Daybreak Friday 12/4/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

It'll be just like yesterday! Only without the sun. And with a slight chance of showers this afternoon. And with breezes from the southwest rather than the south. But the temperatures will be about the same: rising into the mid-40s, dropping back to the low 30s tonight. Oh, and maybe snow tomorrow.Meet Henry. And Lydia. And Wally, Auk, and Eddie. They live in Lost Woods, a new cartoon strip by Lebanon's D.B. Johnson, the bestselling author and illustrator of Henry Hikes to Fitchburg and other books. If you've read aloud to kids anytime in the last two decades, you've probably gotten to enjoy his work. Now you can see it every week, as we launch "Lost Woods." It'll be here on Fridays, a week's worth of strips at a time: Just hit the maroon link, then scroll right. And check out his "About" video, behind the three little lines at the top.Daybreak in Windsor. Kyle Jones was out early yesterday morning at the Windsor Grasslands Wildlife Management Area and caught the peach-rose on the horizon, the deep blue sky starting to lighten, and a single, extremely photogenic old tree. Kyle thinks that white dot, by the way, is Venus.  Morning moon, red barn. Barbara Woodard was also out yesterday morning, and found the moon setting above the barn at the corner of Breck Hill and N. Thetford roads in Lyme.Target coming to West Leb. A Maryland-based contractor has filed plans with the city planning department to demolish and then renovate the interior of the old Kmart in what used to be Kmart Plaza on 12A, reports the Valley News's John Lippman. The documents "specify that it would be a 'small-format' store, a reference to Target stores which average 40,000-square feet, or about one-third the size of a normal 130,000-square foot Target store," Lippman writes. It's the second sign of new life for the strip, after news that an Xfinity/Comcast store will open in the Payless Shoes space that has been empty since 2018. SPONSORED: Gingerbread houses, reimagined. Well, the houses for the Family Place's annual Gingerbread Festival are always imaginative. But the festival itself is different this year: the houses are on display behind the windows of businesses all around Norwich, White River Junction, Hanover, Lebanon, and W. Lebanon. Tour them all and vote for your favorite house—and bid to win it—as well. You'll find everything you need at the maroon link. Here's a Valley News writeup about the whole event. Sponsored by The Family Place. Walking or wheeling close to home: the Hanover River Trail. This week, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance checks in with a newly accessible trail close to downtown Hanover. After descending a bluff, it hugs the banks of the Connecticut until it turns and follows peaceful Mink Brook along a new ADA section of trail that's ideal for wheelchairs or strollers. It's got benches, viewpoints, and easy access from Rt. 10. A bit over a mile all told.As NH gears up for vaccine distribution, it still needs one key piece. It is the last state in the country to set up a vaccine registry, which is how the state and physicians track who's been given what. This is crucial with the Covid vaccine, which will have different versions (Pfizer and Moderna, so far) and is given in two doses several weeks apart. State officials say it should be ready by mid-month, but even without it, NHPR's Jordyn Haime reports, individual providers say they can collect the necessary information. Progress on EV charging stations in NH? 0 to 0 in two years. Well, that's not quite true. The state has 271 public charging outlets, most put in by downtown establishments and only a handful of them fast chargers; by comparison, ME has 483, VT 754, and there are 3,054 in MA. But in the two-plus years since the state allocated $4.6 million in Volkswagen settlement money to build an EV charging station network, not a single station has resulted, reports NH Business Review's Bob Sanders. On the other hand, Electrify America, the VW subsidiary, is installing one fast charger in West Leb.So... daring jumping spider for NH state spider, anyone? Can't believe I missed this earlier this week. After a fraught election season with passionate advocates in Tara Happy's third-grade class for goldenrod crab spiders, woodlouse hunters, and black and yellow garden spiders as well, elementary school students in Hollis chose the daring jumper as their candidate. And Hollis state Rep. Kat McGhee has put in a bill to that effect. The Monitor's Ethan DeWitt has a surprisingly inspiring little story of how it all came about. VT aims for Dec. 15 to roll out vaccines for health care workers, long-term care residents. Pfizer's is expected to get the FDA's emergency authorization by Dec. 10, and a batch of 5,800 doses is expected in the state right after. That has doctors, state officials, pharmacy managers, and nursing home administrators scrambling to get ready, VTDigger's Katie Jickling reports.