Daybreak Friday 1/15/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

This will stun you: Mostly cloudy today, high in the mid-30s, though we may get a look at some sky late morning/early afternoon. But then... what's this?... a change in the weather! Though honestly: yuck. A low pressure system from the Ohio Valley will move through tonight and tomorrow—most recent track puts it directly overhead of us, which means around here it'll start as snow but then change to all rain in the morning, then back to snow. The higher summits should do better.It's "Lost Woods" Week 7: In which Henry takes art lying down. As you know, Lebanon author and illustrator D.B. Johnson (Henry Builds a Cabin and other classics) is lending his new comic strip to this spot each Friday, a week's worth at a time. Scroll right to see what happens, left to catch up on previous weeks.When life gives you clouds, make...? They've been the defining feature of our days, so no surprise that they're starting to show up in photos:

Testing finds 3 cases among Kendal residents; outbreak grows at nursing home in Unity.

Kendal had reported four cases among staff earlier in the week, but the

Valley News

's Nora Doyle-Burr reports that a resident transferred to DHMC for other reasons also tested positive. Later testing found two additional cases among residents. Meanwhile, the outbreak at the Sullivan County Health Care nursing home in Unity now includes 35 people: 21 residents and 14 employees. 

Dartmouth bans use of tobacco, indoors and out.

The new nonsmoking policy takes effect March 18 and covers visitors as well as students, faculty, and staff. It applies to "all indoor and outdoor public and private spaces," the college says, "including common areas, conference rooms, residential space, on- and off-campus housing controlled or managed by the College, fraternities and sororities, parking lots, Dartmouth-owned or leased vehicles, and any public streets or sidewalks within 20 feet of a Dartmouth building."

