GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly sunny, still a bit humid. Maybe some fog to start, but definitely more sun than clouds today, though there's a slight chance that a cold front moving through will bring a shower to the north later this afternoon. Temps around or above 80, wind shifting to come from the northwest, and in the wake of that cold front we get down into the upper 50s overnight.Storm brings trees, power lines down. It was brief but intense, and from Claremont to Woodstock fire departments, road crews, and utilities dealt with trees down across roads and, in some cases, live electrical wires, reports Patrick O'Grady in the Valley News. In Hartford, the town rec department closed the Sherman Manning Pool after a power outage knocked out its filtration system. As of this morning, GMP reports some homes still without power in Hartford, Hartland, Woodstock, and Bridgewater. Liberty Utilities seems not to have updated its map since June.At presentation on Lyme Road plans, Dartmouth runs into buzz-saw of criticism. Executive VP Rick Mills began Monday evening's meeting, the first in a series, by telling attendees that the college's revised plan to build an apartment complex at the north end of the golf course “is the direction we’re going to go," John Lippman reports in the VN—and that the college would like to engage the neighborhood on what it looks like. The neighborhood, however, doesn't like the whole idea, raising objections from the impact on student life—is Dartmouth "going to wind up being an undergraduate campus with two campuses connected by a fleet of buses" one attendee asked—to the impact on the neighborhood. Lippman gives a blow-by-blow.Dartmouth study links greenhouse gases emitted in one country to depressed economic growth in others. Overall, the research team found, five countries—led by the US and China—caused $6 trillion in economic losses through warming from 1990 to 2014. Their work, they argue, may provide a legal basis for climate liability claims. "This research reveals that the people who have benefited from the consumption of fossil fuels and from the warming associated with...the combustion of fossil fuels, they are not the same as the people who have suffered," geography prof Justin Mankin told CNN yesterday."I actually cried." That's Brad Piccirillo, president of Charlestown-based Optical Solutions Inc., and his emotion is understandable: 30 of the company's lenses are being used in the Near Infrared Camera, or NIRCAM, aboard the James Webb Space Telescope—so some of those images you and the rest of the world saw yesterday from the Webb came through those lenses. WCAX's Adam Sullivan spent some time at OSI to talk about the Webb project. "I know this is going to work for the rest of my life, the rest of my kids’ lives, my grandkids,” Piccirillo says.A story that feels "raw and messy, hopeful and lovely all at once." As a writer, you can only look at Akwaeke Emezi and shake your head in awe: Over four years, they've published seven books, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young adult, and now, romance. In this week's Enthusiasms, the Norwich Bookstore's Emma Nichols writes about Emezi's latest, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, about a young woman still living with grief as she learns to make room for joy. The novel, Emma writes, "got under my skin and made me grateful to be alive."NH's health and human services commissioner, Lori Shibinette, will step down. Shibinette, who became one of the state's most prominent voices during the pandemic—especially as she tangled with legislators over Covid misinformation they were highlighting—told the Executive Council yesterday that she'll serve through December. “Just when we were getting along, too," GOP Councilor Ted Gatsas—"who often tangled with Shibinette at the table, particularly over issues related to child health and advocacy," writes Paula Tracy in InDepthNH—responded.As VT preps for new mental health hotline, guv hopes residents needing someone to talk to will take advantage. The new national 988 hotline number goes live on Saturday, and it's there not just for people who are in a suicidal crisis: Calls will be routed to counselors in VT (or in whichever state a call originates) who can help people who are simply feeling distressed or overwhelmed, deputy mental health commissioner Alison Krompf tells Seven Days' Kevin McCallum. With the pandemic, suicide hotline use has already risen—the state used to field 150 calls a month, McCallum reports; in January it received more than 500. Until Saturday, the number remains 1-800-273-TALK.It takes a global village to run the snack bar in Waitsfield. While staffing is a challenge for many summer dining spots, the Canteen Creemee in Waitsfield has become a magnet for international students and grads visiting VT and working through the J-1 program. Seven Days’ Sally Pollak meets the crew on the snack bar’s busiest weekend of the year—the 4th of July—as they withstand 105-degree kitchen temps to keep the orders coming and the crush of customers happy. From Mongolia, Hong Kong, Spain, and Kazakhstan, they’re finding a warm welcome from the community as they try to stay cool.This cricket match in India was a crime. You don’t even have to know the rules of the game to appreciate the chutzpah of these guys in India (with the help of some Russians) who created a fake cricket league to scam people out of their money. Except there wasn’t a single person in the audience. BBC’s Soutik Biswas reports that all were arrested for live-streaming staged matches—with sham umpires and piped-in crowd noises—to online bettors who figured it was all real. The lead investigator’s never seen anything like it: “These guys just cleared a patch of land… and began playing a match.”The Wednesday Vordle. Just five letters. You can get them.
