RABBIT RABBIT, UPPER VALLEY!
March? Well, not totally a lion. But not a lolling house-cat, either. Today starts in the upper 30s then rises to around 40 as a low pressure system from the central Plains brings a chance of rain throughout the morning. Then as the clouds dissipate and some sun appears, a series of cold fronts pass through, winds from the northwest pick up—we're looking at gusts above 40 mph tonight—we get some snow, and temps drop to the mid single digits by morning.A small milestone. Daybreak turned two years old on Saturday, and all I know is that there's no way it would have become something without all of you: who read it, who support it financially, who send your thoughts and photos and music ideas, who pass it along to friends, and who help in ways too numerous to count. Above all, it wouldn't exist without the journalists, editors, bloggers, writers, photographers, illustrators, and others whose hard work makes it possible for Daybreak to have something interesting to point to each weekday. Thank you to all of you!A break from daybreaks to go full pileated... Just for today, though. The mail just brought in two separate (I think) pileated woodpeckers going at suet hanging in a cage. They're acrobatic! And determined.
Here's a still from Quechee's Lisa Lacasse.
And a one-minute video from Quechee's Ann Charron.
With cases on the rise, Dartmouth pulls inward. The college's case load (119 as of yesterday) now accounts for about 4.7 percent of New Hampshire's active cases, and on Saturday, Dean Kathryn Lively wrote students asking them to return to the guidelines in place when they arrived: remaining alone in their rooms as much as possible and refraining from gathering. She also asked students to avoid downtown Hanover and area restaurants. The college has closed the ice rinks on the Green, as well."Students tell me that while classmates comply outside, in dorms mask wearing can mark you as a narc." Not literally, of course, but you get the idea. In a Twitter thread last week, journalist and Dartmouth writing prof Jeff Sharlet reflected on what he'd been hearing from students (not, he's careful to say, his current ones). And adults are in part to blame, he argues. "Did higher ed leaders say, 'This is the biggest crisis we've faced since WW II, & just as then, many may feel called to put your own advancement aside to use yr youth & energy for the good of all'?" No. The result, he says: "Poisoned solidarity."Woodstock's Village Butcher sells. George Racicot opened his shop in 1969 and moved it to its current Elm Street location in 1973. Now, he and his wife, Linda, have passed it on to Alex and Cristy Beram, who settled in Quechee full-time last May and are, the VN's John Lippman writes, "stepping off the corporate treadmill and into a small business [the] family can run together." The Berams plan to keep the meat and deli counters and the bakery, expand the prepared-food offerings, introduce online ordering, and source in VT and NH.SPONSORED: What Does a Rising China Mean for the U.S. and the World? Join Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry M. Paulson Jr. ’68 H’07 on Thursday at 8 pm for a live online discussion with Associate Professor of Government Jennifer Lind about the delicate power dynamics and future of relations between the western world and rising superpower China. Part of Dartmouth NEXT’s Great Issues/New Perspectives series. Information and registration at the maroon link. Sponsored by Dartmouth College.Poultry notes from all over. In what have to be the listserv posts of the week, here's what ran on the UV List last Thursday: "2 year old Sumatran Chicken. She bites. Lays pretty beige eggs in the warmer months only. She is currently on the loose at my house." And Friday: "2 year old Sumatran Chicken. She bites people, but gets along with her 2 coop mates....She is currently back in the coop. She needs a new home ASAP." Sorry, no link. (Thanks, SVG!)Making sense of the Lebanon council, school races. The VN's Tim Camerato looks at the candidates for city council, including a three-way contest involving incumbent Karen Liot Hill and two challengers, and two newcomers vying to replace outgoing council member Bruce Bonner, and at the seven candidates running for three open school board seats. Voters will also be considering three amendments to the city's zoning code.45,800 vs. 40,079 a year ago. That's the jump in snowmobiles registered in NH this year by both residents and out-of-staters, reports the Union Leader's Shawne K. Wickham. That's a lot of new people out enjoying the snow in this pandemic winter, and not all of them know what they're doing, Wickham writes: Crashes are up, too, including one in which a 20-year-old Maine woman who'd never ridden a snowmobile before crashed, without a helmet, into a bobhouse on Franklin Pierce Lake last week. But the boom in riders from MA, CT, and RI has hospitality businesses in the north country smiling.It turns out that arrest data for NH exists, but it's hard to find. One of the challenges last year's commission on police reform faced was finding consistent data from state and local police agencies; no single source exists, they were told. But the Granite State News Collaborative's Mary Steurer reports that there is, in fact, a crime stats site, maintained by a single dedicated program manager on an $8K-a-year budget, hidden deep in the Dept. of Safety website. And it shows that police "disproportionately arrest Black and Hispanic people compared to their racial demographics in the state," Steurer writes.Vermont is vaccinating out-of-staters. About 6 percent of the roughly 95,000 people the state had vaccinated as of last Thursday are nonresidents, reports VTDigger's Amanda Gokee. According to VT rules, nonresidents working in the state, those whose physician is in VT, and people who've just moved to VT and intend to establish residency are all eligible. State and some hospital officials defend the policy. But, Gokee points out, NH does not reciprocate: Granite Staters who get primary care at, say, Mt. Ascutney, can get vaccinated there, but Vermonters whose care is at DHMC are out of luck.First it was lumber company land. Then the Civilian Conservation Corps cut trails. Then it was Stowe. Well, it was Stowe all along, but it became Stowe, writes historian Mark Bushnell, after lumberman Craig Burt opened some land on Mt. Mansfield to skiers—the few who didn't mind trekking to the top—and then the CCC cut trails in the mid-30s, followed by a New York stockbroker's venture to build a chairlift—$1 a ride. It took in only $3,840 in 1940, its first season. But a few years later, Bushnell says, "Stowe was ready to boom."The real question on Town Meeting Day in VT: Will Peacham name its snow plows? Yeah, sure, there are some big-ticket spending items, and some heated selectboard contests, but in his rundown of some of the more eye-catching ballot questions Tuesday, Seven Days' Colin Flanders notes that, taking a leaf from Scotland, Peacham voters will decide whether to go with the snow-plow names picked by its students: Sparkles, Day Blaze, Fearless Frosty, Ice Cream, and Got Snow. Though the real question, he writes, is who on the road crew gets to drive Sparkles. Sight and sound. Maybe Monday isn't the day you feel the need to be carried far away... but maybe it's exactly the day for it. We've done Radio Garden and Radiooooo, now along comes Travel Remotely, which lets you walk (or drive, or take the train) through cities around the world while listening to local radio stations or street noise or both, day or night...
