Daybreak Thursday 4/16/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Mostly sunny, slight chance of showers later. A fast-moving little disturbance tied into a bigger low-pressure system high above much of the northern US passed us by early this morning, but it's clearing out, leaving mostly clear skies. There's another one headed our way this afternoon. The result of all this: Should be plenty of sun to start, getting a bit cloudier and breezier with the slightest chance of rain this afternoon. Highs in the high 40s, down below freezing again tonight.So... let's look at those numbers...

And just for the heck of it, three data visualizations that might interest you:

"What the dance makes us feel over the course of one minute could be large- or small-scale, a giggle or roar, a tear or cascade." You may remember a pointer a few days ago to the Sourdough Dance-Off hosted by the Hopkins Center. Artful blogger Susan Apel did an email interview with Tony-winner John Heginbotham, who leads the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble and is spearheading the project. Susan's post is full of information about it, and about the thinking that lies behind it.JUEL adapts. Elena Taylor, co-owner with Julie Sumanis of the "modern apothecary" in downtown WRJ, spoke to blogger Paul Hyson about how things are going. "Restaurants have notoriously small margins, so to unexpectedly have to close for an undetermined period of time is really scary," she says. But customers and landlord Bill Bittinger have rallied around, and the crisis forced JUEL to "spend time and develop our website" to move to online ordering and curbside pickup.The Valley News wants your stories... Specifically about filing for unemployment and/or getting your stimulus check. There's a form at the link to fill out if you're willing to have one of their reporters get in touch.New effort takes shape to provide food for first responders in Lebanon, Hanover. It's being organized by realtors Jaime Durrell and Lori Shipulski, and uses Meal Train, a platform to organize food donations. As most people are staying home, Durrell posts, "there are still those front line workers that are out there every day doing their jobs, putting themselves at risk, and keeping us at home safe." Restaurants including Salt Hill, Lui Lui, Boloco, Lou's, Ramunto's, and Han Fusion will prep meals, and you can either help fund those or volunteer to deliver to Hanover Police and Fire, the Lebanon PD, or the Lebanon Fire Department.Dartmouth's Chinese and Chinese-American students, faculty, parents, and alums donate nearly 145,000 pieces of PPE. One effort got underway through WeChat in early March, organized by Shudong Jiang, an engineering professor at Thayer, reports The Dartmouth. The group raised $30,000, researched PPE and US customs requirements, bought in China, and shipped donations directly from China to DHMC. Dartmouth alums in China have mounted a separate effort, as well. If you're headed to the NH woods to hunt wild turkeys... An interesting development. While most states allow hunters to report the game they kill online or over the phone, New Hampshire has long insisted they do it in person at registration stations. Last year, the legislature killed a bill to create an online check-in system. But now NH Fish & Game has filed an emergency rule to allow it, for this season only. Hunters, who still have to register their kills, have the choice to do it at a station or online, though the agency notes "many registration stations may be closed." (Thanks, FP!)Speaking of getting out, The Nature Conservancy in Vermont has reopened most of its natural areas. including the Barnard Fen and Fairlee Bog. Hartland's Eshqua Bog and four other spots around the state remain closed. Stewardship director Lynn McNamara says, “We ask that visitors do not travel to visit our natural areas unless they live within a ten-mile radius and continue to follow our existing visitor use guidelines."So what do you do if you're a frenetically creative actor sequestered at your parents' house all day? If you're Jacob Tischler, you figure out how to film yourself in multiple roles, then launch short sketches to FB and Instagram. You may have seen Tischler at Northern Stage or the New London Barn, and what's funny is that I'd planned to draw your attention to his entertaining videos down below, in the "Staying Sane" section. But now, Seven Days' Chelsea Edgar is up with a profile of him and his quarantine work, and you can both see it and get the whole, introspective, wildly diverting back story. NH's "entire health-care system is stressed." The state's health and human services commissioner, Lori Shibinette, yesterday met with the Legislative Advisory Board to the Governor’s Office For Emergency Relief and Recovery. Hospitals in the state have lost over $100 million in revenue over the last six weeks, and nursing homes and other facilities "are experiencing delay, suspensions or significant changes in the way they do business," she said. Among those stressed: Midwives. Birthing centers in NH are being deluged with calls from expectant parents who want to avoid hospitals, NHPR reports. The midwives who staff them are trying to sustain the lower-key, more personal touch they've always used, but it's gotten harder. "It's feeling a little overwhelming,” says one. “But, you know, we just keep going on....There's not much you can do. Babies are going to continue to come. You can cancel knee surgery. You can cancel dental surgery. You can cancel going in for your physical. You can't cancel your baby.”VT National Guard stood up a pop-up hospital in days, and The Atlantic noticed. "The story of how about 70 National Guardsmen managed to transform a convention center into an alternate health-care facility in mere days shows a state community coming together to get ahead of the pandemic at a time when the federal response is faltering," writes Kathy Gilsinan. She follows Matthew Tatro, high-school music teacher, bandmaster of the 40th Army Band, and longtime guardsman, as he and his fellow guardsmen create a 400-bed surge facility at the Champlain Valley Expo."I'm living in dog years, because a day seems like a week, a week seems like a month, a month seems like seven months." That's VT Gov. Phil Scott talking to Seven Days' Paul Heintz, who spent serious time putting together a long profile that went up yesterday. For Scott, the real start came March 1, with a call from NH Gov. Chris Sununu telling him that a DHMC employee who'd shown symptoms after returning from Italy had broken isolation to go to a party at the Engine Room. "Suddenly it struck me how vulnerable we really were by the actions of one person," Scott says. Heintz delivers a riveting blow-by-blow account of one governor's experience of the crisis since then.And speaking of governors, Vermont will join the effort to coordinate re-opening among a group of northeastern states. Scott said at his press conference yesterday that he got a call Tuesday night from a New York official about the group, which was organized by NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The idea is to plan things so that, for instance, one state re-opening its golf courses doesn't draw a flood of pent-up golfers from states where they're still shut down. At the same news conference, he also said new guidance on farmers markets may be coming on Friday.Meanwhile, legislators are getting an earful about VT's unemployment-claims backlog. "I've never heard the level of desperation from constituents that I'm hearing now," one state senator told her colleagues on Tuesday. The Department of Labor and its creaky system have been overwhelmed by the volume of calls. "Many are now treating the call center like a radio station giving away concert tickets, dialing and re-dialing for hours on end, vying to be the next lucky caller," writes Seven Days' Colin Flanders. At his press conference yesterday, Scott said, "This is an area that we didn’t foresee and certainly, no excuses, but we need to do better.” The crisis "has proved to be a tremendous advance in transparency at the Statehouse." Karen Horn, who directs public policy for the VT League of Cities and Towns, has an interesting take on the move to remote legislative meetings: Now, the public doesn't need to travel to Montpelier to attend, and "those who are in the Statehouse on a daily basis are no more able to buttonhole legislators in the hallways than is the general public." It's all, she says, a great equalizer, and argues that the state should not "reflexively return to the well-trodden path of face-to-face meetings and communication in the Statehouse" once this is all done.

