GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Back to sunshine. Depending on where you are. High pressure is moving our way, but there's still some "troughiness" and moisture overhead, so clouds and maybe some drizzle could stick around through the morning. It'll be cloudier to the south, sunnier to the north as the afternoon goes on. Temps in the low 70s, winds shifting to come from the east, low or mid 50s overnight.Speaking of sunshine... A monarch at a vibrant goldenrod plant on a sunny day in Lyme. Now that's some serious brightness, from Robin Weisburger."I wonder if this is too little, too late.” That observation about Vermont Law and Graduate School's bid to expand its student base by shifting into policy graduate programs comes from Karen Gross, who was once president of the now-defunct Southern Vermont College and knows something about small, struggling colleges in VT. In Inside Higher Ed, Liam Knox outlines both the specific and generic law-school struggles that VLGS is trying to surmount. President Rodney Smolla is optimistic. "I think we've turned the corner," he tells Knox. (Thanks, MS!)In case you notice a bunch of police swarming Leb Airport this morning... It's the city's police department and the Department of Homeland Security conducting a training exercise between 8 and 10 am. "An increased amount of Police presence will be in the area during that time," the LPD writes.::Palm-to-forehead:: In yesterday's item about the NH attorney general's investigation into anonymous mailers in the 2nd Congressional District, GOP candidate George Hansel somehow became "Geoff." Sheesh, and apologies.SPONSORED: SKI FOR LESS! The Dartmouth Skiway Early Bird Sale is on now! Grab the best deals of the season with the Early Bird Sale. Save up to 35 percent off window rates on season passes across all categories. Check out our new weekly programs for kids and adults in our Snowsports School. Snag the best deal on boards or skis with our season leases—these will sell out. Sale ends 10/31. Sponsored by Dartmouth Skiway. A "nuanced portrait of how our society makes sense of mental illness." Still North Books & Bar's Allie Levy pays close attention to books about mental health and illness, but it's taken until now for her to find one she can praise wholeheartedly in Enthusiasms. That book comes out next week: Rachel Aviv's Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us. It's a blend of memoir, reporting, and cultural commentary, Allie writes, that through its portraits suggests an approach to mental health care "that is compassionate, calm, curious and without judgment."NH fines two hikers $248 for seriously tough rescue in the Whites. The rescue actually happened in June and the two pled guilty last month, but NH Fish & Game just put out a release yesterday. The two had headed into Franconia Notch with no plans, no equipment, and no decent footwear, and decided to climb off-trail on a feature known as Hounds Hump. One got stuck on the cliffs, trying to keep from falling off when he called 911. It took a team of rescuers hours to find him; finally, professional climbing guides were able to rappel down, then climb back with him to a trail.Most NH voters confident that state's elections are free of fraud. But there's a big partisan gap, writes Kevin Landrigan in the Union Leader (here via Yahoo) about a new poll by the left-leaning New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights. In all, 80 percent of Democrats among the 931 likely voters polled said they were "very confident" about state election integrity, versus 18 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of independents. The poll's results came just before the state's Special Committee on Voter Confidence held its final scheduled public listening session yesterday in Keene.Has highway traffic gotten worse around here? That's the question David Brooks asks on his Granite Geek blog about I-93 through Concord after complaints that the perennial bottleneck is worse than ever. Fortunately, there's a way of checking: NHDOT maintains a very robust set of traffic monitors on highways and secondary roads through the state. And what Brooks found is that yes, it's climbed since the free-wheeling days of 2020, but it's not worse than it was pre-pandemic. Or as he puts it, "It’s slightly less bad."So, has highway traffic gotten worse around here? Because it turns out you can drill into those NHDOT monitor records anytime you want! You can get to them several ways, but the easiest might be through the "Map Search" tab at the link. Choose that, then zoom in until you've drilled down enough to see the individual monitor icons. Choose, say, friendly little monitors 62253061 and -2, on I-89 between exits 17 and 18, and you'll see that the