GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Chance of showers this afternoon. There's low pressure moving through and we'll see clouds pretty much all day, though we get a rain respite this morning ahead of the next system, which is headed our way from the Great Lakes. Rain likely by late afternoon, highs today in the mid-50s, winds from the southeast. Showers tonight, with temps down into the upper 40s.Those fox kits sure are cute!
For several days, Terri Munson had been staking out a den she'd heard about in Grantham, with no luck. Then, on Tuesday, this little one wandered out and, for five minutes, sat and stared at her. No sibs showed up, but maybe someday.
Meanwhile, near New London, Marc Beerman has been watching a den and photographing its family for several days. "It was amazing to watch the care and attention both parents demonstrated with the 6 kits," he writes. "While watching them closely, they groomed, fed, and cared after them. It cannot be an easy task given the kits' endless energy and antics."
Norwich Bookstore sells. In an email this morning to bookstore followers, owners Penny McConnel and Liza Bernard announced that the store they've built over a quarter-century into one of the Upper Valley's bedrock institutions will be changing hands. Emma Nichols and Sam Kaas, independent booksellers in Seattle, will drive across country in a few weeks ("with their shy cat, Ghost") to pick up the reins in June; McConnel and Bernard will stay on through the end of that month. The entire staff, they write, has been "invited to stay so you may not notice much change in your day-to-day contacts."Farmers markets return. The Norwich market opens for the season on Saturday, Susan Apel writes on Artful. "Opening day is a ritual as sacred as that of any baseball park," she writes. "It means that summer, if not exactly here, is guaranteed. There will be days of sunshine." The market will initially follow the mask and distancing rules it used last year, though they may relax as the state changes its guidelines. It will be followed quickly by the Lebanon market, which returns to Colburn Park on Thursdays starting May 20, and the reborn Hanover market, which is moving to the Richmond School starting Wednesday, June 2. Learning from other towns, Thetford energy committee gets down to brass tacks on EVs. Building on an idea from the Sustainable Hanover Committee, Thetford's town committee has just launched an "ambassadors team" of electric vehicle owners who are ready to give prospective buyers advice and information on their cars, writes Laura Covalla in Sidenote. The committee has also created a webpage for people interested in EVs, taking a leaf from the Lyme Energy Committee. Thetford has roughly 45 electric vehicles in town today; its town plan has set a goal of 187 by 2025.SPONSORED: Be a HERO for CHaD kids! The 16th annual CHaD HERO will be a hybrid event. Most of it will take place virtually from Sept. 19-26 this year, with an in-person 5K run planned for Sept. 26 in Hanover. Please note that the live portion of the event is contingent on CDC, state, local, Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health guidelines at that time. Register today to support the 95,000 pediatric patients who receive care at the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock each year. Sponsored by CHaD.With a stretch of River Road in danger of collapse, Plainfield looks to state for okay to fast-track repairs. The roughly 150-foot stretch of road, reports Tim Camerato in the Valley News, has been eroded by the Connecticut River. “It’s already starting to slump here. It’s basically being held up by roots,” engineer Erin Darrow told public officials and nearby landowners yesterday. The town hopes to be able to repair the section before it collapses, forcing a road closure and blocking businesses like Riverview and Edgewater farms and McNamara Dairy from access to Route 12A. Dartmouth looking at allowing graduates to bring guests. In yesterday's weekly "Community Conversation," Provost Joe Helble announced that, given recent case count trends and vaccination progress, "we are exploring ways in which we could allow students to bring up to two guests, ticketed, to investiture or commencement," in a way that is consistent with campus, local, and state rules and is equitable to all graduates. "We're being transparent in saying we would like to make this happen, but we cannot yet promise that it will be possible," he said, adding that he expects to have more to say in a week or so.We'll see if there's any non-classified information we can share. Then, silence. If you've been into the Union Village Dam lands off Tucker Hill Road in Thetford, you may have noticed some odd-looking structures in a field. Turns out, Nick Clark and Li Shen write in Sidenote, they were put there by the Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab—which isn't talking about them. But in an email, the US Army Corps of Engineers' Heather Morse tells Clark and Shen that CRREL has been using drone cameras to look at structures, especially in winter, in a bid to make the cameras more accurate. "Every stitch is like a prayer." NHPR is running a series of conversations with New Hampshire artists on how they're doing in the pandemic. Yesterday, Rick Ganley talked with Rhonda Besaw, an Abenaki beadworker in Whitefield. It's exacting work, she says—antique beads are so tiny "if you just breathe on them, they're like dust"—and the past year has been isolating. But, she says, "we've been given a great deal of time to think about what is important to you and who is important to you. So now when we come out of that...it will make us appreciate each other and everything even more."Two NH cities in top ten "emerging" housing markets. In an analysis released yesterday by the Wall St. Journal and Realtor.com, David Brooks writes in the Monitor, Concord and the Manchester-Nashua region are 8th and 9th on the list. It's good news, he writes, because the standings are "based on predictions that New Hampshire’s job market will stay strong and that we have the sort of 'lifestyle metrics' which attract people." But it's bad news, of course, because it means home prices will rise more quickly than elsewhere. The analysis follows a recent study that found the Lebanon "metro" area ranked 7th for biggest change in net in-migration over 2019."The idea of this program was not to enrich, [but] that's exactly what happened." VT Auditor Doug Hoffer last week told lawmakers that of 57 businesses he looked at that got pandemic relief grants, 38 were better off at the end of 2020 than at the end of 2019; by his office's calculation, 16 of them showed no need for the money. The problem, writes Seven Days political columnist Dave Gram, lies in how the state calculated "need." "You can't... blame businesses or nonprofits for taking free money," Gram writes, but "the government should hand it out more carefully and make sure the need is real."Start with stealing candy, learn how to do a holdup from Harvey Keitel in Reservoir Dogs, and before you know it you're France's most infamous prison escapee. Okay, there's actually more to it than that. But if the exploits and escapes of Rédoine Faïd seem like they come from the movies, writes Adam Leith Gollner in his in-depth profile of "the world's greatest jailbreak artist" in GQ, it's because Faïd "envisioned himself from a young age as the protagonist of his own movie... To him, life itself became celluloid." And it reads like a script: a high-speed shootout, a 2018 helicopter escape from prison... Speaking of taking flight... It's just seven seconds, but once you watch a seagull piggybacking on a flying buddy, you definitely want to watch it again.