“I can’t go to Schwartz’s Deli in Montreal for their corned beef medium plate special! This is terrible.” That's Vershire's Doug Shane, maybe a bit tongue in cheek, telling VPR's Brave Little State how the border's closure is affecting him. With the show's usual thoroughness, Angela Evancie and Henry Epp talk to Vermonters and Canadians missing loved ones and dealing with changes to their businesses (some small NEK shops are just fine, given the influx of US flatlanders; others are struggling). VT's AG says "see you in court" if guv decides to challenge climate law. Phil Scott has made no secret of his belief that the new Global Warming Solutions Act's creation of a state climate council is unconstitutional. At its first meeting the panel's chair, Scott's administration secretary, said, "We may have no choice except to ask for clarity from the judicial branch.” Now, in a letter to Scott's general counsel, deputy Attorney General Joshua Diamond warns that his office "will aggressively and dutifully defend...Vermont’s historic effort to combat global warming,” writes Seven Days' Kevin McCallum. "The multiple levels of disruption that have happened in the last six months have been kind of eye-opening." That's the Skinny Pancake's Benjy Adler, in a deep look in Middlebury mag at the ShiftMeals and Everyone Eats efforts that he and fellow Middlebury alum Jean Hamilton have steered into being during the pandemic. Jessie Raymond gives the fullest all-in-one-place accounting yet of how they worked first to take advantage of VT's local food economy to provide food for laid-off workers, then expanded that into the statewide Everyone Eats effort."Writing about beer in Vermont is like writing about cheese in France or snowboarding in Whistler." It's fair to say that thrillist's Julia Clancy thinks highly of what you can find in the state. After all, she writes, "This is a state with an actual 1876 court case titled The State of Vermont vs. One Keg of Lager Beer, and the keg of lager won." Burlington, she says, is a beer lover's "ultimate playground." She's got a lovingly detailed tour of the city's breweries, taprooms, brewpubs, and beer-wealthy dives. Just to file away for when you can use it.A headline-writer's dream...! WCAX went with "Loose Cabot Emu Coralled." Seven Days' "Daily 7" newsletter one-upped them with "An Emu Called Wanda Reunited With a Woman Called Ariel." The long and short: Ariel Zevon's emu, Wanda, escaped on Wednesday, but was spotted walking along a roadside and Ariel (Warren's daughter) headed out to the rescue. WCAX has the video.Oh man, you hate to see this. But also, you can't not watch. You may have heard that the giant Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed the other day. Failing cables that suspended it over the 1000-foot-wide reflector dish had led the National Science Foundation to withdraw the telescope from service and bar staff from getting close. Good thing. Yesterday, the NSF released drone video—from two separate views—of Tuesday's sudden collapse, as a cable snapped and the huge structure fell into the dish below.  And is there a better way to end a week than with Olive and Mabel? Turns out, they've cut a perfume commercial. "Tell me, what is it you want...want...want...?... To dig and roll in something unpleasant?"

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When he was in his 50s, Canadian folk performer Tom Wilson discovered that, instead of being the "big, sweaty Irish guy" he'd always thought, he was actually adopted and his birth parents were Mohawk. That led him in new directions, which is how he wound up in March at an Indigenous awards ceremony sharing a stage with iskwē, a singer-songwriter of Cree, Dené and Irish heritage. They'd never collaborated before but they hit it off, and have just released a redo of an earlier Wilson song, bringing in Ojibwe jazz trumpeter Chuck Copenace to add to

Try as I might, I can't do better than "An Emu Called Wanda." Oh well. See you Monday.

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