GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, warmer. We're turning the corner, people. High pressure moved in last night, clearing out the clouds and bringing us early-morning cold temps, but the result today is mostly clear skies and temps getting into the mid 60s. Winds from the northwest, down into the lower 40s tonight with a slight chane of rain.Oops. If you hang around White River Junction enough, you know that every so often a trucker ignores the 12'-3" height-limit sign for the underpass beneath the railroad tracks over Bridge Street. It happened again Tuesday morning, in a big way. Tony Luckino happened to pass by not long afterward, and got this pic.Prouty to return this summer with some in-person events. The organizers of the annual fundraiser for the Norris Cotton Cancer Center are calling it a "hybrid": There'll be in-person golf on Friday, July 9 at Eastman Golf Links; a 20-mile ride for cyclists on Saturday, July 10 starting at Dewey Field Lot in Hanover; a 5k walk on Sunday, July 11, also starting at Dewey Field Lot; and a virtual edition, like last year's, from June 1-July 10, which includes the Prouty Ultimate. And while we're talking in-person events, you could put August on your calendar, too. That's when the Lebanon Opera House is holding its three-day Nexus Festival, the 13th-15th. It will be in and around Colburn Park, including on the Lebanon Mall and in the revitalized rail trail tunnel. Art, dining, and above all, music, including the Boston-based Twisted Pine, Kat Wright and her band, and the Van Morrison tribute band Moondance. "Flashes of creativity and community at every turn," LOH writes, and adds, "Necessarily, planning is being done with public health measures in mind."SPONSORED: Five reasons to plant a solar future in your field or backyard—right now! Federal tax incentives for solar remain generous, but state incentives are dropping. Solar can transform your relationship with energy, save you tens of thousands of dollars, harvest an endless supply of clean energy, improve your property's value, and clean up your carbon footprint. You can finance the purchase with attractive solar loans...and do it all in time for the long, sunny days of summer! Details on the five reasons at the maroon link. Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.UV towns on alert for emerald ash borer. It was confirmed last year on the NH side, including in Plainfield, Canaan, and Enfield, as well as up in Orange, VT, reports the Valley News's Liz Sauchelli. “Towns like Hanover or Lyme or Orford are not listed yet, but most likely there probably is some emerald ash borer in there, but we don’t see it,” a UNH extension forester tells her. At the moment, towns are just collecting data on trees and formulating plans—cut preemptively? use insecticide?—if the ash borer is discovered."How do you create a space people will slow down in?" WRJ is about to get its fourth art gallery, and that's the task that Ben Finer and Bevan Dunbar set for themselves: shaping a gallery that invites people to linger. For starters, they're building a library of books, and inviting artists on display to add a few themselves that in one way or another relate to the work on the walls. They're calling it Kishka Gallery, and in a Daybreak Interview, Finer describes what they're up to...and why they named the gallery for a sausage. Who knew there was a chicken-wing and tequila shortage? Those are the items that Dunk's, the new sports bar in the old Salt Hill space in Hanover, had trouble sourcing its opening week. Part of the Blue Sky family (Molly's/Jesse's), the bar and restaurant opened last week to heavy use from students, reports The Dartmouth's Jacob Strier. "It's been crazy," owner Anthony Barnett says. "Dartmouth kids know how to party." Complying with safety protocols has been straightforward in the kitchen, reports one cook, but it has been “a challenge” at the front of the house, she says.NH, VT open Pfizer vaccine registration to kids 12 and up today. In VT, online registration opens this morning at 8:15, or people can use walk-in clinics. In NH, appointments (including at DHMC) will be on VINI, the state-managed signup system, though walk-ups are available at some sites, as well. In both states, kids under 18 need their parents' permission. Here are more details for:
NH high school seniors get a gift: a community college course. A million-dollar donation to the state's community college system from the NH Charitable Foundation and the Foundation for NH Community Colleges will let any student graduating from a high school or home school this year take any three-credit course of their choice at one of NH's seven community colleges this fall—online or in person. The idea came from a similar effort in VT in 2020, funded by the McClure Foundation, reports the Monitor's Eileen O'Grady.DWL That's what NH House Democratic leader Renny Cushing would like on his belt buckle: Dying While Legislating. He was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer last year. Ordinarily, writes Amanda Gokee in her profile in NH Bulletin, someone trying to decide whether to run for minority