Meanwhile...
Dartmouth reports 4 active cases among students (no change) with 3 among faculty/staff (up 1). There are 4 students and 5 faculty/staff in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 4 students and 7 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 243 new cases yesterdayfor a cumulative total of 94,405. There were 2 new deaths, bringing the total to 1,296, while 84 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 2). The current active caseload stands at 2,563 (down 48). The state reports 163 active cases in Grafton County (down 3), 49 in Sullivan (no change), and 210 in Merrimack (down 5). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Claremont has 22 active cases (up 2), Lebanon has 12 (up 2), Haverhill has 10 (up 1), New London has 9 (no change); Hanover has 7 (up 1), Newbury has 5 (down 1), and Charlestown has 5 (no change). Orford, Wentworth, Enfield, Plainfield, Grantham, Springfield, Cornish, Croydon, Sunapee, Unity, Newport, and Wilmot have 1-4 each. Canaan is off the list.
VT reported 48 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 22,723. There was 1 new death, bringing the total to 246, while 17 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 2). Windsor County gained 4 new cases and stands at 1,324 for the pandemic, with 71 over the past 14 days, while Orange County also added 4 cases and stands at 722 cumulatively, with 73 cases in the past 14 days.
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At 12:30 today, Dartmouth's Political Economy Project and Dickey Center host Cambridge historian and anthropologist Alan Macfarlane. For half a century, he's been writing about how societies modernize, and has recently been traveling to and focusing on China. He'll be taking off from De Tocqueville's comparison of Russia and the still-young US to talk about the US and China today.
At 2 pm today, Dartmouth's Leslie Center for the Humanities hosts Ann Goldstein, who was working as an editor at The New Yorker when she began studying Italian... and went on to become a celebrated translator, including of Elena Ferrante (My Brilliant Friend), Primo Levi, and others. She'll be interviewed by profs Nancy Canepa and Giorgio Alberti.
At 7 this evening, NPR's Nina Totenberg will join the Rockefeller Center for a talk called "The Supreme Court and Its Impact on You." Totenberg, of course, has been NPR's Court correspondent for decades, covering its decisions and, to the extent possible, inner workings. She'll be talking about the Court's latest cases and evolution and looking ahead at what's to come.
Also at 7, the Hartland Public Library and Hartland Community Arts present six area poets for a virtual poetry festival. Reading from their works: Putney English teacher Megan Buchanan, retired physician and Hartland resident Rob Foote, Free Verse Farm apothecarist Taylor Katz, Bear Pond Books staffer and poetry series editor Samantha Kolber, writer and poetry editor Peter Money, and Vanderbilt U. writing teacher Didi Jackson. Though it says you have to have signed up by Tuesday, there are actually still a limited number of Zoom slots available. You can snag one by emailing [email protected].
And also at 7:00, the Norwich Bookstore will host Saul Lelchuk, who grew up in the Upper Valley, splits his time between Oakland and Hanover, teaches in Dartmouth's MALS program, and has just published the second in his series about bookstore owner and private eye Nikki Griffin. One Got Away, his follow-up to 2019's Save Me From Dangerous Men, has been drawing great reviews ("a smashing sequel," Kirkus writes). Lelchuk will talk with nonfiction writer and visiting Dartmouth prof Tom Zoellner.
In 2015, the Israeli musician Shye Ben Tzur—who splits his time between Israel and India and, among other things, composes traditional Sufi devotional music in Hebrew—recorded an album and launched a tour with Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and the fireball Indian horn supergroup Rajasthan Express. Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, a friend of Greenwood's, set out to film the whole thing, including the recording sessions in the 15th-century Mehrangarh Fort in Rajasthan.
See you tomorrow.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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