Daybreak Friday 4/10/20

SO NICE TO SEE YOU, FRIDAY!

Though could we talk about this weather? Yesterday's front, which dragged in cold air behind it, is stalled off the coast of Maine, which means everything's backed up. This morning starts with a chance of rain and snow showers, then a chance of rain throughout the day along with some serious wind gusts this afternoon, then maybe more snow to cap things off late tonight. Temps at best around 40 today, back into the low 30s tonight. The barred owl, cooking/Up another song, loiters... Okay, this has never happened before. Lately in this space I've been running photos taken around the Upper Valley. Today, it's a poem triggered by photos. Remember the pics Tig Tillinghast took the other day? Now Dave Celone, who among other things is a poet and translator (he's responsible for English translations of Vaclav Havel's early poetry), sends along "Accelerations," an ode to spring set off by Tig's photos (which are here, in case you need a refresher).  

But enough of art! Let's do the numbers:

Data geek alert! This is a Twitter thread from Trevor Bedford, who studies viruses, evolution, and immunity at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He pulls together a whole skein of up-to-the-minute studies, here and abroad, that show the slowing spread and rate of growth of Covid-19. The key number to track is what's called Re, which is the number of secondary infections caused by a primary infection. It dropped from 3.5 to a bit more than 1.0 in many European countries and King County, WA as they imposed shutdowns.Dartmouth postpones graduation. "It is now clear that the risk of hosting events of this magnitude in mid-June, with students, families, alumni, and friends from all over the world gathering on the Green in such close proximity, is simply too great a risk to take," President Phil Hanlon wrote in an email to the college community yesterday afternoon. Degrees will be conferred virtually this year, and members of the Class of 2020 will get a formal ceremony sometime in June of 2021.Meanwhile, Dartmouth to get $3.4 million from CARES Act. The federal relief measure has set aside $14 billion for higher education, and the Education Department yesterday announced who's getting what. Dartmouth's share puts it in the same league as Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, GA. For comparison, UVM is getting $7 million, UNH $11 million, and Colby-Sawyer $779,000. Of the other Ivies, Princeton's landed $2.4 million, Brown $4.8 million, Yale $6.8 million, Harvard $8.6 million, Penn $9.9 million, and Columbia and Cornell each $12.8 million. Here's how the shares were calculated. (Thanks, LM!) Amidst uncertainty, a family practice tries to adapt. Dr. Michael Lyons, the senior partner at White River Family Practice in Wilder, says the office has tried to do everything right: It's set up separate space for people with fevers and coughs, boosted its tele-health services, done its best to keep patients out of the emergency room. The result? Its future is rocky and its docs are working without pay. State help is uncertain, testing protocols change without notice, and insurance companies threaten not to reimburse for common-sense moves. An interview.The Haven adapts. It's offering pre-boxed food curbside, and has expanded to serve anyone who needs it, regardless of where they live or how much they earn (more on that in "Helping Out" below). It's now screening every volunteer who arrives each day, including using infrared thermometers to check temperatures of every volunteer and staff member. Its family shelters remain open, but now each guest gets a private room and bathroom, while others have moved to area motels. Plenty more at the link.The wheels are turning at Upper Valley Strong. The group first formed in the wake of Hurricane Irene, and re-launched a few weeks ago. It's now got 35 member organizations, with a steering committee chaired by Andrew Winter of Twin Pines Housing Trust and Barbara Farnsworth at DHMC. At the moment, it's focused on ramping up home food-delivery, especially for older adults, and creating an on-line navigator for essential workers to find daycare. "Our general strategy," says COVER Home Repair's Bill Neukomm, "is to find where additional resources...are needed to support the populations more vulnerable to COVID-19 and to support health care workers and first responders."UNH study says highest infection rates are in rural counties with more second homes and seasonal rentals. In the report, released Wednesday, researcher Jessica Carson writes, "In the nation’s 199 rural counties where seasonal housing accounts for 25 percent or more of all housing units, average cases per 100,000 are more than twice as high as in other rural counties and 15 percent higher than in urban areas as of April 5." This may reflect a higher median age or differences in testing, she says, but it may also be because fleeing urbanites have brought the illness with them. NH releases data, says mitigation strategy is working and now is not the time to let up. At a press conference yesterday, state epidemiologist Benjamin Chan said the state has tested almost 10,000 people, and has been averaging 400 tests a day over the past week. His slideshow with fuller stats is here, but note that the chart showing NH with one of the lowest per-capita rates of Covid-19 in the northeast may be due to the fact that NH also has one of the lowest testing rates. For the finest in sea-to-table dining... Faced with the near-disappearance of their restaurant markets, a group of fishermen in Portsmouth have created a Facebook page where locals can place orders, show up at the pier, and get their fish fresh off the boat. “This is a really safe product,”  says NHCommunity Seafood General Manager Andrea Tomlinson. “It travels through a limited set of hands before it gets to you. In this case, it travels through one set of hands, the stern-man!”And it's not just fish. Back on March 20, two Portsmouth-based lobstermen, Gary Glidden and his son-in-law Jake Eaton, posted on Facebook wondering whether anyone would want to buy lobsters right off the boat. They were hoping for a couple of dozen responses. Within a few days, they had 3,000. "We have no idea how this happened, but we are so incredibly grateful for the support," says Mackenzie Eaton, Gary's daughter and Jake's wife. "These people are literally saving us."Small Vermont hospitals were already struggling; now things are worse. They've canceled elective surgeries and focused on the pandemic, and their revenues have slowed to a trickle. Springfield Hospital just got a $1.3 million emergency loan, Grace Cottage Hospital has asked for one, and state officials are worried about them collapsing. The federal relief package may help, but as VPR's Howard Weiss-Tisman reports, no one's sure how much Vermont will get or when it will come. "The situations at Springfield and at Grace Cottage, those hospitals, they need cash now to keep their doors open. They didn't even have cash on-hand to wait for the federal money."There's now a figure on how much milk VT farmers are dumping. It's been 60,000 gallons since the beginning of April, VTDigger's Kit Norton reports. Basically, there's too much milk right now, as schools and restaurants are closed and grocery stores limit how much customers can buy. The state has asked them to stop doing so, and is looking at ways to boost cheese and yogurt production, but, says the Agency of Ag's Diane Bothfeld, "we’ll never eat our way out of this. We make way too much milk.”VT says it will fund half of tuition costs for vacant child care spaces. The Department for Children and Families wants to make sure that child care centers are still around once people start going back to work. WCAX reports the subsidy may cost as much as $2 million a week. "Mr. Rogers said to look for the helpers, and that's what we're going to do today." In her latest "Stuck in Vermont" episode, Seven Days' Eva Sollberger talks to people who'd stepped up, including Sharon's Annemieke McLane, who's doing weekly piano concerts online; Elliott Katz at the Burlington makerspace Generator, which is turning out 3D-printed face shields for the UVM Medical Center; and and Vergennes Mayor Jeff Fritz, who is helping organize the town's nightly parade and car-honking hullabaloo."The absence of a 'reason' doesn’t mean that good, and beauty, and humor cannot be found in the worst of circumstances." Blogger Susan Apel doesn't have much truck with social media posts that "purport to find reasons for the world coming to a dead stop." But she's still looking for moments of grace, and finds one in a video of the poem, “History Will Remember,” by Donna Ashworth. "This rendition...with motion graphics and score by Ivan Almaral is among the most moving reflections that arrived on my screen this week," she writes. Get to it at the link.Speaking of scores, we know the coronavirus is, yeah, spiky. But what does it sound like? This is wild. A team at MIT, using a new technique called sonification, gave each amino acid in the virus a unique note, converting the entire protein into a musical score. Why? "The new format can help scientists find sites on the protein where antibodies or drugs might be able to bind—simply by searching for specific musical sequences that correspond to these sites," Science mag explains. "This, the researchers say, is faster and more intuitive than conventional methods used to study proteins, such as molecular modeling." Here's the funny thing: It doesn't sound half bad. (Thanks, RM!)

