WELCOME BACK, UPPER VALLEY!
We're in a dry slot today after last night's rain, which was thanks to a band that moved through from Lake Ontario. Today, clouds and sun, temps getting into the mid-40s. There'll still be wind, and even some gusts this morning, but it won't be howling like last night. Down to about 30 overnight.
William Daugherty got his drone out yesterday and flew it over Dartmouth's campus. No video, but a lot of vertiginous stills of buildings you'll recognize and maybe some you won't. Plus a bunch of cool-looking geometric walkway patterns.
It happened just after 8 pm and was centered a few miles south-southwest of Lyme. It wasn't strong—2.0—but people from Canaan to Lebanon to Quechee heard a rumble and/or felt it. No damage or injuries were reported.
They're doing line striping today and tomorrow. Once that's done, they'll return the roadway to its pre-construction traffic pattern while crews work on drainage structures on the shoulders.
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The new downstairs spot below Main Street, 4U Bubble Tea, will open in January, reports
The Dartmouth
's Lorraine Liu, bringing the popular flavored-drink-with-tapioca-balls back to town after the Swirl and Pearl closed earlier this year. 4U is owned by Janice Zheng, who runs Oriental Wok Express—you know it as "gas station Chinese"—in old West Leb. It will be takeout only to begin, 10 am to 8 pm, and there'll be snacks from Taiwan, Japan, and S. Korea as well.
The news that Thomas McHenry will leave in June after his first three-year term ends came in a press release from the board on Friday. As the
Valley News'
s John Lippman notes, neither McHenry nor the board would cite a reason. McHenry presided over intensely difficult fiscal times at VLS, leading him to revoke tenure for most of the school's tenured faculty, which divided the campus. In its release, the board said McHenry has made the school "financially stronger and enhanced its educational programs."
So, since you're sticking around home for Thanksgiving... On her Upper Valley Fun blog, Katie Donovan has a list of take-out options divided by NH and VT locations—places like Pine, Arianna's, Kitchen 56, a free takeout hosted by 603 Café in Canaan, Wicked Awesome, Simon Pearce, the Hartland Diner... And if you're pulling the meal together yourself, there's still time to order a turkey from local farms; she's got a short list of possibilities there, too. Some places are missing—like Hogwash Farm in Norwich—but there's a comments section to add information.Small NH retailers want to keep shoppers out of their stores on Black Friday. So, reports the Granite State News Collaborative's Brad Spiegel, they're encouraging customers to shop online, call in orders ahead of time, and in one way or another spread things out. “We will push pretty hard to prioritize web store orders and pick-up orders instead of people coming to browse,” says Tony Vandenberg of Black Moon Games in Lebanon. There'll also be promotions—plaid scarves in the Mt. Washington Valley, dollars-off-future-purchase scratch tickets at Black Moon.Woodstock merchants gird for... whatever. As they move into the crucial holiday season, the VN's Lippman reports, they're both buoyed by a more-successful-than-expected leaf season and wary of a locked-down Thanksgiving-to-Christmas stretch with, at best, a fraction of the out-of-state tourists they rely upon. On the other hand, Lippman writes, it's possible that second-home owners who've relocated to town and warnings about overwhelmed delivery companies may boost local shopping. "We've just got to be ready for anything," says the Yankee Bookshop's Kari Meutsch. “I don’t know a librarian in this state who’s sleeping, quite frankly." That's Andrea Thorpe, director of the Richards Free Library in Newport NH, talking to the VN's Tim Camerato. After staying tamped down for months, libraries and the librarians who run them had been reopening gradually or planning to do so, but rising Covid numbers have them rethinking it all. The Lebanon libraries decided last week to remain contactless; Thorpe, eyeing rising cases in Newport, is prepared to go back to online-only if they reach 1 percent of the town's population. Friday's executive order. As you've no doubt heard by now, on Friday VT Gov. Phil Scott wrenched the spigot closed a few turns, ordering bars closed as of Saturday and "suspending" gatherings of more than one household, indoors or out. “Given our recent case growth, we have no choice but to restrict social gatherings, whether at a home, in a bar or in a parking lot after a game," he said at his press conference. Here's the actual executive order—you'll want to scroll down past all the Whereases to "It Is Further Ordered..."VT schools charged with contact tracing. As has also happened in NH, a hard-pressed state health department is leaning on school personnel to help handle the impact of rising caseloads. Health staff will continue to interview anyone who tests positive, VTDigger's Lola Duffort reports, but schools will have to let staff and students' families know that they need to quarantine. The move has placed an unwelcome new load on schools, which are already short-staffed and are facing new surveillance testing. “Frankly, we’re hanging by a thread. We don’t have any more bandwidth,” says one superintendent."Being partially open is not a business strategy; it’s just a way to lose more money.” Performance venues in Vermont—and elsewhere—are looking at a bleak winter, and worrying that without a fresh infusion of capital from the federal government, many of them won't make it through to when they're allowed to reopen, writes Ellie French in VTDigger. Despite creative efforts to use Zoom and outdoor space, rocker