GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Fog to start, then sunny and definitely warmer. High pressure's still in control and we get another fine September day today, with warmer air above bringing us, well, warmer air. Highs today reaching toward 80, mostly clear skies tonight with lows around 50 and maybe fog in some spots."Freshmen arriving at Dartmouth." From Hanover, Jane Masters sends along this photo with that subject line.But seriously, today is drop-off day at Dartmouth, and you might want to avoid downtown Hanover. If you've been through town during the morning rush recently, you know College St. along the east side of the Green is under construction and closed to traffic, so E. Wheelock and N. Park in particular have been backing up. Imagine what it was like yesterday, with everything starting back up again. Actually, you don't have to imagine: Traffic was at a standstill in three directions, reports John Replogle, who sends in the photo at the link. Add in hordes of parents today trying to help students move in, and....Demolition begins on Lebanon fire house. The city's got a new station in the works for S. Park Street, but first the old one—which has been around for about 70 years—has to make way. That began yesterday, and WPTZ was there to film demolition crews at work, talk to Chief Jim Wheatley about whats ahead, and to Lt. Jim Coelho about the old station and what he'll miss.Over 300 Dartmouth community members petition college to keep child care center out of for-profit hands. A college committee has been looking into options for expanding child care access for faculty, staff, and grad students, reports Christina Dolan in the Valley News—but "as word spread that proposals from for-profit providers were on the table" for taking over the Dartmouth College Child Care Center, members of all three groups grew alarmed. For-profit chains, they write in their petition, are known for "high ratios of children to adults, increasing tuition, low quality of care, [and] paying staff poorly." College officials say they're still weighing options. You'll find the full petition here.Riding south along the Connecticut with a hammock, a camera, and a microphone taped to the handlebars, talking with people along the way. Ben James, based in western Mass., began his trek just before Memorial Day at the northern border, following whichever roads ran closest to the river. "I wanted to look closely at people’s faces, to give them my full attention at a moment when so much in our society seems to be coming unraveled," he says at the start of his report for New England Public Media. And he did. At the link: the people and stories he found along the way, in photos, text, and audio.SPONSORED: Help someone today! At Hearts You Hold, the Upper Valley-based nonprofit that supports immigrants, migrants, and refugees by taking the time to ask them what they need, we're flooded with requests as summer turns to fall. At the burgundy link or here, you'll find requests from people from all over the world who need clothing, shoes, and basics like diapers for their kids while they try to make a life here. Including a farmworker in Grafton County who preps food for others, and a former farmworker who now sells homemade food to farmworkers in the county. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.In Grafton County, three Democrats vie for sheriff nomination. Current Sheriff Jeff Stiegler is stepping down after six years, and as John Lippman writes in the VN, given the county's "traditional blue leanings," the Democratic nominee "has a good shot at becoming the county’s next sheriff." Lippman profiles the three people running next Tuesday for the nomination: Deputy Eric James, of Thornton, who is Stiegler's favored candidate; Littleton Police special investigator (and former sheriff's sergeant) Jill Myers; and part-time Deputy Sheriff Michael Tamulonis, who retired from full-time duty in 2021.For NH governor and Congress, more debates than you can shake a stick at. Including last night's GOP gubernatorial debate on WMUR, there are ten over four days, including four today: a GOP gubernatorial debate at 5 pm at New England College in Henniker (livestream channel here), followed immediately by GOP and Democratic debates for Congressional District 2, and then a Democratic gubernatorial debate on WMUR this evening at 8. There's more on both WMUR and at NEC tomorrow and Friday. The Globe's Steven Porter runs it all down in the Morning Report newsletter (no paywall).SPONSORED: This Friday at Thetford Academy: Circus and brass! On September 6th at 6 pm, the Flynn Theater's Playing Fields Project rolls (literally) into Thetford Academy, as the free back-to-school celebration brings the Québec-based Cirque Kikasse and its spectacular food-truck-based circus performance to school grounds. They'll be joined by the vibrant sounds of the West Philadelphia Orchestra, blending Balkan and New Orleans brass. Don’t miss out—everyone is invited! Sponsored by Thetford Academy.Springfield VT murder investigation finds a web of guns, drugs, and mayhem. The murder, of Justin Gilliam, was in 2022. The arrest came last week, when VT State Police announced they were charging Paul Lachapelle Jr. of Littleton, NH with the crime. In the intervening two years, reports Ethan Weinstein in VTDigger, police pieced together a string of events involving the same small group of drug dealers—different shootings, the torching of an Oldsmobile Intrigue in a Springfield cemetery, a pipe bomb