WELL HEY, UPPER VALLEY!
Nice to see you again.
Mostly sunny, warm, maybe some smoke haze. We're kind of between two systems, and the patchy dense fog that started us off today should be clearing out from most spots soon. Then it's full-on sun, with temps reaching the mid 80s. Clear for the first part of tonight, too, with lows around 60.Ever wonder what happens if a glider doesn't get all the way back to the airport before the end of the day? I hadn't, until Rick Sheppe sent along this photo of gliders being assembled at a Post Mills Soaring Club get-together last week and mentioned in passing that he was among a handful of pilots who hadn't landed back in Post Mills. Well, you'd need to know more, right? Turns out, he landed at the airport in N. Haverhill that day, but glider pilots aren't always so lucky. Sometimes, this happens—and then you have to wait around for someone to show up with a trailer. "This usually involves taking the crew out to dinner before arriving back home," he adds.Expect delays today crossing the Connecticut on I-89. Starting this morning at 4:30, crews began placing concrete on the median bridge deck that's under construction. This will cause delays between Exit 19 northbound to the VT state line and at the I-91 to I-89 southbound interchange in VT to Exit 20 in NH. They expect work to wrap up around 3 pm.Meanwhile, don't expect to be driving Buzzell Bridge Road upstream of the Union Village Dam anytime soon. Army Corps of Engineers ranger Adlai Ostrer writes that there's lots of debris and mud and a section of the road is completely washed out—and will be closed to vehicles for the rest of the season. "Trails, bridges, and other roads are also in a sorry state and haven’t all been assessed for damage yet. We will try to keep the public posted," he adds—and sends along the photo at the burgundy link.Oh, also, a stretch of Route 132 between Thetford and S. Strafford will be closed for a month. That's because it needs emergency repairs to keep the road from sliding into the West Branch of the Ompompanoosuc, the Valley News explains. Flooding undermined the embankment, and the road will have to be torn out and rebuilt; the detour uses Mine and Gove Hill roads. As it turns out, Katie Futterman writes in Seven Days, the rains undermined lots of land: VT has seen at least 50 landslides since July 11.SPONSORED: Osher lecture series focuses on China. Professor Jeremy Paltiel will take the stage on Friday, July 28 to discuss Chinese and American politics and governance, their strengths and weaknesses. It’s all part of the Osher Summer Lecture Series, “China and the United States: Can Competitive Coexistence Be Maintained?” running Fridays from July 7-Aug. 11. Presented with the Dickey Center, the series is open to the public, both livestreamed and in person at LOH. Sponsored by Osher at Dartmouth."It’s through hundreds of conversations that I start gaining my view and my voice.” Dartmouth's new president, Sian Beilock, has been talking to a lot of people both on campus and off since before she took office—in part, Frances Mize writes in the VN, because her work in cognitive psychology has convinced her of its importance, in part because she knows how much she doesn't know yet, and in part because she's focused on the college's place in the Upper Valley. "Look," she tells Mize, "Dartmouth brings a lot to the community. We also have a responsibility to think about how we are of the community.”And carrying a big part of that community relations load: Emma Wolfe. Wolfe spent her career in organizing and politics in NYC and she's the college's first VP for Government and Community Relations. She, too, is doing a lot of listening, she tells Hanover Town Manager Alex Torpey on his Hanover Happenings podcast. "If you’re going into a neighborhood, or into a new state, you must understand that you do not know the culture and that you have to learn it," she says. They talk over what Wolfe's learned so far, the college's "blob" of New Yorkers, and the "intimidating" outdoor scene in the Upper Valley.And speaking of the outdoor scene... You probably saw this already, but just in case: Access to the Mt. Cardigan fire tower has been shut off until the end of August, as NH's Division of Forests and Lands works on rehabbing it. In addition, on days when a helicopter is flying in new materials, all trails on the mountain will be closed to hikers "both for their own safety and for the safety of the crew,” the agency writes in its press release.Ten days without water have Woodstock re-thinking private company. Woodstock Aqueduct—whose pipes under the Ottauquechee broke in this month's flooding—started in 1887, with many of its original shareholders belonging to the Billings family, writes Amanda Gokee in the Boston Globe (paywall). In the floods' wake, the company says it will relocate the pipes—one deeper, one across the Elm St. Bridge—but even so, Gokee reports, some residents are pushing for the town to take over. “My family has always believed the town should be in charge of their own water," says Jireh Billings.Meanwhile, Bridgewater-area businesses face "a long, costly road to recovery." So wrote John Lippman in the VN over the weekend after talking to Ramunto's Andy Reid, ShackletonThomas's Charles Shackleton, the Woodstock Farmers Market's Brandon Little, and White Cottage owner John Hurley. All have been cleaning up since the floods. Ramunto's needs new walk-in refrigeration—for which former Sleep Woodstock motel owner Patrick Fultz launched a GoFundMe campaign (it's at $38,715 of a $50K goal); Shackleton, facing $125K in recovery costs, did the same and has raised $159K.VT's oldest known loon may have been killed by a boat strike. You may remember that the loon known as Newark Pond Male was found dead last month at an estimated age of 31, almost 25 years after field biologist Eric Hanson—then working for VINS—first began tracking him. In a press release Monday, Hanson—now at the VT Center for Ecostudies—announced that after an autopsy, "All signs point to a high-speed, one-sided impact, possibly caused by a motorboat hit.” Most such incidents are unintentional, VCE writes; "loons can pop up anywhere, just like deer darting in front of a moving car."Everything you might