Daybreak Monday 11/30/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Well, at least we got yesterday. Today, on the other hand, low pressure and a storm system are moving in and setting up shop, and it's just going to be ugly out there. With warmer air filtering in above us it looks like it'll all be rain, starting around mid-morning. We'll spend the morning in the 30s, a windy afternoon in the 40s—with noticeable gusts—and this evening in the low 50s. Showery overnight. Local waters in late-afternoon light. As luck would have it, within about an hour of one another yesterday, two very different photos arrived—with water and sundown in common.

Lebanon Middle School goes all-remote. Superintendent Joanne Roberts announced Saturday that a staff member tested positive last week and that given the number of staff required to quarantine as a result of contact tracing, "there will be insufficient staff to conduct in-person learning at LMS.” Remote learning will run through Tuesday next week, with students expected to return to in-person on Dec. 9, though that could change. (Valley News)If you're wondering why Dartmouth flags are at half-mast this week, it's to honor Alan Green. The longtime chair of the department of psychiatry at Geisel died at home on Thursday after a long illness. A specialist in the brain's reward circuitry and its role in addiction, he was a national leader in the field of psychopharmacology, a highly regarded teacher, a prodigiously energetic researcher... and a talented pianist, guitarist, and folk singer."Our restaurants are in need of our support and if we want them to make it through the winter, they need us now." That's part of a post on FB last week by Dan Fraser of Norwich's Dan & Whit's. Fridays and Saturdays through the winter the store will donate 10 percent of all beer and wine sales to an independent restaurant on the VT side, including the Blue Sparrow, Wolf Tree, Elixir, the Quechee Inn, and others in Norwich, WRJ, and Quechee. He also urges takeout, generous tips, and buying a gift certificate. "If you don't want or need it, pay it forward and give it to the mail carrier, your child's teacher or bus driver, your favorite public servant..." he writes. Details at the link.  Local pop-ups breathe life into holiday retail. There's Everything Christmas, opened by Sarah and Jesse Webber in the former Pier 1, and the Leb Art & Crafts Assn’s Christmas sale in the former Sears spot a stone's throw away. Up the road in the former Board & Basket (starting to see a theme here?), Ryan Lonergan has opened the Holiday Artisan Market, with work by seven NH craftspeople and artists. "Pop-up stores are hardly a new idea," the VN's John Lippman writes. "They trace their roots back to the Christmas markets of medieval Vienna." Warning: gratuitous shade thrown at Pats fans lower down.SPONSORED: Celebrate the holidays with music! Upper Valley Music Center is presenting a free, online Holiday Music Festival Dec. 4-15. Craving caroling or missing your annual Messiah Sing? The festival includes both holiday traditions—as well as performances by students, faculty, and guests, chamber music and fiddle tunes, and lots of singing for all ages. Whether you want to sit back and enjoy or sing and play along, UVMC invites you to join the celebration. Sponsored by Upper Valley Music Center."We don’t send our books out all over the world and they don’t come in on trucks. People donate them from their homes to our shop and then the books go back out into the community." Rena Mosteirin took over Hanover's Left Bank Books in July, and has had to navigate the lack of in-store readings and a policy of not selling books online while, as Junction mag's Molly Papows writes, "speaking with unguarded optimism about the kinds of encounters she hopes to facilitate." Papows profiles Mosteirin, Left Bank, and the “sassy sister store” literary hub that Left Bank and Allie Levy's Still North have created."We may have over-emphasized travel.” That's Stephen Lawe, CEO of Resource Systems Group in WRJ, talking to the VN's John Lippman for an intriguing story on a long-term shift toward remote work that seems to be taking place for back-office employees in the Upper Valley. It's not just that companies—and Dartmouth and DHMC—are willing to keep people who've been able to work remotely doing so; they've also broadened hiring to people who don't live in the region "without the expectation that they'll relocate," Lippman reports.If you happen to stumble on a cairn south of Lake Solitude along the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway... leave it alone. It was a USGS benchmark first established in 1872 as part of the first serious effort to