Daybreak Monday 10/24/22

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Maybe showers. There's a low pressure system falling apart off the coast, and a band of moisture headed north—all of which may or may not bring us a bit of rain over the next few hours. Odds drop after about 1 pm, though there's a slight chance the rest of the day and night. Cloudy all day, with a high around 60. Low 50s tonight.Apple trees: It's not just bear. Remember last week's photo of the young bear snacking on the lower tiers of an apple tree? Bob Wetzel sends in video of another reason some trees only have fruit higher up: "We call them the 'dancing deer,'" he writes.Hartford Selectboard places town manager on leave. Though, as Patrick Adrian reports in the Valley News, Tracy Yarlott-Davis has already updated her LinkedIn profile to show that her employment with the town ended this month. In a Friday email to town employees, the board said only that it wanted to thank Yarlott-Davis, who took over in February, 2021, “for the work she’s done for the town” and “wished her the best going forward.” Hartford's human resources director, Paula Nulty, and Finance Director Gail Ostrout will oversee day-to-day operations until the selectboard can appoint an interim manager.A monopine grows in Thetford. "Monopines" are those cellphone towers gussied up to look more tree-like than unadorned towers, even though they generally stick far above the natural canopy—and, over time, can shed their plastic needles. Now, reports Li Shen in Sidenote, the existing tower off Quail John Road in Thetford seems likely to gain another 15 feet, given T-Mobile's request to add six new antennas and six new reverse radio heads (which help run cellular communication). Unless the town challenges the move before the PUC, writes Li, "the fifteen-foot growth spurt is a done deal."In Norwich, school septic plans take shape... and hot lunches are a success. Nora Doyle-Burr's article in the VN focuses on the advent of hot meals at the Marion Cross School—a first-ever departure from decades of students bringing lunches from home or getting bagged lunches brought over from Hanover. Until the school can resolve its longstanding septic issues, she writes, those hot meals are also brought over from Hanover, then re-heated. But septic progress appears to be in the offing: the school district on Thursday issued an RFP for "a pre-treatment system for an on-site septic plant."Fallout from Randolph Union volleyball-team controversy continues... on soccer teams. The issues involve two different coaches. In VTDigger, Ethan Weinstein reports that Northfield Police Chief John Helfant was told last week he could not volunteer to coach the high school girls' soccer team because of an incomplete background check; Helfant claims the move is retaliation for a commentary he wrote siding with girls on the volleyball team who'd complained about a transgender teammate in the locker room. And the conservative Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal reported last week that Travis Allen, father of the volleyball team member who first went public on WCAX, was suspended without pay as middle school girls soccer coach for refusing to apologize for referring to the transgender student, who identifies as a girl, as a boy.Creating "a bubble of joy in the midst of a pandemic." Next week at Hanover's Nugget Theater, filmmaker Nora Jacobson's documentary, Passion in a Pandemic: Making Opera at Hanover High School, will get its Upper Valley premiere. The near-hour-long film highlights choral director Jennifer Chambers' project to teach students opera as the pandemic roiled—with the help of renowned Dartmouth conductor Filippo Ciabatti—and the camera, writes Susan Apel in Artful, finds students "grappling with a new art form and Italian with its rolled Rs, and with exhortations to embrace something called legato."NH? It's serious about its asbestos-removal laws. On Friday, the NH attorney general's office announced that the state police have arrested a Swanzey man for removing asbestos-containing shingles from a Charlestown home without a license, then illegally dumping them at a residence in Lempster and by the side of a road in Acworth, reports the Union Leader's Shawne Wickham (here via Yahoo). Aaron Doleszny, who runs a property management company, was also accused of enlisting a juvenile "to transport and dispose of the harmful materials."“We’re going to be fighting on two fronts": Covid and flu. That was DH infectious disease specialist Elizabeth Talbot, who along with NH state epidemiologist Benjamin Chan spoke last week to a webinar hosted by a new group, GoTruthNH, formed to counter medical misinformation in the state. As the Monitor's David Brooks reports, the pair touched on the recommended gaps between boosters—waiting less than two or three months isn't dangerous, Talbot said, just helps maximize immune response. And a bad flu season in the southern hemisphere is a warning about what may be coming.“Be free! Do your thing!” Chloe Sardonis is a "protection forester" with VT's Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, and she's talking to a tiny parasitoid wasp. VT Public's Abagael Giles reports that state scientists are releasing the wasps at three sites around Vermont in a bid to control the emerald ash borer. The wasps target EAB larvae, implanting their own eggs, which then hatch and devour the grub. Eradicating EAB is a lost cause, a state forest specialist tells Giles, but the insects can reduce the population to the point where future ash trees "have a fighting chance to defend themselves."The Monday Vordle. With a word from Friday's Daybreak (promise).

And let's just start the week with...

The boss.

off his new album of covers,

Only the Strong Survive.

See you tomorrow.

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

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