Daybreak Friday 6/11/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Oh, well. There's an upper-level disturbance coming through today, bringing clouds, a slight chance of showers early this afternoon, building to a decent chance this evening and tonight. Because of those clouds, the high will only get into the mid- or upper 60s (which is fine, just fine, really), down again into the lower 50s tonight. Winds today from the south.So, how was your eclipse?

"I'm flying! I'm flying!" Or, at least, trying... because flight turns out to be a problem when you're flightless. It's Lost Woods, Week 28, and Auk is nothing if not determined. Writer, illustrator, and, now, cartoonist DB Johnson chronicles a week of the Lost Woods crew's doings: Scroll right to see what happens next or left to catch up on previous weeks. If you've missed a week (or more), check out the archive and synopsis behind the three little parallel lines at the top right.Cheating scandal? Dartmouth says "Never mind." On Wednesday evening, reports Nora Doyle-Burr in the Valley News, Geisel Dean Duane Compton announced to the school community that the med school has dropped all honor-code-violation charges against the students caught up in the cheating scandal this winter and spring. The decision, he wrote, was based on "new information received from our learning management system provider," and added, “I have apologized to the students for what they have been through and believe dismissal of the charges is the best path forward." SPONSORED: Looking for something to lift your spirits? Come be part of St. Thomas Episcopal Church’s outdoor prayer service, held each Sunday at 10 am at Crossroads Academy in Lyme, NH. All are welcome to experience faith, hope, and love this summer. Find out more at the maroon link. Sponsored by St. Thomas Episcopal Church.Should Upper Valley restaurants require patrons to be vaccinated if they want to eat indoors? That's the "big question" in this week's We The People news quiz—though there are plenty of others, like who bought Koffee Kup and when does the Nugget plan to reopen. Meanwhile, fully a third of the 520 respondents last week don't think their school system is handling student mental health adequately, while 52 percent aren't sure—suggesting, says We The People's Kevin McCurdy, that "there is an opportunity for school systems to be communicating with parents around the topic."You know that ParkMobile app Hanover uses? Uh-oh. At the end of March, the company announced that a data breach had exposed some 21 million users' customer email addresses, license plate numbers, phone numbers, even vehicle nicknames (if users entered them) to hackers. A Vermonter has filed a class action suit on users' behalf, reports VTDigger's Seamus McAvoy. "ParkMobile failed to prioritize data and cybersecurity by adopting reasonable data and cybersecurity measures to prevent and detect the unauthorized access," the suit reads.A taste of things to come. The it-only-feels-like-forever tunnel project under the Lebanon Mall, which will connect the Mascoma River Greenway to the Northern Rail Trail, is drawing to a close. If you're curious what it looks like right now, WCAX's Adam Sullivan heads over to check it out. Many mall businesses suffered: “There was the pandemic and no one was coming up at all, but then even the people that were coming out couldn’t necessarily find us,” says Makayla Ruel of Lalo’s Taqueria. Now, foot traffic is rising and there are high hopes the trails and tunnel will bring lots of people through.Hiking close to home: Okemo State Forest's Healdville Trail. This is a 6-mile round trip hike up Ludlow Mountain, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance says. It's a good half-day family hike (consider lunch at the top), and though it starts gently, it will take some work to get to the top: there's an almost 2,000’ elevation gain. Along the way you'll find wildflowers and a wide variety of trees, with a teaser of an overlook a half-mile before you reach a fire tower and amazing summit views of the surrounding mountains. The trail can be busy on weekends. Parking is just off of Station Road in Mount Holly, Vermont. "Laurie List" disclosure headed for reality. The NH House yesterday approved a measure to make public the list of NH police officers whose credibility may challenge during a trial because of past behavior, reports NHPR's Todd Bookman. It gives officers 180 days to appeal their status in superior court (or 90 days if their names were added after April, 2018). The measure has already passed the Senate, and a spokesman for Gov. Chris Sununu says he supports it.