map New Hampshire. A survey team led by Dartmouth prof E.T. Quimby began the work in the late 1860s, and though mountaintops featured prominently in their work, writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog, so did things like “the ridgepole of big barn” at Shaker Village in Canterbury and the “gold ball atop dome” of the State House in Concord. Warm weather, drought, poor economy, Covid rules... Not a great start to ski season, writes InDepthNH's Paula Tracy. VT's restrictions may bring more skiers to NH slopes, but MA's quarantine-after-you-return-home rules may keep Bay Staters from showing up. As of last week, only four ski areas in New England were open, and many areas are planning "slow rolls" into the season, to avoid spiking crowds. Projected open dates—which, she notes, are "more like a wish list than a firm projection"—include Crotched on Dec. 15, Whaleback, King Pine, and Black on Dec. 18, and the Skiway on Dec. 19.“I’m glad to see they are finally taking our health and safety into consideration.” According to the state constitution, the NH legislature is required to convene the first Wednesday in December—ie, in two days. The quote is from a Democratic state rep. responding to the news that yesterday afternoon, the GOP leaders of the House and Senate announced they've opted to do it outdoors. The gathering will be at UNH, though they haven't yet disclosed exactly where. Oh boy, here's another shortage we have to worry about: snow plow crews. Though both town public works departments and VTrans (and, you can bet, NHDOT) have already done the worrying for us. They've been hiring extra drivers and gaming out mutual aid networks in case a crew is sidelined by Covid during a storm this winter, reports VTDigger's Ellie French. The challenge, as one public works director says, is that mutual aid may be fine for a fire, since it's unlikely there'll be simultaneous fires in two towns. "But when a major snowstorm hits, it’s all at once."One bright dairy light: butter. Restaurant and institutional sales remain low, thanks to the pandemic, "but a renewed interest in home cooking and locally sourced products has helped butter rebound," reports VTDigger's James Finn. There are seven licensed butter-makers in VT, from Cabot to Gammelgården Creamery, a five-cow dairy in Pownal, and all have seen a butter resurgence as home demand grows. This seems to be part of a national trend, Finn writes: production is up more than 5 percent this fall compared to last year.If you're thinking of avoiding the ski resorts and heading into the backcountry instead... Vermont outdoors writer (and host of the radio show "The Vermont Conversation") David Goodman has a guide in the NYT to some possibilities for newcomers to the sport, including trails in NH, VT, and the 'dacks. He includes some caveats, including the need for avalanche knowledge and being aware of parking limits at trailheads, but you should also read the comments section for a brisk primer on safety and precautions. (Thanks, JF!)Even from above, a pyramid looks like a pyramid. Only flatter. A few years ago, Benjamin Grant published a volume of satellite photos of the Earth called Overview, built from a daily Instagram account he runs. Now he's got an organization of the same name, and among many other things, it's stitched together a set of photos of UNESCO world heritage sites. The pyramids, sure, but also Venice, an amazing look at the Sundarban mangrove forests of Bangladesh, Ayers Rock, the squeeze of Marrakesh, Yellowstone...Don't grip your tablecloth too hard. I dunno, this just seems right for the start of the end-of-year sprint. Back in 1976, the French film director Claude Lelouch made an eight-minute film entitled "C'était un rendez-vous" ("It was a date"). It features his madcap drive through Paris on his way to... well, you'll see... in what sounds like a Ferrari but was actually his Mercedes, hitting, he claimed, 120 mph at one point, though later doubters think he never got above 85. Regardless, as one commenter notes, "He jumped 11 red lights, scared to death 4 pedestrians and had near-misses with 2 bin lorries..." (Thanks, GF!)

Let's do some catching up.Before we get started, though, a reminder that, given the Thanksgiving holiday and interruptions to testing and reporting, trends won't really be clear until later this week. 

Whew! I think we need to take things down a notch after that drive, eh? Maybe this is the night before, sometime late, light spilling from an empty bistro onto a deserted street... French film composer and jazz pianist

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See you tomorrow.

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