Believe it or not, ice-out on Joe's Pond didn't happen until yesterday. You probably know the tradition up in Danville, VT: a cinder block tied to a clock, with a prize for whoever guesses closest. In the 33 years of the Joe's Pond contest, only three times has the block gone through the ice earlier. Ice-out on Winnipesaukee was declared 10 days ago.Good news on the wooly adelgid front! The aphid-like pest, which attacks hemlocks, has been death to large stands of the trees up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Now, reports David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog, the National Arboretum has announced it's developed a strain of adelgid-resistant hemlocks. On the other hand, on the same page Brooks has a map of emerald ash borer "management zones" in New Hampshire. There are a lot of red circles. VT speculative-fiction writer Katherine Arden is a finalist for the Hugo award. It's a huge big deal in what used to be called the sci-fi world, won in the past by people like Arthur C. Clarke and Ursula K. Le Guin. Arden, who went to Middlebury and lives in Waterbury, has developed a large and devoted following for her Winternight Trilogy, which follows a young woman in medieval Russia who can see and talk to spirits of the stables, household, water, and the rest of the ordinary world, and comes into conflict with the Orthodox Church.It's just 30 seconds of clouds and trees reflected in a pond yesterday... but it's kind of mesmerizing. William Daugherty's latest drone video.And a little dollop of yellow finches, too. These are in a backyard in Nashua, but they're showing up around here as well, and don't they just gladden the heart?

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Thoughts and comment

Nancy writes: "I have a neighbor I have been friends with for over 20 years. I am an 'essential' worker, leaving home every morning. She has made me a Double Latte with chocolate shavings every am for weeks now. I call her when I am leaving home, and there it is—steaming hot curbside on the walk outside her house. Don't want to share her name, but she is the best Barista ever!!!"

Hope you get some moments of warm-beverage grace today, too. See you tomorrow.

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