Bradford, Newbury pass school budget on fourth try. Voters in the Oxbow district rejected the same budget back in November; schools have been restricting supplies since then, and were facing major personnel cuts, the Valley News's Alex Hanson reports. Budget backers credit clearer explanations of what was in the budget—though it may not have hurt that ballots went only to people who requested them this time around, rather than to all voters, as they did for the November balloting.Hiking close to home: Trout Pond Forest in Lyme, NH. The Upper Valley Trails Alliance checks in with an easy, 2.2-mile round-trip hike. The trail initially follows an old woods road, then turns left down to the pond. Once there, hikers can follow the trail to the left along the boulders on the shore of the pond and either turn around and come back or follow a short loop back. To get to the trailhead, follow the road straight at the junction of Hardscrabble and Pony Hill Roads for half a mile to the parking area. In winter, park at the road junction, which adds that half mile to the hike."Since the 1600s, we have revamped the continent into a robin food shelf." Naturalist and writer Ted Levin was out walking yesterday when 19 robins flushed—a lot for the winter. They're living these days on buckthorn and bittersweet berries, he writes, though in the spring they'll be going for another invasive: earthworms, which colonists introduced to the continent in the 1600s. Astonishingly, a single robin can down up to fourteen feet-worth of worms in a day. Bonus: he also writes about the remarkable comeback of ravens.Upper Valley students to present (virtually) at world's largest general science conference. The middle- and high school students—from Hanover High, Sharon Academy, Cardigan Mountain, and other schools—will be at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science meeting in February, held online this year. Sponsored by the NH Academy of Science, their research includes protein models to study the SARS-CoV-2 virus, water-quality projects analyzing local water sources, optical engineering efforts to develop low-cost tools, and genetic analysis of wild showy lady's slipper populations. At its current rate, NH will need 95 weeks to vaccinate its population. Granite Geek blogger David Brooks was doing some number noodling yesterday during the state's briefing yesterday. "We’re getting a little less than 20,000 doses of vaccine a week via the feds," he writes. "If 70% of our 1.35 million residents want to be inoculated and it takes two doses, it will take 95 weeks to finish the job, or about 1 year 10 months. Even if the amount of vaccine that New Hampshire receives is tripled, we’ll still be vaccinating people in late summer." NH launches statewide board to hear appeals of local housing and housing development decisions. The three-member board, established last July, opened for business Wednesday, reports NHPR's Daniella Allee. Its aim is to move more quickly than courts usually can in ruling on housing development matters, and it can "affirm, reverse, or modify...appeals of final decisions of municipal boards, committees, and commissions regarding questions of housing and housing development," according to the statute creating it.  NH joins VT in bumping ski patrollers to head of the vaccine line. The state slipped the news onto the website of the NH Region Ski Patrol last week, reports NHPR's Josh Rogers. Though NH officials didn't elaborate, VT's health commissioner, Mark Levine, explained last week, "They still fit the category of being a first responder who’s directly in contact with a human being who is often in a vulnerable situation." As in VT, the NH teachers union is arguing that teachers should get the same priority as first responders.Seizures of black-market cannabis rise at border crossings. In December, reports Kate Barcellos in the St. Albans Messenger, officials at the Highgate crossing found over 1,400 pounds of cannabis inside a shipment of kitchen cabinets from Quebec headed for MA. Because Canada has legalized marijuana and the US hasn't at the federal level, Barcellos writes, there's money to be made by shipping it south and selling on the black market. Across the US, customs data shows, the amount seized rose from 4,592 pounds to 51,388 pounds between fiscal years 2019 and 2020.You know the voice. Bet you didn't know it's been coming from under a fleece dog blanket by the kitchen table. Let's just start by saying that Seven Days publisher Paula Routly's profile of VPR's Jane Lindholm is impossible to summarize. Lindholm is leaving her 13-year gig as host of "Vermont Edition" at the end of the month, and Routly goes deep: back to Lindholm's childhood and school years, her peripatetic early radio and writing years, and the growth, evolution, and unusual qualities of "Vermont Edition." Also, her newfound celebrity as an off-the-cuff tweet-chronicler of pandemic press conferences."Life is hard up here right now. They're scratching and clawing—every animal—to survive and live." Mike Frisbie has been exploring the woods around his home in Westford, VT for over two decades, and has been a hunter for close to five. So when Eva Sollberger went out with him for a walk in early January for her latest "Stuck in Vermont" video, they talked coyote scat, deer trails through the snow—which fishers, foxes, and other wildlife use—and becoming part of the forest world. "It's my temple, my church," Frisbie says. Plus, footage from the no fewer than 11 game cameras he's set up.“He wore his sadness like an extra layer of skin." You may remember a Daybreak item from back in November about Mostly Harmless, the unidentified AT hiker whose body was found in a yellow tent in Florida. Well, thanks to a bunch of internet sleuths, he's been identified. Nicholas Thompson, the Wired writer whose article about the mystery went viral, follows up with the story of Vance Rodriguez, a lost soul who may—or may not—have found himself on the trail. And wonders, "What do you do when the answer to the mystery isn’t what you thought or hoped?" If you don't like snakes, do not click. But seriously, this is too cool to miss. It's a story in the NYT by Sabrina Imbler on a new report by two biologists studying how to protect birds in Guam from brown snakes; they wound up documenting a new "mode of snake locomotion" that had never been seen before. To wit: a brown snake that essentially lassoed a pole, using the coil it created with its bottom half to anchor itself as it inched up the pole toward some mice set as bait. The story itself is interesting; the video, riveting. Unless, as I said, you don't like snakes. In that case, just scroll past it fast.

Last numbers (whew!) for the week...

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Now. Leyla McCalla is a formally trained cellist who, it's fair to say, has created new avenues for her instrument. A Haitian-American who lives in New Orleans, she was part of the Carolina Chocolate Drops for a time before heading out on her own.

is in part her reflection on "the roles that we all play throughout our lifetimes, how we are all trying to navigate our way through this world where sometimes it feels as though we are the hunter, and sometimes we are the prey." 

See you Monday!

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