Daybreak Thursday 10/29/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Sheesh. There's so much going on up there. The remnants of Zeta are approaching from the south and there's a storm system off to the west that's making its way toward us as well. The impact will roll out over the course of the day. It'll be foggy then cloudy but dry to start, with a chance and then a likelihood of rain starting mid-afternoon. Highs in the mid-40s. Sometime tonight things will change over to snow—not much around here, but more in the mountains, especially to the south. A bunch of fall photos. On her Upper Valley Fun blog, Katie Donovan rounds up the work of local photographers Derek Richardson, drone artist William Daugherty, Leb-Quechee-Norwich Times photographer Dave Nelson, and Teal Parker. They each do beautiful work. "Let them remind you just how lucky we are to be in the Upper Valley," Katie writes."Your lead could have...highlighted the athlete's accomplishments." Readers Kate Hilton and Jen Hutchins take issue with a Daybreak headline that used a quote from Tris Wykes's profile the other day referring to Leb HS athlete Sally Rainey as "just a girl." They write, "Although it may not have been intended and/or misrepresents the context of the quotation, this choice of headline reflects an implicit bias that girls are weaker or less capable than their boy counterparts." Full letter, plus a response, at the link. Windsor County sheriff's dept seeks info. Tuesday morning, a sheriff's deputy stopped a car on Route 4 in Bridgewater. The driver gave the deputy a false name, then got out of the car and took off into the woods. It turned out that Virginia has a felony warrant out on him for credit card fraud and violation of probation. Deputies have seized the car, which they believe was stolen from Enterprise, but the man hasn't been found, though he was seen around Route 4 yesterday morning. He's not considered dangerous, but authorities are hoping for information on his case or whereabouts."Cut us some slack please." In an email to VT's commissioner of financial regulation, state Rep. Jim Masland—who represents Thetford, Norwich, Sharon, and Strafford—notes that the interwoven nature of the Upper Valley makes the state's travel restrictions onerous. Especially as ski season approaches and Ford Sayre kids get ready. His fellow state rep, Tim Briglin, tells the Valley News' Nora Doyle-Burr that state policy would direct local VT skiers to practice at Killington or Craftsbury, rather than locally at the Skiway and Oak Hill. "It would seem people would be safer staying local," he says.Dartmouth alums launch effort to save spots in line for elderly voters, vets, and essential workers. The initiative, called Vote Saver, is the work of two Class of 2019 alums living in LA, Jono Klein and Bharath Katragadda. Their volunteers, including current Dartmouth students, will be at polling places in Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, D.C. and Wisconsin. They hope to bring the service to Hanover, though town clerk Betsy McLain says the town doesn't usually see lines that require waiting more than about 15 minutes.Macbeth at a costume party. That's Bethel-based director Tess Holbrook's approach for the premiere performance of Just the Players, a community theater troupe launched by the Chandler. "The audience knows Macbeth," Holbrook tells Seven Days' Margaret Grayson, "and we're also all fully aware of what's going on in our real lives. I can't change Macbeth into Much Ado About Nothing. So instead, [I asked myself], How could I make it feel lighter without insulting the text?" It'll be streamed for 10 days starting tomorrow."Why tell me that we're safer here?" Molly Bolick is a folklorist, "trained to listen, see, observe as an outsider, and note cultural and group patterns." She moved to central NH last year, and as she listened to her Merrimack County neighbors talk about the pandemic, she was struck by their sense that whatever its impact elsewhere, they could handle it. "Can it be explained by the trope of Yankee toughness—the dedication to self-reliance and prosperity by one’s own blistered hands?" she wondered. She can't yet answer her question, but argues that making the attempt matters.No, it's not just testing. State epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan and DHMC infectious disease specialist Dr. Elizabeth Talbot were on NHPR's The Exchange yesterday to talk about NH's rising caseload. The state, says Chan, is seeing more clusters, and contract tracers "are identifying more and more people coming into close contact with someone with COVID-19." And while the two argue that people take precautions, Talbot says the argument about mask-wearing is over. "Proper masking works," she says. "There is no question any longer as to if this