But what's this? Heavy rain and thunderstorms? Yeah, lucky us: We get not one, but two cold fronts passing through, one today, one tomorrow. Today's going to be the muggiest day of the week, temps about like yesterday. It's possible the worst of the storms will be to our south, and at the moment there's just a chance of rain and thunder after noon, and then a likelihood later in the afternoon, but it's not a dead cert. If we get them, we may also get winds and hail. More rain tonight, lows in the mid-60s.
Last numbers for the week...
NH announced 101 new positive test results yesterday and 1,387 specimens tested, bringing its total reported cases to 4,386. Of those, 2,730 (62%) have recovered and 232 have died (up 9), yielding a total current caseload of 1,424. Grafton County is now at 74 cases all told (up 2); Sullivan remains at 17. Merrimack County is at 331 (up 4). Lebanon remains at 5 current cases, and Enfield, Claremont, Newbury, and New London each have between 1 and 4.
VT reported 4 new cases yesterday, bringing its total to 974, with 855 people recovered (up 6). No one with a confirmed case is hospitalized, but one person died, bringing total deaths to 55. Neither Windsor nor Orange county gained any cases, leaving them at 51 and 8, respectively. The state added just 153 tests, to bring its total to 31,152.
Lebanon food truck festival cancelled. No surprise here, but the highly popular Colburn Park extravaganza, which was to have been held June 26-27, is on hold until next year. So, for that matter, are this year's Skip Matthews Memorial Run, and all of Leb Parks & Rec's Colburn Park concerts and shows.DHMC becomes experimental site for new testing equipment. A MA-based company, LexaGene, has developed a genetic analyzer for pathogens that both speeds up the process and allows simultaneous testing for a range of viruses, not just Covid-19. If it proves accurate, this latter feature could be vital, as "healthcare providers are increasingly questioning negative results from Covid-19 only tests, wondering if the test result is a false negative or the person is sick from another pathogen,” says the company's CEO. It's being put through its paces at D-H's Laboratory for Clinical Genomics and Advanced Technology. That's a lot of boxes in 20 seconds! Well, not 20 seconds strictly speaking: Canaan's Red Wagon Bakery topped off its pandemic-era CSB (Community Supported Baking) effort yesterday with a time-lapse of prepping the final round of baked-good boxes. They'll be moving to takeout next Thursday. "[M]y back is grateful, but i’ll miss the novelty and support that the csb box platform has provided," owner Nellie Smith writes on FB. "[I]t has been a trip navigating this new way of business."Windsor gets a dog park. It's only temporary—in front of the concession stand at the town's Little League field. But it's taken eight years to get to this point, and dog owners are happy. Though organizer Kerry Clifford notes that there may be some weak spots in the fence, and since the park's not there for the long haul, "it's not going to be super-secure. Any doggie escape artists should be closely supervised."Transfer stations navigate the coronavirus era. Workers have dealt with residents razzing them for wearing masks and berating them for not wearing masks. They've closed swap shops, cut traffic, and tried to figure out how to handle recyclables safely. In Hartford, the station closed to all but household trash, recyclables, and compost, though it's since reopened to all waste—though only three days a week. “We were afraid we would be inundated” if opened fully, Public Works director Hannah Tyler tells the VN's Alex Hanson.NH schools flummoxed by aid holdup. The state's schools are due to get $37 million in federal CARES Act relief money, but haven't seen any of it yet. The reason? The state's Department of Education "is still waiting for formal direction from the federal government on how to do that," writes the Monitor's Ethan DeWitt. The issue is federal guidelines that would result in distributing more money to private schools than pre-stimulus guidelines permitted. That debate is still going on in Washington.Department of Clarification... Yesterday's item on Dartmouth applying for federal CARES Act relief money missed a nuance: Half of it must go to students eligible for financial aid but not to be used for financial aid; instead, it covers "expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus" (ie, housing, sudden travel home, etc). Unfortunately, the Education Department has been less than clear (is this starting to sound familiar?) about just which students actually are eligible. Insider Higher Ed explains the stakes at the link. (Thanks, JG!)The reopening state of play in the Northeast. NPR has a thorough and detailed look at where each state stands right now: what can reopen when; what's closed, cancelled, or delayed; what they're doing about testing and tracing; the financial relief and resources they're providing. If you want to check out the rest of the country, you can do so here.NH better prepared than VT for post-Covid digital economy. That's one conclusion of a study by, of all things, a national storage-space search company called STORAGECafé (which happens to be owned by a property-management software company). It ranked states by their technology industries, internet connectivity, and availability of computers and internet. Overall, NH ranks 10th, VT 34th. The study quotes Dartmouth econ prof. Diego Comin, arguing that the pandemic "has evaporated" some major deterrents to the diffusion of digital technologies.Phil Scott announces for re-election. The Vermont governor's move came in a statement released at 7 am yesterday; the filing deadline for the August primary was at 5 pm. Scott said that he would not hire "a campaign staff or office, be raising money, or participating in normal campaign events" until the current state of emergency has lapsed, which right now is due to happen June 15. His leading Democratic opponents say the campaign will revolve around how the state should respond to the economic fallout from the crisis.Meanwhile, Scott Milne will run for VT lieutenant governor. The travel agency owner and former US Senate and gubernatorial candidate will face two unknowns in the GOP primary. On the Democratic side, assistant AG Molly Gray, Senate President Tim Ashe, state Sen. Debbie Ingram, and activist Brenda Siegel are all running for the slot.VTDigger fires political columnist John Walters; new union "almost certain" to protest. The announcement came last week in a terse email to employees, saying that Walters was "no longer an employee at VTDigger." He confirmed on Twitter yesterday, reports Seven Days' Paul Heintz. The issue appears to be his use of social media, and the new VTDigger Guild is likely to take it up with the National Labor Relations Board. Walters was let go by Seven Days last year after struggling with inaccuracies in his reporting.Marlboro College property to be bought by charter-network nonprofit. The college, which last year announced it is becoming part of Boston's Emerson College, had attracted several bidders for its 500-acre campus. The winner is Democracy Builders, a nonprofit run by former Obama administration education official Seth Andrew that runs the national Democracy Prep charter network. Its plan is to target low-income and first-generation college students from charter schools around the Northeast, who would be on campus for three two-week sessions a year, and otherwise would learn from home.Mabel has a dream. BBC sportscaster Andrew Cotter's dogs are back... only lockdown's obviously got him feeling more wistful than light-hearted. On the other hand, Mabel's (and Olive's) life pre-lockdown looks like it was pretty darn great.
