Daybreak Monday 8/31/20

HERE WE ARE, LAST DAY OF AUGUST...

High pressure moving in... Though temps will still be a bit below normal. Things will start out cool and maybe foggy in the usual spots, but with plenty of sun out there will warm quickly into the low or mid 70s. It won't be as blowy as it was yesterday, either. Down into the low 50s tonight.Taco spot opens in Leb Diner space. Lalo's Taqueria is the new, fixed-spot venture by Eddie Moran, whose green Taco's Tacos food truck has been a regular at Colburn Park and select events around the Upper Valley for the last few years. It opened Saturday with a new mural along one wall, reports Susan Apel on her Artful blog, and plans are to serve lunch and dinner Wednesdays through Saturdays, 11 am to 8 pm and Sunday, 11 am to 4 pm. Andy Hill and Karen Liot Hill announced they were closing the Lebanon Diner back in June."OK, guys, we’re not playing ice cream window anymore. This is real." That was Billy Beattie to his kids, who used to pretend to sell ice cream out their window when they lived next to the Baited Hook in Enfield. Now the Beatties—whose family ties to Mascoma Lake go back to the early 1930s—own the Baited Hook, and three generations of them have thrown themselves into burgers, fries, buffalo chicken and above all, reports the VN's John Lippman, whole-belly clams.Co-op board president steps down. Lippman also reports that Allene Swienckowski "abruptly resigned" her post on the Co-op Food Stores board last week. "My input for trying to elevate the culture of the board was not considered by a majority of the board members," she told him; she differed with her colleagues on how to handle interim general manager Paul Guidone in the hiring process for a permanent GM and over a change in the bylaws. Board VP Jessica Saturley-Hall will become acting president.Oh, what the heck, let's just make it a Lippman trifecta... Remember the news a couple of weeks ago that Dartmouth prof and biotech entrepreneur Tillman Gerngross has a new startup to develop antibodies that can fight SARS-Cov-2 and other viruses in the same family? Lippman's got the story behind how Gerngross raised $50 million just like *that*... plus news that Adagio, the new company, has "homed in on" one antibody and expects to enter clinical trials later this year.NH Public Utilities Commission hammers in the final nail on the proposed Leb pipeline. You may remember in July, Liberty Utilities ran out the clock on its plan to construct a natural gas pipeline through Lebanon and Hanover, failing to meet a requirement to start construction within two years of PUC approval. On Friday, the PUC formally ended Liberty's bid, ordering that if it wants to try again it has to start all over and show "customer interest sufficient to support a finding that the franchise(s) sought would be for the public good.""A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear." For the last several years, former VN reporter Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, who lives in Vershire, has been working on a book about the attempt to turn Grafton, NH, into a linchpin of the libertarian "Free State" movement—and what happened when black bears injected themselves into the mix. The book's due out soon, and Kirkus is up with a pre-pub review. The free-towners "argued over purity while trying to defund such things as the public library. The bears advanced their own arguments..."And speaking of bears, looks like Mink might have died of natural causes. A necropsy late last week found "that she had not suffered any broken bones or been shot," the VN's John Gregg reported Friday. Moreover, Ben Kilham tells him that she was older than anyone had thought: “Her teeth were as worn as much as I’ve ever seen on a bear,” and he estimates she might have been as old as 30. Meanwhile, bear cub sightings are coming in, Gregg wrote yesterday, including one by Leb Fire Chief Chris Christopoulos and his wife. The cubs may be headed back to their den near Sachem Village."Mink was an extraordinary mother." Naturalist and writer Mary Holland has a tribute to her "old acquaintance," whom she was able to photograph over the years. "I couldn’t let her passing go by without a nod to her and the richness she added to so many peoples’ lives," she writes. "I, for one, shall forever be indebted to her for tolerating my presence and allowing me to observe and photograph ursine behavior in the wild so few are privileged to see." NH AG says GOP broke law with mailers, issues cease-and-desist. The order was issued Friday, and concerns the state Republican Party's two mailings of absentee ballot applications, which the attorney general's office says were potentially misleading. The first, you'll remember, had recipients' applications all mailed to Durham; the second attempt "failed to correctly reproduce the proper application," NHPR's Dan Barrick reports. State investigators are still looking into the first mailing. Pick-your-own might see a boost this year, as apple growers' worries go far beyond Covid. Consumer tastes are shifting from the varieties that make up the bulk of VT's orchards, writes VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen, and growers are having trouble securing convenient storage, packing, and shipping facilities. And the boom in cider hasn't come to the rescue, since cider-makers pay much less than retailers. So they're adding farmstands...and hoping families looking to get outside show up to pick their own.All those webs in trees? Not to worry. The Monitor's David Brooks says they're fall webworms, whose nests are "are ugly but almost never a real problem"—unless they blanket a cherry tree, which webworms adore. It seems like there are a lot of them out there this year, but Brooks says it's hard to know for sure, since they do no harm so no one keeps track."[Dartmouth] students and faculty take great pride in their Environmental Studies program." That, believe it or not, is one of the first things Travel Awaits, a travel website "for the 50+ traveler" has to say about Hanover as part of a writeup on "11 Must-Visit Quaint Towns in New Hampshire." To be fair, it also mentions the AT. Sunapee (a "jewel" in the Lakes Region) and Cornish (home to St. Gaudens) are also on the list.A bear at Ben Kilham's, sled dogs in Grantham, and, of course, Baker Library... They're among 35 "Images of the Granite State" just posted by The Atlantic, which has finally gotten around to New Hampshire in its "Fifty" project, which has been putting up photos of each of the 50 states each Sunday since the beginning of the year. It was Vermont's turn back in February. And maybe less familiar: European shags, an ocellated turkey, a hoopoe in flight... For the last five years, the conservation charity Birds on the Brink has run a "bird photographer of the year" contest; this year's notable photos are out. There are some stunners. A great gray owl in Sweden; a closeup of a brilliantly colored Ocellated Turkey as it preens in Tikal, Guatemala; northern nutcrackers fighting in the snow in Bulgaria; a cormorant underwater off Baja; a fleet of swifts darting through the mist by Iguazú Falls in Argentina, and plenty more.

Oh, wait! Here they are, down here!

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And hey, let's try something different in this slot, too. Wendy Law is a well-known cellist—she's soloed with the NY Philharmonic and Boston Symphony and founded Classical Jam. A few months ago,

—Bach's Cello Suite No. 1, which you'll recognize instantly—with the same bow on three different cellos: a mere $5,000 version by California instrument maker Jay Haide; one made by London luthier Thomas Kennedy in the 19th century that sells for $180,000; and a cello crafted by Neapolitan violin-maker Alessandro Gagliano sometime in the early part of the 18th century that if you have to ask the price, you can't afford (okay, it's $1 million). The notes may be the same, but the

sound

... I'm relieved to say that the $180,000 one would do just fine, thank you.

See you tomorrow.

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