GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sun. High pressure's building in, the clouds have been scoured out, and here we are: a clear, seasonably cool day with a high around 70 late in the afternoon and the light with that early-fall slant to it. Winds calm, eventually from the northwest, lows tonight in the mid 40s.Sometimes, you just need a view. With striking clouds and the hills rolling off into still-green mountains in the distance. So here's one from Robert Frost Lane in Etna, from Janice Fischel.Buddy Teevens dies at 66. Dartmouth announced the death of its celebrated football coach last night—about 90 minutes after the team was told, reports Tris Wykes in the Valley News. Teevens was struck by a pickup truck in March, and had been hospitalized or in rehab since. "Unfortunately, the injuries he sustained proved too challenging for even him to overcome," his family said in a statement. "We are confident and take comfort in the fact that he passed away knowing how much he was loved and admired.” Burgundy link goes to the college's announcement and career retrospective; here's Wykes' story.In West Leb, a green space closes. In a note on Monday to people who've been following Lyme Properties' effort to build a mixed-use development in West Leb, company president Chet Clem announced that it closed River Park to the public last week—including the trails that lead down to and along the CT River. The move capped a summer of disputes between Clem and city staff over planners' insistence on review of a proposal to use a 1920s dining car on the property as a restaurant. In the VN, Patrick Adrian details conflicting perspectives from Clem and city staff on what the disputes entail.La Salette Shrine celebrates final mass. As you'll remember, the Catholic order that runs it announced in May that it would close the Enfield shrine at the end of this month. Yesterday, reports WCAX's Adam Sullivan, "the faithful packed the final mass, praying one last time in a church pilgrims have been coming to since 1927." “We are all connected, nobody is separated," the Rev. John Sullivan, the shrine's director, told him. "We are all part of a big family, the family of God." The Enfield Shaker Museum is mounting a $3 million capital campaign to buy the property.SPONSORED: Office space available now in downtown White River Junction. Office sizes range from a one-person to a six-person work space. Upper floors served by elevator. Central AC, all utilities paid, use of conference room. Moderately priced, includes weekly custodial service. Visit your possible new office at the Gates-Briggs Building. For more information, email Dave Briggs at [email protected]. Sponsored by David Briggs.Pushing and pulling at our understanding of intelligence. That, writes the Howe Library's Jared Jenisch in this week's Enthusiasm, is what artist and writer James Bridle manages to pull off in Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence. Bridle has made a name for taking a dim view of technology, but this is not a screed, Jarisch writes. Rather, Bridle embarks on a wide-ranging tour of human endeavor, from Neanderthal bone flutes to AI, suggesting that intelligence might be "something doable in all kinds of fantastic ways, many of them beyond our own rational understanding."The hordes are back in Pomfret—only now it's TV crews. Okay, maybe not hordes hordes. Still, it was hard not to notice yesterday that both NBC's Today and ABC's Good Morning America ran stories on the town's bid to keep tourists from overrunning roads around Sleepy Hollow Farm by closing off a couple of roads—following up on Kevin Cullen's coverage in the Globe earlier this week (here via MSN). Front and center in all three: Sleepy Hollow neighbors Mike Doten and Amy Robb—and the selfie-grabbing tourist behavior they've seen. You've gotta figure it's just nanoseconds 'til the international crews show up.24 hours. That's all the writers, actors, directors, and crew of Parish Players' 24-hour play festival get, starting at 7 on Friday night, to come up with a show that'll open to a live audience Saturday night at 7. In Artful, Susan Apel talks to organizer Rachael Thomeer, who likes the pressure—"This creative team project under a deadline yields some new and out-of-the box ideas that you don't always see in traditional theater settings"—and notes that it's taken a small team behind it to pull things together. One note: If you want to go, you need to reserve, since there'll be no ticket sales at the door.Newbury, NH gets a new town administrator. Monday evening, the selectboard announced that it's hired Diane Ricciardelli, the town administrator in Warner, to replace Dennis Pavlicek, who's retiring after nearly three decades with the town. Ricciardelli, who lives in Warner, probably won't be sorry about making the commute: In July, writes Michaela Towfighi in the Monitor, two selectboard members first resigned, citing "systemic dysfunction" in town government, then tried to rejoin the board so they could fire Ricciardelli. A court later ruled that their resignations were final and the vote was improper.It's not just farmers: Loggers are grumbling about the wet weather, too. “I think this is the worst I’ve ever seen it. 2021 was pretty bad but this is worse for sure, economically it’s far worse,” Randolph logger Sam Lincoln tells WCAX's Sophia