WELL GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Yep. Warmer. There was a yo-yo cold front that dropped south last night, got stalled by building high pressure to our north, and is now returning as a warm front—bringing us a slight chance of showers late morning/early afternoon. Mostly, though, today starts out foggy and a bit cloudy then turns mostly sunny, and this warming trend we've been in continues for a few more days, with temps today in the mid- and higher 70s. Down tonight into the low 50s.Heads up: No Daybreak Monday or Tuesday. Back in your inbox on Wednesday. And a different kind of heads up: Probable Sykes Mtn. Ave-area traffic snarls today. As work gets going in earnest on the roundabout, VTrans is shifting all traffic to the southbound lanes of Route 5 and to one travel lane each way on a portion of Sykes Mountain Ave. This will last for several months. There'll be flaggers out today to guide cars through the new pattern. (VN)Sometimes, being a farmhand has its perks. Though it doesn't hurt to work down the road from the Post Mills Airport, where hot-air balloon maestro Brian Boland hangs out. For the last few mornings, Boland's been giving free pre-work balloon rides to field hands at Crossroad Farm, a treat he arranged with farm co-owner Tim Taylor. "He asked me if it would be ok to give them a little gift for all their summer hard work and to thank us for letting him use the fields for his landing pad," Taylor explains. Some Covid refugees are spending their time here creatively. The Sheila Divine is a Boston-based post-punk/shoegaze band with a strong following in its hometown and in Buffalo, where lead guitarist Aaron Perrino is from. When the pandemic hit, Perrino decamped to Woodstock, where he decided to start writing new songs. One a day, in fact, which the band then records. "One day it’s a rip off of Echo & the Bunnymen or Bob Dylan, and the next I’m trying to use vocoders and channel modern hip hop,” he writes. “They aren’t all masterpieces, but at least once a week I am very happy with the outcome.”NH to loosen indoor dining restrictions next week. At a press conference yesterday, Gov. Chris Sununu announced that restaurants will be able to move tables closer together than six feet if they place barriers between them. “We’re very confident we can move forward with this model in a safe manner,” he said.Meanwhile, NH health officials say Granite Staters may be letting their guard down. They announced yesterday that data collected by the state's contact tracers shows the average number of close contacts identified for each Covid case has been rising. It spiked around Labor Day, and with community spread still an issue in the state, health officials "are concerned people might be letting their guard down at backyard barbecues or birthday parties," WMUR reports."They tend to crawl around in the vegetation instead of risk flying on high wind days.” If you were a small butterfly living above 4,000 feet in the Presidentials, you'd be cautious, too. NHPR's Sean Hurley spent a day with lepidopterist Heidi Holman and her team as they work to figure out if the White Mountain Fritillary is threatened by climate change and, if so, how to save it. It took a year to figure out which were female. Now they want to learn what the caterpillars eat. “If we don't know the host plant, we don't know if that's at risk, and then how quickly the habitat could be at risk," says Holman.“Your car will be your locker room now." NH's alpine and nordic ski areas have proposed a "trail map" for finding their way through the pandemic to the state. Some of it's familiar—like electronic ticketing—but they're also focused on cutting the time skiers spend indoors by adding food trucks and aiming to discourage or outright prohibit skiers from booting up or changing inside and leaving their belongings under tables and benches. If protesters burn your story, does that mean you hit a nerve? Remember Chelsea Edgar's story in Seven Days about the street protests in Burlington? After it was published, activists put out calls to collect copies of the paper and bring them to Battery Park; circulation staff yesterday found empty newsstands and racks around downtown. Yesterday evening, organizers asked protesters to "paint words on the newsprint that represent white supremacy and patriarchy"—they were then burned. This is "the very authoritarian behavior they are protesting," wrote publisher Paula Routly in a statement.VT's gov, lieutenant gov candidates face off in first debates.
Gov. Phil Scott and Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman sparred over taxes, the state budget, a 24-hour waiting period for handgun purchases, and Zuckerman's past criticism of the VT National Guard.
Meanwhile, Republican Scott Milne attacked Democrat Molly Gray for not voting in several election cycles between 2008 and 2018; "That is not something I’m proud of,” Gray responded, before blasting Milne for being vague in criticizing her policy proposals as adding costs to the state's budget.
