start up again in the fall.$699,000. That's how much a condo in...wait, really? Franklin, NH?...is on the market for, writes David Brooks in the Monitor. High-end condos atop an Irish pub, a new hotel and restaurants, hundreds of apartments being built... The small city that, as Brooks puts it, was "always looking to bounce back but never getting anywhere," is now getting somewhere, he reports. The fact that, once the mills hit the skids, Franklin's buildings were boarded up but left standing meant they were there when years of effort culminated in the destination Mill City Park whitewater park and all the visitors and attention it's brought.“You know the difference between the tomato you get at a farmers market versus the tomato you get in a supermarket? There’s a very similar difference with lumber quality.” That's Katrina Amaral, who with her husband runs a custom sawmill in Strafford, NH. In Fast Company (via MSN), Whitney Bauck profiles their Timberdoodle Farm, which began in their backyard when they were UNH students and now focuses on using locally grown woods that aren't part of monocultures and don't rely on unethical practices to harvest.Investigating Mt. Washington’s invasive weed problem. A new report by NH’s Natural Heritage Bureau, highlighting an uptick in the number of non-native plant species found within the mountain’s protected alpine tundra, is cause for some concern. William Carroll writes in the Berlin Sun that 58 non-native species have now been identified in that zone, up from only 18 in 1990. Among the most concerning—endangering rare species like White Mountain avens—is the common dandelion. Focused efforts to eradicate dandelions in recent years have been mostly successful, but not entirely.Hey, remember the Bernoulli's Principle guy? He's a local! Well, sort of. Turns out that Greg Wolf, the science teacher behind last week's viral video of him blowing up a long yellow bag with one breath, teaches middle school in South Burlington. Seven Days' Alison Novak writes that he got into TikTok episodes after he showed his 8th-grade students how to set methane bubbles on fire and they insisted he take it online. Wolf has enough followers now that he's "classified as a TikTok 'creator,' which means he gets a nominal stipend when his videos go viral," Novak writes.“There’s a man called Christian who flies a microlight aircraft alongside some birds.” That’s how YouTuber Tom Scott, strapped in as a passenger, begins his journey into the clouds with not just any birds, but a flock of lesser white-fronted geese. And the pilot, Christian Moullec, isn’t just some bird enthusiast. This particular species was nearly hunted out of existence, so Moullec, hoping to restore its numbers in the wild, breeds the geese in a reserve in France, teaching them how to fly and where to migrate in winter. “I raise them as if I were their parent,” he says, “and they naturally follow me in flight.”The Wednesday Vordle. Bringing you a word from Tuesday's Daybreak.
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At 12:30 today, the Hood Museum hosts an in-person conversation with Dillen Peace and Sháńdíín Brown, both Diné (Navajo) and former interns in the Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative (DAMLI). They'll be talking about and touring their exhibition at the museum, Unbroken: Native American Ceramics, Sculpture, and Design.
At 7 this evening, the Norwich Bookstore hosts an in-person chance to hear from fellow-bookseller Jeff Deutsch, who directs Chicago's legendary Seminary Co-op bookstore. Deutsch has just published In Praise of Good Bookstores, a book-length essay not just about what goes into creating a good bookstore, but about why, even now, they still need to exist. “While bookstores are no longer the most efficient or, perhaps, cost-effective method of procuring specific books," he writes, “the selling of books has always been one of the least interesting services that bookstores provide. The value is, and has always been, at least in the good and serious bookstores, in the experience of being among books—an experience afforded to anyone who enters the space with curiosity and time.”
Let's keep it simple today.
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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