GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Still a chance of showers, but mostly it'll be cool and kind of dreary. There's this mass of colder air aloft that's keeping temps below normal, and unlike yesterday, when we got up above 70, we'll be lucky to reach 60 today, with winds from the northwest. Chance of rain all day and night. The good news: The smoke from Canadian wildfires (more below) is dissipating, and air quality alerts have been allowed to expire. Low tonight in the upper 40s.It's swarm season! That's when a portion of a honeybee hive follows an old queen to find a new home—usually alighting for a time on a nearby branch while they figure things out. Norwich beekeeper Hugh Huizenga sends along what that looks like, at the burgundy link. Bees tend to be docile while they're swarming—they're searching for new digs, after all, not on the attack—but you've gotta figure it's a strange feeling when, out of curiosity, they land on you. Here's what that looks like. "Once you get the clump with the queen into a new hive box," Hugh writes, "the rest of the workers will follow."“Uncharted territory.” That's how weather forecasters in Burlington yesterday morning characterized smoke from wildfires in Quebec and across Canada affecting VT, NH, and the entire Northeast. As of yesterday afternoon, NYC and Toronto were ranked among the cities with the worst air quality in the world, reports the Washington Post's Matthew Cappucci (burgundy link, no paywall). Locally, reports Frances Mize in the Valley News, both VT and NH issued air quality alerts, and the air quality index was at unhealthy levels here at mid-day. You can track it here. In all, 416 wildfires are currently burning in Canada.Dartmouth's new government/community relations VP comes from the big leagues. Emma Wolfe was senior adviser for external relations to incoming president Sian Beilock at Barnard, but before that, was former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio's right hand—the aide he trusted most and his point person for dealing with the city bureaucracy and NYC's fierce political world. On Monday, Wolfe takes over the Office of Government and Community Relations at the college. "One of the smartest people out there," NY State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli once said of her. "One of the most pleasant people as well. Which not often goes together for political geniuses."In place of hedges outside Hanover town hall, tables and chairs. It's the first step in an effort by an ad hoc group of town officials and downtown business owners, led by town manager Alex Torpey, to boost activity and create a more welcoming set of spots for people to hang out. “This process is all about looking at spaces one by one to try to figure out if we can create more gathering spaces,” Torpey tells the VN's Patrick Adrian. “We have a lot of places to sit with benches but we don’t have a lot of places for gathering." Down the road, maybe: something like WRJ's First Friday.SPONSORED: The new state-of-the-art Patient Pavilion has opened at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. This new building allows us to deliver high-quality, patient and family-centered care to more people than ever before. Patient rooms are equipped with the latest technology, such as remote clinical monitoring communication tools, smart care boards, and telehealth equipment. Upgrades are also being made throughout the academic medical center. The new pavilion is part of Dartmouth Health’s continued investment in the health of our communities. Learn more here. Sponsored by Dartmouth Health.Mapping incidents in Hartford. The Hartford Police Department announced on its FB page yesterday that it's got a service called CityProtect (at the burgundy link) up and running. It shows the location of 911 calls, fires, burglaries and robberies, "citizen disputes", and other incidents over the past week, though with scant additional information.A translation of an untranslatable novel. At least, that's how many Brazilians viewed Mário de Andrade’s sprawling 1928 novel, Macunaíma: The Hero With No Character. It's considered one of the country's founding modernist pieces of literature—"I copied Brazil," Andrade said of it. Translator Katrina Dodson spent six years immersing herself in the country and the book's minutiae, and the result, published in April, is "mystical, playful, and poetic," Rena Mosteirin reports in this week's Enthusiasms—and well worth reading.SPONSORED: Support Willing Hands TODAY during NH Gives. New Hampshire's most important 24 hours of giving ends today at 5 pm! By making a gift to Willing Hands before then, you will join more than 1,000 community members working together to reduce food waste and end hunger in the Upper Valley. This work has a direct positive impact: One neighbor experiencing food insecurity recently said, "This food makes me feel like I matter." Join us now to help all of our neighbors get the food they need! Sponsored by Willing Hands."How deep can you dig for the truth before it gets dangerous?" NHPR yesterday dropped a new six-episode-plus-epilogue podcast, The 13th Step. It grew out of reporter Lauren Chooljian's 2022 story about allegations of sexual harassment against Eric Spofford, the founder of NH's largest network of addiction rehab centers—the story that got NHPR embroiled in an ongoing libel lawsuit and may have led to vandalism against homes owned by Chooljian, her parents, and her editor. In the podcast, Chooljian doubles down, digging into the charges, Spofford, "the ways powerful, wealthy people can intimidate sources," and the addiction treatment industry and its problems.And with that podcast's release, "On the advice of NHPR’s security consultants, Ms. Chooljian and her family will be hunkering down out of state." That little nugget is in David Enrich's NYT story, published yesterday (gift link), detailing the cases of vandalism, Chooljian's reporting on Spofford, and the legal maneuvering surrounding the original NHPR stories. Among other things, media lawyers are alarmed by a judge's ruling last week that NHPR must hand Chooljian's notes and interview transcripts to Spofford's legal team.
