GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Showers, mostly cloudy. I know, you're speechless with surprise. Today's rain won't amount to much, and a lot will depend on where you are, but that low pressure isn't headed anywhere yet. Rain is likeliest this afternoon, slight chance of thunder, and we'll see temps much like yesterday's: maybe reaching the low 50s. Light winds from the southeast, lows tonight around 40.On the water...
An early-morning beaver lodge in the mist in Etna, from Jay Davis;
And up in Newbury VT, Ian Clark has been out on one of his nearby ponds, checking things out since the ice left. Herons, bitterns, mergansers, loons, and geese nesting—as well as an arresting pair in mid-flight, coming in for a landing.
Hey, New London parkers! You're okay for another week. Thanks to this week's rain, NHDOT won't be closing the Park & Ride off I-89 until this coming Monday, May 8—depending, of course, on the weather. Once again: All vehicles left in the lot will be towed so they can repave and restripe. They expect the lot to reopen next Thursday, May 11.LaSalette Shrine in Enfield to close Oct. 1. In a post that went up yesterday on Facebook—but was dated April 29—the Very Rev. William V. Kaliyadan wrote, “The difficult decision to close the Shrine and its ministries is because of the declining number of vocations in the La Salette Community.” In the Valley News, the Enfield Shaker Museum's Carolyn Smith tells reporter Liz Sauchelli that the museum has been in talks with LaSalette since last fall about buying the land—which once belonged to the Shakers. The shrine will hold daily Mass until Sept. 30, Sauchelli reports, as well as a celebration on Sept. 19.“I was like, ‘Wow, you could make a career, and you don’t have to get it all right?’" You don’t have to, but it sure seems that Sian Beilock (pronunciation here) does. In the Dartmouth Alumni Mag, Abigail Jones speaks with the incoming Dartmouth president about, well, pretty much everything, from playing competitive sports to her groundbreaking research in cognitive science to programs she established at other institutions to improve the college experience for students. Beilock brings with her a history of success and innovation, and an understanding of the impact she can have as the first female president of Dartmouth. “I want to model for everyone—especially women—that it’s messy but you can do it.”"I tripped and fell and then the train came.” That's WRJ's Betsy Hallahan, 56, the woman who nearly two weeks ago was struck by a freight train along the tracks near Latham Works Lane. On Monday she “discharged myself out” out of Mt. Ascutney Hospital, where she had been undergoing rehab, and tells the VN's John Lippman that she believes her backpack shielded her from the train's worst impact. Firefighters found it smoldering by the tracks. Lippman follows up with Hallahan about her injuries, which were extensive, and about what she was doing that day.SPONSORED: Take pause, take courage. Join violist Jennifer Elton Turbes & pianist William Ögmundson on Saturday, May 6 for an Upper Valley Music Center program designed to create space, engage our minds, and ultimately inspire action. The program includes Reena Esmail’s Take What You Need, with poetry read by Rabbi Ilene Harkavy Haigh of Shir Shalom in Woodstock; Mary Kouyoumdjian’s A Boy and a Makeshift Toy; and works by Jessie Montgomery, Harry T. Burleigh, and Heinrich Biber that inspire reflection and highlight the power of music to make an impact. Sponsored by UVMC.Sympathy for citizens wondering what the hell is going on. That was Bill Craig's response to a line in The Insurrection in Dublin, a slim memoir by Irish poet, playwright, actor, and novelist James Stephens on the Easter Uprising of 1916. In this week's Enthusiasms, Bill writes that Stephens didn't try to write a history so much as convey "the disorientation and fear, the fervor and grief of the average citizen who knows only what is known in history’s moment." And he wonders whether Stephens's remark that "barbarism is largely a lack of news" still holds in the era of the internet and social media.Passing overhead. Over the last decade, an international collaboration spearheaded by Birds Canada has tagged—and then tracked the migration of—some 40,000 individual animals: mostly birds, but also butterflies, dragonflies, bats, six bumblebees, and 13 people. The effort, known as Motus, has been expanding in the Northeast, and in NH Bulletin, Hadley Barndollar describes what it's taken—the NH Motus team met weekly for three years as it planned tracking stations—and the insights it's provided into migration patterns. There are tracking stations in both NH and VT, though none in the Upper Valley.And speaking of flying... John Stadler is a children's book author and illustrator (Big and Little, The Ballad of Wilbur and the Moose, and many others) who lives in Lyme. He's also an animator, and his latest is basically a 43-second children's book without pages. The title, "The Baby on the Beach," contains two of the three objects it features. There's also a hat.SPONSORED: DeLeon Day Spa & retail boutique in Lyme has the largest selection of organic baby & children’s clothing in the Upper