WELCOME TO THE WEEK, UPPER VALLEY!
And definitely make the most of today. Last night's rain is just a dim memory, high pressure's building in, it will be calm, with some clouds but plenty of sunshine, temps into the 50s. Lows tonight around freezing. This high moves off to the east overnight, and tomorrow we have what they like to call an "active day of weather," but let's not concern ourselves with that right now.Loons are back. Jennifer Hannux's cam on Lake Seymour, way up in the Northeast Kingdom, caught this pair swimming by yesterday evening. Okay, time for some catching up...
NH is up to 1,392 reported cases. It added 78 on Friday, 56 on Saturday, and 50 yesterday, or 184 all told. Meanwhile, 521 have recovered and 41 have died, bringing the total current caseload to 830. Grafton County is at 45 cases (up one over the weekend), while Sullivan is at 10 (up two); Merrimack County is now at 94 (up 9).
VT reported 14 new cases on Friday, 7 on Saturday, and 10 yesterday, bringing the total to 812. That includes readjustments of cases going back to March, including 21 that hadn't been counted previously. Of those, 27 are hospitalized (down 7 from the end of last week), with 38 deaths (up 3). Windsor County is at 37 officially reported cases (up 6 over the weekend), while Orange County remains at 5.
With state officials in both NH and VT cautiously optimistic that health systems can handle new Covid patients, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock system is looking to get back up and running more normally, chief clinical officer Ed Merrens tells the
VN
's Nora Doyle-Burr. Officials are "working out a staged process to bring back patients with more 'time-sensitive' needs first, such as cancer-related care and postponed imaging," Doyle-Burr writes.
It's just been a weekend,
Seven Days
notes, but since state colleges chancellor Jeb Spaulding announced a plan to close the Randolph VTC campus and college campuses in Lyndon and Johnson, the governor, state legislators, community leaders, alumni councils, and students have all lashed the plan. "While we recognize that change must come, an abrupt vote to close three campuses...without a public plan for what comes next for the students, faculty and staff, and the host communities is not appropriate, especially in this era of unprecedented unknowns," wrote Senate President Tim Ashe and House Speaker Mitzi Johnson yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, the colleges' board opted to delay its vote.
Local farms adapt. CSA memberships are topping out. At Sweetland Farm in Norwich, farmer Norah Lake has begun sourcing food from other farms without their own outlets to sell at its weekend farmstand, and is "thinking seriously" about opening the stand to non-CSA-members. At Strafford Village Farm, Shannon Varley and BJ Miller are organizing drive-through pickup. “Normally a good Saturday at the farm stand would be 30 customers. Last Saturday (April 11) we had over 100," Varley tells the VN's John Lippman. And farmers who sell at the Norwich Farmers Market are prepping for opening with safety measures in place May 2, after Gov. Phil Scott lifted the ban on Friday.King Arthur Flour adapts. Bake magazine's Sam Sosland details the steps the company's taken in response to the unprecedented demand it's facing. It has redeployed staff from shuttered operations (the baking school, the café) to areas with greater need, including food-shelf deliveries and mask-sewing. It has ramped up production of products in short supply and changed its warehouse operations. It has also suspended shipments to Canada and overseas. And, as you read last week, it's buying baked goods from bakeries in select cities and distributing them to food pantries and others. VN has raised $75K in less than a week. Some 800 people have contributed since the paper started asking for donations last week. In a note Friday night, publisher Dan McClory said that the drive has been so successful it reset its goal from