WELCOME TO THIS WEEK, UPPER VALLEY!
As you probably noticed overnight, things are a little unsettled up there. That's because a low pressure system in Canada is drooping our way and then expected to settle in for a spell. Today, cloudy skies, showers and a slight chance of a thunderstorm pretty much all day. Temps only reaching the low 70s, down to the high 50s overnight. Some numbers...
There are now between 1 and 4 active cases each in Canaan, Lebanon, Plainfield, Grantham, Charlestown, Claremont, Newport, Sunapee, and Newbury. Overall, NH added 109 new positive test results over the weekend (with 6,135 tests), bringing its official total to 5,747. There are 4,412 (77%) recovered cases and 367 deaths (up 10), yielding a total current caseload of 968. Grafton County gained 4 cases and now stands at 84 cumulatively; Sullivan also gained 4 and is now at 31. Merrimack County gained 6 and stands at 407 all told.
VT reported 11 new cases over the weekend, including 2 in Windsor County. The official statewide total now stands at 1,202. Two people (down 1) are hospitalized and 946 (up 8) have recovered. Deaths remain at 56. Windsor County has now had 58 reported cases over the course of the pandemic; Orange County remains at 9. In town-by-town numbers released Friday, Hartford remains at 13 cumulative cases, Woodstock at 8, and more than half the other towns in the region between 1 and 5. The state added 3,165 tests over the last three days; it's now done 63,865.
You may have seen this double rainbow. Rebecca Lafave did, and caught it for the rest of us. Thanks, Rebecca!
West Leb photographer Courtney Cania has been spending time around Mink and Trout brooks in Hanover, where fog settles over the water first thing, the moss and rocks frame the streams' flow, and the eddies add contour and drama.
A local-business triple-header.
VN
business writer John Lippman had a lot to say over the weekend:
That J. Crew closing thing from Friday? May have been premature. "While the Hanover store was on the initial list of leases the company intended to reject, it has since been removed from the list,” a spokeswoman for the bankrupt company emailed Lippman on Friday. But who knows how long its doors will actually be open? “While J. Crew as a company may ultimately be completely liquidated," Hanover town manager Julia Griffin says, "for at least this week, that storefront will remain occupied."
Three Pomeroy general stores up for sale. Lippman reports that Baker's Store in Post Mills, the Village Store in Thetford Center, and B&B Cash Market in W. Fairlee will all go up for sale. They're owned by Mary Dan Pomeroy, who's been running them by herself ever since her husband Mike died in January. Also at that link: the Windsor Diner's up for sale and the old Route 4 General Store just off Exit 1 in Quechee has become the Modern Country Store, open at the moment for ice cream.
Some local retailers are seeing booming business despite the general retail travails both here and around the country, Lippman writes. Hardware stores, gardening supply centers, plant nurseries, vendors of outdoor structures, and of course King Arthur Flour, are all going flat out. “It’s been crazy. In the 19 years I’ve been here I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Lee Ann Lyman, store manager of Woodstock Ace Home & Hardware in Woodstock. “It’s, like, where are they coming from?”
Evans resumes as Thetford police chief today. In a listserv post Saturday, town manager Guy Scaife wrote: "The internal review has progressed to a point where there is no longer a requirement for Mike not to be on Town Hall premises... Please understand that the decision to put Chief Evans on leave was not one that anyone took lightly or relished, but it was one that had to be taken, and advised by the Town Attorney. The entire situation has been unfortunate for all... Hopefully, the rest of the review will be settled as quickly as this first portion." Local police budgets have risen, driven by personnel, social service calls. As elected officials around the region start to look at police budgets, the VN's Anna Merriman writes that in four of six towns whose budgets she analyzed—Claremont, Hanover, Hartford, and Norwich—policing takes up a bigger portion of the overall budget than 10 years ago. This has largely been driven by personnel costs, she reports, but also by an increase in social service and mental health calls. Activists and some politicians are pressing to rethink how town monies are spent.Key NH coronavirus numbers head in the right direction. The Monitor's David Brooks has been tracking four key goals and all (with one caveat) are what you'd want to see. The 14-day running average of new cases has dropped for two weeks in a row, the daily average of new cases is below 4 per 100K people, and the positive rate on tests is below 5 percent. The state has upped its daily average of tests, though a lot of them are re-tests of people in nursing homes. Still, he writes, masks and social distancing are here to stay: "We can’t stop these annoying practices now any more than you can shed all your winter clothes when walking through the snow because they’ve kept you warm so far."VT Legislature sends first policing reforms to governor. The state House and Senate late Friday came to terms on a measure that, in the