Thomas. July's rains, she reports, washed out logging roads, and the drumbeat of downpours since has turned work zones into bogs—cutting not just the timber harvest, but affecting sawmills and other businesses that rely on wood that comes out of the forests. One forester says he expects it will take two years to rebuild roads, culverts, and other washed-out infrastructure.Remember that $4 painting bought at a thrift store in Manchester? It just sold at auction for $150K. That's because it turned out to be an original N.C. Wyeth from the 1930s, titled “Ramona.” Neither the woman who originally bought it at a Savers in the city nor the single bidder who landed it at auction yesterday has been named. Nor, notes NHPR's Todd Bookman, does anyone know where it was for decades or how it wound up at a discount store in Manchester, NH.Listening for the eclipse. Okay, this is cool. When she first heard about "sonificaction," or using sound to convey data, Harvard astronomer Allyson Bieryla wondered, "What do you mean, astronomy for the blind? It’s a visual science!” Now, she's leading an effort to build and distribute hundreds of little hand-held units so that people who can't see the full solar eclipse on April 8 can still experience it, as the devices transform changing light levels into changing sounds. On his Granite Geek blog, David Brooks describes the project—and notes it takes only about 15 minutes for a volunteer to solder a device.At the bottom of Lake Champlain, a 250-year-old wooden gunboat faces an uncertain future, thanks to a tiny invasive mussel. The ship is the Spitfire, commanded by the pre-treasonous Benedict Arnold and sunk in the Revolutionary War Battle of Valcour Island. It's remained deep in the lake's frigid waters, protected from light and decay. The mussel, writes Hope Hodge Seck in Atlas Obscura, is the Quogga, which "loves to infest ship hulls" and has already populated the Great Lakes; its arrival in Champlain "is almost certain," Seck writes. The wreck remains intact, with a trove of artifacts; the question is whether it can be raised without destroying it.Balance and harmony. For a calming contrast to the action-packed photos that so often grab our attention, spend some time with the 2023 Minimalist Photography Awards from B&W Minimalist Magazine. On My Modern Met, Jessica Stewart highlights the winners chosen from the more than 3,100 entries from around the world. Many—not surprisingly—are in black and white, though don’t miss Michael Jurek’s “Blue Window”in the architecture category. You can see all the winners and honorable mentions on the awards website.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.
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Today at 3:30, Princeton sociologist Ruha Benjamin gives the inaugural Susan and James Wright Center Lecture on Computation and Just Communities, "Utopia, Dystopia, or… Ustopia?..." Sponsored by a collection of institutes and departments, Benjamin, who teaches in Princeton African American Studies Department, will delve into how bots, automated decision systems, and AI have the potential both to deepen discrimination and to improve society, and will talk through how to look soberly at how the tools are used and can be shaped "when we are wide awake." In-person in Oopik Auditorium and online via Dartmouth's YouTube channel.
And since it's been a while, just a reminder that from 6-8 pm on Wednesdays, some of the more playful and intriguing live music in the Upper Valley can be found at the Filling Station in WRJ, when the regular Wednesday Acoustic Jam Session led by Jakob Breitbach takes over the space. You can show up to play, or just to listen; either way, it'll be memorable.
At 7 pm, the Norwich Bookstore hosts journalist, author, and podcaster Shannon Mullen, talking about her new book, In Other Words, Leadership. It's about the unlikely correspondence between Ashirah Knapp, an off-the-grid homesteader in a tiny Maine town, and Janet Mills, the state's governor, as both grappled with the first year of the pandemic. The book traces Knapp's encouragement of Mills and her emergency orders—even while they hurt her family's business—and Mills' own journal entries tracing her personal response to both the political and the emotional weight of that time.
And across the river at 7 pm, Still North Books & Bar hosts Hanover native Shawn Samuelson Henry, reading from and talking about her debut young adult novel, Made in Maine. It's a coming-of-age story about two teens in a working-class town whose mill has closed—and the town's response as they try to help it come to grips with a tragic accident.
And today...
It has been 50 years to the day since a small plane carrying singer Jim Croce clipped a tree on takeoff from the airport in Natchitoches, Louisiana, where he'd just given a concert at Northwestern State University, and crashed. Croce, his agent, his road manger, guitarist Maury Muehleisen, comedian George Stevens, and the pilot were all killed. After "Time in a Bottle" and "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," Croce was on the edge of major stardom, though he was also still touring the college circuit. The following day, his label released a new single, "I Got a Name," which quickly hit the top ten.
.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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