!YELLAV REPPU, TIBBAR TIBBAR
Boy, it's busy up there... For starters, there was the front that came through yesterday, bringing us rain. Then there's a low-pressure system moving up the coast... and another trough of low pressure high up arriving today. The upshot here on the ground is rain for a good chunk of the day (though maybe some snow in northern towns), possibly turning into snow everywhere sometime this afternoon. Temps won't get out of the 30s today, down to around 20 overnight. There'll be some decent north winds this afternoon, too.Ice by night and by day:
Here's Monday night's highly atmospheric moon lighting up a still-icy Lake Fairlee. "It looks like it's daytime," writes Kirsten Detrick, "but I took it around 10:30 at night, when I happened to glance out the window."
And on Tuesday, Robin Osborne was over at the Union Village Dam watching the water flow when she saw a small ice bouquet sitting in the middle of the brook. "To me, this looks like a campfire made of ice," she writes.
The announcement came in a press release yesterday, which added that Deputy Chief Phillip Roberts will take over as chief starting May 1. Mello, who took over in December, 2015 from longtime Chief Gary Smith, is leaving policing for a job in the private sector, reports the
Valley News
's Anna Merriman.
Thetford news site debuts. Sidenote, which officially launches today, is put together by the brother-sister team of Nick Clark and Laura Covalla, joined by Li Shen. Clark and Shen both serve on the Thetford selectboard. "There are a lot of 'little stories' that don’t get covered by traditional outlets, but those stories are still important," Clark writes. "The stories already exist–usually shared as side notes as you pass your neighbor at recycling... Sidenote is just another way to make information available." The ins and outs of Treasure Island, why GMP's burying lines on Academy Road, local hiking trails... "Gone, but not forgotten. RIP, Rubin-Williamson bird." In early March, a hawk crashed into a window on the 6th floor bridge connecting the Williamson and Rubin buildings at DHMC—and died. It lay there for a few days, attracting attention, before it got carted off. Suddenly, a week later, a memorial sign appeared, commemorating the spot. Now a shrine is slowly growing, writes ES, who sends a pic. "It has expanded to contain a Dr. Fauci prayer candle, an origami bird and flower—and someone even named a star after the bird." No word yet on when anti-bird-strike striping gets added to the memorial...SPONSORED: The Hop announces... With the spring thaw, the Hop is finding new inspiration in the work of adventurous artists. Over 20 virtual events were announced on Hop@Home, including concerts by a MacArthur-winning cellist and an Iranian kamancheh player, the culmination of Dartmouth Idol, and a multimedia opera for the digital stage. Artist talks include dance pioneer Dianne McIntyre, a new “Coastin Conversations” jazz series, and an artist roundtable with Two-Spirit, Native artists. Explore the artists and original Hop creations at the maroon link. Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.Bradford fire likely caused by chicken-house heat lamp. Fire officials say the blaze that destroyed a barn and several outbuildings, burned 17 acres, and put several other houses in danger as high wind gusts drove the flames may have been kicked off by a heat lamp being used to keep chickens warm. In all, reports the Valley News, 20 fire departments from around the region were called in to fight it. Universities, Hanover push back on NH student vaccine policy. Yesterday, the NH College & University Council—21 public and private higher ed institutions (not including Dartmouth)—said it has "entered into discussions" with the Sununu administration on when out-of-state college students can get the vaccine. Hanover town manager Julia Griffin points out to The Dartmouth's Ben Fagell that vaccines are allocated based on "the number of people 18 years or older," and that the Census counts students at their college residence, undermining Sununu's argument that NH's allotment isn't for out-of-staters.Out-of-state college students out of luck in VT, too. In a press conference Tuesday, Gov. Phil Scott said that college students in the state who "maintain their out-of-state status" won't be eligible for vaccines. That leaves about three-quarters of UVM students and 96 percent of Middlebury students ineligible, notes the Free Press's April McCullum, though the Middlebury Campus paper reports many students there have gotten shots. "We canceled spring break to minimize travel," Middlebury prof Eilat Glikman tweeted. "They are here, trapped with no access to basic healthcare that protects us all." "Is this awareness going to be there moving forward, or is this going to be something where people are posting on Instagram and writing stories now because it’s the cool thing to do?” Weiwei Wang is a member of VT APIDA (Asian Pacific Islander Desi American) for Black Lives and one of the people behind a recent letter to VT officials and media organizations taking them to task for remaining silent after the March 16 shootings in Atlanta that killed eight people, including six Asian women. In VTDigger, Emma Cotton explores the letter and instances of bias against Asian Americans in the state."Until very recently, the performance of Vermont pensions has been horrendous." That's VT state Rep. (and former SEC investigator) John Gannon. He's been taking the legislative lead on questioning past investment performance by the state's public pension funds—whose returns, writes Seven Days' Kevin McCallum, "fell well short of most similarly sized public pension plans in the nation" over the past decade. They're doing better now, but even as the state treasurer's office argues past performance is a red herring, legislators are looking to boost oversight. McCallum explains the debate.“They are fascinated, trying to figure out how, and why, something can exist to give them a gift—a literary gift—without depositing a coin.” The first short-story vending machine in the country went into SF's Café Zoetrope, owned by Francis Ford Coppola. Now, reports KQED-San Francisco, the Bay Area's rapid transit system is installing them, too. The dispensers are touchless: Just wave your hand and it spits out a one-minute, three-minute, or five-minute story to read while you ride. Would that be cool or what?Oops. Remember the volcano in Iceland that's been offering drone photographers a chance of a lifetime? There's one local guy, Garðar Ólafs, who decided to fly his over its mouth. “I slowly lowered the drone until all I could see was erupting lava, and when I looked up, I didn’t see the drone anymore," he tells MyModernMet's Emma Taggart. "Basically, I was inside the crater of the volcano.” He managed to fly the drone out before it melted entirely, but its sensors were destroyed. His video, however? "I would say that the shot was worth it," he says. Yep.