Ben Kilham's got a new cub! Drivers on the Stratton Mountain Access Road yesterday noticed a small black cub on its own by the side of the road and called the Winhall police, who watched it until state game warden Kyle Isherwood could get there. Isherwood took the 2.3 lb. male cub (who's a cutie, by the way) to Kilham's bear rehab center in Lyme. He was unable to find the mother. Norwich Selectboard approves change to immigration policing policy. The measure, approved by voters last month 1,346-296, bars officers from asking a person’s immigration status, detaining them for their immigration status, or sharing immigration info with the feds. Police Chief Jen Frank opposed the move: "You’re asking officers to violate that federal oath,” she told SB members. John Langhus responded, "Police officers swear an oath to the constitutions of the state of Vermont and the United States of America. They do not swear an oath to the federal law.” The measure passed 4-1. (VN, sub reqd)Judge strikes down NH voting law. In his ruling, Hillsborough Superior Court Judge David Anderson said the state had failed to prove that the Republican-passed law — which requires people to prove they live where they’re trying to vote — is needed to protect the integrity of the state's elections. "The new process establishes enough hurdles, the forms contain enough complexity, and the penalties present enough risk that they tend to dissuade a specific type of voter from even engaging with the process," he wrote. The law "does not stop someone at the polls from casting a ballot; it discourages them from showing up in the first place."

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Sometimes you just need to get carried off by a song to end a week. One of the most haunting melodies I know is

from Galicia in Spain, sung by Uxía, probably the region's most famous interpreter of its rich musical traditions. 

And with that... Have a fine weekend. See you Monday.

Daybreak is written and published by Rob Gurwitt                     Banner by Tom HaushalterAbout Rob                                                                                   About Tom

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