GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Cooler, chance of showers. There's all sorts of changing pressure and frontal passages and moving air masses going on up there, but the long and short of it is that we've got colder air filtering in from the west and a slight chance of rain much of the day. Even so, we should see some sun, winds from the northwest, temps in the low 60s. High 40s tonight.Maybe if we're really quiet... On Sunday, Catherine Holland was in Monroe, NH, when she chanced on a family of sandhill cranes in a pasture. "They've got so much personality," she writes. "And it was incredibly funny watching them tiptoe around the cow—and the baby freak out and run away when the cow stood up!" Here's more on the sandhills of NH from "Something Wild" in 2014.That Exit 19 off-ramp? Work starts on it tonight. The closing of the I-89 Exit 19 northbound ramp in Lebanon has been postponed twice, so take it with a slight grain of salt, but yesterday's press release from NHDOT seems pretty confident. The shutdown is expected to last eight to ten weeks.Tuckerbox hoping to reopen for dinner Oct. 4. In a message on their GoFundMe page yesterday, owners Vural and Jackie Oktay write that the restaurant, closed since the Gates-Briggs flood, has replaced its floor and that staff this week is doing deep cleaning, "floor to ceiling." Work in the basement is ongoing, and until it's finished, the restaurant won't be open during the day. "We simply do not have enough kitchen prep space or enough storage space to be open during the day and for dinner without our basement," they write. They hope to open for dinner next Tuesday.Fairlee extends moratorium on building around Lake Morey. The ban, in place since last fall, was initially imposed to help the town and state zero in on causes of cyanobacteria blooms in the lake. The one-year extension, writes Frances Mize in the Valley News, is designed to give the town time to revise zoning bylaws and then assess septic systems around the lake. Some local contractors, whose businesses have been hit by the building ban, resisted the extension; the town hopes to "have the contracting community back up and working" by next summer, zoning administrator Chris Brimmer says.SPONSORED: Artistree's Music Theatre Festival presents Nunsense at the Grange Theater, Oct. 13-30. "The non-stop nonsense in Nunsense is what makes it such a fun musical. Chock full of diverse and witty song and dance numbers, satire and physical comedy, it prepares a course which satiates nearly every comedic taste." RESERVE EARLY! Sponsored by Artistree.West Central Behavioral Health lands $4 million federal grant. The HHS money will boost the agency's ability to provide a range of mental health services, reports NHPR's Paul Cuno-Booth. The Lebanon-based organization offers most of them, spokesman David Celone explains, but the grant will require it to bolster those targeted at veterans and armed forces members. The funding, Celone writes in an email, "will allow us to expand our total number of client-facing clinical staff positions to be able to treat an ever-growing number of people in need of mental health and substance use disorder treatments."And if you're in crisis... One key piece of the work NH has done recently as it tries to dig out from years of under-funding mental health services is to create 24-hour crisis teams and emergency intervention services. Locally, those services are provided by West Central. The NH crisis number is 833-710-6477 or online at NH988.com—the new national 988 number "does not engage local mobile crisis response clinicians as does the NH number," Celone explains. In VT, which does not have a similar statewide crisis response program, the number to call or text is 988.A great poem "takes us by hand and lets us face the truths and not just perform them." In this media-dominated age, Courtney Cook writes in this week's Enthusiasms, good poetry reflects the many realities of our lives—and, when it's extra sharp, a poem "is here to make a clean cut that heals." And so she guides us through Megan Fernandes's poem "Amsterdam" and how reminiscent it is of memes and Instagram and comment threads—until suddenly it's not. "It helps us remember," she writes, "that we are not merely tourists in our lives."SPONSORED: Want to work for the community with a team that cares as much as you do? Working Fields is seeking a full-time Account Manager who shares our belief in second chances to drive our growth and impact in the Upper Valley. We're an award-winning staffing agency with a unique, peer-led model and a mission to improve lives through employment opportunities. Bonus: competitive salary with commissions, comprehensive benefits, flexible work model. Apply to join us today. Sponsored by Working Fields.VT announces tax breaks for revitalization projects. In all, the state's handing out $4 million in tax credits statewide, and the list of Upper Valley recipients (you'll need to scroll down) offers a glimpse of commercial and residential rehab efforts around the region: There's the upgrade of Bethel's old train depot, for instance; facade improvements at the long-vacant gas station at 512 Main in Fairlee; rehabbing a couple of Simon Pearce-owned buildings in Quechee into apartments; structural repairs to an apartment building in Springfield, improving the Tunbridge