Daybreak Monday 4/12/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

A "backdoor cold front." That's what arrived late yesterday, earning the "backdoor" label because it moved in from the northeast, bringing cooler, maritime air with it. Meanwhile, another front is stalled to our south and weakening as the day goes on, bringing a faint chance of rain to southern areas of the region. Mostly cloudy, highs today only in the low 50s, down to the high 30s tonight.However you need to get around...

“It’s a really grim situation.” That's Sullivan County public defender Jay Buckey, talking to the Valley News's Nora Doyle-Burr about how difficult it can be for people in a mental-health crisis in NH to schedule an evaluation in a reasonable time. The March 31 police shooting of Jeffrey Ely in Claremont, Doyle-Burr writes, points up the system's shortcomings. Still, there's hope, she reports: The state will be expanding its mobile crisis services later this summer, with teams of mental health providers to visit people who are struggling "before things escalate to violence."Thetford lands donation to hire part-time coordinator for Treasure Island. The money comes from the Lake Fairlee Association and private donors, reports Nick Clark in Sidenote, and is aimed at helping the town after rec/public works director Nathan Maxwell—who you'll recall was caught up in controversy over social media posts—left his position. A special Treasure Island committee has been working on walkway improvements and greater accessibility to the waterfront, and sees a coordinator as "necessary to help Treasure Island’s best and highest uses" for recreation, education, and the environment.If you hear what you think is thunder in the evening... Just a heads up that the Vermont Air National Guard stationed at Burlington Airport has started nighttime training in its F-35s. They began last week, and will be at it again this week (tomorrow-Friday) and next, between 4 pm and 10 pm. No indication of whether they intend to head this way, but you'll know it if they do. (Thanks, MS!)"Mountain flying is fundamentally unsafe. It’s physics." In Outside Online, Marc Peruzzi offers a primer on the risks inherent in heli-skiing—not the skiing part, which has plenty of them, but the helicopter ride to the jump-off point. The investigation into the Alaska crash that killed veteran heli-skiing guide and Hanover native Sean McManamy and others is just getting underway, Peruzzi writes, and may take a year or more to complete. But the list of things that can go wrong on a flight, he notes, from rising too high to light conditions that make it like "flying inside of a ping pong ball," as one pilot puts it, is mind-boggling. Grafton County committee looking for residents' input on broadband. The committee, whose members include the town managers of Haverhill and Canaan, hopes to speed broadband development by having the county build a "backbone network through population centers" that towns could then tap into. First step, though, is to figure out what's already available, where the gaps lie, and what Grafton County residents want. So, naturally, they've got a survey: at the maroon link. Tim Camerato's VN story about the project is here.“I don’t (run across the street) any longer, because I’d be doing it all day now." Gloria Timmons used to cross the street to introduce herself to another Black person, the sight was so rare. Now, NH is still one of the whitest states in the country, but its BIPOC population doubled between 2000 and 2018, writes Meg McIntyre for the Granite State News Collaborative, accounting for two-thirds of its population growth. Lebanon went from 97 percent white in 2000 to an estimated 85 percent now. In the first of a multi-year series, McIntyre looks broadly at the complexities and tensions in NH as the state diversifies. NH budget now in Senate's court. Don't hold your breath on a resolution anytime soon to the controversies the House kicked over to the other chamber, from stripping the budget of funding for school infrastructure and health services for low-income women to trying to limit the governor's power to declare a state of emergency to barring teachers from covering a list of "divisive topics" when teaching about racism. The Senate starts hearings today, writes InDepthNH's Garry Rayno, as he lays out some of the issues it will consider.Consider Bardwell Farm takes "baby steps" as it returns to business. It's been a year and a half since the nationally known cheesemaker shut down and sold its goat herd following a recall caused by a listeria scare. Now, writes VTDigger's James Finn, it's back with less than a third of its staff, and for the moment making only cows' milk cheeses. “I was so bereft over something that I loved...coming to an end,” co-owner Angela Miller says. "To suddenly have that stop was ultimately not acceptable.” It has "addressed all the factors that may have caused the issue in 2019,” a state official says. So... Where to go for a walk during mud season? Despite the dry weather of late, it's too early to declare mud season over. So Erica Houskeeper, whose Happy Vermont blog offers tips on exploring the state, has some suggestions. There's Marsh-Billings, of course, and Shelburne Farms. But she also recommends Equinox Pond in Manchester—"one of the prettiest places in Vermont"—as well as the Kingsbury Greenway in Warren, the South Shore Trail along Lake Willoughby, and the Mt. Ascutney auto road. Before we say goodbye to winter for good... It's been stunning weather the last week, but it wasn't long ago that you could do stuff like this.... Well, okay, not exactly like this: mathematician Mårten Ajne skating over beautiful but alarmingly thin black ice on a lake outside Stockholm as the ice pings, trills, and whistles in response; (thanks, PB!); and Finnish figure skater Emmi Peltonen doing her routine on a "rink" plowed out of the ice up at the top of Finland, well above the Arctic Circle—and what it took to make it happen. 

Time to catch up.

News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:

On Saturday, the Covid Cello Project released its 13th video of the pandemic,

The project began last spring, with 12 friends of Austin, TX cellist Tony Rogers. It's now got 536 participants in 47 countries—who've all had so much fun that Rogers has decided to keep the effort going once the pandemic's over. Among those 536 cellists is E. Thetford's Joel Teenyanoff, who writes, "Rogers developed seven cello parts for 'The Saga of Harrison Crabfeathers,' plus cello percussion (tapping on cello) and includes several improvisations by a few cellists in the final version.... Look for a Waldo cellist - he's in there - but that's not me!" 

See you tomorrow.

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