WELCOME TO THE WEEK, UPPER VALLEY!
Sure it's freaky for November, but grab hold of these days. The high pressure that settled in late last week is sticking around for a brief bit more, bringing us bright sun and warm temps. It may start out foggy today, but the skies will clear and we're going to climb from the upper 30s into the lower 70s by mid-afternoon. Back down to around 40 tonight.Makes you want to get out your panning equipment. Janice Fischel was in Tilton, NH on Saturday, by the Winnipesaukee River near the caboose village, when the mid-afternoon sun hit the water and turned it to liquid gold. D-H restricts visitors again. On Friday, the hospital system announced that no visitors will be admitted to a D-H facility for inpatient or outpatient visits, except in cases where patients require caregivers or for "pediatric patients, labor and delivery and prenatal patients, perioperative patients, family meetings, patients at the end of life, and D-H employees and volunteers." The restrictions apply to all its facilities, and reflect "rapidly changing conditions relating to the COVID-19 pandemic," the hospital said in a press release.Kaitie Danger: She does trails, not land. And you know what? I knew that! On Friday, Daybreak linked to a VN story about Kaitie Eddington and her middle-name fundraiser for the organization where she works. But in an early-morning brain freeze, I flubbed it. She's at the Upper Valley Trails Alliance, not the Upper Valley Land Trust. Apologies to Kaitie/UVTA... and condolences to the UVLT for not having a staffer with "Danger" as her middle name.Skiway to reopen next month. It's been shuttered since the pandemic began, but plans to restart the lifts on Dec. 19, though with limited capacity. Season pass-holders can ski without making reservations, but day-pass buyers will need to get them in advance. The McClane Family Lodge will probably be open only for restrooms and rentals; skiers will have to change or gear up in their cars. Interestingly, Lorraine Liu writes in The Dartmouth, one of the college's bigger logistical challenges may be getting students there (and back) from campus safely.Quick home invasion update. Colby Bowen, the suspect at large in that Thursday home invasion in Hartland, turned himself in to the Springfield police on Friday. Bowen, 29, lives in Hartland, and will be arraigned in Windsor Superior Court today. “Strafford is like child’s play compared to Norwich." That's Tig Tillinghast, who moderates the Norwich and Strafford listservs (among others), talking to VTDigger's Amanda Gokee. Gokee looks at rising demand for community connection during the pandemic: through the lists, including Dan Fraser's newsy posts to the Norwich list (and the brief hoo-hah they caused, which ended when Tillinghast ruled they were "support for the community"), the rise in traffic to the Valley News site, boost in readership at Seven Days, "unprecedented" jump in Front Porch Forum users, and growing numbers of totally fantastic subscribers to Daybreak. “The citizenry needed a wake-up call." In a community video last week, Dr. Josh White, chief medical officer at Gifford Medical Center, argued that rising case numbers make it easier for health officials to reinforce their stay-close-to-home message for the holidays. VT is urging people to avoid holiday travel; so is Dartmouth for people who will be on campus after Thanksgiving. All this, writes the VN's Nora Doyle-Burr, is having "downfield effects": demand for smaller turkeys from local growers, calls to the King Arthur hotline on how to bake remotely with family. "Before I Die I Want to...see the northern lights." You'll find that written in chalk on a brick wall on Church Street in WRJ, just up from the Rio Blanco Salon. Following a wildly successful "Before I Die" wall in Norwich, Bayada Hospice community liaison Cynthia Stadler and several volunteers created one for the Briggs block, finishing their work on Friday. “The spirit of the program is people thinking about what matters to them, what their wishes and dreams are,” Stadler tells the VN's Liz Sauchelli. It's already seen some use. Okay, you know about bikes and ammunition and patio heaters. The latest shortage? Snow tires. October snow and pandemic-related supply problems have produced tire-dealer wait times "of a month or more since the end of October, with no end in sight," reports VTDigger's Ellie French. Partly it's the timing of snow-tire production: this season's tires were produced back in the spring. And partly it's that the pandemic's timing meant a lot of people drove their snows through the summer, so they now need new ones. That old Altoids tin? It's for more than storing paper clips. Remington Robinson is a painter in Colorado who velcros small, primed wooden panels into the inside lid, creates a palette in the storage part, then paints the landscape in front of him. Having pretty much your entire kit able to fit in your pocket, he says, makes plein air painting "very accessible." You can see his mountains, beaches, forests, old roads, and other work at the link.And he sticks the landing!!! You know those Rube Goldberg-esque videos that pop up on here from time to time? This guy's taken it an impressive step further: He's the ball. With a mask on. Though as one commenter writes, I wouldn't want to be his knees.
Okay, let's check in...
Dartmouth reports 1 student case and 4 among faculty and staff. In all, 8 students and 1 faculty/staff are in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 6 students and 8 faculty/staff are in isolation as they await results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 209 positive test results Friday, 230 Saturday, and 249 yesterday, with a seven-day average of 184.9, well north of the May peak of 102. The state's official total is now 12,488, and there were 3 new deaths over the weekend; they now stand at 489. The state's current caseload is at 1,903 (up 357). Grafton County has 95 active cases (up 21). Sullivan County more than doubled and now has 53 active cases (up 28); Merrimack added 29 to stand at 219. Many of those Sullivan County cases are in Newport, where an outbreak at the Woodlawn nursing home has brought total active cases to 31; Lebanon dropped 2 and is at 11 active cases; Hanover, Claremont, and New London now stand at 5 each. There are 1-4 cases each in Haverhill, Piermont, Orford, Warren, Lyme, Canaan, Grantham, Charlestown, Unity, Goshen, Sunapee, and Newbury. Plainfield is off the list.
VT reported 25 new cases Friday, 22 Saturday, and 43 yesterday (its highest one-day jump since April 9). Its official total is now 2,392, with 410 of those still active (up 53 over the weekend). There was one new death, the first since July; they now stand at 59. Two people with confirmed cases are hospitalized. Windsor County gained 9 cases over the weekend and is now at 137 for the pandemic, with 17 of those in the past 14 days. Orange County also gained 9 over the weekend to stand at 49 cumulatively, 16 of them reported in the past 14 days. In weekly town-by-town totals reported Friday, Hartford remains at 30 cumulative cases, Killington at 20, Woodstock at 14, and Springfield at 11. Hartland gained 2 cases and is also now at 11. Randolph gained 1 case to stand at 9, while Windsor remains at 9, Norwich at 8, and Royalton at 6.
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We've been through some edge-of-the-seat times and there's no doubt tumult ahead, so now it's time to take a deep breath, settle down... and swing unstoppably into the week with grace and elegance. Here's the Oscar Peterson trio—Peterson on piano, Ray Brown on bass, Ed Thigpen on drums—in 1964 with
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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