want to know about why Mt. Moosilauke once hosted long poles topped with black nail kegs. It was part of an effort 150 years ago by Dartmouth prof Elihu Quimby to create the first “modern” map of NH. And just as notable, writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog: It features in a 400-page book that is only the latest in a 13-volume series about the mountain. There are two more to go. “Is there a market for this?" asks Robert Averill, a retired Shelburne Falls, MA physician who's been guiding the project for three decades. "No." But, he tells Brooks in an explanation any historian will recognize, "The more I looked, the more stuff I came up with."It may look like the color of summer, but you'll want to stay away from Scheele's Green. That's because the artificial colorant, invented in 1775 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, contained enough arsenic to poison people who wore it, breathed it, or ingested it. It's been on Courtney Cook's mind lately, in part because things are pretty lush out there, and in part because of Kassia St. Claire’s entry on it in her book, The Secret Lives of Color. It's "the stories behind 75 shades, dyes, and hues," Courtney writes in this week's Enthusiasms. Like, the use of "fallow", for instance, dates back to Beowulf.As regional theaters struggle, Northern Stage gets a liquor license. "While this is certainly auxiliary to our mission,” managing director Jason Smoller tells the NYT's Michael Paulson, “it will represent a not insignificant revenue stream, and it undoubtedly improves the experience for our patrons.” Especially since other theater companies around the country are cutting runs, cutting seasons, and cutting staff as they grapple with higher costs, smaller audiences, and theater-going habits broken by the pandemic. “It’s impossible not to be distraught about the state of the field,” says one artistic director.Vermont larceny watch. Bear with me, I'm just catching up. But sheesh. You stop paying attention for a week and look what happens...
First, there's that mini-excavator exploit in Weathersfield. As John Lippman writes in the VN, early in the morning ten days ago someone at the controls of an orange Kubota broke through the wall of the Jiffy Mart at Downers Four Corners in Weathersfield, scooped up the ATM, and made off with it to a waiting vehicle. They left the Kubota behind. Head-scratching footnote: Those things can go for $10-$20K used, which is about as much cash as a convenience-store ATM generally holds.
And then there are the thefts from the Beetlejuice 2 set in E. Corinth. First, someone grabbed a lamppost adorned with "distinctive pumpkin decoration," tossed it in their pickup, and then sped away, reports Colin Flanders in Seven Days. Then came—or, actually, went—a 150-pound abstract statue "that looks a bit like a supersize back scratcher," Flanders writes. Adds the NYT's Derrick Bryson Taylor (gift link), "It was unclear if the thefts would affect filming or if movie officials would increase security measures on set."
Alley oop! Dogs, man.Oh, and yes: the Wednesday Vordle. Thanks for your patience this morning, Vordlers!
Heads Up
Today at noon, the artist-in-residence at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park, Heather Heckel, will give an online talk about her residencies throughout the lands managed by the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management, the artwork inspired by them, and her work while she was in Woodstock.
And the North Haverhill Fair gets underway this afternoon at 4, starting with youth oxen pulling and the Boston Bachert Variety Show. Pig races, classic cars, an antique farm museum, Vyntyge Skynyrd on Friday, the Mike Piazza Flying High Dog Show on Saturday, plus so much more.
Opera North has just offered up tickets to the final dress rehearsal of Carousel, which formally opens tomorrow and whose final performance on Sunday is already sold out. The rehearsal starts at 5 pm sharp at Blow-Me-Down Farm in Cornish. If you're interested in rehearsal tix, email [email protected].
At 7 pm, the Etna Library's own Sarah Molesworth will give a talk, sponsored by the Etna Library, about her 272-mile-long hike along Vermont's Long Trail, from the border with Massachusetts to the border with Canada. She'll be showing photos, too.
Also at 7, the Norwich Bookstore and WRJ's Main Street Museum present "An Evening of Pride and Poetry" at the museum with poets James Crews, Laura Foley, and Emma Wynn. Crews and Foley, both published extensively, live in VT; Wynn teaches at Hotchkiss, a boarding school in CT.
Finally, tonight at 10:15 eastern time, local-boy-turned-massively-successful-singer-songwriter Noah Kahan is performing at the fabled Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado—and he's going to livestream the concert (and sell t-shirts) to raise flood-relief bucks for the VT Flood Response & Recovery Fund via his own Busyhead Project and the Vermont Community Foundation.
And we can't let music start up again...
...without noting Tony Bennett's passing. There's nothing to add to the reams of pixels that have been shed, except that as remarkable as his life was, so was the fact that he recorded his final studio album (his 61st) at the age of 95, five years after he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. That album,
Love for Sale
, was a compilation of Cole Porter songs he did with Lady Gaga, a follow-on to their exquisite 2014 duo album,
Cheek to Cheek
.
"Each time," Bennett once wrote of singing Porter's songs, “it’s like opening some exquisitely made treasure.” Yep. And since we're on the subject of unexpected pairings involving Tony Bennett,
here's veteran journalist (and Dartmouth grad) Bob Sullivan in Time a couple of decades ago on interviewing Bennett and the Beat poet Allen Ginsburg back-to-back
—and discovering they knew one another.
"
Interesting cat, Allen," Bennett told him.
See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Jonea Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson
If you like Daybreak and would like to help it keep going and evolve, please hit the "Support" button below and I'll tell you more:
And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! Subscribe at no cost at:
Thank you!