GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Heads up: No Daybreak Monday. Or Memorial Day, for that matter. But back as usual on Tuesday both weeks. Wring out and repeat. We'll be getting into the high 80s again today—clouds overnight didn't give things much of a chance to cool off. They'll linger for part of the morning, dissipate through the middle part of the day, and then return. There's a slight chance of isolated showers or thunderstorms later in the afternoon. Breezes from the southwest, down only to the low 60s tonight.Those Baltimore orioles are good for the spirit... At least, that's what seven-year-old Luke McLane discovered when, feeling low, he glanced up, saw this one framed perfectly by the tree it was perched in, and managed to take its portrait. "Before you know it, nature just sucks you in." It's Week 25 of Lost Woods, and Henry and Wally are out exploring...including Lost Woods' swamp. As he does every week, Lebanon writer and illustrator D.B. Johnson provides a full week's worth: Scroll right to see what happens next or left to catch up on previous weeks. And if you've missed a week (or more), check out the archive and synopsis behind the three little parallel lines at the top right.What's lost to fire. Tony Luckino lives a few houses down from the barn that burned down in Thetford Wednesday evening. He sends along this photo from a few years ago. "It was a gorgeous structure and just part of the landscape," writes Pam Kneisel, who lives next door. "So strange to walk down the road and see air (and smoke) where it stood." About the hard work of the volunteer fire crews who protected the house, put out the barn fire, and managed to keep flareups in the woods from spreading, she writes: "There are no words."SPONSORED: What happens when our energy grid gets hacked? The vulnerability of the nation’s fossil energy supply system was on full display again last week. Hackers caused a shutdown of the 5,500-mile Colonial Pipeline network that delivers nearly half of the gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel consumed on the East Coast. New England drivers were spared the worst, but all of us have become hostages to an energy delivery system that’s out of step with the times. To find out more about our brittle power system—and what we can do to take action—hit the maroon link. Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.
Permanent outdoor dining in Hanover? An overwhelming yes. At least, that's what We The People heard from the 485 people who responded to their question about it last week: 82 percent of them said outdoor restaurant seating on Main Street should be made permanent. On another question, 60 percent of respondents favored masks indoors but not out, and 28 percent said they should be ditched altogether. And here's this week's news quiz—and an opinion question on school resource officers (ie, police) in high schools.Plainfield lifts mask ordinance as other towns prepare to consider it. The three-member selectboard voted unanimously on the move, reports Tim Camerato in the Valley News, though it did issue a statement asking people who are unvaccinated to wear a mask "indoors when they are with people who are not in their household." Meanwhile, Lebanon's city council has set a June 2 public hearing to take up the issue, though they may not make a decision that night, and Enfield has scheduled one for June 7.Hiking close to home: Mount Cube. The Upper Valley Trails Alliance sends along a pointer to the 2.2-mile section of the Cross Rivendell Trail that heads up the popular mountain in Orford. There are beautiful views of the surrounding forest on the way up, and the summit offers stunning vistas over to the Greens and out over New Hampshire. The trail to the summit has several steep inclines. Use the trail map on the Cross Rivendell Trail posting on Trail Finder and look for the Baker Road to Mt. Cube section, which is the trailhead farthest to the east on the trail map. “Bears have a wonderful nose. They’re very good at finding food.” And unfortunately for NH farmers, reports Amanda Gokee in NH Bulletin, that includes sweet corn straight from the stalk. Kristen May and her father, Howard Hatch, farm up in N. Haverhill, and they can lose up to five acres of corn to bear activity—at a cost of $800 to $1000 an acre. The state has actually had a law on the books since 1895 to help farmers with bear-related damages, but Hatch's application wasn’t accepted, Gokee writes, "because of a stipulation about bear hunting. The