GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Enjoy today. There's a high pressure stopping by for a quick visit today before the next system approaches, so though we start with fog in spots, eventually we'll see sunny skies (especially in the afternoon), temps around 70, gentle winds from the northwest. Clouds roll back in tonight, and there's a chance of rain before daybreak. Lows tonight around 60."The fog was whisking off the water." And the scene on Mascoma Lake early Sunday morning was enough to make Matt Giffin pull his car over on the bridge and take this photo.Got a moment? It's been a while since I did this, so I'd like to point out the maroon "Yes, I count on Daybreak" button down below. It's simple: You and your fellow readers are what keep Daybreak going. If you find your day or week doesn't feel right without it and you'd like to see it continue and grow, hit the link at the start of this item or the button below and check out the options. Go ahead! The rest of Daybreak will wait patiently. Oh, and if you can't afford to contribute, please don't fret: It's a pleasure to have you as a reader.Dartmouth to begin drilling geothermal test wells next week. In a rejoinder to last week's VN story questioning the pace of its transition away from fossil fuels, the college yesterday announced the test wells are "part of Dartmouth’s transition toward a noncombustion energy future." They'll go in on four sites, starting next Tuesday by the Maynard parking lot. Geoexchange systems, the communications office writes, are typically paired with heat pumps in buildings; actual fields of geothermal wells—"which could each have hundreds of wells, about 6 inches in diameter, and from 200 to 800 feet deep"—will come later.New 196-unit apartment complex proposed for Mechanic Street in Lebanon. The project would renovate the old Woolen Mill building that once housed Kleen laundry, reports Patrick Adrian in the Valley News, and add three new apartment buildings on the five-acre site, as well as a parking garage. “We want to create a walkable and enjoyable living experience for residents, where people can park their cars and enjoy the Mascoma River or a five-minute walk to Lucky’s Coffee Garage,” a Delaware-based developer tells Adrian. The Planning Board will hold a public hearing Oct. 10.SPONSORED: Spring Awakening, winner of 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical, ignites Northern Stage’s 25th Anniversary season. With music by Grammy Award winner Duncan Sheik, Spring Awakening achieved cult status by giving powerful voice and glorious dance to teenagers rebelling against a cruel and repressive society. History and today’s headlines intersect in this powerful folk-rock musical that's not to be missed at Northern Stage in WRJ, 9/27 through 10/23. $10 TICKETS FOR AGES 25 AND UNDER: Valid for preview performances Sept. 27-29 at 7:30 p.m. Sponsored by Northern Stage.Attack on Dartmouth grad student investigated as hate crime. The incident Saturday night involved an older white man who accosted Pakistani biochem Ph.D. candidate Abubakar Khan and three Indian friends with racial epithets. After Khan and his friends responded and began filming him, reports The Dartmouth's Taylor Haber, the man rushed Khan and placed him in a chokehold; pushed away, he then threw a beer can, and passing undergrads came to the group's aid. “[The suspect] is well known to us in the area,” Hanover Police Lt. Schibuola tells Haber. “He’s got mental health issues."VT Law & Grad School announces new School for the Environment. The school will house two existing master's programs, reports Emma Cotton in VTDigger: in energy regulation and law, and food and agriculture law, and then add a master’s of climate and environmental policy and a master’s in animal protection policy. “There was a period of time in which the law school, I thought, was disinvesting in environmental programs in ways that were troubling to me,” Audubon VT's David Mears tells Cotton. “I think that they've realized the error of that approach and are shifting back in the direction they should be going.”Little Free Libraries: Waaaay more than just a cheap read. Of course, you can always take or bestow a book. But what if you just... read the titles? That's what Bill Craig does. "If you savor the incongruities of excessively randomized playlists, if you skip a step to avoid sidewalk cracks, you might start paying attention to Little Free Library titles," he writes in this week's Enthusiasms. But he's got rules: left-to-right, top-to-bottom, no touching. And maybe above all: Don't think the titles say anything about the place you find them.Among the Clouds. That was the name of a newspaper printed atop Mt. Washington between 1889 and 1917. It's one of the first NH newspapers to be digitized as part of an effort led by the Dartmouth library to digitize historically important newspapers in the state for the Library of Congress's Chroncling America effort. (You may remember Dartmouth's announcement of an NEH grant back in August.) The other papers the NEH just highlighted: The Dartmouth, the nation's oldest school newspaper, and the NH Gazette, the first newspaper known to be printed by an enslaved personSPONSORED: Whaleback Mountain Early Bird Season Pass sale is going on now. The best deal in the industry! Buy before 9/30 to get a FREE season-long tune at Golf & Ski Warehouse and amazing in-store discounts. Other pass benefits include 3 free lift tickets to each of the 20 Freedom Pass resorts, access to the Indy Pass Add On