Daybreak Monday 4/19/21

WELL, GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Kinda meh, but warmer. The morning may start out foggy, but mostly we get a mixed sun-and-clouds day. There's a weak system coming through this afternoon that will bring a slight chance of rain and maybe even thunder, temps getting into the lower 60s before dropping back into the high 30s tonight. Winds from the west this afternoon. On Friday, elevation mattered. Around where Etna photographer Jim Block lives, it looked like winter, with over 8 inches coming down. But then he headed downhill to Norwich and Thetford, and then River Road in Lyme and Hanover: snowy, but definitely different. He takes you on the trip.NH may have lifted its mask mandate, but Lebanon, Hanover, Plainfield, and Enfield have not. In Hanover, it's concern about college students, many of whom haven't been vaccinated yet, reports Tim Camerato in the Valley News. In Lebanon, the majority of people haven't been vaccinated yet, city manager Shaun Mulholland says. Meanwhile, says the UV Business Alliance's Tracy Hutchins, businesses with mask requirements are girding for pushback. "It just makes it really difficult on businesses to not have that backup,” she says.Norwich Planning Commission wants town to study sewer options. Its unanimous recommendation that the selectboard pay to look into connecting the town's business corridors to either the Hanover or Hartford systems, writes Chris Katucki on his Norwich Observer blog, may put it at odds with the school board's effort to resolve septic problems on the Marion Cross School green. That's because, so far at least, the school board proposal to Hartford limits sewer connections to four users, including the school and King Arthur. The planning commission wants a broader base of users.Med school social media policy now in the spotlight. Geisel's new policy, writes the VN's Nora Doyle-Burr, clamps down on students' use of social media and has drawn concern from students and at least one national group that it appears designed to keep students from airing their grievances over the school's handling of its cheating investigation—a charge the school denies. Meanwhile, despite claims from students and national organizations that it misconstrued devices passively logged on to a platform used to store course materials as evidence of cheating, Geisel Friday "issued decisions in the 10 cases of suspected student academic misconduct that remained active."“We feel much more ready and in control of the situation in 2021.” That's Susan Miller Hild, who owns and runs Camp Merriwood in Orford, talking to the Union Leader's Jonathan Phelps about the upcoming season. With many parents wanting their kids to get away from being cooped up—and from screen time—NH's summer camps are seeing strong interest, Phelps reports. That's despite the requirement that incoming campers have a negative PCR test within seven days of arriving, again when they get to camp, and a few days later—"the most strict testing requirements in the country," Phelps writes.Thetford school board looks at tripling Thetford Hill solar array. An existing 150-kilowatt array on land owned by the school district covers only a portion of the school's needs, writes Nick Clark in Sidenote. So the board last week gave the go-ahead to solicit a proposal for a 380-kilowatt expansion. "The expectation," Clark writes, "is that the proposal from Norwich Technologies will meet both the Town and School’s remaining electricity needs renewably, as well as offer the potential for some community solar."Waiting for the new Target? Don't hold your breath. Workers are retrofitting the former Kmart for its new occupant, writes John Lippman in the VN, but it's unlikely to open before the fall. “That’s the appropriate time for commercial businesses that want to be open in time for Thanksgiving," says Leanne Cushman, in Leb's planning office. Meanwhile, Lippman also writes, Blood's Catering has an intriguing offer: a free mac-and-cheese meal—it's twice won awards in VT Farmstead’s annual Mac and Cheese Challenge—to anyone who can show proof they've been fully vaccinated against Covid.VT Health Connect sees data breaches. There were at least 10 cases between November and February, reports VTDigger's Katie Jickling, in which users logged on to their accounts to find other people's info, including names and social security numbers. Even worse, Jickling writes, administrators don't know if there have been others. It's the latest in a long series of tech problems, and comes as "thousands of Vermonters" are expected to log in over coming weeks to take advantage of new federal subsidies for health insurance. 11 inches. That was the snow depth atop Mt. Mansfield last week. On average over the last 70 years, it's had 68 inches in mid-April. That's just one of the signs VTDigger's Erin Petenko and Emma Cotton point to as a warning that the drought that began last summer isn't close to over. Stream flows are low, and dry, windy air—the air "has not been this dry in decades," they write—is sucking moisture out of the ground.  A map Petenko created that includes NH shows that all of VT is either in moderate drought or unusually dry, while moderate drought extends through the Upper Valley on the NH side, as well. Scott lets bill taxing PPP loans become law without his signature. The measure, known as H.315, includes millions of dollars for economic relief, mental health services, and foreclosure prevention—which, Scott says, is why he let it go into effect. However, it also includes a provision added late in the game that would tax 2021 PPP loans as if they were ordinary income. Legislators contend the language is just a placeholder and might be removed as it finalizes the budget; businesses and nonprofits slammed the move.You probably don't get this view of your dog or cat very often. Andrius Burba, a Lithuanian photographer, places his subjects on a glass table, then shoots their portraits from underneath. "Some look perplexed by the experience, while others (mostly cats) seem totally unfazed by the request to walk on glass," writes MyModernMet's Emma Taggart. While Burba's more recent efforts have focused on household pets, a few years ago he was photographing horses, which required a much more elaborate setup. 

Let's see what the weekend brought us...

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Yeah, so, speaking of dogs... Guy Michelmore composes music for television and films (if you're fan of early 2000s Marvel animated films, you've heard his work). He's also got a quirky sense of humor, so a couple of years ago he gathered a small group of dogs, set out seven bowls with food—each representing a different musical note in the key of C major—then let the dogs out: The order they ate from the bowls determined the order of the notes. From their random choices, he then wrote a tune.

And as he says, "It sounds like a proper tune!"

See you tomorrow.

Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.

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