Daybreak Monday 9/21/20

WELCOME TO THE WEEK, UPPER VALLEY!

Warming trend! Though today, at least, we're just talking a few degrees. We're lolling in high pressure, which has been bringing us these brilliant early-fall days. Frosty start to the day again, with fog in the usual spots, but then temps rising into the low 60s and pretty much nothing but sunshine out there. Down into the mid-30s tonight.On an equally frosty morning... Saturday, that is... Lisa Lacasse was out with her drone over McDaniels Marsh in Enfield. It was early (and cold), and she captured the white frost and the speckles of pastel foliage and still-green trees and the cobalt blue of Bog Brook as it widens through the marsh.Co-op board, Guidone reach agreement, hope for end to turmoil. Paul Guidone will now be able to remove the "acting" from in front of his general manager title—and won't be resigning effective Friday—after the board agreed to 11 "terms" that parallel his demands for greater professionalism on the board's part. The only dissenting vote came from Nick Clark, who objected to the process the board followed, reports the VN's John Lippman, who also writes that employees who backed Guidone at one point considered a formal protest against the board.Mobile car detailing service with new used-car sales model launches; Great View Skating Rink > Chosen Valley Pet Resort > For Sale. Lippman also writes that Rick MacLeay, former owner of The Car Store in Norwich, is taking over Zippity's car cleaning service with his new company, UV n Go. He also plans to expand into used cars on a "tell-me-what-you-want-and-we’ll-find-it” model. Lippman also reports that after trying out the pet-care business, Chosen Valley/Great View owner Peter Martin has found the pandemic too much to contend with and has the site on Route 4 in Enfield up for sale again.Officials still searching for third of Mink's cubs; sighting Friday. NH bear project leader Andrew Timmins tells The Dartmouth's Lauren Adler that the cub was seen "no more than a hundred yards or so from where Mink herself was found, so it’s certainly staying in the area that the cubs know well." He expects the community search effort to pay off. Hanover town manager Julia Griffin, in the meantime, is using Mink and her cubs' fame as a reminder that human behavior affects—and can end—bears' lives. "We should not have had to see her experience what she had to experience,” she says of Mink.“After this is over, I’m going to be moving far away.” That's W. Leb's Vince Marzello, the man charged with voter fraud for voting under different names—once as a man, once as a woman. The VN's Jim Kenyon digs into the story, which involves dual personalities and, oddly, the right-wing booby-trap organization Project Veritas. The case, Kenyon writes, "is less about alleged voter fraud than about the struggles of an older man who wrestles with his identity... [which has] been capitalized on by a multimillion-dollar gotcha outfit using a highly unusual case to score cheap political points."Cell towers in search of a home. AT&T will be testing two sites in Thetford next week as potential alternatives to its original plan to construct one off of Sawnee Bean Road. That plan raised a ruckus in town; the company now plans balloon tests for a site on Pero Hill Road and another in the town forest next Monday, reports the VN's Anna Merriman. It is also looking at several sites in Chelsea, where town officials have proposed sites on town-owned land as an income-generating move.NH woman survives both Spanish Flu and Covid. Gerri Schappals is 102 and lives in a nursing home in Nashua. She was 11 months old when she came down with the 1918 flu, as did her mother, and both were given up for dead; they both survived. In May this year, she was running a fever and was taken to the hospital; by the time the test came back, she was feeling better. Schappals herself credits her early bout with flu for strengthening her immune system, and her fondness for wine for her longevity. “Jesus did not change water into wine at Cana so we could look at it,” she likes to say.Speaking of surviving two pandemics... So has Montpelier's Wayside Diner (so far). It's actually a few months younger than Gerri Schappals. It's not clear how it responded to the 1918 flu, but VTDigger's Mike Dougherty writes it was probably much like what it did this time: Its doors closed "while its owners figured out how to keep feeding the community." This time around, it's reopened with closed tables, no stools at the front counter, and far fewer than its usual 1,000 daily customers. "You don’t have that open restaurant feeling," says co-owner Brian Zecchinelli. "But you also have this safe feeling.”"Be flexible, be patient, and maybe bring a sandwich." That sums up ski resorts' message to skiers in Nina Keck's review for VPR of how the various VT resorts are approaching this winter. At Killington, the lodge bar will be closed and food will be grab-and-go: "We don't really want people to sit in and drink and relax and hang out," the general manager tells Keck. Most mountains require day passes in advance, though Jay expects no business from Canada  and is being more relaxed. "Our expectation is that there will be plenty of room to spread out here at the mountain this year,” its general manager says.Catching up with that panda cub. Remember that tiny—but astonishingly loud—cub from the end of August? It's now four weeks old and still doesn't have a name. But the cub, the National Zoo reports, "is growing into the pandas’ signature ‘plump,’" which means it's starting to regulate its own body temperature, which means that its mom, Mei Xiang, can now leave it more often, though never for long. The zoo has pics. (Thanks, CW!)

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