36,000 miles. That's how far a single Bicknell's Thrush has flown over the course of a remarkable 10-year life as it's migrated between Mt. Mansfield and the Dominican Republic each year. It was collected last week in the VT Center for Ecostudies' final banding session atop the mountain. As they released the bird, writes VCE director Chris Rimmer in a blog post, "we had to wonder...if we’d see him again in 2021." Overall, they tallied 72 birds. And Rimmer survived the night up there even though he forgot to pack his sleeping bag. "Oh, ocelots impugn. I tan. A meek Alaska yak kayaks a lake, emanating up mist, Ole. Coho!" Confused? Read it backward. Mark Saltveit was the 2012 world palindrome champion, and he may just be the world's leading expert on the subject. Though, as he says, "It's not like anybody else is trying." Among his researches: a 58-line poem in Latin attacking the king of Sweden, published in 1608, in which each line is an original palindrome. He moved to Middlebury from Oregon last month; Seven Days' Sally Pollak has a profile.Of the top 10 women big-wave surfers in the world, three get paid while all 10 of the top men do. Maybe that will start changing, now that Brazil's Maya Gabeira nailed the biggest wave surfed by anyone during the 2019-20 season, off Nazaré, Portugal—73.5 feet, just confirmed by a team of wave engineers and scientists. This NYT story by Adam Skolnik goes into the details, but really, what's mind-blowing is the video header of Gabeira's ride. (Thanks, AS!)"Some people think I'm eccentric... I find the lookout experience to be very full." At one time in this country, there were 9,000 staffed fire lookouts on mountaintops; these days, there are 60. Jim Henterley, a naturalist and illustrator, spends his summers in the historic Desolation Peak Fire Lookout—once staffed by Jack Kerouac—overlooking the North Cascades near the Washington/British Columbia border. If you've ever wondered what it's like, filmmakers Lindsey Hegan and Chris Naum have just produced the reflective 12-minute Ode to Desolation, about Henterley and his calling.
Last numbers for the week...
Dartmouth's down to just 1 active case, a student, with 4 other students recovered. In all, 4,050 students and 1,792 faculty/staff have been tested. 13 students are in quarantine (because of travel or exposure), and 8 students and 12 faculty/staff are in isolation as they await results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 37 new positive test results yesterday, bringing its official total to 8,044. There were no new deaths, which remain at 438. The state has 281 current cases in all (up 15), including 8 in Grafton County (up 1), 6 in Sullivan (up 1), and 24 in Merrimack (down 1). There are between 1 and 4 active cases each in Lyme, Hanover, Lebanon, Plainfield, Enfield, Springfield, Claremont, Charlestown, New London, Newbury, and, now, Sunapee.
VT reported 2 new cases yesterday, bringing its official total to 1,724, with 100 of those (up 1) still active. Deaths remain at 58 total, and 2 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized. Windsor County remains at 84 cases over the course of the pandemic, with 3 of those coming in the past 14 days; Orange County remains at 24 cumulative cases, with 3 of those in the past 14 days.
News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
Vermont is distributing close to $1.2 million in technical assistance funding for small businesses looking to recover from Covid setbacks. Today at noon they're running a webinar for small-business owners interested in finding out more.
Matthew Nisbet, a Dartmouth grad who teaches communications and public policy at Northeastern, is researching a book on Buddhism, yoga, and other mindfulness practices, how they influence our mind and body, why they're growing more popular, and what lessons they hold for living a better life. He'll be talking about all that online today at 4, sponsored by Dartmouth's Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement.
At 6 pm, Vermont Humanities and the Springfield Town Library present poet Rajnii Eddins, who uses spoken word to engage diverse audiences on race, culture, equity, "and the richness to be found in each of our stories." He'll be reading from his poetry and talking about how sharing one's own story builds mutual understanding.
And at 6:45, Hartford Parks & Rec is showing Big on the big screen in Lyman Point Park.
Meanwhile, if you're looking for stuff to do this weekend... Tomorrow from 9 am to noon, the Hartford Tree Board is holding its annual tree and shrub sale at Hartford Town Hall. "Buy a plant," they say, "and remove some carbon dioxide from the planet." Trees include white oak, red maple, cottonwood, paper birch, sycamore, and red maple. (No link.)
Also tomorrow, Positive Tracks, the Hanover-based nonprofit that works with young people around the country to use sport to catalyze change, is holding a "Get Your Vote On" 5K: run, walk, bike, swim, whatever gets you breathing hard for 5K, and they'll donate $5 on your behalf to When We All Vote, a national, non-partisan group founded by Michelle Obama and others to encourage voter registration and turnout.
And BarnArts launches its tour of a staged reading of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here. At Fable Farm in Barnard tomorrow at 2 pm, same time Sunday at East End Park in Woodstock, then elsewhere around VT on subsequent weekends, including WRJ Oct. 25.
Meanwhile though... It's Friday.
: "Ghosts," from his new album.
Ghosts runnin’ through the nightOur spirits filled with light
Have a wonderful weekend. See you Wednesday.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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