Daybreak Friday 7/10/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

More haze, more fog, more humidity. But maybe a couple of degrees cooler, and the fog, at least, will lift and it will be partly sunny at least through the morning. There's a system approaching from the south and ahead of it we may get some high-level clouds that should help keep us from the 90s they're expecting elsewhere. Chance of rain starting this afternoon, ahead of the main event late tonight and tomorrow. Even so, temps only into the low 70s tonight. Heron chicks grow fast! Etna photographer Jim Block's been hanging around in Springfield, NH, following the progress of a nestful of Great Blue Herons. Back in mid-June, the chicks were tiny (check out pic #3); these days, they're feeling their oats, squabbling for food (except for the smallest one, who tries to stay out of the way), and looking much more like herons. A streak in the sky. You may not have been following this, but there's a once-in-a-lifetime comet up there that's become visible to the naked eye: NEOWISE (for the space telescope that first spotted it in March). You can see it best right now in the northwest sky an hour before daybreak; starting Sunday, look about an hour after sunset. Yesterday morning, the folks at the Mt. Washington Observatory caught it after dodging the early fog. It's quite a pic. (Thanks, JF!)Last numbers for a bit... (but see way below)

Dartmouth shuts down Hanover Country Club for good, axes five varsity sports. The official announcement came in an email to the campus yesterday, though athletes in the affected sports—men’s and women’s golf, men’s lightweight rowing, and men’s and women’s swimming and diving—got a few minutes' heads up via a Zoom webinar. The college was looking at $1 million+ deficits at the country club; it "has no plans to sell the property and will explore how to keep it open for community recreational use," The Dartmouth reports.When beavers up and leave... Writer and naturalist Ted Levin moved to the fen in Thetford he calls Coyote Hollow 23 years ago, when a beaver dam blocked the brook outlet and the water was high. There were marsh wrens and muskrat lodges, otters and moose and osprey. Then the beavers "ate themselves out of house and home, literally," and decamped. The water level dropped. But he's found other comforts, as he writes in his latest blog post.Visible incidents of intolerance unsettle Upper Valley. Black Lives Matter signs have been stolen and trashed in Lebanon, Norwich, and Meriden. A Nazi flag appeared in an apartment window in White River Junction. Racist language appeared on the bottom of the Quechee Club pool. An interracial couple found a cross gouged into their car. Patriot Front signs have appeared around Hartford. And though Leb police say they haven't seen an uptick in hate incidents, Hartford Police Chief Phil Kasten tells the VN's Anna Merriman that his department has “definitely received more reports” recently.Federal judge likely to approve federal class-action settlement in Dartmouth suit. At a hearing yesterday, Judge Landya B. McCafferty commended both parties in the high-profile sexual misconduct suit for agreeing to settle a case with such "highly charged allegations," NHPR's Daniela Allee reports. The suit alleged that the college failed to protect students in the Department of Psychological and Brain Science from harassment and assault by three professors. In all, 74 women are part of the class, and on average, each will receive about $105,000, once the settlement agreement is approved. Proposed gas pipeline bites the dust. Back in 2017, Liberty Utilities got an okay from NH's Public Utilities Commission to build a storage depot for fracked natural gas, and to construct a pipeline through Lebanon and Hanover. Ever since then, a coalition of citizens around the Upper Valley has been fighting it, though for the past couple of years Liberty has been quiet about it. Yesterday, one of the leaders of the group, Jon Chafee, announced that the project's dead: the company failed to meet the minimal requirement to start construction within two years of the PUC's approval. (Thanks, SB!)SPONSORED: Upper Valley forecast: More heat waves. Over the last five decades, average temperatures in northern New England have risen more than 2 degrees F, making readings in the 90s, like yesterday's steam bath, more frequent. And while the heat may be bad, it’s the oppressive humidity that’s killing us—heat waves kill more people than tornadoes in America. As local temperatures rise, you may be thinking about home air conditioning. If so, electric heat pumps—powered by solar—can shrink your carbon footprint and save thousands on your energy bills. Learn more: www.solaflect.com. Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.   

