GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Should be a nice day out there again today. Clouds will be moving in later in the day with some low pressure that's passing to our north, but the morning, at least, will be clear and sunny. High today in the low 60s around mid-afternoon. Winds picking up then, too, coming from the southwest. Cloudy and calming down tonight, lows in the 40s.Sunday's CHaD Hero raised $790K. So far. This year's top fundraiser, as he was last year, was Saheer Mathrani, Dartmouth ’20, who pulled in $52,671. “When I was in middle school, one of my good friends passed away because of pediatric cancer,” he explains. “When I was older, one of my cousins had leukemia, then one of the kids I used to ski coach ended up being in a pretty bad accident and was treated by CHaD itself.”And while we're at the hospital: Remember that D-H was going to unveil a new geriatric emergency department yesterday? Well, it did. The VN's Nora Doyle-Burr has the details. The idea is to revamp the existing ED and put in place new protocols, especially to manage chronic conditions better at home. “The ED is geared to work up 'is something new?'” Dr. Daniel Stadler said at yesterday's press conference. So a patient with dementia “gets a head scan and she gets a urine analysis and she gets a chest x-ray, when what she needs is medication at home.”It's just a maple alongside a highway in Vermont. Why the fuss? The state wants to fell the tree by the Ascutney exit on I-91, and locals are upset because it's all that's left of Romaine Tenney's farm. In 1964, Tenney refused to leave when surveyors routed the highway through his farmstead. The night after sheriff's deputies arrived to start emptying the place, he set it on fire—himself inside, his dogs and livestock freed. Exit 8, says Howard Mansfield in his haunting account of what happened, is "just about the saddest spot along thousands of miles of highway." Public meeting planned for Tuesday.Ask yourself "Do I need this? Is there an alternative?” That was Marc Morgan, Leb's solid waste manager, at an event at AVA with photographer Evelyn Swett, whose "Compost Compositions" are hanging there. They were talking about how to reduce the stream of stuff flowing into landfills. Which, Morgan says, are really just holes. “To make that property last as long as possible as a disposal site, is to put as little as you can into it.”Rebecca Holcombe staffs up. The Norwich resident running for VT governor has hired Kyle Quinn-Quesada, who previously ran US House campaigns in CA and AZ, as campaign manager. Cameron Russell, who ran Christine Hallquist's campaign two years ago, will work on the campaign part-time. Gov. Phil Scott is “a good guy and it seems like he wants to be there,” Quinn-Quesada told VTDigger. “But right now we don’t need someone who’s just a caretaker governor. We need someone who’s actually going to step up."And NH gets a second Democratic guv candidate. Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky yesterday announced that he'll be joining State Senate Majority Leader Dan Feltes in a bid to challenge incumbent Republican Chris Sununu. NH faces "a quiet crisis" for struggling working- and middle-class families, Volinsky said. "I understand what it's like to be the underdog."This seems like a good moment for a pic of sunrise over Camel's Hump. The river snaking by in front, the mountain looming through the early-morning mist...Eureka! Okay, so you know when you're driving on I-91 north of Wells River and look out over the mountains and see a large white rectangle that looks like a billboard, and you go, "What is that?" Well, thanks Upper Valley VT/NH Group on Facebook! Someone asked, and the crowd sourced an answer: It reflects microwave signals to help operators communicate with the Comerford Dam near Monroe/Barnet. NH has lowest murder rate in country, ME and VT right behind. Home security company Safewise looked at FBI data from 2013-17. The nation averaged 4.9 homicides per 100,000 people. New Hampshire's figure stood at 1.2, Maine's at 1.7, Vermont's at 1.8. The company compared the actual rates to its surveys of public perception: nearly 50 percent of the people it asked worried about murder in their everyday lives, far more than the stats warrant.It's not your imagination: NH house prices are rising. The median price of a single-family home was $305,000 in September, 5.2 percent higher than the year before, according to the NH Association of Realtors. One big reason: fewer homes on the market.New arsenic regs likely to put over 100 public water systems out of compliance in NH. You may remember that earlier this year, thanks in no small part to Dartmouth researchers, the state became only the second in the country to cut the allowable limit to half the federal standard. Water sampling from 2015-17 showed at least 70 public systems would need remediation; new samples suggest the number will be at least 120. The state's aiming for 2021. What's with the 4,000 sticks alongside NH highways in the winter? That's what the Monitor's David Brooks asked. They're small, limbed trees, maybe an inch around, 8-14 feet long. Highway workers put them up along roads that get a lot of snow in the Whites, right next to the metal poles that hold reflectors (and by the big boulders that line viewing areas along the Kanc), so that plow drivers won't cause mayhem. In his usual way, Brooks turns the pedestrian into a great story.Vermont cheeses take home 19 medals from World Cheese Awards in Italy. Cabot's Alpine Cheddar, more cheeses than you can shake a stick at from the Cellars at Jasper Hill, Grafton's Bismark and Barnburner, Spring Brook Farm's Tarentaise... they all stood out. “It’s wonderful to see Vermont cheesemakers getting the respect they deserve on the world cheese stage,” says Tom Bivins, who runs the Vermont Cheese Council. Woodstock Farmers Market gets pie bragging rights. People mag joined forces with Eater to come up with the best pie in each state (giving preference to regional appropriateness and local sourcing). VT's winner? The WFM's maple blueberry pie. In NH, it's the grasshopper pie (seriously? regionally inspired?) at The Bakeshop on Kelley Street in Manchester. Truth is, they all look pretty darn great, except maybe NM's Frito pie: a single-serve bag of corn chips smothered with chilli, cheese and onions. (Thanks for the tip, Mom!)If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
GOT PLANS?
Sharfstein was deputy commissioner of the FDA during President Obama's first term, then ran Maryland's health department. These days he's at Johns Hopkins' school of public health. He'll be giving the C. Everett Koop Distinguished Lecture in Auditorium G at DHMC, starting at 5 pm.
Or you could go hear Peter Orner read from his collection of interlocking stories, Maggie Brown & Others
. Orner, who's written four previous works of fiction as well as a collection of essays, moved to the area a couple of years ago to teach at Dartmouth. "It’s been apparent since his first book...that Peter Orner was a major talent," Dwight Garner wrote in his
NYT
review of
Maggie Brown
a few months back. "You know from the second you pick him up that he’s the real deal." Sanborn Library starting at 4:30 pm.
Horan, who lives in Thetford, will be reading from her latest collection,
Self-Portrait
, a tribute to the life and art of Frida Kahlo. Slides of the paintings that inspired each poem will accompany the reading. At 7 pm.
Enjoy this day! See you tomorrow.
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