Valley. Our brands are affordable, well made, cozy, and cute! The best reason to shop for kids' clothes at DeLeon is one close to our hearts, and that’s because all products are made in our garment factory in Ukraine. Starting May 1 we will donate 10 percent of children’s clothing sales to Care in Action, which helps children in Ukraine. Learn more here. Sponsored by DeLeon Day Spa."This time of the year is probably the most dangerous to be in the water." That's Hanover deputy fire chief Michael Gilbert talking to NBC5's John Hawks about the combination of fast, high waters, debris, and cold temps that characterize the area's rivers in the spring. They're especially high right now due to the rain, and Hawks checked in yesterday with the HFD's Swift Water Rescue Team—which also includes members from Lebanon and Hartford—about its training and preparation. Gilbert says there's been "an uptick" in rescues this year: six so far, including a man who drove into the CT in January.New Northeast Seed Network aims to provide seeds native to New England. The seeds you get from the big companies may be from varieties you could consider native to the region, but they were "harvested from plants raised in very different climates than here," writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog. And so, says Michael Piantedosi of the MA-based Native Plant Trust, "They are adapted to very different environments." The network will collect seeds from specific states, counties, and ecosystems and store them in its seed bank in western Mass., making them available as needed.Scott signs bill to make VT first state to officially let non-residents use its medical-aid-in-dying law. Oregon's been doing it under court order, but yesterday, Scott gave the okay to legislation that codifies it in VT, reports Vermont Public's Mikaela Lefrak. Only terminally ill legal residents were allowed to get prescriptions for the lethal drugs that would bring about their own deaths until a CT woman sued the state for access, winning a settlement in March in which the state waived the residency requirement.
Dream of rafting through the Grand Canyon? The river is in charge, and it doesn't respect you. That's the crux of Annette McGivney's absorbing article in Outside mag, which focuses on the death of a 67-year-old adventure-seeker on the Colorado River last fall and what it says about the iconic waterway. The end result is a sobering read about climate change, a tragic accident, and the future of rafting on a hurting, drying river that supplies 40 million people in seven states. "Lately it feels like the Grand Canyon is just a place between two dwindling reservoirs,” says the head of the Canyon's river guides association.The Wednesday Vordle. If you're new to Daybreak, this is the Upper Valley version of Wordle, with a five-letter word chosen from an item in the previous day's Daybreak.
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Today from 4 to 8:30, food produced by businesses run by eight Dartmouth alums will feature in the college's 53 Commons. They include a menu of items from Allie Levy's Still North Books & Bar, Ben Nelson's Claremont Spice & Dry Goods, Jarett Berke's Lou's, John Pepper's Boloco, Nicole Carrier's Throwback Brewery, and more. At 5:30, three of them—Nelson, Berke, and Carrier—will be in the Paganucci Lounge for a product tasting and panel discussion on what it's like to navigate the food industry. Open to the public.
Today at 5:30, Left Bank Books in Hanover welcomes in Annabelle Cone to read from (and, presumably, show) her new graphic novel, Empty Nesting II. Cone taught French and comp lit at Dartmouth for three decades—where she specialized, among other things, in graphic novels and French and Belgian comics. The first volume of Empty Nesting came out in 2018—a memoir about finding an identity after the kids leave.
This evening at 7, the Norwich Public Library and Norwich Historical Society present this month's Vermont Humanities First Wednesday lecture, UVM anthropologist Teresa Mares on "Essential Work in the Food System: Imagining a Better Future." Mares, who runs the university's Graduate Program in Food Systems, will be talking about her work on food and farmworkers, focusing in particular on VT's dairy industry and on why farm laborers should figure in building sustainable food systems. In-person at the library and online.
At 8 this evening in Rollins Chapel, the Hop presents the Clarion Choir celebrating the 150th anniversary year of Sergei Rachmaninoff's birth with a performance of his 1915 All Night Vigil, a choral composition based on texts from the Russian Orthodox all-night vigil ceremony. Rachmaninoff was so fond of it he asked that its fifth movement be sung at his funeral. The renowned choir, based in NYC, is led by Dartmouth grad Steven Fox—and right after this returns to New York to perform All Night Vigil at Carnegie Hall. So here's your chance to beat the crowds.
Oh, there are so many possibilities...
You knew we'd have to do this, right? Gordon Lightfoot died Monday at 84 in Toronto. So...
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Or
.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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