Daybreak Thursday 10/1/20

RABBIT RABBIT, UPPER VALLEY!

Sunny today. Though there'll be some clouds around. Highs in the upper 60s. There's a trough of low pressure off to the west and an upper-level disturbance headed our way, but we won't see its impact until tomorrow. Winds from the southwest, and lows tonight in the mid-40s.Fall from above. It may look a little different now, what with yesterday's rain, but just before that, photographer Lisa Lacasse got her drone up to overlook fields, barns, the distant hills, and the luminous trees of Woodstock and Pomfret.Enfield town manager stepping down. Ryan Aylesworth, who's held the post for three years, is headed to Mansfield, CT, which contains Storrs, home of UConn's main campus. In Enfield, writes the VN's Tim Camerato, he was known "for his patience, listening skills and thoughtful approach to contentious issues"—including his successful effort to abandon the town's elected fire wards and have the fire chief overseen by the town manager. 

Dartmouth cancer researchers launch "accelerator." With $1.4 million in seed money from investors, the idea is to raise $15 million by 2022 to help bring cancer-related innovations developed by researchers at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center and Geisel to market. The Cancer Center has already helped spin off 14 startups; their early support came from grants funded by donations from individual donors, foundations, and The Prouty. The new accelerator will bring entrepreneurial dollars to the mix, as well."I just want to calm the alarmist reaction on Grafton Pond." Sayer Palmer lives up the road, and checks in with a letter to Daybreak: The state always planned to lower the pond's level so it could continue repairs on the dam, he writes; it had to do so earlier than anticipated this year because of the drought, in order to feed Lebanon's water supply. The pond will eventually return to normal—but, he adds, "Walking around the pond right now, you’ll find stone walls that are normally submerged. It’s really amazing to explore."Farmers markets adapt. The Dartmouth's Jaymie Wei spent time calling the various market managers around the UV to see how things have been going. The Leb market, because of its restrictions, has seen fewer visitors and vendors, but is still doing fine. The same is true in Norwich, but interestingly, the number of sales per vendor has held steady. Once things shut down, it'll switch to a once-a-month preorder and pickup model. Which happens to be what the smaller Hartland market moved to early in the summer.SPONSORED: Three! 3 year-round houses, 3 ponds, a 3-car garage, 3 decks, 3 dry basements... plus 42 acres of largely open pastureland. For the last 50 years, Rugg Haven on the Bradford-E. Corinth line has been in the hands of a single family, an unusual three-home respite and haven just a few miles from I-91. It's up for sale, and for the creative mind the options are endless. Co-housing with friends? Spiritual retreat? Agricultural? Drone footage and a basic overview at the link. Sponsored by John Chapin and the Occom Group. If you run into issues trying to vote, NHPR wants to hear from you. It's joined up with newsrooms around the country as part of a ProPublica-led effort to track barriers to ballot access and other voting problems. They're looking for anything that keeps people from voting, from absentee-ballot delivery issues to out-and-out voter intimidation. Rising numbers of NH kids waiting for psychiatric hospital care. The other day, there were 20 young people waiting for an inpatient bed in the state. Ordinarily, the number's in single digits. NHPR's Peter Biello talked to Ken Norton, head of the NH chapter of NAMI, the National Association on Mental Illness. The chief issue, Norton says, is a mix of pandemic stressors on kids and challenges finding placements for people leaving the hospital. Chris Sununu's getting a reputation. First it was Mink. Now he's intervened on behalf of a fox that a family domesticated in Massachusetts then released into the wild. It was captured by another MA resident, who took it to a wildlife rehab facility in NH... where state wildlife officials from MA tracked it down and requested that it be returned to be euthanized. Instead, NH wildlife officials worked out a deal to keep the fox at the Millstone Wildlife Center in Windham, where he's in quarantine and "doing great," the director reports.Wait. Twenty-two percent of Granite Staters have never heard of Cam Newton? The new UMass-Lowell poll of NH voters, which mostly focuses on politics, threw in a bunch of popularity questions at the end. Skip to the very last page, and even leaving the Patriots' new QB out of it, it's got some fun results: People from MA have a 42/25 favorable/unfavorable rating; people from VT, 58/9 (though 31 percent of respondents had no opinion). Shaw's does better, with 63 percent positive, same as Stonyfield Yogurt; Hannaford, 82 percent.Business vs. demographics: VT's lieutenant governor candidates differ on priorities. The contest between Democrat Molly Gray and Republican Scott Milne is close—within the margin of error in the only public poll available—and as the two battle for undecided voters, Seven Days' Colin Flanders takes a look at their backgrounds, their campaigns, and where their priorities. "The office may be a glorified soapbox," he writes, "but it's a tall one."VT received more per capita from the CARES Act than every state except Wyoming, and all that cash has made a difference. The state pulled in $2,000 per person, compared to $388 in states with populations larger than 7 million, writes VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen. The legislature's economist, Tom Kavet, thinks that's why retailers are reporting record sales of recreational equipment, cars, and electronics, and contractors are busy with home improvements. "There is this phenomenal amount of money," he says.And the state budget awaiting Phil Scott's signature has $5 million for people excluded from CARES Act funding. The money's aimed at migrant workers and others who were explicitly left out of the federal program, and the state believes about 4,000 adults and 1,000 children will be covered, writes VTDigger's Amanda Gokee. But because some of them are "literally hunted by ICE," as state racial equity director Xusana Davis puts it, they may be tough to find. Still, says Davis, “If the entire nation agrees that people should get stimulus payments, then everybody should get stimulus payments.""I do not plan to read anything from Seven Days again." That's from one of many letters Seven Days received in the wake of last week's Burlington-protests story and followup paper-burning. This week, the newspaper is running pages of letters from both critics and supporters. Less visibly, writes publisher Paula Routly in an accompanying piece, "Our staffers endured personal attacks, graphic humiliations and bullying of every variety, including profanity and sexual harassment. Nothing prepares you for the indictment of a mob in the digital era and the subsequent online public stoning."Meanwhile, the protesters took down their encampment last night. They've occupied Burlington's Battery Park for a month. Yesterday evening, though, they folded their tents and labeled them for return to their owners, bagged clothes to be donated, and tossed trash into a dumpster by the Burlington Police Department. “While we take our leave from a 24/7 presence at Battery Park,” organizer Harmony Edosomwan read to the crowd from a statement, “we will continue to raise our voices and resist the current corrupt system until all violent officers are removed."

That was an extremely impressive effort by Census takers. Remember the concern over the summer about the relatively low self-report rate in VT? Now that the decennial count is coming to a close—though the Bureau's Oct. 5 end date differs from a federal judge's Oct. 31 order—VT is in a five-way tie for best response, at 99.9 percent of people counted: 40 percent of them by workers going door to door. NH is right behind, at 99.8 percent counted, though its better initial response meant that workers had fewer doors to knock on.Want peace and solitude you can't always find on hiking trails these days? Try the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. National Geographic Traveler is out with a loving—and lushly illustrated—story on the trail, which links 22 rivers and streams and 56 lakes and ponds across ME, NH, VT, a tiny bit of QC, and the Adirondacks. It follows many of the trading routes pioneered by the Abenaki and Iroquois nations. Stephanie Vermillion delves into the trail's history and possibilities for foliage season. 

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Years ago, Hawaiian singer-songwriter Jack Johnson and Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder joined up onstage on Johnson's song "Constellations" during his Kokua festival in honor of Earth Day. Back in April this year,

, definitely a more intimate version.

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