Daybreak Thursday 12/10/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Some sun, modestly warmer. High pressure's building in, which will keep things on the pretty-nice side today and tomorrow. We may see some sun to start, then more clouds than blue sky until later in the day, but at least we won't be blanketed. Highs in the upper 30s, down into the low 20s tonight, northwest winds. Skies will be partly clear tonight until about midnight, which is good news because maybe, just maybe, northern lights.What is it about flowing water in bad weather? It looks so... alive. These could have been yesterday, but photographer Travis Paige took them over the weekend, when he was out in the storm along Bicknell Brook in Enfield. They're long-exposure shots, so you don't see the rain or snow, just the woods, the slick rocks, and the crash and flow and wisps of the brook.Hanover goes for the European touch downtown. If you've been there recently, you might have noticed little kiosks sprinkled along Main and Lebanon streets. They're part of the town's effort to rethink its usual holiday celebration. “My scheme was to turn downtown Hanover into a holiday lighting extravaganza with European market feel,” town manager Julia Griffin tells the Union Leader's Damien Fisher. Outdoor food kiosks for local restaurants and market stalls for shops, the town hopes, will bring visitors on weekends and over the four days leading up to Christmas.In all, Dartmouth sent 86 students home this past term. That's out of 600 reports of possible Covid-restriction violations, Provost Joe Helble said in yesterday's campus-wide "community conversation"—the first time the college has detailed its disciplinary actions. The college is also making changes to improve students' quality of life this winter, making some indoor spaces more accessible and moving more life outdoors, including buses to the Skiway and grooming the former golf course for xc skiing.“I’m very much at the mercy of the couple of kids or staff members who are tearing around the halls with me.” Until today, anyway, when Enfield Village School Principal Harrison Little is due to return after a 10-day quarantine. While he was home—after coming in contact with someone with Covid-19—school administrators set up a Chromebook on a wheeled platform dressed in a shirt and tie (or occasional hoodie) so he could be pushed around the halls and into classrooms, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News.SPONSORED: This won't fit under your Christmas tree. But it will handle all your power outages in the new year! Sonnen, a German battery manufacturer, has just introduced a lower-priced, more compact and versatile battery to pair with your home solar energy system. With a higher safety rating and much longer expected lifespan, it is poised to givethe better-known Tesla Powerwall a run for its money. Find out more at the maroon link. The power is in our hands to make a difference! Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.Wilder Dam owner proposes steadier flow to improve river health. The proposal by Great River Hydro for changes at Wilder and its downstream dams in Bellows Falls and Vernon is part of a federal license renewal application, reports the VN's John Gregg. The idea "is akin to filling a bathtub and then letting it drain at the same rate water flows from the faucet, as opposed to draining it rapidly and refilling it, sometimes twice a day, which is what the current 'peaking' license allows for power production," Gregg writes.New York Times 2020 "Year in Pictures"? Oh yeah, been there. At least, you have been if you're Lyme's Deborah Robinson. Times photographer Hilary Swift caught her and her twins, Ellenora and Rowan, sheltering under an umbrella as a rainstorm moved in during the Black Lives Matter rally on the S. Royalton green this summer. In the June photos, 3rd one down.NH House Speaker Dick Hinch dies suddenly, a week after being sworn in. The news came late yesterday from his office, which gave no details and called his death an "unexpected tragedy." Hinch was 71 and was starting his seventh term as a legislator. On Tuesday, his colleagues in a virtual legislative meeting were told that he had non-Covid-related cold-like symptoms, InDepthNH's Paula Tracy writes. “We just didn’t know about the speed of sound at that time." Before Chuck Yeager, who died Monday, other pilots pushed their planes to the limit, laying the groundwork for what came later. Yeager's death reminded WWII pilot Jack Sherburne, of Deerfield, NH, of a redheaded 20-year-old who crashed and died during training in Virginia in 1942, after doing a loop. "I was just thinking," he explains to the Monitor's Ray Duckler, "that a lot of unknown young pilots had been killed, and they weren’t always killed by the enemy. I was thinking about this kid who was killed. No one will ever remember him.” With GOP in control of legislature, NH pivots to accept charter school grant. The move is expected to come tomorrow, when the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee organizes for the first time in two years under Republican control. The state landed the $46 million, five-year federal grant to expand charter schools last year, but Democrats in control of the committee argued that taking it would force the state to siphon funds from traditional public schools.