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This evening at 7, you could check out Rutland-based singer-songwriter Phil Henry's livestream via Fairlee Arts. Henry does folk-pop acoustic originals centered around small-town life.
And this weekend is Art In Your Yard, organized by New London's Casey Biuso and Rosanna Long. It honors the much-loved children's book author and illustrator Tomie dePaola, who died in March. The idea is to make some art at home, display it in your yard or driveway, and pin your location on the map at the link so people can go see it. “This seemed like a colorful, community-minded way to give everyone a chance to remember him in an artistic way," Long told the VN recently.
Martha's On A Roll, the bright orange food truck helmed by Martha Lorden that serves breakfasts and lunch sandwiches, salads, and curries, has a new venue: From 8-5:30 today, next Friday, and probably Fridays after that as well, you'll find the truck in the Hanover High School parking lot at the corner of Lebanon Street and Hovey Lane. Lorden's also at the Rivermill complex in Leb on Tuesdays and DHMC's Heater Road facility on Wednesdays.
Today also marks the reopening of WRJ's Thyme restaurant for takeout and, weather permitting, outside dining. You'll need to call ahead for the latter—and to wear masks when you're not seated. They'll be open from 4 pm to 8 pm.
Now, what to do after dinner? Club Passim, the legendary Cambridge MA folk venue that's hosted everyone from Dylan to Shawn Colvin (and once refused Springsteen a gig there) is streaming live performances many nights of the week. Tonight it's Honeysuckle, tomorrow Sarah Siskind, Sunday Liz Longley, and Monday the folk-pop duo The Nields.
And here's a film festival like no other: Over 20 international festivals, including Berlin, Toyko, Sundance, Venice, and Toronto, are coming together on YouTube starting today and lasting until June 7. The WeAreOne global festival will bring both new and archived films to viewers—many, many of them. Here's hoping you never get a chance like this again, but while it's here, grab it! (Thanks, CJ!)
Notes & Comment
In a listserv post yesterday noting that Boloco is delivering, owner John Pepper also wrote this: We know there are many options and local businesses to support… we appreciate it when Boloco is included in that group, but most importantly, please remember to take the extra time and effort (and it often does require that) to support as many local and independent businesses as you can at this critical time. PPP for those businesses who received it is only 2-3 weeks away from being gone, and then everyone is on their own. It won’t be easy for anyone. There have already been and will continue to be casualties, but remember that every dollar spent locally makes a far greater impact than those spent online with large public companies. Never has it been more important for small communities to support each other. He adds in an email: $100 spent at a local business can make or break an entire day for that owner and her employees… $100 spent online with a large corporation is often a rounding error.
Reading Deeper
There seems to be growing evidence that a relatively small number of "super-spreaders" are responsible for a large percentage of Covid cases. Three separate studies—not yet peer-reviewed—conclude that about 10 percent of cases appear to have caused around 80 percent of new infections. Since there's no way currently to know who these people are before they infect others, Eileen Drage O'Reilly writes in Axios, the trick is to "control behaviors that cause superspreading events."
In the workplace, that burden is going to fall on management, write a group of biz-school profs from the University of Toronto, in MIT Technology Review. That's because, without a treatment or a vaccine, "places of work will be opportunities for infected people to infect others. This creates a management problem requiring management solutions, and managers do have control of those." In addition to things like temperature checks, the two key strategies: making interactions less risky and reducing interactions. "Every decision involves a trade-off between short-term profit and safety, and therefore assumes some risk," they conclude. "If tragedy strikes, as it likely will for some, then the central question will not be who is to blame but whether the risk they took was wise."
For the rest of us, what do we do? Experts still say the best thing is staying home, but it's summer, things are reopening, and a lot of people aren't going to do that. In The Atlantic, Amanda Mull runs down things to consider. In particular, ventilation—outdoors is vastly preferable to in, especially when there are large groups of people, close proximity, and interactions that last for an extended period of time. Like, say, bars. But how much risk you assume, she writes, "should also depend on how extensive the coronavirus outbreak is in your town, who you are, and whom you might encounter when you go out."
So here we are, faced with the weekend and, increasingly, a desperate need to make something extraordinary out of the ordinary. For inspiration, here's
with nothing but a squeaky floor board, a newspaper, and some tap shoes. Oh, and, you know, being Gene Kelly
.
(Thanks, DM!)
Have a fine weekend! See you Monday.
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