words of Hartford Rep. Kevin "Coach" Christie, "is meant as a step to create change." It requires state police officers to begin wearing body cams August 1, prohibits law enforcement officers from using chokeholds, and creates a new crime for officers who use such restraints resulting in injury or death—though that portion sunsets next July. The bill requires lawmakers to work with the attorney general, the defender general, and others to revise the law before then.VT lawmakers pass $577 million in aid. Wrapping up their session in a marathon online spree, legislators passed three bills that would spend nearly half of the $1.25 billion in federal pandemic relief. Some $327 million would go to the state's health care system; $214 million to businesses, housing initiatives, internet connectivity, and municipal government; and $36 million to ag and forestry. "By the end of the evening," Seven Days' Paul Heintz writes, "legislators appeared somewhat loopy from all the time they had spent in front of their computer screens." They'll return at the end of August.So many orogenies! Vermont's landscape, distinct geological regions, and patterns of human development were shaped over eons by the slow movement of rocks, magma, and glaciers, journalist and historian Mark Bushnell writes in a recap of the state's deep-time history. Three separate mountain-forming orogenies—the Grenville (not much left from that one), the Taconic (the Greens, the Taconics), and the Acadian (which gave the NEK and NH their granite)—created the basic physiography. Then humans arrived, a mere 12,000 years ago. Jackson Pollack had nothin' on fireflies. It's that magical season out there, and not just around here. In Japan, a photographer named Tsuneaki Hiramatsu (whose day job is in customer support for an internet company) has for years been creating "light paintings" of fireflies at their work, using long-exposure digital photos then merging the images. An archive of his work, mostly from the forests and fields of Okayama prefecture, is at the link, most recent first. As always, click on the photo for the full effect. (Thanks, AFG!)
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At 11 today, you could hear the Vermont Center for Ecostudies' Jason Hill talk about "The Future of New England's Mountains." "As global climate change continues to alter New England’s temperature and precipitation regimes," VCE writes, "we will see additional changes in the distribution and abundance of flora and fauna that call our region home. These changes will be especially noticeable in the mountains, which are warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world." Signup link at the link.
And at noon, the Norwich Public Library is hosting the third and final of its Frederick Douglass discussion groups. They'll be reading excerpts from his “Pictures and Prophets” and discussing his vision of justice using artwork by contemporary Black artists. No need to read or prepare in advance.
Meanwhile, the King Arthur Café and retail store reopened on Saturday. They're open 8 am to 4 pm daily, though there's no seating at the café currently allowed. Still, you can stop by (without preordering) to pick up bread, pastries, coffee, and grab-and-go items, as well as... flour! (And all the rest of the stuff they sell.) Masks required.
The Montshire reopens on Wednesday to members only, and to the general public on July 8. It'll be Wednesdays to Sundays 10-4, and you'll need to reserve tickets in advance. Also, it will be outdoors only—the indoor exhibits are still closed.
Finally, you may have missed the reopening of Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu last week, but fortunately, they've preserved it for everyone to see. On stage: a string quartet performing Giacomo Puccini's "Crisantemi". In the huge theater's 2,292 seats (including the balcony tiers): an audience of plants. Conceptual artist Eugenio Ampudia, the Liceu's artistic director, and independent art curator Blanca de la Torre wanted to offer "a perspective that brings us closer to something as essential as our relationship with nature." The music wasn't bad, either. The plants have since been given to frontline health care workers. (Thanks, MW & NS!)
Reading Deeper
A graphic snapshot of a country in retreat. Covid Exit Strategy.org is a coalition of public health professionals from United States of Care, Duke U's Margolis Center for Health Policy, and others, and they're tracking states' progress on reducing symptoms and cases, health system readiness, and testing capacity. Back in May, large swaths of the country were making progress. Now? It's a sea of red out there (though most of the Northeast is doing better). Detailed state-by-state data on key measures, updated each night and made visually simple to grasp.
But at the start of the week, what we
really
need is music to get us up and launched and... well, at least tapping our feet. Last summer, the Petersens—a young family of bluegrass musicians from Missouri—were touring Ireland and stopped by to visit Irish multi-instrumentalist and singer Ger O'Donnell in Limerick.
And that self-effacing bassist in the background who's keeping everything together? Mom Petersen.
See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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