“I always told Curtis he was the Vermont welcome center before we built the one down in Guilford." That's former VT Gov. Peter Shumlin, remembering BBQ-master Curtis Tuff, who died on Tuesday night at 83. Curtis' BBQ, says VPR's Howard Weiss-Tisman, "is the kind of place where if you visit it once, you never forget it." There's the blue bus, of course, and the food, and the pot-bellied pigs. But mostly, he says, it was Tuff himself, "a gentle and soft-spoken pit-master, part-James Beard and part-wise man." Weiss-Tisman has a bio and an appreciation.With federal help due to expire soon, 20,000 Vermonters could be without income. That's a state labor department estimate of how many residents will lose benefits once the unemployment programs Congress enacted in the face of the pandemic expire Dec. 26, reports Seven Days' Colin Flanders. With savings exhausted and families scraping by, state officials are girding. Among other things, the state is training unemployment call-takers on how to deal with people in crisis—"in recognition of what's coming," says state labor commissioner Michael Harrington.On the other hand, up to 1,000 people who couldn't get stimulus grants may get help from VT over the next few months. The money is part of a $5 million slice of the state budget earmarked for Vermonters who file jointly with undocumented spouses and for "lawful" immigrants without social security numbers. They were ineligible for $1200 stimulus checks earlier this year; the grants are an "effort to foster equal treatment for all Vermont residents, regardless of immigration status," writes VTDigger's Kit Norton."I've never met kids who don't like starting fires, sneaking up on things, throwing sticks, getting muddy." Brad Salon and Sarah Corrigan run the ROOTS School in Bradford, teaching tracking, foraging, and other wilderness skills—or as their slogan puts it, "Bringing You the Stone Age Since 2007." They've seen a decided uptick in interest (especially from adults) during the pandemic, reports Seven Days' Margaret Grayson. She touches base with several wilderness educators about the trend, including Murphy Robinson, who teaches hunting to women and gender nonbinary people.Our Semi-Neked Friends of Wheeler Field 2021 Calendar. Pretty much says it all, doesn't it? It's an effort in W. Bolton, VT, to raise enough funds to buy the local rec field, which doubles as town green and all-around gathering spot. As Seven Days' Pamela Polston puts it, "It's not quite 'The Men of Maple Corner' calendar—the famous fundraising venture that showcased some coyly nude Calais fellas and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars back in the early aughts," but it's off to a good start, with 115 $20 calendars sold as of Monday.China, Nepal agree on Mt. Everest height. Whew. Now we can relax. Even better: It's about 0.86 of a meter higher than previously calculated, putting it at 8,848.86 meters, or 29,031.69 feet. Up until now, China had pegged the mountain at about 3 meters shorter than Nepal's official measurement—which dated back to an Indian survey in the 1950s that included snow. The two countries sent joint expeditions to the summit twice in order to come up with the new official figure. Oh, and speaking of snow: "nuoska." That's my word for the year. It's the Finnish word for "snowballable"—ie, packable—snow. It's on a list of the astounding variety of Finnish words used to describe snow and ice. There's snow floating atop water, for instance ("hyhmä"). And the hard, frozen covering of snow that makes trees bend ("tykky"). And pack ice ("ahto"). And wind-driven snow ("ajolumi"), and snow that...

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You can't pigeonhole GoGo Penguin. They're a piano/standup bass/drums trio from Manchester, England that seems like they could fit comfortably in the "leaderless" jazz tradition, except that their influences are equally modern classical, rock, electronica—you could maybe think of them as acoustic electronica—and they've very much forged their own path. Whatever. Their work is by turns mesmerizing and lyrical,

And really, what we need right now is "pyry," or snow that is currently falling. See you tomorrow.

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