NH regulators agree to hearing on utility disconnections. You may remember that last week, the state's consumer advocate, Don Kreis, petitioned the Public Utilities Commission for emergency rules in response to a closed-door agreement to end the moratorium on disconnections on July 15. The PUC says Kreis's petition is "premature," but agreed to a remote public hearing next Tuesday. “I hope ratepayers turn out in droves to explain why it would be unconscionable, in a pandemic-induced economic depression, to allow utilities to disconnect people and resume collections efforts,” Kreis said in response."Vermont is off the charts in the extremely bad direction." That's Jeff Thompson, who runs the Boston Fed's New England Public Policy Center, talking to VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen about the fact that the state has very low Covid numbers but is taking a huge hit to its economy. “You guys are so reliant on the sectors that shut down. People didn’t get sick and die as much in Vermont, but you are the state most heavily dependent on sectors that shut down, such as tourism and hospitality.” In essence, Allen writes, whatever the virus numbers locally, the state will struggle as the rest of the country struggles.Holcombe calls for ethics and transparency reforms. Norwich's Rebecca Holcombe, running for the Democratic nomination for governor in VT, yesterday proposed multi-year bans on state lobbying by legislators and gubernatorial appointees, and strengthening the state ethics commission. She also attacked the state's "deny first" approach to public records requests. “We are facing a crisis of confidence in government nationally,” she told a press conference. “Even here in Vermont we see that there are some interests that are better able to place someone full time in the Legislature to represent themselves.”Marlboro College sale hits another snag. In May, the college and Seth Andrew, founder of a nonprofit called Democracy Builders, announced they'd reached an agreement for Andrew to buy the campus and create a new, two-year program for low-income, first-generation college students that would open in September. However, VTDigger's Lola Duffort reports, the state Board of Ed has had no recent communication with Andrew about approving accreditation, and Marlboro alums are raising questions about allegations of “racism, bullying, and manipulative behavior" at a charter school network Andrew founded.Remember the raised middle finger statue in Westford? The story's more complicated than it appears. Seven Days reports that Wilmington, VT filmmaker Garret Harkawik has a new short film, A Very Large Gesture, that delves into the bad blood between Ted Pelkey, the Westford resident who commissioned the 700-pound, 16-foot-high sculpture, and town officials. The film, writes Ken Picard, "manages to shift the narrative on Pelkey’s pièce de résistance from being a standard David-versus-Goliath tale to something more nuanced." Links to the film (free to stream) at the link.Just in case you're looking for some unusual Vermont images... Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky specializes in making large-format, beautiful photos of industrial landscapes. Among the many things he's photographed are Barre's marble quarries—which he heard about after checking out quarries in northern Ontario and being disappointed by their small size. He drove down to Barre... and has since made a half-dozen trips. Link takes you to the results, as well as photos from quarries in Italy, India, China, and Portugal.Oh, and before I forget: The Far Side's back. Sort of. It's been 25 years since Gary Larson quit cartooning, traumatizing legions of boomers and GenXers. But a few years ago he got a tablet and, he wrote on his blog Wednesday, "within moments, I was having fun drawing again." He's just put up three new cartoons (two are pretty good, one's, you know, Gary Larson), and though he's not going to be doing a daily, he's out of retirement. "I’ve got my coffee, I’ve got this cool gizmo, and I’ve got no deadlines. And—to borrow from Sherlock Holmes—the game is afoot," he writes. (Thanks, NS!)Well, that was a few months, huh? In case you missed it yesterday, Daybreak will be off the next couple of weeks. So I want to say THANK YOU: to those of you who hit that button just below and contribute and make it possible for Daybreak to be here; to those of you who offer us good photos and fine music and ways to pass the time; to the nearly 3,000 of you who've signed up since the pandemic began; to everyone who forwards Daybreak to family, friends, and neighbors and made that happen; and to all of you who read it day in and day out. You make me look forward to July 27.  

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Let's go out on a high note: Fiddle virtuoso Mark O'Connor with Wynton Marsalis and his combo at a jazz festival in France in 2010, doing

As one of the commenters says, "If your foot ain't tapping while you watch this, you must be dead."

(Thanks, DM!)

Take good care of yourselves, have a fine couple of weeks, and be here when I get back, okay? See you on the 27th.

Written and published by Rob Gurwitt         Banner by Tom Haushalter    Poetry editor: Michael Lipson  About Rob                                                    About Tom                             About Michael

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