is effective." Remember this: Only states can say who won an election in their state. They’re the ones counting the ballots. That bit of sage advice comes from NHPR's invaluable Civics 101 podcast, which has an explainer on how election-night calls from the networks work. Two things to keep in mind: Don't get antsy, because counting the votes fairly and accurately could take a while; and if any network anchor doesn't repeatedly stress that there's likely to be a partisan difference between early results from mail-in ballots and Election Day counts, change the channel. VT officials say they're not worried about challenges to election results, but prepare just the same. While plenty of ordinary people are fretting about what happens after Election Day—including Norwich's Judy Pond—VPR's Peter Hirschfield reports that state officials are confident state prerogatives will prevail in any conflict with the White House. "If the president or others try to declare or certify a victory on election night prior to every vote being counted," says AG TJ Donovan, "yes, I could see some form of litigation and Vermont could be involved on a side of being sure that every vote is counted."Migrant Justice notches a win over the feds. The Trump administration has settled a lawsuit with the VT farmworker advocacy group, agreeing to pay $100K and stop deportation proceedings against three workers arrested by Homeland Security for their political activities. In addition, DHS will distribute a memo about the First Amendment—which, as the Washington Post notes, "protects undocumented workers from being targeted for political speech"—to ICE's VT office. The suit, says farmworker activist Enrique Balcazar Sanchez, exposed the agency's "retaliatory arrests against community leaders.”"A hidden gift of the pandemic." That's what Kate Larose calls how moving life online has opened up civic participation for people with disabilities. It's "provided new opportunities to take part in previously inaccessible activities," writes Seven Days' Paul Heintz. "They can phone-bank from home, join remote campaign meetings and even take part in legislative committee hearings." And while it's unclear whether this all will persist past the pandemic, Jericho's Maria Rinaldi "is hopeful that the experience will at least open people's eyes to what it's like to be stuck at home or unable to attend certain events." Community college enrollment dips nationwide, but not in VT. At 5,102, CCV's count of "unduplicated" students this fall is just two fewer than last fall. The reason, says CCV president Joyce Judy, is that a large gift from the McClure Foundation and money from federal pandemic relief funds have made classes accessible to a broad range of students. “If we remove cost from the equation, we see a lot more people willing and interested who want to continue their education,” she tells VTDigger's James Finn.Did you know there's a "vampire's" heart buried in the Woodstock Green? If you've ever read Joe Citro, author, folklorist, and master of all things spooky in Vermont, you probably do. Seven Days' Dan Bolles read him starting as a teenager, and was expecting someone fearsome. Instead, he writes, "At lunch, the genial 72-year-old Windsor resident passed on fries with his medium-well burger because he's watching his salt intake." It's a lovely profile. "For me," says Citro, "it's all about the story." And that heart? Let Bolles tell you all about poor Corwin the Vampire. If you give a bear a sheet... Sure, we need to take in our birdfeeders. But where does it say we have to take in our laundry? This happened in Rindge, NH the other night. After the bear's first foray there's a long stretch in the middle you can skip, until about the 4:18 mark. Next, learning how to fold...

With snow in the forecast, maybe today's the day to contemplate the most remote place in Alaska. St. Matthew Island is a 24-hour ship ride from the nearest human settlement, and it "looks fittingly forbidding, the way it emerges from its drape of fog like the dark spread of a wing," writes Sarah Gilman in Hakai magazine. "To set foot on this scatter of land surrounded by endless ocean is to feel yourself swallowed by the nowhere at the center of a drowned compass rose." It's a beautiful, meditative profile of a place that, in Gilman's words, thoroughly rejects human presence.

As for the numbers...

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I don't know about you, but after a day like yesterday I just need some of the warmth that great musicians bring (or mostly, in this case, brought) when they decide to do something together. The Traveling Wilburys—Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison—

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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