Okay, let's catch up...
Dartmouth now reports 117 active cases among students (up 80 since Thursday), and 2 among faculty/staff. There are 106 students and 4 faculty/staff in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 128 students and 6 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 337 new cases Friday, 287 Saturday, and 270 yesterday for a cumulative total of 75,424. There were 7 new deaths over the weekend, bringing the total to 1,170. Meanwhile, 87 people are hospitalized (down 10). The current active caseload stands at 2,532 (down 326). The state reports 225 active cases in Grafton County (down 55), 44 in Sullivan (down 10), and 185 in Merrimack (down 30). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Hanover has 75 active cases, Claremont has 20 (down 13), Enfield has 9 (down 2), Lebanon has 7 (no change), Canaan has 5 (down 1), Sunapee has 5 (no change), Grantham has 5 (up at least 1). Haverhill, Piermont, Orford, Grantham, Springfield, Plainfield, Cornish, Charlestown, Grafton, New London, and Wilmot have 1-4 each. Warren, Lyme, and Newbury are off the list.
VT reported 131 new cases Friday, 95 on Saturday, and 100 yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 15,198. It added 1 death over the weekend to reach 204 all told. Meanwhile, 25 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 3). Windsor County gained 19 cases to stand at 1,048 for the pandemic, with 65 over the past 14 days. Orange County had 7 additional cases and stands at 510 cumulatively, with 39 cases over the past 14 days. In town-by-town numbers reported late last week, Killington added 6 new cases over the week before, Springfield gained 5, Hartford, Chelsea and Randolph added 3 each, Norwich, Thetford, Weathersfield, and Fairlee each gained 2, Newbury, Sharon, Bridgewater, and Reading each added 1.News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
It's March, which means it's time for Bethel University. Undaunted by the pandemic, Bethel's hugely popular yearly pop-up effort to bring useful, intriguing, or downright quirky learning to the Upper Valley will be all-online this month. You can check out their free Zoom classes, meet-up groups, and discussions on everything from the Royalton Raid to writing about rural Vermont to designing video games to how the Randolph/White River Valley Herald gets published each week. Classes often fill up, so if something strikes your fancy, sign up sooner rather than later.
Today at 4 pm, NH PBS and D-HH launch a series of panel discussions on the workforce shortages facing New Hampshire and what might be done about them. Today's event starts with a screening of the new documentary, COMMUNITIES & CONSEQUENCES II - Rebalancing NH's Human Ecology, followed by a Q&A and conversation that includes D-H's VP for government relations, Matthew Houde; demographer Peter Francese; Business & Industry Assn VP David Juvet; and Sarah Wrightsman, who runs the Workforce Housing Coalition of the Greater Seacoast.
And also at 4 pm, the Dartmouth Political Union hosts "Clean Energy and Climate Action: A National and New Hampshire Update." It will be moderated by environmental studies prof Elizabeth Wilson, who also runs the Irving Institute for Energy and Society, and includes Rob Werner, NH director of the League of Conservation Voters; Tracy Hutchins, who runs the Upper Valley Business Alliance; and state Sen. Suzanne Prentiss, of Lebanon.
March is such a
serious
month, I think we have to start it frothy, don't you? So... Back in 1928, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote an opera,
The Nose
, based on Gogol's 1836 short story of the same name about a man who wakes up one morning to discover his nose missing and sets out to find it. Over the last near-century it's gotten the occasional performance, but surely one of the most notable was in 2016,
.
This should get your week off on the right feet.
Okay, off to go check out Istanbul! Or Marrakesh. Or maybe Paris... See you tomorrow.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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