NH State Police identify woman found by the side of I-89, arrest suspect. Her body was found early Monday morning in the northbound breakdown lane of the highway in Hopkinton. After an intensive effort that included releasing an image of a tattoo in the small of her back, police yesterday identified her as Gina C. Maiorano, 27, of Henniker. An autopsy Monday determined she'd died from "blunt impact head injuries" and yesterday evening, police arrested Thomas Shane Hanley, 30, of Henniker, charging him with felony "conduct after an accident," breach of bail, and stalking.On sex ed, feds offer end-run around NH Exec Council. You may remember this: Last year, GOP members of the Council voted three times to pull funding from a decade-old sex education program aimed at reducing teen pregnancy, run by an agency in Manchester and by the TLC Family Resource Center in Claremont. Now, reports Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin, the US Dept of Health and Human Services is offering $250K in grants for the programs, after Sen. Jeanne Shaheen pressed it to do so. The agency began accepting applications Friday; no Exec Council approval is needed.Judge dismisses NH civil rights case against white supremacist group. Monday's ruling comes in a civil case brought against the regional group NSC-131 by Atty Genl John Formella in January; two of its members were accused of trespassing on a Portsmouth bridge last summer to hang a banner reading, “Keep New England White.” In his opinion, Rockingham County Superior Court Judge David Ruoff wrote that the state's interpretation of "trespass" exceeded its constitutional authority. The AG's office will appeal."Trespass here, die here. Take the chance!" That was part of a sign greeting town officials from Pawlet, VT one morning last week when they attempted to enter the Slate Ridge firearms training facility for an inspection. The owner, Daniel Banyai, had been ordered by a state environmental court to dismantle un-permitted buildings on the property; he was nowhere to be found. So the town, reports Emma Cotton in VTDigger, has now filed a motion with the court for Banyai's arrest. The court hasn't yet issued a decision on the question. Meanwhile, a federal judge has thrown out a counter-suit filed by Banyai. Phil Scott vetoes child care bill. “I know some headlines will probably read ‘Scott vetoes child care,’ but I’m not vetoing child care. I’m vetoing the payroll tax,” VT's governor said at a press conference yesterday. He was referring to one of the mechanisms legislators turned to in order to fund their effort to inject $120 million into the state's struggling system through subsidies to families and reimbursements for providers. As Peter Hirshfeld reports for VT Public, the measure passed easily in both houses, and its supporters are expressing confidence they'll override Scott's veto when the legislature convenes June 20.Sometimes the little guy wins—and saves possibly 1.8 billion people from being scammed. Chris Plummer calls himself "just a guy from New Hampshire"—albeit one who works in cybersecurity. So when he noticed what was clearly a scam email using a new Gmail feature designed to prevent scam emails, he let Google know it had a bug. He got a brushoff. So, as Carol Robidoux writes for Manchester Ink Link, he took it to Twitter, and when he woke up the next morning, had over 100K views; an apology from Google followed. Then, over the weekend, Forbes published a story noting that Google is working on a fix. "The whole thing has been crazy,” Plummer says.Pickleball, it turns out, is unusually loud. For one thing, pickleball hits have a particularly high pitch, kind of like the beeping of a garbage truck backing up. And a solid hit—that satisfying pwock—is not quite as loud as a vacuum but louder than a city's background noise. With nine million people in the U.S. playing the sport regularly and more joining them all the time, it’s not likely that things will get quieter. In Hubspot's The Hustle, Mark Dent writes about the wars breaking out around courts—and the lawsuits in courts—and how one man is using science and engineering to try to quiet it all down.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.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
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Lost Woods
mug from DB Johnson for you? Or maybe a Vordle t-shirt? Or, of course, Daybreak tees, long-sleeve tees, and mugs. Check out what's available and wear it (or drink from it) proudly! Email me ([email protected]) if you've got questions.
As you may have noticed in Willing Hands' sponsored post above, NH Gives began late yesterday and ends today at 5 pm. Sponsored by the NH Center for Nonprofits, it's a dead easy way to donate to organizations around the state (as well as some across the river that serve New Hampshire residents). It's everything from the arts to social services to trail work and conservation, and there are plenty of Upper Valley organizations represented: You can search by name or location. In some cases, matches and other incentives will amplify your gift. Check it out at the link.
This evening at 7, the Norwich Bookstore hosts author and writing teacher Joni Cole for an interactive "prompt" workshop, centered around the revised and expanded edition of her writing guide, Toxic Feedback—which is all about how not to give toxic feedback.
Also at 7, the Center at Eastman hosts Upper Valley Music Center cello teacher Ben Kulp for a concert featuring Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, along with other pieces he discovered during the pandemic. A former member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and the Miami Symphony Orchestra, Kulp performs both solo and in chamber groups around the Upper Valley.
And at 7:30 this evening, one of the world's great guitarists, Pat Metheny, takes the stage at the Lebanon Opera House with his latest project, "Side-Eye"—his effort to give a younger generation of musicians the same chance he got as a youngster to play with some of the greats (who included Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Gary Burton, Herbie Hancock, and others). Tonight, he'll be joined by pianist/organist/keyboardist Chris Fishman and New Orleans drummer Joe Dyson. There are some tickets left, but not many, so now's the time to act.
And to get us going this morning...
We kinda have to, right?
performed live not too long after
American Garage
came out.
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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