Daybreak Wednesday 6/2/21

A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!

Dry, sunny, warm. There's a ridge of high pressure above us, and though things will start out cool and possibly foggy in spots, it will heat up pretty quickly. Another system heading our way will bring more clouds as the day wears on, but with warm air moving in from the southwest this afternoon, temps will get up to around 80 or higher. Chance of rain this evening and a likelihood overnight, low in the mid-50s.What's great about storms? They stop. And then...

“She served on everything." Terri Dudley died Monday at 92. She started out as a young Valley News reporter and went on to become the first woman to run an advertising department in New England and the first woman president of the Lebanon Chamber of Commerce, as well as to serve in public office as a Lebanon city councilor, mayor, and state legislator, writes the VN's Tim Camerato. She and her husband, Roger, were married for 72 years. “You always feel welcome [in the Upper Valley] regardless of your lot in life," she once wrote in a letter to the editor, "and friendships last for a lifetime.”Lady bugs to you and me, lady beetles to naturalists: Whatever you call them, VCE wants your help finding them. "Celebrated for their beauty, lady beetles are also ruthless predators of aphids and other garden and farm pests," writes Joel Banner Baird in the Burlington Free Press, but native species are disappearing. So WRJ's VT Center for Ecostudies is launching a weeklong Lady Beetle BioBlitz, starting Saturday. Anyone out there with a smartphone can take photos and load them into iNaturalist; the idea is to create an "atlas" of local lady beetles to guide scientists as they try to restore native populations.SPONSORED: Final days for the Pompy Tent Sale! There are just three days left to shop this year's tent sale. Come visit our flagship showroom and workshop in East Thetford or shop in-stock items across our eight Pompy showrooms at the maroon link above. We’ve just added more than 100 brand new pieces. Mention Daybreak at a showroom to save an additional $100 off any purchase over $1,000. Sponsored by Pompanoosuc Mills.Birch, cedar, moss... and 205 hours of painstaking work. What's that get you? A canoe. This weekend, Bill Gold and Reid Schwartz launched a birchbark canoe they made from materials they found within five miles of Contoocook, NH. Gold is of Abenaki descent; Schwartz is not (though he tells the Monitor's Geoff Forester that "there's a little bit of native blood in my family history"). They worked on the project together "to understand a little bit more about how people lived in these woods," Schwartz says, and to figure out if they could "create something usable" from local materials.It's not just housing: Port-a-potty costs have skyrocketed, too. At least, that's what Laconia's found out. Last week, city officials reported that the low bid for renting portable toilets for the nine days of Motorcycle Week was $20,000—compared to $4-5K the last time the city rented them, in 2019. "There’s been some consolidation in the industry,” the public works director told the city council. In addition, demand for portable toilets has risen during the pandemic, so companies have fewer of them in stock at any one time.An unusual feeling in NH mental health circles: optimism. In the wake of the May 11 state Supreme Court ruling on keeping people in crisis in emergency rooms for days on end, the state has put efforts to expand services "back on track," writes Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin. The Senate is ready to reverse cuts, including money for a new psychiatric hospital; the state says it will pay community mental health centers more to expand transitional housing and hospitals more to expand in-patient beds; and a statewide mobile crisis unit is slated to start up this summer. NH experiment with aluminum mixture to reduce cyanobacteria blooms holds promise, but it's not a "magic elixir." The blooms have become an annual summer problem throughout northern New England; the mixture binds with phosphorus on lake bottoms to make it inaccessible as an algal food source. But, writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog, that works only so long as excess phosphorus—from leaking septic systems, fertilizer runoff, or other pollution—doesn't enter the water. "Otherwise," says state aquatic biologist David Neils, "you’re just throwing your money away.”  First NH, then the US, then...? The NH Liquor Commission is poised to become a direct shipper of alcohol in a bill set to pass the NH House and then go on to Gov. Chris Sununu for his signature, reports Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin. The measure would allow the commission to ship within the state and, once it gets shipping licenses from other states, to their residents, as well; it would also partner with NH-based liquor manufacturers to ship their products out of state. The bill passed the Senate unanimously, and is on the calendar to pass the House without discussion tomorrow. "If I could pick this place up and move it to Vermont I would be happy." Zelda Beckford moved from LA to take a job in Brattleboro... and had so much trouble finding a place to live that she wound up in Amherst, MA. The state's housing crunch existed before the pandemic, reports VPR's Howard Weiss-Tisman, but it's definitely gotten worse. State housing officials call it "the missing middle"—“There’s not a lot of homes for sale in Vermont that someone that is making that median wage in their community could afford. And, those homes are not being built,” says housing commissioner Josh Hanford. VT has 11K to go before full reopening. As you'll remember, Gov. Phil Scott has said he'll lift pandemic restrictions once 80 percent of Vermonters 12 and older are vaccinated. At a press conference yesterday, state officials said that it stands at 77.9 percent. If the current rate of 1,500 vaccinations a day holds, human services secretary Mike Smith said, full reopening could happen as early as June 7—though the rate has been falling, notes Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days. She also reports that New England governors have offered extra doses to Canada, in a bid to speed up border reopening.Sea kale, hostas, spinach vine... Coming to a table near you? VT farmer-researchers Graham Unangst-Rufenacht and Aaron Guman are convinced that perennial vegetables like those are both better for the environment—less tilling and disturbing the soil—and for withstanding climate change, reports Melissa Pasanen in Seven Days. So they've been planting them on plots around the state. "This reporter can share that thinly sliced sea kale stems and whole florets sautéed up beautifully with slivered garlic, anchovies and red pepper flakes," Pasanen writes."Light and sessionable with some degree of sourness." That's how Molly Zapp describes the beers at Whirligig Brewing up in St. J. Geoffrey Sewake and his wife, Gillian, opened it in the teeth of the pandemic a year ago and have managed to stay afloat—in part by selling community memberships, in part by working jobs elsewhere and then working at the brewery. Sewake brews in single-barrel batches—some of those barrels come from Fable Farm, Zapp writes, "taking advantage of the residual ample microflora inside." The brewery's now open on Fridays and Saturdays.The best police-chase photo ever! There isn't even an officer in sight. There are, however, plenty of members of what the Barron County, Wisconsin Sheriff's Department happily calls the Barron County Bovine Unit. Early yesterday morning, deputies took out after a speeding Chevy Cavalier, trailing it for 13 miles outside the town of Barron before their quarry was forced to come to a stop by a herd of cows milling in the road. "Thankful to say no humans nor cattle were injured during this incident," the department posts on its FB page.

And in numbers....

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It was 54 years ago today that

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

was released in the US (the UK edition came a few days before). Since those harmonies are always worth revisiting (as is getting to hear Paul kinda cut loose),

for the title song itself.

See you tomorrow.

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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Check out the Spotify playlist generously maintained by Sarah and Nelson Rooker.

Written and published by Rob Gurwitt         Banner by Tom Haushalter    Poetry editor: Michael Lipson  About Rob                                                    About Tom                             About Michael

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