General Store, and more.Controlled burns manage NH's landscape now—and in the distant past. In a two-part series, NH Bulletin's Amanda Gokee looks at the evidence that Indigenous people stewarded the state's forests through select burning—creating trails and meadows and keeping the understory clear; and then shifts to today, and work by NH Fish & Game biologists to use burns to safeguard various butterfly species that depend on plants like lupine, which get crowded out by growing forests, and to feed nutrients back into ecosystems that once depended on natural fires.Mail-in ballots go out to VT voters this week. About 440,000 of them, in fact, according to Secretary of State Jim Condos. All active registered voters will automatically receive a general-election ballot, writes VTDigger's Juliet Schulman-Hall, making the pandemic-era voting procedure a permanent election option in the state. Voters who don't receive their ballot by Oct. 10, Condos said, should get in touch with their town or city clerk. And in case you're wondering what to do with those ballots... Seven Days has just put out its 2022 guide for voters who are starting to focus on the Nov. 8 election. It includes a rundown on the state's Republican, Progressive, and Democratic parties; a writeup on the two proposed constitutional amendments (including extending constitutional protection to abortion); and Q&As for candidates on the general-election ballot, independents included, for US Senate, US House, and statewide office.Before the Roman Empire, there was... this canoe. And the society that created it in what is now Wisconsin. A year ago, maritime archaeologist Tamara Thomsen discovered a 1,200-year-old canoe at Lake Mendota, in Madison. Then, this summer, she saw wood poking out of the sand there. It turned out to belong to a 3,000-year-old canoe. "Archaeologists believe it’s the oldest canoe ever found in the Great Lakes region by 1,000 years; it’s also the earliest direct evidence of water transportation used by Indigenous peoples in the region," writes Smithsonian mag's Sarah Kuta. FL has one that's 7,000 years old.“Bicycle Blamed for Appendicitis.” That may sound totally ridiculous, but many years ago it was actually a newspaper headine. And sure, bicycles (and their operators) are still blamed for lots of things—mowing down pedestrians, flouting traffic laws—but you wouldn’t believe the inane conspiracies that have been attached to the trendy, modern conveyance. Twitter user Paul Fairie, a researcher, dug up several archaic clippings about the scourge of the bicycle, also blamed for “the falling off in marriages,” “the cheap price of cattle and hogs,” and a most perplexing condition known as “bicycle face.”A puff of dust in space. You may have seen Monday evening's dramatic NASA footage from its 1,340-pound DART spacecraft as it approached (and ultimately hit) the asteroid Dimorphos in a test of whether we earthlings can knock an asteroid off course. Turns out plenty of Earth-based telescopes were watching, too, and SpaceWeather.com has footage from Hawaii's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System of the moment of impact. (Thanks, JF!)The Wednesday Vordle. With a word straight outta yesterday's Daybreak.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
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This evening at 6, pay a visit to Arrakis and the swirl of conspiracy around House Atreides as the Mascoma Film Society continues its fall season with Dune—the2021 Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac et al version. In the Mascoma Regional High School auditorium.
At 7 pm, Susan Mills visits the Norwich Bookstore to read from and talk about her new book, On the Wings of a Hummingbird. Mills spent two decades as an immigration lawyer in Providence, and her career and the experiences of her clients undergird this novel about a 15-year old Guatemalan girl struggling with the violence and poverty that surround her at home who, finally, flees to the US—where her past follows her.
Also at 7, the Eastman Center and the Grantham Historical Society host Mary Kronenwetter, reading from and talking about her new historical novel, Pauper Auction. The book takes its title from the early practice in New Hampshire towns of auctioning off indigent residents to work for bidders who would take them into their homes in exchange for town funds. It centers on a young widow and an abandoned child taken in by a farmer in 1805. Plenty of period detail on food, blacksmithing, stone walls, needlework, and cider-making.
And some music for the day...
Pretty much every time she releases an album, Toronto-based singer-songwriter Abigail Lapell garners more attention both in her home country and elsewhere. "Songwriting," she said recently, "has always felt more like a force of nature to me, something I can, at best, try to harness." Her sound is clearly Appalachaian-adjacent, though as the indie-artist showcase Chillfiltr once wrote, "You can call it prairie noir, or Canadiana desert rock: this is the evocative poetry of a traveling soul with countless stories to tell about the complexities of the human heart." She often collaborates with fellow singer-songwriter Dana Sipos—for reasons that,
will be obvious.
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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