And the numbers...
Dartmouth reports 29 active cases among students (down 6) and 2 among faculty/staff. There are 56 students and 4 faculty/staff in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 29 students and 7 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 486 new cases yesterday, for a cumulative total of 84,176. There was 1 new death, bringing the total to 1,238, and 77 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 3). The current active caseload stands at 3,113 (up 239). The state reports 139 active cases in Grafton County (up 7), 43 in Sullivan (down 1), and 266 in Merrimack (up 34). In town-by-town numbers, the state says that Hanover has 36 active cases (down 1), Claremont has 15 (down 1), Lebanon has 15 (up 1), New London has 10 (up 2), Newport has 9 (no change), and Sunapee has 5 (no change). Haverhill, Piermont, Canaan, Enfield, Plainfield, Grantham, Grafton, Springfield, Wilmot, Cornish, Croydon, Charlestown, Unity, and Newbury have 1-4 each. Rumney is off the list.
VT reported 162 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 19,275. It had 2 new deaths, which now number 227, and 31 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 6). Windsor County gained 2 cases and stands at 1,179 for the pandemic, with 70 over the past 14 days, while Orange County added 3 new cases and is at 550 cumulatively, with 16 cases in the past 14 days.
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WRJ restaurant implements "airline-style" seating. As diners return to Trail Break, the pre-pandemic S. Main St. hot spot, owner Topher Lyons announced last night that tables would now be divided into "extra-atmosphere" tables, available for a $40 fee; $20 "leisure-class" tables that generally—but not always—guarantee the waitstaff won't seat total strangers next to you; and "economy-class" tables that give anyone willing to pay an extra fee the right to unseat you. Lyons' Facebook post includes a seating chart.
In addition to, well, today being April 1, it's the start of National Poetry Month, and in its honor not one, but two area towns host PoemTown—think of it as a rural region's version of a touchless poetry vending machine. The work of 82 poets from 42 Vermont towns went up all over Randolph yesterday—from one at the Whale's Tail sculpture out by Exit 4 to three poems at the Super Suds to five at the Sanel/NAPA Auto Parts store. And Bradford's got over 100 poems up all over town and on the Bradford Public Library website.
At 3 pm today, the Hop, WRJ's Center for Cartoon Studies, and Dartmouth's Leslie Center host New Yorker cartoonist (and half-time Cornish resident) Harry Bliss. He'll be talking about his latest book, A Wealth of Pigeons, which came out of his collaboration over the last couple of years with Steve Martin, in which they riffed back and forth on hundreds of cartoons, with Martin providing the lines and Bliss the drawings. Free, online.
Today at 5:30, VINS is taking on "Bat Conservation in the Time of Covid-19." They're bringing together a panel of bat experts and biologists to talk about coronaviruses in general, why bats may be particularly vulnerable to viral spillover of SARS-CoV-2, and what Vermont is doing to protect bat populations during the pandemic and beyond.
At 6 pm, NH PBS and NH Humanities present an online screening and discussion of a portion of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's new three-part documentary, Hemingway. It's about...well, you can probably guess. Afterward, documentary writer Geoffrey Ward, the NH Writers Project's Masheri Chappelle, and NH author Robert Wheeler (Hemingway's Paris) talk it all over.
Also at 6 pm, VTDigger and the group Vermont Has Her Back (which organized January's open letter to the VT press corps calling it out for biased coverage of women in politics) take on "Gender Bias in the Media." The online event features New York mag writer Rebecca Traister (author, among other things, of Big Girls Don't Cry), followed by a panel moderated by VPR's Jane Lindholm that includes Digger founder Anne Galloway, Seven Days editor Candace Page, VPR VP Sarah Ashworth, former WCAX anchor Eva McKend, and letter co-author Natalie Silver.
Remember the guy on skis and parasail yesterday? I sort of think of this as the Brazilian acoustic guitar equivalent: You watch French guitarist Elodie Bouny and the great Yamandu Costa, a virtuoso on the Brazilian seven-stringed guitar, launch into this, and just hope they land safely. Which, of course, they do.
just a little ray of sunshine for the gloom outside the walls this morning.
See you tomorrow.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. A regularly updated collection of photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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