Grace Potter tells her, there's no substitute for the real deal. “Live music is such a powerful force; it’s something that can only be felt and understood in that moment. And a stage is the only place it can happen.”VT to issue free hunting licenses to tribal citizens. The move won't come in time for this year's hunting season, but starting in January the state will make hunting and fishing licenses free to tribe members who have an Abenaki Hunting and Fishing License Tribal form certified by the appropriate tribal official. They'll also need a current, valid tribal identification card and, as you'd expect, other paperwork, like proof of having held a previous hunting license in the US or Canada."If people want to move, they want to move somewhere vibrant that doesn’t feel like Anywheresville USA." The new president of the Preservation Trust of VT, Ben Doyle, talks to VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen about his goals and, in particular, approach to the vitality of town centers. Doyle, who grew up in the Northeast Kingdom, took over last month after the the death last year of founder Paul Bruhn. "It’s not about keeping the downtowns preserved in amber," Doyle says. "If it’s not alive, it’s dead. It’s got to be vibrant, and there are a lot of different ways that can happen."Some day, you might be able to mountain-bike the length of Vermont. It probably won't be for another decade, says Angus McCusker, who runs the Velomont Trail Collective, the group organizing the project, but it just got a good step closer, after Velomont landed a $526,375 grant from the Northern Border Regional Commission to build 10 miles of trails, including one linking Rochester and Pittsfield, in the Greens. Linked hiking and snowmobile trails, of course, have a long history in the state. "It just hadn't been applied to mountain biking," McCusker tells the Rutland Herald's Gordon Dritschilo.Can you tell when a photo was taken? This is a pretty intriguing little experiment on The Pudding. They present you with five photos and ask you to indicate the year you think each was taken by using a slider on a timeline. Of course, you're looking for clues: what people are wearing, haircuts, what the surroundings look like... But there's at least one other clue that factors into your guesses. They explain everything once you're done, and show you what other people saw, as well.
And now...
Dartmouth's last update was on Saturday, when it reported 6 student cases and 2 among faculty and staff. In all, 29 students and 7 faculty/staff were in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 10 students and 15 faculty/staff were in isolation awaiting results or because they'd tested positive.
NH reported 462 positive test results Friday, 384 on Saturday, and 361 yesterday, bringing its total to 14,671. There were 4 new deaths, which now stand at 499; 69 people are hospitalized (up 5). The current caseload is at 3,306 (up 778 over the weekend). The state is still struggling with its dashboard (it promises a fix tomorrow afternoon), but town-by-town numbers are available: Newport has 39 active cases; Hanover has 18 (up 9 over the weekend); Lebanon has 12 (up 4); Claremont has 10 (up 2), Charlestown has 9 (up 2), Canaan has 7 (up at least 3), as does New London (down 1). Sunapee remains at 6. There are 1-4 cases each in Haverhill, Piermont, Orford, Warren, Dorchester, Lyme, Enfield, Plainfield, Grantham, Unity, Goshen, Newbury, and Wilmot.
VT added 88 cases on Friday, 95 on Saturday, and 45 yesterday, bringing its official total to 2,889, with 807 of those still active (up 173 over the weekend). Deaths remain at 59 and 20 people with confirmed cases (up 1) are hospitalized. Windsor County gained 5 cases over the weekend and stands at 151 for the pandemic, with 23 of those in the past 14 days. Orange County gained 18 new cases to stand at 91 cumulatively, 53 of them reported in the past 14 days. In weekly town-by-town totals reported Friday, Hartford now stands at 36 cumulative cases (up 6 over last week). Killington held steady at 20 and Woodstock at 14. Springfield gained 1, and has now had 12 all told. Hartland remains at 11, while Windsor gained 2 to stand at 11 and Randolph gained 1 case to stand at 10. Norwich gained 1 case and is now at 9 for the pandemic. Chelsea has joined the specific-number set with 6, and Royalton remains at 6.
News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help keep it going, here's how:
At 5 pm, Dartmouth's Dickey Center has a post-election followup conversation with three foreign policy experts: Johnnie Carson, former assistant secretary of state for African affairs; Chris Savos, former director of the CIA's weapons intelligence and nonproliferation center; and Anne Witkowsky, former deputy coordinator for homeland security at the State Department and then deputy assistant secretary at Defense. The Q&A will be live.
This evening at 7, Ciné Salon Online talks to Patrick Friel, who ferrets out rare, early silent films that are available online. He'll be showing some of his favorite discoveries, a series of shorts to be presented in chronological order; they date from between 1895 and 1915 and come from countries as diverse as Italy, Japan, Sweden, the US, and France.
So, yeah, Fleetwood Mac. But... not Fleetwood Mac. Infinity Song, five brothers and sisters from NYC—born in Detroit but moved to NJ, just outside New York, by their musician/producer father, John Boyd, and now performers, songwriters, and producers in their own right—
that somehow manages to be true to a song that everyone's pretty much got in their DNA, and yet entirely original.
(Thanks, TD!)
See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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