an initial $50,000 ask to $90,000. Just to put this in context, its sister paper, the Concord Monitor, has raised $28,108 from 348 people. Yeah, why not? "Candy for Frontline Workers." Red Kite Candy, the Bradford caramel-maker, has launched an effort to get its distinctive white boxes with the red kite into the hands of hospital workers far beyond the Upper Valley. For every purchase a customer makes over $25, they'll send a box to a hospital in Boston, NY, Columbus, Cincinnati, Houston—or, if you can identify an internal contact to receive and distribute the shipment, the hospital of your choice. Oh, and yes, they ship to DHMC, too.The Upper Valley makes some noise. The Norwich Congregational Church bell tolls for five minutes every night at 7 to honor health care workers and first responders. In Lyme, writes the VN's Liz Sauchelli, people head outside in the evening to shout or contribute in their own fashion. “There are cowbells and sleigh bells and pots and pans. Somebody is playing a tuba. There’s a hunting horn. Someone got an old fire siren that they set off,” high school teacher Bill Murphy, who got the whole thing rolling with a post to the Lyme List, tells her. From Stateline Sports to Plainfield Country Store to Canaan's 603 Bakery to the League of NH Craftsmen... There's a Facebook thread collecting news on small businesses that remain open. It's catch-as-catch-can, but there are a lot of places out there trying to adapt and keep business coming to the curbside even if it can't come in the doors. DHMC to launch course this week for employers on keeping workers safe. The nine-session program, through D-H's Extension for Community Health Outcomes effort, starts Wednesday and lasts into June. It will cover everything from coronavirus basics, to how to determine when it's safe for employees to return to work, to mask-and-glove best practices, to "facility hygiene." Further description and signup at the link. (Thanks, RM!)Protesters notwithstanding, "large majority" of New Hampshirites give social distancing priority over restarting the economy. A joint Dartmouth-UNH poll last week found that a full one-third of working Granite Staters have lost their jobs or had their hours reduced, but that a full 68 percent of the 1,029 people surveyed (which took place in early April) "consider maintaining distancing more important than getting back to work." Interestingly, that sentiment was strongest among those who have lost work or feel the greatest stress over family finances. VT to send $1200 relief checks to 8,300 Vermonters still waiting for unemployment benefits. "I'll be dropping [them] in the mail tomorrow AM," Gov. Phil Scott tweeted last night. The move comes after Scott on Friday gave the state labor department until Saturday night to clear its backlog of claims. The department yesterday announced it had processed 20,000 of those in the two days leading up to the deadline, but that still left 8,384 with unresolved claims, Seven Days' Colin Flanders writes.
"No business brains in the Upper Valley, Gov?" That's VN business writer John Lippman's question for Phil Scott. He notes that Vermont's new Economic Mitigation & Recovery Task Force has four teams allegedly made up of “job creators, community leaders and business representatives from each region of the state,” except that one region seems, ahem, conspicuously absent. Also, southern VT has only one rep on the task force. Second item at the link."My car is due for inspection. Do I need to get it inspected right now?" That's one of many frequently asked questions that VTDigger poses on a new FAQ page with quick-hit answers. It covers everything from "How accurate is the state's testing" to "Can I get the virus from handling mail?" In order: No, you've got up to 60 days for cars due in April; depends; and getting the coronavirus from contact with mail is “on the level of likelihood as a lightning strike,” according to UVM Medical Center infectious disease specialist Tim Lahey.