“Nature does crazy stuff." That's one way of putting it. For the last few weeks, beachgoers from Wells, ME, along the NH coast, and down to Gloucester, MA have been reporting feet stained black by something in the sand that's almost impossible to wash off. Some weird algae? Oil that washed up on the sand? Nope, reports Heather Murphy in the NYT. ME's Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry says it was likely a black kelp fly die-off. Millions of them. "I have worked on the geology of beaches for 40 years on the Maine coast and never seen anything like this," says a U of ME marine geologist.NH's state of emergency ends tonight. At his weekly Covid press briefing yesterday, Sununu announced that, after over a year, he'll let the pandemic state of emergency lapse as of midnight. “We’re not in a public health crisis, we’re in more of a management mode,” he said. The move won't have much impact on the average Granite Stater, but it does affect how funds can be allocated; he'll be keeping a "public health incident" status in place, which will give liability protection to vaccine providers, reports InDepthNH's Paula Tracy.VT businesses, non-profits ask Scott to go slow on lifting state of emergency. In fact, 130 of them signed a letter to the governor—including Vital Communities, LISTEN, Sustainable Woodstock, and the food shelves in Randolph and Thetford. Their point, reports VTDigger's Emma Cotton: Access to emergency funding, especially for food and housing, has been crucial to helping vulnerable Vermonters. “We believe that, unless a new plan is in place to ensure all in Vermont can meet these two most basic needs, our entire recovery is jeopardized,” they write.Is VT "just a very convenient test case" on religious freedom and LGBTQ rights? In The 74, a nonpartisan education news site, Asher Lehrer-Small looks at last week's federal appeals court opinion that students in school choice districts may use public funds for religious schools. VT's laws lack clarity on how those funds can be used, and the case may may wind up at the Supreme Court. And that, says former ed secy Rebecca Holcombe, may be the point: “We were picked precisely because we have a weak statutory and regulatory set of constructs around the use of public dollars in private settings."Wait. Now it's gypsy moths? They're baaaack, says the VT Agency of Agriculture. Or, actually, they never went away. But in the 1990s, after the last major outbreak in 1991, a fungus called Entomophaga maimaiga laid waste to the gypsy moth population. The fungus thrives after periods of wet weather—and in the last few years, we've been having droughts and dry weather. So gypsy moth populations are rebounding. Trees can usually survive a few years of their leaf-eating, but here's yet another reason to look forward to rain. Need a road trip? There are two Frank Lloyd Wright houses accesible to the public in New England, and they're both in Manchester, NH. And they just opened. Or, in the case of the Zimmerman House, re-opened, since the Currier Museum has been leading tours there for a while. But the Kalil House, just down the street, didn't come into the Currier's hands until 2019, notes Julia Ann Weekes in the Union Leader, so this is the first time the public's been allowed in. She gives their histories and a preview of what you can expect. Note: The only way to see them is on a two-hour tour. Now, again, how many oceans are there? If the words "two-hour tour" put you in mind of a certain 1960s sitcom (I know, an hour short, but still).... The National Geographic Society has just recognized a fifth ocean, in addition to the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic. The US (or at least, NOAA) actually recognized the Southern Ocean, around Antarctica, back in 1999 (as did some other countries), but there isn't international agreement; NatGeo geographer Alex Tait tells the Washington Post's Paulina Firozi that "we thought it was important at this point to officially recognize it" as a distinct oceanic region.It's all in the perspective. Juggling's cool. But seen from above? Even cooler. This is Taylor Glenn, a juggler originally from Salt Lake City who runs a YouTube channel filled with tutorials, advice, and other juggling-related videos. Watching from directly above as she handles balls and clubs makes it all seem just that much more fluid and floaty and magical.

Last numbers for the week.

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Let's just end the week in style... Bob Dylan, Roger McGuinn, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, and George Harrison

, 1992, Madison Square Garden.

(Thanks, JF!)

Have a fine weekend. See you Monday.

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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