average annual daily count of 31,941 both directions in 2021 was about 300 less than 2019. You can check out various points along Route 4, in Leb itself, and, really, all over.SPONSORED: Seeking infants and toddlers to help with a Dartmouth College research study about physical activity. We are currently asking parents and their infants or toddlers (ages 6 to 24 months old) to help us with a research study to measure child movement. Participation requires visiting our office at Dartmouth College only once for a 1-hour visit. You will be provided with an e-gift card and a small toy for your time. To learn more hit the link above, email [email protected] or call 603.646.5432. Sponsored by the Media and Health Behaviors Lab at Dartmouth College.VT, NH share in $438.5 million, multi-state agreement with Juul Labs. The settlement is the result of a two-year investigation into the e-cigarette manufacturer’s marketing and sales practices. VT and NH will receive about $8 million each over six to ten years—but the key provisions of the agreement require Juul to refrain from marketing to young people, funding education programs, using cartoons or any paid product placement, advertising on billboards or public transportation, and other strictures. Press releases from the AGs of Vermont here, and New Hampshire here.VT's getting $100 million from opioid settlements, but it's unclear what it'll do with that money. Actually, that number will go up, reports Vermont Public's Liam Elder-Connors, since the state is also due to receive money from four recent national settlements. There's great uncertainty about specific amounts, though—as well as how much the state's law firm will get paid—and the 17-member advisory board established to decide how to spend the settlements has just begun meeting. Ideas include harm-reduction strategies and boosting pay for workers in the substance-misuse field.From Wolf Kahn to Warhol to Afghanistan's ArtLords to, once a year, domino-toppling: the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center turns 50. And, writes VTDigger's Kevin O'Connor, it hits that milestone both more secure and just as up in the air as it was when volunteers turned the town's old train station (then slated to be torn down to make way for a parking lot) into a museum. In 2019, the museum detailed plans for a $30 million arts and apartments complex; the pandemic has toppled those plans. “We’re spending a lot of time figuring out, ‘Where do we go from here?’” its director tells O'Connor.Wait. Domino-toppling at a museum? Here's last year's. This year's event is next month.Hey Upper Valley! Here’s an idea: put your kids through college selling maple creemees. You’d be borrowing the idea from John Paré of Burlington, who bought an old food truck so his sons could run a maple ice cream business out of it and, writes Seven Days’ Melissa Pasanen, “help underwrite their college bills and build life skills.” The idea actually belongs to Paré’s cousin, who leveraged their family’s sugar bush to supply the magic ingredient for a creemee stand that funded his daughters’ education. So, hey, if you’ve got a maple connection, a little extra capital, and a few enterprising teens… One secret to a happy marriage? TikTok dance moves. If you frequent the app, you may have seen these two, Marideth Batchelor and Austin Telenko (aka @cost_n_mayor), busting out perfectly choreographed little numbers…for just about any occasion. It all started when the pandemic cost them their actual dance gigs and they needed to stay busy. Now their videos routinely rack up 2 million views. Anything they do is totally in sync and pure joy, but they’re taking the form to new levels with these ingenious iPhone text tone dances (at the link). Could anyone do "Bamboo" better?The Wednesday Vordle. With a word from an item in yesterday's Daybreak. Have at it!
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Music to set your day up...
No one really knows how "Shenandoah" originated. It's been a voyageurs' song, a sea shanty, a much-loved folk song. Folklorists John and Alan Lomax wrote,
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The lines are a call from the homeland... a call not from a sweetheart, a house, or even a town, but from the land itself, its rivers and its familiar and loved hills." And so many versions! Harry Belafonte, Springsteen, Tom Rush, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir... Now, Milwaukee-based songwriter and singer Peter Mulvey and the once-Milwaukee-now-Nashville-based SistaStrings (that's Chauntee Ross on violin, Monique Ross on cello, and they'll be at TD Garden in Boston next month with Brandi Carlile)
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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