GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Drier, but also cooler. And still gusty. It'll be mostly sunny today, but yesterday's front dragged in significantly colder air. We'll spend the morning in the 40s and even mid-afternoon will only be in the lower 50s. Things will stay windy today, with gusts this morning above 20 mph. Patchy frost overnight. Dartmouth continues to trim jobs. Between early retirement and layoffs, furloughs, or reduced hours, the VN's John Gregg reports, it's cut 41 jobs in its Campus Services division. It will leave many of the positions opened up by early retirement unfilled, VP for campus services Josh Kennison said in an email to college staff yesterday. He added that the reductions may be all his division needs for the moment. In addition to those and layoffs at Tuck this summer, college officials have said layoffs may be needed in other divisions.Hartland Farmers Market may keep pre-order system next year... even if life gets back to normal. That's because it's been so successful, manager Brian Stroffolino (who also owns and runs HeartLand Farm and Solstice Seeds) tells VPR's Howard Weiss-Tisman. Markets around the region have adapted to the pandemic, but they've also struggled. "A lot of them have gone into their very meager savings to kind of make ends meet this summer, and are worried about going into next season without savings," NOFA-VT's Jennie Porter says. New "Harmony Park" opens in Randolph. The installation by the playground at the town's rec fields includes a harp, vertical chimes, an array of drums, a vibraphone, and marimbas anchored in concrete footings and available for anyone to play. The year-long, $34,000 project was spearheaded by Randolph's Sunrise Rotary. It's the largest installation of its kind in the state.SPONSORED: Now Playing at Northern Stage. It’s Fine, I’m Fine follows Steph Everett as she comes to grips with a new normal after four career-ending concussions as a varsity soccer player at Dartmouth. Funny, heartbreaking, and human, It’s Fine, I’m Fine advocates for compassion in the face of all of our invisible struggles. Winner of the Best Festival Debut at New York’s United Solo Festival in 2019. Hit the link for tickets and details, including a summary of the safety precautions taken for COVID-19. Sponsored by Northern Stage.Hanover, church officials face off, remotely, in court. Lawyers for the town and for Christ Redeemer Church met in Grafton Superior Court on Tuesday, the VN's Tim Camerato reports, to argue over limits placed by the Zoning Board last year on a proposed 21,250-square-foot church on Greensboro Road. The church argues that Hanover is discriminating by requiring zoning board approval for new church construction outside its downtown and institutional districts. Local NH election officials, including in Lyme, Wilmot, Sunapee, flag USPS ballot delivery change. As recently as the September primary, absentee ballots mailed in a given town were delivered directly to voters or to the town clerk's office by postal workers. But clerks in various NH towns say they're now going to regional sorting centers in Manchester or WRJ, delaying delivery, reports NHPR's Casey McDermott. She received no direct answer from a spokesman about why. The secy of state's office says it will follow up.Sununu issues order on police reforms. Following up on recommendations made by a commission he formed in the wake of George Floyd's killing, the governor yesterday "directed agencies to strengthen police training to include anti-bias instruction, increase oversight and reporting requirements for individual police officer misconduct, and chart a path forward to pay for body cameras for State Police," the Monitor's Ethan DeWitt reports. In all, Sununu addressed 20 of the panel's 48 recommendations, though he has endorsed them all; most of the rest require legislation.Scott allows tax-and-regulate cannabis bill to become law without his signature. But in a letter to the state legislature yesterday evening, VT's governor told lawmakers they need to focus more on preventing drug misuse and on racial equity issues in the state's growing cannabis industry. "We must take additional steps to ensure equity is a foundational principle in a new market," he wrote. In addition, Scott yesterday also allowed a new police-use-of-force bill to become law. The measure bans choke holds and requires officers to consider language barriers, mental impairment, and other factors in decisions about whether to use force. Turkey-hunt reporting in VT goes online, may be the future for other game. The pandemic closed many reporting stations for hunters, forcing Fish and Wildlife to shift to all-online reporting for turkeys. Now, after approval by the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, the commissioner has okayed a continuation of electronic reporting for turkey, and says he may expand it to cover bow hunting for deer. Brenna Galdenzi of Stowe-based Protect Our Wildlife tells VTDigger's Amanda Gokee, “Fish and Wildlife has hijacked the Covid crisis to liberalize the reporting of big game for hunters.""Affordability has become one of those buzzwords..." That's VT state auditor Doug Hoffer in Paul Heintz's searching look in Seven Days at the ingredients that go into making Vermont more or less affordable. Gov. Phil Scott ran on the issue four years ago, tagging government costs as the problem. Hoffer points to the cost of housing, health care, and childcare as affecting families much more profoundly. Others look at lagging wages. Filled with interesting and eye-opening data."There are many reasons why the simple act of voting has become so fraught." Sue Halpern is a scholar in residence at Middlebury and a staff writer for The New Yorker. She's been covering election security and voter suppression issues, and just sat down with David Goodman to talk over ballot access, voting, and other timely questions for his Vermont Conversation podcast. "It's very, very hard not to be worried" about Nov. 3, she says. "Let me count the ways...""Biff is affectionate but easily distracted." Biff's the house Weimaraner at the Latchis Hotel in Brattleboro, and who paid warm but brief attention to Seven Days' Pamela Polston on check-in. Polston was exploring Brattleboro for the newspaper's "Staycation" series: the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Works Bakery Café, the Harris Hill Ski Jump, and, of course, Sam's Outdoor Outfitters. Downtown, she writes, "bears some resemblance to a ladder: a steep angle up Main Street with perpendicular streets forming flat rungs.... And always, to the east, New Hampshire shoulders its way into view."Sunrise over Plainfield. It's maybe not as brilliant as it used to be, but when William Daugherty got his drone up yesterday morning, the carpet of trees stretching off toward Mt. Ascutney far in the distance was still plenty colorful.Here's a sight you won't be able to go see: the 232 waterspouts and funnel clouds that formed over the Great Lakes last week. “There were an average of 33 per day,” Wade Szilagyi, director of the International Centre for Waterspout Research and a meteorologist at Environment Canada, tells the Washington Post. “That’s why I label it as a world record." The spouts form when colder Canadian air sweeps over the lakes and makes surface air prone to rise. Plenty of pics and video at the link.