You've got a week to enjoy the River Road bike ride in Lyme, and then... Starting next Monday, April 27, the road will close where it crosses Hewes Brook so that the bridge across the brook can be removed and replaced. The company doing the work expects it to take five to six weeks. During that time, the town says, "the construction zone will be closed to walkers, runners and bicycle traffic at all times.*
You're a gubernatorial candidate stuck at home; what do you do until you can get out and campaign again? The VN's Alex Hanson has a profile of Norwich's Rebecca Holcombe, who is running for the Democratic nomination to take on Scott in November. She notes that the issues that led her to run—the state's affordability crisis, its lack of "an economic engine," spiraling health care costs, making education more equitable, accelerating the state's progress on climate change—haven't gone away. It's just that, for the moment, she has to bring them to voters' attention virtually. Land, properties in E. Grafton, Bridgewater Corners preserved. Mascoma Valley Preservation, the group behind the restoration of the Grafton Center Meetinghouse, is now the proud owner of 175 acres, along with a historic barn, harness shop, and mill in E. Grafton. It aims to restore and then "bring life back" to the buildings in some form. And on the VT side of the river, the Montpelier-based Northeast Wilderness Trust has bought 359 acres to create the new Bramhall Wilderness Preserve; the Trust bought the land from Bridgewater artist Paedra Bramhall. (VN)There's a new book you might want to know about, especially now. For the last five years, Gordon DuBois has been the hiking columnist for the Laconia Daily Sun. He's also a longtime hiker with a fondness for obscure (sometimes overgrown) trails that the masses ignore. “I wanted people to go to different places where they can enjoy solitude in nature," he tells the Conway Daily Sun's Ed Parsons about Paths Less Traveled: Tramping on Trails (and sometimes not) to Find New Hampshire’s Special Places. Though it's focused on the Lakes Region and the Whites, it includes Cardigan and a hike into Jobildunk Ravine, a glacial cirque on Mt. Moosilauke. Been under the Ledyard Bridge lately? The other day, Lori Harriman was out for a walk in old Lewiston with her dog, Harry, and came upon this striking bit of graffiti on the Norwich side. News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
#UVTogether
Staying Sane
Tonight at 7, the Howe's Ciné Salon will present Paul Young, who chairs Dartmouth's Department of Film and Media Studies and happens to be a devoted comics fan. He was a childhood devotee of Frank Miller's Daredevil, and his 2016 book about Miller and his own cultural journey wrestles with Miller's sexism and turn toward anti-Muslim bigotry while acknowledging his groundbreaking work as a younger artist. Tonight's question: “If Marvel movies aren’t cinema, what are they?”
Speaking of the Howe, it feels like almost every day the staff there is putting up resources on its YouTube channel to keep you busy. Reference librarian Jared Jenisch is doing a series of "rapid reviews" of everything from books on beverages to the ought-to-be-a-classic Canadian tv series, Slings and Arrows. On "Howe Makers," emerging technologies librarian Rachel Donegan tackles how to do your own stop-motion animation, make arm mittens, and produce your own zine... She's up with a new one every week.
And for an extremely cool little time-sink that will also teach you plenty you didn't know, check out the Society for Architectural Historians' "Archipedia." You can bop all over the country, but you can also enter a location and learn about the WRJ train station (built in 1937, designed by Jens Larson; it's the fourth to serve WRJ, the first three having been destroyed by fire in 1862, 1880, and 1911); the Latham-Kendrick House on Thetford Hill; the Norwich Congregational Church (1817), which has "particularly fine" detailing; and plenty more. (Thanks, JG)
Reading Deeper
"This is the real time for mass mutual reliance." Well, first it's the time when the novelty of self-isolating has worn off, parents with kids at home are feeling more stretched, singles with house-mates are getting kind of bored of them... Reader RW sends along this two-minute piece of advice from therapist and author Esther Perel, talking to Christiane Amanpour. It's "the most articulate and helpful interview we’ve seen so far on getting through this crisis more or less intact, especially for families," he writes.
And if you haven't seen it, longtime NYT health reporter Donald McNeil went up over the weekend with a long, here's-experts'-best-guesses analysis of what the next year might look like. "When can we emerge from our homes? How long, realistically, before we have a treatment or vaccine? How will we keep the virus at bay?" The virus, he notes, may be mutating to cause fewer symptoms, but it's going to be a long and bumpy road. What's it going to look like to have a society divided between those who've recovered and may have some immunity, and those who are still vulnerable?
But you know what?
Really
what we need to start the week is some moxie: three very familiar horn notes, a blare of music, some tympani you haven't forgotten since you were a kid...and the Orchestra of Opera North (the one in the UK), isolated in its players' homes, conducted with brio from Sweden by Tobias Ringborg,
because they didn't get to do it live. Stay with it past the part you know from
2001
...
See you tomorrow.
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