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This morning at 9, the Howe is sponsoring and the Hanover Conservancy is hosting a guided walk through the Mink Brook Nature Preserve (meet at the end of Brook Road). The conservancy's program coordinator, Myrilla Hartkopf, will lead a 1.2-mile conversation about conservation efforts there and their impact on the Mink Brook ecosystem. Register in advance by emailing [email protected].
It's been an empty three years, but the Circus Smirkus tent has once again gone up on Fullington Field, on Route 10 between Hanover and Lyme. Today at 1 pm and again at 6 (same hours tomorrow and Saturday, 11 am and 4 pm Sunday), Vermont's homegrown and the nation's only tented traveling youth circus brings its high-level jugglers, aerialists, acrobats, clowns, electric effervescence, and abundance of fine acts to Hanover with, fittingly, "On the Road Again." There's one local in the troupe this year, Norwich acrobat and clown Miki Hertog-Raz.
At 5:30 today, Shona Sanford-Long and her Flying Dog Farm in Tunbridge host an on-farm wood-fired pizza social and tour to highlight the White River Farm Collaborative, a farmer-led effort to preserve working lands and make them available to young and marginalized farmers. Sponsored by the Northeast Organic Farmers Association-Vermont.
At 6 pm, Artistree continues its weekly Music on the Hill series in S. Pomfret—your chance to hang out in the cool evening air with a picnic and live music. Tonight it's Scott Forrest, an opera-trained singer-songwriter and guitarist who covers a wide range of genres, from Brazilian jazz to folk rock to, well, opera.
Also at 6, the Mascoma Film Society continues its weekly summertime film series with The Wings of the Dove. The 1997 film adaptation of Henry James's novel of the same name stars Helena Bonham Carter as a poor girl in love with a rapscallion journalist (is there any other kind?), with whom she plots to separate a traveling young American woman from her wealth. Complications ensue. In the Mascoma High auditorium in Canaan.
At 7 pm, and admittedly a drive away, the Stowe Jewish Film Festival returns to in-person screenings at the Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center with Yerusalem, Levi Zini's documentary about the ancient community of Ethiopian Jews who, in clandestine operations in the '80s and '90s, were airlifted to Israel from Ethiopia and refugee camps in Somalia—and about their lives in Israel. Future films include UnRaveling: My Grandfather, Pancho Villa and Me, about whether Pancho Villa really attacked a border town because he was ticked at the filmmaker's grandfather over an arms deal gone bad; and The Missing Tale, about the few remaining members of the ancient Jewish community of Cochin, India. Each will be available to stream a few days after its live screening.
And this evening at 7:30, the inaugural Oak Hill Music Festival gets underway at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon. Nine highly talented classical musicians come together for three evenings of chamber music (there are concerts Friday and Saturday, as well, with different themes and programs). Tonight it's "From the New Hampshire Woods," with a program of mixed duos, trios, and a wind quartet, playing a world premiere by film composer Amotz Plessner written for this occasion, the trio version of Stravinsky's Suite from The Soldier’s Tale, arias from Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, and "White Birches," the first movement of Marion Bauer's 1922 From the New Hampshire Woods.
Let's just dip a toe into tonight's Oak Hill festival program... In some ways, Leó Weiner may have been best known as a composer in his native Hungary and elsewhere in central Europe, but his influence as a teacher spread much further: A longtime music educator at Budapest's main conservatory, he taught generations of musicians, including conductors Georg Solti, Antal Doráti, and Jenö Blau—later known as Eugene Ormandy. At home, he was sometimes called "the Hungarian Mendellsohn."
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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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