GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Still warm, still partly to mostly sunny—but also a chance of showers and thunderstorms. With low pressure off the Maritimes and more low pressure moving in to the west, things are geting less stable today than they've been. The upshot: a mix of sun and clouds, and a slight chance to a chance of showers and thunderstorms all day. Highs today in the mid 80s (things will definitely cool down tomorrow), with a low tonight in the low 60s.A lupine portrait. On Monday, curious about the fuss over the lupines in Sugar Hill, NH, Tammy Willens headed up there for a field trip. The flowers were spectacular—but what she hadn't expected was the eastern phoebe that landed right in front of her.Hey, if there's going to be a roundabout, let's think big! Now that work's begun on the new roundabout near DHMC, Peter Burghardt sends along a photo of what has to be the world's flashiest: the World Bicycle Day statue in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. "We can only hope the designers on Mt. Support Road have this kind of vision," he writes. Though he adds that ours needs to be distinctly Upper Valley. "How about the Saint-Gaudens Diana rotating on a giant Shaker box, supported on the backs of four cows with stethoscopes?"Hanover's C&A Pizza to close. Elaine Georgakopoulos began working 33 years ago in the popular Lebanon Street spot opened by her parents and uncles in 1976. Now she's ready to stop, and with the building (which her family owned) under contract, she's pegged June 22 as the day C&A will retire, too. "It's a little bittersweet because I've been here so long," she says; all three of her kids—George, who died in 2013, Soula, and Aphrodite—worked there, too. Georgakopoulos plans to take a year off, see family in Greece, and then decide what comes next. WRJ's C&S Pizza, owned by cousins, remains open.Haverhill town administrator decides to step down. Brigitte Codling, whose town manager position was voted out from under her at town meeting this year, submitted her resignation Monday, reports the Journal Opinion's Alex Nuti-de Biasi. Her final day will be June 14. Codling for years has been the target of ire over a funding dispute with Woodsville. "I walk away not because I want to, but because I need to for my own well-being and the well-being of my family," she says in her resignation letter, citing "an environment that is so hostile and difficult that I feel that I have no choice but to resign."SPONSORED: Help someone today! At Hearts You Hold, the Upper Valley-based nonprofit that supports immigrants, migrants, and refugees by taking the time to ask them what they need, we're flooded with requests as summer takes hold. At the burgundy link or here, you'll find requests from people all over the world who need clothing, shoes, even beds while they try to make a life here. Including a former farmworker in Grafton County who now prepares and sells homemade food to farmworkers and is looking for help with pots and lids. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.The women of west Belfast "know how to dance, how to tell a story, how to have you wheezing with laughter. You want to be near them.” Upper Valley writer Flynn Berry has built a reputation for thrillers that are also closely observed novels focused on family and the conflicting tides of loyalty. "She pays attention to the details, to the moods, to the weather, and brings it all together to cast a spell over the reader," writes Rena Mosteirin in this week's Enthusiasms, about Berry's forthcoming Trust Her. "It doesn’t take long before you feel like you know the characters. You’ll want to be near them."The taste of summer in your mouth... That's how Susan Apel headlines her latest Artful post, and it'll have you ready to head out the door. She pays a visit to Upper Valley Tropical Sno, a shaved-ice truck that's landed curbside at Colburn Park in Lebanon; checks in with Red Clover Café and Creamery in E. Thetford, which opens, why, today (though ice cream arrives June 15); and name-checks Dairy Twirl, Hanover Scoops, and the sidewalk dining options in Hanover and downtown Leb. Plus, of course, Mac's Maple: "Already open; their maple creamee always a summer gift to self."SPONSORED: Cindy Pierce returns to the Briggs! Renowned comic storyteller Cindy Pierce will perform her solo show, Keeping It Inn, at the Briggs Opera House this weekend, June 7-9. A post-show discussion will follow the matinee on Sunday, June 9th. “With her quick wit and outspoken nature," Cindy says, "my mom navigated life with flare and unrelenting optimism, bucking the conventional life expected of her as a woman born in the 1920s.” Here's a trailer for the show, and here's Cindy's interview on Vermont Public with Nina Keck. Sponsored by Pinzer Productions, LLC.One challenge of being a community nurse: "We're not all grant writers." Jodi Hoyt has been Tunbridge's community nurse for a couple of years—she grew up next door in Chelsea—and she's an advocate for the model, which helps townspeople navigate