Daybreak Monday 5/11/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Well, at least it'll be a little bit warmer. But only a bit. Low pressure pushing a warm front came through last night, and as it departs it's leaving us with rain, a chance of it this morning and then a likelihood most of the day, along with a chance of a thunderstorm this afternoon and evening. At least temps will get up above 50 today and there won't be much in the way of wind. Back down to a bit above freezing by daybreak tomorrow. What's in a view? Old Roads, Rivers, and Rails blogger Bob Totz was passing through Strafford the other day, and stopped to snag some photos looking east, toward NH. Piece by piece, he dissects his view: the fields nearby, the low hills in the middle distance, a cluster of houses in S. Strafford, Cardigan and Moose off in the distance...

Re-opening continues, and so do the cases...

Remember that all those numbers are just reported cases... reliable numbers depend on much more widespread testing. To get a sense of how the twin states are doing on that front, go to the link. It'll look familiar, but the data visualization is getting more robust with time. If you scroll to the second graph, then highlight the state you want and "New Tests, 1 Wk. Avg" under "Data," you'll see that NH has ramped up and averaged about 1,400 tests per day over the past week. VT, with a bit under half the population, is averaging less than a third of that number, with 420 a day.Leb, Hanover work to accommodate outdoor restaurant seating as Morano Gelato closes. As you may have heard, Morgan Morano on Friday announced that her wildly popular gelateria in Hanover (and outside Boston) will be shutting down, a victim of the pandemic and new safety requirements. Meanwhile, the VN's John Lippman reports, Lebanon and Hanover are taking steps to cordon off streets and alleyways to allow restaurants to expand outside. Hanover may also carve out space in the parking lot behind town hall.On the other hand, two spots have re-opened for takeout: The 4 Aces Diner in old W. Leb, which had been closed since the shutdown began, started up the service on Friday (at the maroon link). They've got breakfasts and lunches, as you'd expect, and have also expanded to offer dinners for four. Now all you need are some red vinyl seats at home... Meanwhile, Men at Wok in the Glen Road Plaza reopened yesterday. Woodstock's Mt. Tom Farmers Market decides not to open for summer. The VN's Lippman reports that Neil Lamson, the market's manager, says that a smaller-than-usual number of vendors this season makes rent unaffordable, and the market is too small to recruit the volunteers it would need to monitor state health and safety requirements. So it will wait until 2021 to reopen. (Third item down.)Enfield parents scramble to find child care after center announces closure. Kidsview Academy Preschool & Daycare announced earlier this month that it will not be reopening, leaving the parents of 45 children in and around Enfield looking for options as some prepare to return to work. The Upper Valley was already short some 2,000 child care spots, the VN's Nora Doyle-Burr reports, and many are struggling to remain operating. A group of Enfield parents have come together to try to create a nonprofit child care center that would operate in Kidsview’s location.Southern NH malls to reopen today. The Mall at Rockingham Park, the Mall of New Hampshire in Manchester, Merrimack Premium Outlets in Merrimack, and Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua—all managed by a single company—will open their doors today. Retailers are being asked to follow screening and face-mask protocols and to disinfect regularly. As NHPR points out, the malls "draw large numbers of shoppers from nearby Massachusetts, where officials say infection rates are rising and the COVID-19 surge is far from over."Less traffic, but deaths spike in NH. The state's Office of Highway Safety reported over the weekend that there have been 34 traffic-related deaths in the state since January, compared to 19 a year ago. The office also reports an increase in speeding. VT reports seven deaths over the time frame, compared to four a year ago. And MA saw about the same number of fatalities in April as a year ago, despite a sharp drop in traffic.NH National Guard pops up mobile food pantry at Loudon speedway. On Saturday, Guard members working with the NH Food Bank loaded up 334 families with nearly 52 pounds of food each at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway. "One thing we have an abundance of here...is space,”  the speedway's general manager, David McGrath, told the Monitor.VT to allow day care centers, summer day camps to reopen. At his press conference Friday, Gov. Phil Scott said that day care centers that aren't already serving the children of essential workers can reopen as of June 1; at the moment they're limited to 10 people, though "stay tuned," said Human Services secretary Mike Smith. The move on camps applies at the moment only to day camps, since overnight camps attract out-of-staters, who are still subject to 14-day quarantine rules. The state will address those specifically in the next few weeks. "We think there's a way to do this," said one official. Democratic candidates face challenge in campaigning against Scott this year. It was already going to be an uphill battle, assuming Scott runs again, report VTDigger's Kit Norton and Xander Landen. The state's struggles with unemployment benefits aside, one Democratic insider tells them, Scott's handling of the coronavirus crisis has cemented his popularity. "Other than that, he could get elected as many times as he wants to after this.” Even so, says Dem candidate Rebecca Holcombe of Norwich, while "it was the right thing to stand back and let him lead" in the worst days of the crisis, now that the economy is the chief issue "it’s time to look forward.” If your quarantine extends to 300 vertical feet, how do you skyrun? VPR's Mitch Wertlieb, poking around in the more obscure reaches of the sporting world, called up Hillary Gerardi, a 33-year-old St. Johnsbury native who now lives outside Chamonix, France, so she can pursue her sport of choice: skyrunning. Which she describes as a lot like running the more "gnarly" trails of the Greens and Whites, the ones that require scrambling. Races tend to be 13-40 miles. Lockdown rules in France, though, keep people within a kilometer of home, and allow no more than 100 meters of vertical gain.

