TOP O' THE MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Between a front and a front... That's where we are, one to our south, just hanging out, and one descending from our north, with a band of moisture between them. Even so, for today we'll mostly just see cloudy skies and a slight chance of sprinkles throughout the day, highs in the mid 50s. The real event won't happen until tonight, when a system moves in, the northern front arrives, and we get rain overnight. Down into the mid 40s. Water birds abound...
Cynthia Crawford was out looking for spring bird migrants on Campbell Flats Road in Norwich late last week; she didn't find any, but did sight this striking pair of wood ducks. "Mostly," she writes, "the female stood at alert (I think she knew I was watching them). The male took no notice and went fishing."
Meanwhile, in Strafford, Annemieke McLane came across this Canada goose resting in a field.
Just a heads up if you use Mt. Support Road in Lebanon: The city's putting in a sewer extension and work is scheduled to begin today and last until June 25. It'll run from 401 Mt. Support, a bit south of the intersection with LaHaye Drive, down to Timberwood Commons. Cars, bikes, and pedestrians will all be affected, with bike/pedestrian detours, times of one-lane traffic, and complete road closure for short periods. "It's pretty much insanity." The headline, a quote from Enfield realtor Vanessa Stone, pretty much says it all. In the Valley News, John Lippman puts numbers to the Upper Valley housing market. Sales to out-of-state buyers, he notes, have skyrocketed: almost double over last year in Woodstock, up 29 percent in Hartford, more than doubled in Norwich. Available houses are scarce—one realtor who usually has 40-50 to sell in April and May currently has two, he tells Lippman. The result of all this, Lippman writes: "Less affluent buyers rooted in the community are crowded out of contention."I'm exhausted just reading about these guys. On his Octopus Athletics blog, Tris Wykes profiles Lebanon High sophomore runners Birhanu Harriman and Tommy Wolfe—whose work ethic is so intense most of their teammates "think they're crazy," says track coach Kevin Lozeau. In March, just for the heck of it, they mapped out a marathon route and gave it a try because, Harriman tells Wykes, they wanted to know, “How far could we keep going at a certain pace and at what point would it really start to hurt?” Three days later, they came two seconds short of beating the school mile record—just to give it a shot.Carburetors give way to injectors, distributors to coils, gas to batteries... And through it all, writes Li Shen in Sidenote, Watson's Automotive in E. Thetford adjusts with the times. Owner Bob Watson, his sons Mike and Jason, his brother Kevin, and a small crew of other mechanics have had to become technicians "wielding electronic scanners, laptop computers, and lab scopes," Shen writes in a profile of how one small but determined Upper Valley garage has shifted with the increasing pace of automotive innovation. Including EVs. Watson's company car? A Chevy Bolt."The word 'unprecedented' is overused. But it’s unprecedented." In a Q&A with The Dartmouth's Andrew Sasser, outgoing Provost Joe Helble says that dealing with the pandemic has been the hardest thing he's ever done professionally. "We had to...work with the faculty to say, 'Okay, everything you’ve ever done in your entire career to deliver education and engage students is changing, effective two weeks from now...'" As for what he'll miss about the Upper Valley? "The idea of embracing winter, being outdoors on the coldest days is a spirit and an ethos that I will miss," he says. Leb developer hopes to bring "micro-lofts" to old W. Leb. Though not as micro as they could be. Chet Clem, president of Lyme Properties, is working with Boston housing startup Bequall to bring two of its "plug-and-play" homes to a lot his company owns up Route 10 from River Park, reports the VN's Tim Camerato. Ordinarily, they're 345 square feet; Clem's plans call for two 690-square-foot units. “It’s a very efficient space, but it’s very large,” Bequall co-founder Scott Bailey tells Camerato. Clem's hoping for approval from the city's zoning board at its meeting tonight.“Without exception, every employer in the area is having a difficult time recruiting new employees." That's Hanover town manager Julia Griffin to The Dartmouth's Jacob Strier about the labor shortage now hitting the region. Still North's Ally Levy tells Strier that if she doesn't respond to a prospective employee quickly, they're gone. And that's as the need for staff has amped up to beyond where it was pre-pandemic: Beforehand, she says, "web orders—either on the cafe side or book side—were not a part of our business model. We need more people to [both] process web orders and help people in-person.”"This labor crisis—and yes, I'm calling it a crisis—could be worse than the pandemic for restaurants." And that's Great N.H. Restaurants CEO Tom Boucher tallking to WMUR's Kristen Carosa about the fact that the problem is statewide. Just as they're trying to gear up to welcome what's expected to be a flood of summer visitors, the state's restaurants are having trouble finding staff. Boucher's restaurants are giving kitchen staff bonuses; Lui Lui has taken to advertising for staff for the first time in years, has boosted starting wages, and is giving bonuses to current staff to try to keep them from getting poached.VT case numbers continue to drop, but there's a hot spot at the northern end of the Upper Valley. Overall, VTDigger's Erin Petenko notes, last week's town-by-town map of cases "is one of most optimistic since VTDigger began its weekly reporting in November." But in terms of cases per 100K population over the last two weeks, Newbury, Groton, and Topsham are showing spikes, though the numbers are small: 17 in Newbury and 8 each in Groton and Topsham. Neighboring Ryegate, Bradford, and Corinth are seeing somewhat smaller jumps, as well. You can check town trends for on Petenko's chart.Lockdown is a criminal word/What is the crime? Madeline Kunin has been many things over the course of a long career: governor, deputy U.S. education secretary, ambassador to Switzerland. Now she's added "poet" to the list. "Out of public office," she tells VTDigger's Kevin O'Connor, "I belong more to myself." She's freer to write about her life, her family and childhood, her thoughts on aging and the pandemic. And though poetry seems far from her old concerns, “People are turning to poetry more,” she says. “They want to be brought to a different place than the news. I think it’s a ripe time for poets.”Mt. Crotalus, Mt. Ophus, Mt. Cervus... Good thing VT state geologist Edward Hitchcock didn't get his way in the 1860s, when he wanted to rename a crop of Vermont mountains that bore what he considered to be names that were “not only devoid of all good taste, but [that conveyed] only low or ridiculous ideas.” Mt. Tom was one of them, writes journalist and historian Mark Bushnell, Camel's Hump another. Bushnell covers a lot of historical ground on just how mountains did get their names—including that the original grants for the town of Mansfield were mostly atop the mountain itself.Speaking of things you can climb... Well, maybe not you. But in Italy's Piedmont, ibex scale the nearly vertical Cingino Dam to get to salt and other minerals that leach out of the dam's masonry. It's a vertiginous and dangerous climb—they do occasionally fall—and a few years back, the BBC's Forces of Nature filmed what it looks like. Which is: Remarkable. (Thanks, KrH!)
