Daybreak Friday 12/24/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Reminder: No Daybreak next week. Also: I won't be publishing on Mondays in January—which means I get a few Sundays off. For much of the year it's bearable not to, but when there's skiable snow in the woods all bets are off.This is the last Daybreak of 2021. So let me just tell you how grateful I am to all of you: who signed up, who created space for it in your lives, who sent photos and ideas and kind words and admonitions, who drove its growth by passing it along to friends, and who helped create something by supporting Daybreak with your contributions. You've been a daily joy and made this a memorable and—in spite of everything—deeply worthwhile year.Wait! One more thing! Nelson and Sarah Rooker generously put together and maintain the Spotify playlist of Daybreak music as a gift to us all. Tom Haushalter has graced this newsletter for four months with his sparkling prose. Michael Lipson, week in and week out, finds poetry that enlarges our world. Karen Harris daily offers both discerning judgment and boundless patience. Mark Travis has been an unfailing source of wise counsel since the start... And then there are the Enthusiasms writers, DB Johnson, the News Quiz, the UVTA crew, the writers and reporters whose work feeds this newsletter... So many people to say: Thank you, Daybreak wouldn't exist without you.Okay, time to get on with things: Slight chance of light snow first thing, then some sun. Eventually. Temps reach the upper 20s, then drop overnight into the teens as what looks like a messy weather system heads our way.Air poetry. By the Price Chopper. Bill Waste was coming out of the store in West Leb at dusk Wednesday when he saw a murmuration of starlings wheeling through the sky near the parking lot. The video's from his cellphone so it's a little blurred, but you still get why he stood there in awe.Watching the arrival of winter. In his latest blog post, photographer Jim Block captures the landscape's transformation from mid-November through mid-December: the patterns of leaves and bare branches, ice settling in, the first snowfalls, birds out and about, buildings hunkered down, summit views in that clear early-winter light..."We call them butterflies. You ever wonder what they call themselves?" Since Daybreak's not publishing next Friday, you get two weeks of DB Johnson's Lost Woods today. The link takes you to Week 56, then hit the right-arrow at the bottom to move on to Week 57, as Auk and Eddy try to understand WindoVision and Henry and Wally gaze at the sky. Hit the back arrow to catch up on previous weeks or just head right back to the beginning."Not only was he the keeper of the peace, he was the keeper of the time." In Sidenote, Li Shen has a lovely little story about Michael Evans, Thetford's departing police chief, whose office faces the Timothy Frost Church. Some years ago, the bell would sometimes strike the hour not quite on the hour, so when Evans learned that the clock keeper was getting on in years and struggling to negotiate the stairs to the top, he took on the job himself. Which isn't easy: Not only is it generous to call the stairs rickety, but the mechanism on the 1898 clock—which the story describes in detail—is finicky.Hiking Close to Home: Hartland Winter Trails. With snow on the ground, this week's suggestion from the Upper Valley Trails Alliance brings you to Hartland Winter Trails, a 16-mile groomed trail network for skiing and snowshoeing that owes its continued existence to the many private landowners who open their land up for public use. Which, of course, means you should be respectful and follow the trail guidelines. The primary trailhead is near the Three Corners Fire Station along VT Route 12.Announcing the Hiking Close to Home Archives. Amazingly, this regular Friday feature has been running for over a year, amassing a bunch of trail suggestions for you to go explore. It's a bare-bones Google doc, but just hit the link by each one and you'll get a full description. When Daybreak picks up again, you'll find the link in a new home down at the bottom each day.Been paying attention this week? The guys who run The News Quiz have some questions for you. Like, what did that factory in Wells River make? And what did Dartmouth Athletics just do? And why was Valley Regional Hospital in the news? You'll find those and others at the maroon link.Vermont Everyone Eats extended another three months. The program, which provides a weekly meal to Vermont residents who need one, was due to expire at the end of the year but has gotten FEMA funds to run until April 1. The statewide program is run by SEVCA, and administered in the Upper Valley by Vital Communities. “We keep sort of waiting for Covid to end and thinking that our program may end with it, but the longer that we continue to operate, the more we see the benefit (and) how woven we’ve become into the community,” SEVCA's Jean Hamilton tells the Rutland Herald's Patrick McArdle.NH's mobile vaccine van will be in the Upper Valley next week. It will be at the United Congregational Church of Orford on Route 10 Monday from 11 am-3 pm (with 200 doses); the Lebanon Armory on Heater Road on Tuesday from 9 am-6 pm (500 doses); and the Lyme fire station on Wednesday from 9 am-3 pm (240 doses). These are for walk-ins only, so you don't even need to make an appointment.Better luck this time. NH has made 700,000 rapid at-home tests available, same deal as last time: Order at the link. As you'll recall, they ran out fast first time around. Tests will only be available to households that did not get a kit during the first offer.Test kit scramble. First it was NH's turn, now it's VT's. Yesterday, the state handed out about 30,000 rapid-test kits at sites around Vermont. At some, they ran through the available kits within 45 minutes; others took a little longer. There will be more handouts today and some sites will do it again next week, report Erin Petenko, Liora Engel-Smith, and Jack Lyons in VTDigger. In all, the state health department expects to distribute 96,000 antigen kits and says it is working to find more, “but like other states, we are constrained by the realities of the supply at the federal level.” Distribution schedule here.There's a wealth of information in VT's new vaccinated vs. unvaccinated metrics. The state's Covid dashboard Wednesday added details on the vaccination status of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Overall they show what you'd expect: being fully vaccinated makes a notable difference. But as VTDigger's Erin Petenko writes, the data also include ages, making it possible to see, for example, that the gap between case rates among unvaccinated and vaccinated people 10-19 is immense, and that the death rate for vaccinated people over 80 is noticeably higher than for other vaccinated age groups.Coming soon: The cosmos like you’ve never seen it. Tomorrow morning, NASA is scheduled to launch a new telescope into space that, if all goes well, promises to transform our view of the Universe. Thirty years in the making, the massive James Webb Space Telescope dwarfs the Hubble (link goes to a cute film by some of the scientists involved); and not only can it see farther, its ability to collect infrared light, writes Loren Grush in The Verge, will “unravel the mysteries of supermassive black holes, distant alien worlds, stellar explosions, dark matter, and more.” Every aspect of its launch and 29-day journey into orbit has to go perfectly. But if it does, get really excited.

Last numbers for the year...

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The Billy Strayhorn-Duke Ellington

Nutcracker Suite

came out in 1960 on Columbia Records. It was one of the few occasions on which Strayhorn, Ellington's longtime collaborator, got equal billing (along with Tchaikovsky), and their reinvention of the holiday classic, scored for jazz orchestra, is a classic in its own right. In 1959,

(That's Columbia Records president Goddard Lieberson he deliberates with at the beginning). Featuring Paul Gonsalves on sax, Butter Jackson on trombone, and Ray Nance on trumpet. It's just a taste, but such a rich one.

And I hope that if you're celebrating Christmas tomorrow or Kwanzaa starting Sunday or heading into the night to mark New Year's or just hanging out and appreciating family and this place we all live, your next week is filled with warmth, peacefulness, community (even if virtual), and good food. See you Jan. 4.

Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.

Want to catch up on Daybreak music?

Check out the Spotify playlist generously maintained by Sarah and Nelson Rooker.

Written and published by Rob Gurwitt         Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter    Poetry editor: Michael Lipson  About Rob                                                    About Tom                                 About Michael

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