discovered during a police search. Weinstein recounts a troubled period in the town's recent history.NH officials find "unwelcome surprises" in software underlying new voter registration software. In 2022, reports Politico's John Sakellariadis, the state contracted with a small CT-based company, WSD Digital, to develop a new voter registration database. Then, last fall, the secy of state's office learned the firm had turned some coding over to overseas developers. So they hired another firm to look under the hood; researchers found the database could have been left vulnerable to foreign hackers—and the Ukrainian national anthem was coded into the database. WSD's national reach is limited, though: The only other state using them for voter registration is Vermont.Review of first two years of NH's Education Freedom Accounts finds some families were approved without sufficient documentation. The 2023 review by state education department staff of the application process overseen by the nonprofit Children’s Scholarship Fund found that in 50 randomly chosen cases, 12 families approved by CSF hadn't actually provided the evidence needed, reports NH Bulletin's Ethan DeWitt. Democrats in the legislature are arguing that the findings justify a deeper audit of the program; CSF says it's changed its policies to fix the problem. DeWitt digs into the details.At the northern border, "a number of apprehensions that we’ve never seen in our recorded history in this area.” That's the special operations supervisor for the border patrol's Swanton Sector, talking to VTDigger's Shaun Robinson about the number of migrants apprehended so far this year in the sector that covers parts of northern NY as well as VT and NH: 15,600 people so far from Oct. 2023 to Sept. 2024 compared to 5,300 a year ago. That's led to a boost in the number of border patrol agents, Robinson reports—and to overwhelmed nonprofits in VT trying to help migrants and asylum seekers.iSun and SunCommon will continue operations under former Strafford solar pioneer. This is news because, as you may remember, the Williston-based solar installers filed for bankruptcy in June; on Aug. 23, a Delaware bankruptcy judge authorized their sale to Houston-based Siltstone Capital. And Siltstone, reports Derek Brouwer in Seven Days, has brought in as CEO groSolar founder Jeff Wolfe, who lived in Strafford in the early days of VT's solar boom and now lives in NJ. He tells Brouwer he'll focus on profitability and “organic growth” within northern New England and NY State.If you go, order all the pastas. Maybe it's because I read Melissa Pasanen's behind-the-scenes look at the new Gallus Handcrafted Pasta in Waterbury around dinner-time last night. So when she offered that advice near the top of her restaurant review in Seven Days, I nodded in sympathy. But Pasanen didn't just get to eat there. She also got to tour the kitchen and watch the restaurant's trio of pasta makers crafting a bewildering array of shapes. "I love the way the dough feels," executive chef Antonio Rentas tells her. "I like that you can Zen out. It slows down a world that is so busy."So let's say you're an ace base jumper. Could you fly on a rug? Yep, you could. At least, if you're Fred Fugen, a French base jumper who created a rig out of a carpet that relies on his body to keep it taut. Then he made 40 training jumps. Then, in the Dolomites, he made this filmed jump, which he calls his "masterpiece with this rug.” As if the drone's-eye view at the burgundy link isn't hair-raising enough, here's a more you-are-Fred version.
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We may be the middle of nowhere to everyone else in VT and NH, but
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know what's good! Strong Rabbit's Morgan Brophy has come up with the perfect design for "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Plus you'll find the Daybreak jigsaw puzzle, as well as sweatshirts, tees, a fleece hoodie, and, as always, the fits-every-hand-perfectly Daybreak mug. Check it all out at the link!
At Artistree, singer-songwriter Scott Forrest. The Rochester, VT-based guitarist plays originals and covers, sings in Portuguese (he lived in Brazil for a while) as well as Spanish, French, and German (and English), likes to get his audience laughing, studied opera for years at Weston Opera Theater—and has performed opera in NYC a few times. He's the next-to-last of Artistree's Music on the Hill performers for the year, starting up at 6:30 pm.
At the Norwich Bookstore, restoring a 1702 house—using 300-year-old skills. “I had no idea that I’d just made a deal with the devil,” Lee McColgan writes in A House Restored: The Tragedies and Triumphs of Saving a New England Colonial, his memoir of what it took to save the old house he and his wife bought in the South Shore town of Pembroke, MA. He hand-hewed timber, learned windows from a Nantucket glazier, forged his own cabinet hinges, plastered with horsehair and lime... And will talk about it all at the bookstore at 7 pm.
And to take us into the day:
Cerys Hafana, a master of the intimidating Welsh triple harp, with fiddler Patrick Rimes and the members of Sinfonia Cymru
. Hafana says that she "mangles" traditional Welsh music. But as a music critic once wrote, "that’s just modesty. This is how you keep a cultural tradition alive—you make it so immediate that it feels like it’s starting life all over again."
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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