Let's catch up...
NH reported 264 new cases Friday, 293 on Saturday, and 221 yesterdayfor a cumulative total of 95,377. There were 4 new deaths, bringing the total to 1,305, while 79 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 8). The current active caseload stands at 2,242 2,610 (down 368). The state reports 256 active cases in Grafton County (up 83), 63 in Sullivan (up 11), and 333 in Merrimack (up 111). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Lebanon has 24 active cases (up 6), Claremont has 20 active cases (down 2), Hanover has 15 (down 1), Sunapee has 10 (up at least 6), Haverhill has 10 (up 2), Charlestown has 10 (up 5), New London has 8 (down 1), Newport has 6 (up 1), Enfield has 6 (up at least 2), and Plainfield has 5 (up at least 1). Warren, Orford, Orange, Grantham, Springfield, Cornish, and Unity have 1-4 each. Wentworth, Wilmot, and Croydon are off the list.
VT reported 125 new cases Friday, 79 Saturday, and 83 yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 23,126. There was 1 new death, with a total of 247, while 17 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 2 over the weeken). Windsor County gained 22 new cases and stands at 1,359 for the pandemic, with 80 over the past 14 days, while Orange County also added 22 cases and stands at 756 cumulatively, with 72 cases in the past 14 days. In town-by-town numbers reported at the end of the week, Springfield gained 12 new cases over the previous week; Newbury added 9; Randolph gained 8; Bradford and Windsor each added 5; Corinth, Hartford, and Royalton gained 3 apiece; Fairlee, Killington, Reading, Sharon, Thetford, and Woodstock added 2 each; and Bethel, Norwich, and Weathersfield each added 1.
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At 5 pm, Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center brings together three alums with national political experience to talk about the first 100 days of the Biden presidency. They are James Baehr, who was the lead advisor on veterans' issues for the Domestic Policy Council in the Trump White House; Amanda Brown Lierman, a former Obama aide who now runs Supermajority, an advocacy organization focused on encouraging women's political activism; and host and civil rights attorney Janos Marton, who runs Dream Corps JUSTICE, an effort to cut incarceration rates.
This evening at 6, NH Humanities hosts US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo online. She was first appointed in 2019, becoming the first Native American (Mvskoke/Creek Nation) to hold the post. She'll be reading poems, talking poetry, and—who knows—maybe playing the saxophone.
At 7 pm, the Howe's Ciné Salon gets into vertical cinema—and whether images seen that way have something more or different to say than the familiar horizontal screen—through older films, experimental films, and films shot on iPhones and other devices.
Finally, it's May, which means farm life is arching its back, stretching its arms, and settling back into our seasonal life. The Norwich Farmers Market and Cedar Circle's farmstand both started up on Saturday. Crossroads Farm's Norwich stand reopens on Thursday (its greenhouses in Post Mills are already open). Deep Meadow Farm's stand starts up on Saturday. And greenhouses and farmstands all over the Upper Valley, from Earthwise in Bethel and Kiss the Cow in Barnard to Edgewater in Plainfield and Spring Ledge in New London are already open. You can find out about them all in the Valley Food & Farm guide that Vital Communities maintains—and learn more about this year's virtual version of Flavors of the Valley.
Last fall, Brattleboro-based composer Stephen Spitzer
It has nothing to do with the sculptor—instead, it sets to music a series of lines of poetry by Robert Louis Stevenson (with additions by Spitzer). Windborne's members, though they rove the world musically, are all New Englanders—Lynn Rowan and Lauren Breunig grew up in VT, Will Rowan in NH, Jeremy Carter-Gordon in MA, and the two Rowans have taught and performed with Revels North for years—and immediately said yes. They took the stage at Brattleboro's Latchis Theater for this recording.
(Thanks, LPH!)
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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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