landowners Hatch leases from don’t allow it."A busy day for NH Fish & Game: rescuing out-of-state hikers. Wilderness rescuers were called out three times on Wednesday, Jonathan van Fleet reports in the Monitor: once to find an Indiana man who got lost on the Pemigewasset Loop; then to help a Michigan woman who was having trouble breathing on the two-mile Flume Gorge Trail; and then in the late afternoon for a New Jersey woman on her way up the Falling Waters Trail toward Little Haystack. Fish & Game issued an advisory to hikers afterward: Bring water and drink it."My name is Ann..." That's the start of a letter to InDepthNH from a woman whose 11-year-old daughter has been in an ER in New Hampshire for four days, waiting for a psychiatric hospital bed. It may take a week, she's been told. Nurses and LNAs take turns sitting by pediatric patients to try to keep them calm: "It is an undue burden placed on already exhausted, overburdened healthcare workers & nurses," Ann writes. As policy makers decide what to do about the mental health system, she asks, "This is how the youth in NH are being treated?""Instead of pitting religious liberties against gay rights, try imagining how they can coexist." In a VTDigger commentary, Putney town moderator and former Marlboro College political theorist Meg Mott argues that the recent spate of court decisions that have opened up the question of public funding for religious schools offer an opportunity. A lesbian who is also sympathetic to religious parents' desire to educate their children as they see fit, she sees room for both sides to learn from one another. "Think of it as a cultural exchange program within a supervisory union," she writes. VT legislators reach compromise on broadband bill, send it off for guv's signature. They agreed Wednesday to a measure crafted by a conference committee reconciling differences between House and Senate versions. The $150 million bill, which takes advantage of federal funds, will channel grants to communications union districts (modeled after EC Fiber) through a new community broadband board. Lawmakers, writes Seven Days' Kevin McCallum, "want to ensure future funds flow through public organizations committed to and accountable for making broadband available to all residents, not just the addresses private companies find profitable."Is Burke VT's next tourist boom town? "Nobody expects the town and its attractions to grow into the proportions of resorts such as Stowe or Sugarbush," writes Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days. But with the huge influx of visitors brought in by Kingdom Trails (135,000 in 2019), the town has been planning for growth: restaurants, microbreweries, new B&Bs. "We think about 28 new businesses have popped up in the last 10 years," says Abby Long, executive director of Kingdom Trails. But with growth come challenges, Allen writes: traffic, locals' fears of getting priced out of the housing market, and crowds.Sweet things come to those who wait. Creemees, to be precise. The VT Agency of Agriculture announced yesterday that it's making 10,000 coupons available for free creemees to people who attend EMS vaccination clinics today through Sunday, reports VTDigger's Erin Petenko. Participating vendors include Dan & Whit's, Jonathan's Summer Place in Springfield, and Baker's Store in Post Mills. Coupons are first come, first served, and the vaccines are Johnson & Johnson only, which means you have to be at least 18. On the other hand, Ohio's offering five million-dollar lottery jackpots. Just sayin'."Kind of like the snow beach, if you will." That was VT backcountry ski and mountain-bike-trail leader Angus McCusker, who was at Killington on Wednesday.You may think ski season is over, but the diehards weren't ready to call it quits yet, summertime temps at all. They just hiked up and skied down, reports NECN's Jack Thurston. "Working on that suntan," said one. "It's like soft, squishy Slurpee bumps straight from 7-11."
Ever wonder what that blinking thing is passing overhead at night? If you've spent time on a warm summer's night lying on your back and staring up, you know that some satellites are visible to the naked eye. So James Darpinian, a Google engineer, has created a site just for you: it lets you know what's passing by at any given time (and even includes a nighttime forecast on whether the skies will be clear). Tonight at 8:48, for instance, you could see the International Space Station cross overhead...if the clouds would let you.
Last numbers for the week...