Today's numbers...
In case you're wondering how we fit in with the rest of the country, CovidExitStrategy shows "uncontrolled spread" in 23 states and most of the rest "trending poorly." VT and NH are in the "caution warranted" category along with most of our neighbors except MA and RI. Only one state in the country—ME—is "trending better." Hover over or click into any state for details.
Dartmouth now reports 2 active cases among its students, in addition to the 3 among faculty and staff. In all, 5 students and 1 faculty/staff are now in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 4 students and 9 faculty/staff are in isolation as they await results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 71 new positive test results yesterday, bringing its official total to 8,800. There were two new deaths, which now stand at 448. The state has 507 current cases in all (up 7), including 14 in Grafton County (no change), 6 in Sullivan (no change), and 39 in Merrimack (no change). There are between 1 and 4 active cases each in Haverhill, Lyme, Hanover, Lebanon, Plainfield, Grantham, Canaan, Unity, Newport, Claremont, New London, Newbury, and Sunapee.
VT reported 6 new cases yesterday, bringing its official total to 1,827, with 134 of those still active (up 3). Deaths remain at 58 total, and 1 person with a confirmed case is hospitalized. Windsor County gained 1 case and now stands at 95 over the course of the pandemic, with 11 cases in the past 14 days. Orange County remains at 25 cumulative cases, with 1 of those in the past 14 days.
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At 7 this evening, Open Democracy, a nonpartisan group founded by campaign reform advocates (among them Doris "Granny D" Haddock) to promote civic participation in NH, is holding an Upper Valley town-hall style forum on voting this year. They'll cover everything from how to register to how to fill out (and avoid making mistakes with) your absentee ballot, to how to vote if, say, you've lost your job and had to move in with your parents.
There's a long history of beekeeping in Vermont, and this evening at 7, former journalist Bill Mares and former president of the Vermont Beekeepers Association Ross Conrad will be talking about their new book, The Land of Milk and Honey: A History of Vermont Beekeeping. The book follows the state's "lineage of notable beekeepers," write Phoenix Books on their website, and asks, as honey bees around the world are threatened, "Is it possible that by reflecting on the history of Vermont’s beekeepers we can find clues about what is needed to help the honey bee thrive today and well into the future?"
And also at 7, NH poet laureate Alexandria Peary hosts "COVID Spring: Granite State Pandemic Poems." In April, she hosted two virtual poetry-writing groups a week, and the result is an anthology of 54 poets "writing of job loss, loneliness and love, masks, social distancing, surreal visitors, uncertainty, graduations deferred, grief, neighborly and less-than-neighborly acts...recalibrating or confirming what it means to be human, to be a resident of this region," she writes.
Starting today, the Hop's "Film on Demand" series has A Home Called Nebraska, the new documentary by Beth and George Gage about the Refugee Resettlement Program in Nebraska, and efforts there to resist the tide of hatred directed toward newcomers, and instead welcome them. Runs through Oct. 14, free to Hop members.
And speaking of film: Every year since 2003 (with one exception), the Howe and Cine Salon have held Home Movie Day, featuring films unearthed by Upper Valleyites from their family archives, basements, attics, barns, dusty boxes under their beds, long-forgotten huh-what's-in-here manila folders... This year it'll be virtual, on Oct. 17, and they've put out the call for films. If you've got something to submit, get in touch with Rich Fedorchak at [email protected].
Bach didn't know about the ukulele, but if he had... Taimane Gardner is a Hawaiian uke virtuoso of Samoan, German, Irish, French, and Swedish descent. She spent part of her quarantine this summer learning
. And yeah, I know, now that things are turning colder here: That's a
heck
of a spot for a quarantine.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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