pass, and deep discounts at many local resorts: Dartmouth Skiway, Ragged Mountain, Magic Mountain, Bretton Woods, Killington and Pico. Don’t delay, prices rise 9/30! Sponsored by Whaleback.Can paying forest owners for natural carbon storage actually work? That’s what Granite Geek’s David Brooks—and the New England Forestry Foundation—are trying to figure out. As Brooks writes, NEFF just received a $30M grant to encourage landowners to make good on “climate-smart forest practices.” But how to balance that with the intertwined demands of wildlife preservation, wildfire remediation, and logging operations? The other challenge: measuring carbon storage and its impact against “what happens on lands where you didn’t pay for [these practices],” says a NEFF spokesperson.What to bear in mind as teachers, ACLU challenge "divisive concepts" law. Lawyers for teachers unions and the ACLU faced the NH AG's office last week in federal court in their bid to dump last year's controversial law. In NH Bulletin, Ethan DeWitt offers a useful explainer to the oral arguments and, in particular, what federal District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro said in response. The "crux" of the case, DeWitt writes, is whether the law is overly vague, and on that front Barbadoro warned that the plaintiffs won't win by "positing bizarre hypotheticals"—but noted the statute is confusing. There's lots more.Fall festivals are back. Here are three in VT to check out. Even better: two are nearby. Seven Days' Emily Hamilton takes a quick look at the 19th Century Apple & Cheese Harvest Festival at the Morrill Homestead in Strafford this coming Sunday, with fiddle and accordion tunes, vintage apples, cider pressing, artisan cheeses, and more; the Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival Oct. 1-2 at the Tunbridge Fairgrounds with spinners, weavers, dyers, knitters, sheepherders (both human and canine), alpaca farmers, cashmere goats, and more; and the Indigenous Peoples' Day Rocks! concert in Stowe on October 8.“He’s given this gift to the world, this stone that floats along the lake.” Author Tom Whipple said this of Kurt “Mountain Man” Steiner, who skipped a rock a world-record 88 times on a lake in 2013. In Sean Williams’ engrossing profile of Steiner for Outside, we meet a man who has devoted his existence to mastery of the sport. For Steiner, who lives alone in a cabin in PA, stone-skipping is no casual pastime; its blend of physics, finesse, and ephemerality weds it to nature. “To skip a superior rock is Promethean,” writes Williams, “like unleashing some wild energy that has lain dormant for millions of years.”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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This evening at 6, the Mascoma Film Society continues its fall season with the Bill Murray/Richard Dreyfuss comedy What About Bob, in which a deeply phobic Murray follows his therapist (and family) on vacation. In the Mascoma Regional High School auditorium.
At 6:30 this evening (preceded by a potluck at 5), Caldecott medal winner Jason Chin, who grew up in Lyme and went to Hanover High, will be giving a talk at Tracy Hall in Norwich about his work and his award-winning book, Watercress. Sponsored by a host of Norwich organizations, including the Women's Club and the library. Potluck is in the Marion Cross multipurpose room.
This evening at 8, the Dartmouth English Department opens a three-day symposium devoted to the legacy of pioneering Black poet Robert Hayden—who among other things served in the 1970s as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (the "Poet Laureate" part of the title didn't get added until a decade later). Organized by poet and Dartmouth prof Vievee Francis, events kick off this evening with a reception and reading by poets Tommye Blount, Airea D. Matthews, and Matthew Olzmann and continue tomorrow with a keynote by Charles Henry Rowell, founding editor of the journal Callaloo, plus poetry readings and discussions exploring Hayden, his critics within the Black Arts Movement, and Detroit as an incubator of poets and artists. For more background, here's Aimee Minbiole's article for Dartmouth News.
Finally, if you're in the mood to invest some sweat equity, starting at 4:30 this afternoon Bradford's Parks & Rec Commission needs volunteers to help finish the new Bradford Dog Park. It's at Elizabeth Park, the old-school wooden castle playground that gets a lot of use not just by Bradford residents, but people from Norwich, Thetford, and Fairlee as well. Duties will include helping to install remaining posts, top rails and fencing, and there's motivation to finish by nightfall, since the grand opening is Saturday. (No link, but email [email protected] for info.)
And some music for the day...
It's a little hard... No, scratch that. It's downright impossible to describe L'Attirail's music. Maybe like one of those dreams where you're just a half-step off-kilter from the familiar world. The band began as a Balkan-Parisian trio in the '90s, but then started reaching back, to Roma music, to the Middle East, to the old Soviet Bloc, to brass bands in turn-of-the-century parks. Its moving force, Xavier Demerliac, could be a band on his own: He plays bouzouki, trombone, tuba, guitar, and piano. "Every album is conceived as a musical road-movie between Paris, Moscow and Istanbul," their bio says.
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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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