a health care system that often seems remote—in all senses—from small rural towns. But, she tells UVM's Robert Gamache, on assignment for the Herald, it's not easy to make it work. "You are on your own completely,” she says. “You have no support, and you have no mentoring. The only thing you get is a monthly meeting on Zoom with a couple of other nurses."Strafford voters reject town office renovations by 16 votes. A state fire marshal says the stairs leading to the second floor are unsafe, the listers are working out of a fire station, and town officials had hoped voters would okay not just renovations but a small expansion. On Monday, though, voters rejected the idea, 205-189, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News. Town office committee chair Curt Albee tells her there aren't other options. "The town owns no suitable property for a town office located elsewhere,” he says. “There’s no real estate available that lends itself to a town office. We’re kind of up against it.”Despite NH governor's order barring towns from seizing property for unpaid taxes during the pandemic, many went ahead anyway. In all, the Monitor's Michaela Towfighi writes—based on an analysis of tax deed records during NH's state of emergency in 2020 and 2021—75 towns and cities across the state seized 242 properties from residents. Among them, Haverhill—where the town halted evictions but still took ownership—as well as Canaan and Grafton. Towfighi explores what happened, including tax collectors who were unaware of the governor's order or gave it their own interpretation.Legal analysis of NH school standards overhaul contends it's at odds with state law, constitution. The report from the Office of Legislative Services, writes Michael Kitch in NH Business Review, focuses on the state ed department's proposal on minimum state standards for public schools, which would remove course, curriculum, and class size requirements. "It is unclear how every educable child in the public schools of the state will get a constitutionally adequate education if each school board may or may not choose the curriculum suggested in this rule," the analysis argues.At the Fairbanks Museum and VT Public's Eye on the Sky, a changing of the voice. After four decades of keeping Vermonters (and Granite Staters, and Quebec residents) in tune with the weather, Steve Maleski is retiring. In his place: Megan Duncan, who's been on the job since April. VT Public's Mikaela Lefrak yesterday talked to both of them—about what made them meteorologists (Maleski: a thunderstorm when he was a child, “And then, I actually heard a voice say, ‘You will be a weatherman’") and what they love to forecast. Plus, weather-report reminiscences from listeners.It's hiking season. Where do you take little kids? Seven Days' Sarah Tuff Dunn and Brett Ann Stanciu have five suggestions—none right in the area, but most of them easily reachable. There's Killington's Thundering Falls Trail, for instance, both wheelchair- and stroller-accessible. And Owl's Head in Groton State Forest. Over in Ripton, there's the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail. There's Mt. Abraham, with its small-plane wreckage (the pilot survived) near the summit. And there's the Falls of Lana and Rattlesnake Cliffs—over by Middlebury, but the names alone make them worth a trip.Extreme learning. Predictably, Benjamin Bolger’s first higher-ed degree was a BA. Not predictably, he was just 19 when he got it—and even less predictably, he's gone on since then to collect 14 advanced degrees, including an MFA from Dartmouth, where he studied Iranian sociology and the poetry of Robert Frost. In The NYT Magazine, (gift link), Joseph Bernstein profiles Bolger—and struggles to figure out what drives him. "Many of us love learning, too, but we don’t do what Bolger has done," he writes. To fund it all, Bolger consults on what he may know best: college admissions, at around $100K a pop.
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Adrie Kusserow chairs the sociology and anthropology department at St. Michael's College, and is also what she calls an "ethnographic poet." She's been a teacher and relief worker in Asia and Africa, and her new book is a series of short essays that look at the refugee experience, exile, herself and her own experiences, and the search for human connection. At 7 pm.
And for today...
...Dream folk. At least, that's what Alterne's record label calls their new effort. The trio—from Denmark, Belgium, and Estonia—met while studying at the Sibelius Academy in Finland, and though there's lots of traditional Nordic influence, especially in their instruments (hardanger fiddle, kantele, accordion, stomp box, as well as violin and guitar), they give it all a contemporary folk feel. Ida Marie Jessen composes the songs, sings, and plays violin and kantele; Maimu Jõgeda’s on accordion; and Oscar Beerten handles violin, Hardanger fuddle, guitar, viola, and backing vocals.
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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