Stave Puzzles delights in driving their customers to distraction and "the customers would have it no other way." That's the start of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette profile of the Norwich puzzle company that has become the country's pre-eminent high-end puzzle maker. Some longtime customers request a specific puzzle-cutter for their orders: "They actually can tell the difference," the paper reports. It's not unheard-of for a customer to spend $50,000 a year on its puzzles, though more are in the $10,000-$20,000 range, says Steve Richardson, who co-founded Stave and is passing ownership on to two longtime employees, Jennifer Lennox and Paula Tardie. (Thanks, CK!)Proposed 190-foot Thetford cell tower stokes opposition. The tower would rise some 100 feet above the treetops off Sawnee Bean Road, near Route 113 in Thetford Center. It's planned by AT&T to improve cell reception for its customers and as part of FirstNet, a federally funded first-responder network. Some Thetford residents, writes the VN's Anna Merriman, consider the proposal out of keeping with the town's landscape and a potential hazard for the Post Mills Airport. The selectboard will hold a special meeting on the project tonight, though it's not yet clear how much impact the town might have.D-H asks to delay bike, pedestrian plan for expansion. Work on a new, $130 million patient tower is scheduled to start in June, and the hospital had agreed to submit its traffic mitigation plan to the Leb Planning Board before getting its building permit. But hospital spokesman Rick Adams tells the VN, “We and the planning staff have realized that the work to design and estimate the walkway and bike path improvements would likely take six-to-nine months.” The Planning Board will take up the request for a delay at its meeting tonight.Sometimes, once just isn't enough. A 31-year-old woman from Dover, NH, was pulled over and ticketed yesterday for doing 90 mph on the Spaulding Turnpike in NH. Not even 15 minutes later, she was clocked at 111 mph on Route 16 in Rochester. This time she was arrested.Federal judge tosses "happy cow" suit. VPR reports that a US District Court judge has dismissed activist James Ehlers' suit against Ben & Jerry's for claiming that the milk going into its ice cream comes from farms that meet strong environmental and animal welfare standards. The judge ruled that Ben & Jerry's never claimed that all its cream comes from its Caring Dairy program, which pays a premium to farms that adhere to those standards, and that Ehlers "relies exclusively on his interpretation" of the "happy cows" phrase.  East Coast gets it first official "dark sky" sanctuary. The National Park Service announced Friday that Katahdin Woods and Waters, which sits along the eastern side of Baxter State Park in Maine, just received the designation from the International Dark-Sky Association. Sadly, you'll have to wait to check it out: The park's closed at the moment due to the pandemic. But a "Stars Over Katahdin" celebration is planned for September."How do you prepare for a disaster that always seems incredibly far away… until it’s not?" The latest episode of NHPR's splendid Outside/In starts off with the 1859 Carrington Event, a solar storm of such strength that the aurora borealis was visible as far south as Cuba... and telegraphs worked even after they were unplugged from batteries. Now, imagine the same thing, only this time there's the world's electrical grid and satellite infrastructure to worry about. Some people paid to worry about such things are warning what might happen in the event of a huge coronal mass ejection. Few seem to be listening. Sound familiar?

No flip turns, because if you do it wrong you end up under the ice. That's one of the rules at the Memphremagog Winter Swim Festival, the only subzero swimming meet in North America, in a two-lane, 25-meter "pool" hacked out of the ice. If you're not at least a little scared, says a race briefer, “it means you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.” The kickoff event is a 25-meter breaststroke where what matters isn't speed, but the creativity and engineering of the racer's hat. Marty Munson details the whole thing for Men's Health.News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:

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So, it's Monday. Rain's in the offing. And

still

 we've got to get up. Here's how: Jörg Hegemann is a German jazz pianist who specializes in boogie-woogie. He's playing for people in a bar in Bonn one day a few years ago when Stefan Ulbricht, a younger boogie and stride pianist, walks in to grab a beer. Ulbricht sees Hegemann, sits down on the bench, t

, and it's, like, 0-120 in three seconds.

(Thanks, RM! And SMLG for the translation!)

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