Dartmouth remains at 2 student cases, with 1 new one among faculty/staff. Two faculty/staff member are in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 2 students and 2 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 149 new cases yesterday for a cumulative total of 98,091. There was 1 new death, raising the total to 1,341, while 53 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 3). The current active caseload stands at 1,086 (down 18). The state reports 75 active cases in Grafton County (down 6), 46 in Sullivan (up 2), and 99 in Merrimack (down 4). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Claremont has 22 active cases (down 2), Lebanon has 12 (down 3), Newport has 8 (no change), Rumney has 8 (no change), Enfield has 7 (down 1), Sunapee has 5 (up at least 1), and Newbury has 5 (no change). Haverhill, Piermont, Warren, Orford, Lyme, Hanover, Canaan, Plainfield, Springfield, New London, and Unity have 1-4 each.
VT reported 33 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 24,026. Deaths remain at 255, while 10 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 1). Windsor County gained 8 new cases and stands at 1,456 for the pandemic, with 76 over the past 14 days, while Orange County added no new cases and remains at 809 cumulatively, with 40 cases in the past 14 days.
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At noon today, Hartford Dismas House continues its virtual speaker series on restorative justice with UVM prof Alec Ewald speaking on "Collateral Consequences: The Suspension of Rights After Conviction." Ewald teaches constitutional law and criminal justice and focuses in particular on voting, suffrage, and the disenfranchisement of people convicted of crimes.
And at 7:30 this evening, the White River River Indie Film Fest kicks off at Lyman Point Park in WRJ. It begins with the presentation of the first annual Nora Jacobson award to filmmaker Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, and will follow at sundown with Taylor's film, For the Love of Rutland, which recounts the controversy over the arrival of Syrian refugee families through the story of one woman, Stacie Griffin. On Saturday, there's an outdoor screening of Dramarama, Jonathan Wysocki's debut comedy about a closeted teen struggling to part company with his high-school drama friends at their final dress-up get-together. And starting today and running all through the next week, there's a full slate of shorts, documentaries, features, workshops, and panels online.
Tomorrow from 5 to 9 pm, Vermont actor and comedian Rusty DeWees brings his "Mack Truck Comedy & Music Tour"—yep, all the truck's a stage—to the South Royalton green. It's a fundraiser for a nonprofit, Hope for Miracles, which funds research into childhood neuroblastoma. Food and entertainment throughout the evening.
Also tomorrow, at 7 pm the Chandler kicks off its "Live & Out" outdoor concert series at Farr Hill in Randolph with the Sky Blue Boys—brothers Dan and Willy Lindner on banjo, mandolin, and guitar, reviving the tradition of country-music duos of the '30s and '40s. You may know them better as the leads in the celebrated VT bluegrass band, Banjo Dan and the Midnite Plowboys. Tickets are pay what you can, and the show will be both live and livestreamed.
On Sunday, the annual Race Around the Lake is back in hybrid form. The fundraiser for BarnArts will run as in-person 5K and 10K races (10K starts at 10:30 am, the 5K at 11 am) around Silver Lake in Barnard, with interval starts to keep runners spaced out. There's also a virtual version that can be run anytime and anywhere through May 28.
At 4 pm on Sunday at Lyman Point Park in WRJ (it's sure getting a workout this weekend), North Country Community Theater presents "A Musical Celebration of NCCT Teens: Songs and Stories." It's this year's teen show, with songs and stories "celebrating what the NCCT Teen program has meant to a generation of Upper Valley performers."
Finally, since there's no Daybreak on Monday: At 6 pm that evening the Hop hosts Broadway and film/television actor Raymond J. Lee and actor and filmmaker Sagan (Diane) Chen for a panel discussion called "The Bamboo Scrim." They'll be talking about both the experiences and the underrepresentation of Asian/Americans in theater, film, and television in the US.
The traditional Irish song, "Siúil a Rún," is sung in both Irish and English. If you pay attention to Irish music you've no doubt heard it, and even if you don't, you may have read about it (though probably not with that spelling): Robert Louis Stevenson referred to it in The Master of Ballantrae, and in Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus sings it to Leopold Bloom. As is their habit, the young Irish band Seo Linn has just given it an up-to-date—and if you can say this about a trad song, pretty darn rocking—twist.Have a lovely weekend. See you Tuesday.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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