WELCOME TO DAYBREAK DIVERSIONS WEEK II, UPPER VALLEY!
Andrew Cotter branches out. Back during the pandemic, the BBC sportscaster became a breakout star for his Olive and Mabel series of mock sportscasts. But he also looked farther afield. Here he is, commentating the nightly walk of the fairy penguins of Phillip Island, off Victoria, Australia. "Some resorting to shortcuts," he announces in his now globally recognizable brogue as one penguin ducks under a boat. "Sad, that cheating has crept into this beautiful sport. The judges will have a look at that!"A clear night. A moon close to full. The mist of a waterfall. Sounds like the conditions you need to get inside a mountain in Middle Earth, but actually it's what you need to see a moonbow—a rainbow created by moonlight. Photographer Brian Hawkins has pretty much perfected the art of capturing them, mostly at Yosemite National Park. And while his still photos are lovely, the short film he put out last year—he'd been working on it since 2016—is mesmerizing. Definitely hit the "...more" button to expand his description of what he did and how he did it.How a carousel, made by many hands, revived a small town. It’s a feel-good story that, in a cynical age, seems too good to be true. Closer to fairy tale, since it involves several magical, beautifully colored animals. In the very real place of Albany, OR, writes Atlas Obscura’s Rebecca Deurlein, a community’s heyday had passed when, in 2002, Wendy Kirbey decided what it needed was a carousel. Over the better part of the next two decades, Kirbey and a dedicated group of volunteers hand-carved every animal, restored a century-old carousel mechanism, and brought their dream—and town—to life.The Monday Vordle. With a word from the news.A slight change of pace today. "Nile Rodgers doesn't just enter a room, he glows into it," NPR once said of the veteran guitarist, producer, chief creative advisor to Abbey Road Studios, and songwriter ("We Are Family" for Sister Sledge and "I'm Coming Out" for Diana Ross, among lots else). A few months back, the people at Fender asked him to sit down and tell a story from his career. So he goes with the time David Bowie invited him over to Switzerland to work on an album, and how his noodling around with Bowie's original idea for "Let's Dance" turned it into the 1983 monster hit it became. There's music theory and gentle trash talk and a master showing what he can do with a Stratocaster in his hands.See you tomorrow.
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