leader would talk to "their family, a spiritual adviser, their close political allies. Cushing spoke to his oncologist." He's trying to lead the Democrats through the wilderness of being the legislative minority—while spending a day a week in the hospital. "This is my first time dying, so I’m doing the best I can,” he tells Gokee. A $501 bonus. That's what Big Fatty's owner Brandon Fox is offering new hires who stick around for three months at the WRJ barbecue joint and caterer. He chose it, he tells Seven Days' Anne Wallace Allen, because it's "a weird number, so people would look at it more." Allen surveys the tough hiring landscape in VT, with employers and policy analysts laying blame on everything from unemployment checks to workers reassessing their lives post-Covid to persistent low wages to a mismatch between skills and job needs.And speaking one more time about in-person events... If you're in the mood for a drive in a few weeks, the first major annual VT event to return to live performance will be the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, which announced its lineup Tuesday. It starts off June 4 with "50 Saxophones," an event on the Burlington Waterfront led by local funkster Dave Grippo that will bring a pile of local sax players together. The rest will be scaled down from previous years, writes Seven Days' Jordan Adams, but there'll still be "a robust selection" of artists. Adams details the lineup.1812 all over again? So... Remember that sign war going on in Listowel, Ontario? Turns out the idea actually got its start in Christiansburg, VA, where the Bridge Kaldro Music store threw down the gauntlet to Super Shoes next door. Other stores joined in, the Speedy Glass guy in Listowel got wind of it and started in on Dairy Queen... and then, suddenly, the owner of the Japanese restaurant in Christiansburg put up a sign, "Canadians tryin 2 join the sign war ehh?" and Speedy Glass and DQ fired back. Now they've taken it to Facebook, reports the Washington Post's Sydney Page. (Thanks, TL!)Earth in space. Toby Ord is a philosopher at Oxford who focuses on what he calls "the big picture questions facing humanity." And he's just done an amazing thing. He wanted a great photo of the whole Earth, and it turns out the only people who've ever been far enough out to take one were the Apollo astronauts—and NASA had the foresight to equip them with stellar cameras, film, and lenses. Ord spent years reworking high-res scans of some of those photos, and has just made the results available, many of them never seen before. They're remarkable. And his explanation is just as compelling.
Now then...
NH reported 174 new cases yesterday for a cumulative total of 97,093. There were 4 new deaths, raising the total to 1,322, while 63 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 8). The current active caseload stands at 1,402 (down 22). The state reports 78 active cases in Grafton County (down 4), 41 in Sullivan (down 10), and 117 in Merrimack (down 4). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Lebanon has 16 active cases (up 4), Claremont has 13 (down 2), Newport has 12 (no change), and Newbury has 6 (up 1). Haverhill, Warren, Orford, Wentworth, Rumney, Hanover, Canaan, Enfield, Grafton, Plainfield, Grantham, Cornish, Sunapee, Charlestown, and Unity have 1-4 each. Springfield is off the list.
VT reported 28 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 23,651. There was 1 new death, for a total of 252, while 12 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 2). Windsor County gained 5 new cases and stands at 1,408 for the pandemic, with 85 over the past 14 days, while Orange County added 5 cases and stands at 789 cumulatively, with 65 cases in the past 14 days.
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This evening at 7, former Vermont poet laureate Sydney Lea joins the Norwich Bookstore online from Newbury, VT, to talk about and read from his new book, Seen From All Sides: Lyric and Everyday Life. It's a collection of essays he wrote while he was poet laureate from 2011 to 2015; they were published as newspaper columns, and sought to explain how life and poetry are entangled—and how writing poetry is another expression of how we all build our lives.
Also at 7, Woodstock's Norman Williams Public Library hosts writer Alexander Wolff, talking about his new book, Endpapers - A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home. Wolff, who lives in Addison County, VT, has been a writer for Sports Illustrated for almost four decades, but in this book he gets personal, untangling a tangled family tale involving his grandfather, the publisher Kurt Wolff, who left Germany in 1933 and wound up in New York, where he helped found Pantheon Books; Alexander's father, Niko, who stayed in Germany with his mother, a member of the Merck pharmaceutical family; and the family secrets Alexander unearthed in Berlin archives during the year he spent there in 2017.
Also at 7, Audubon conservation biologist Margaret Fowle joins the Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge to talk about Vermont's bald eagles, their comeback in recent decades, and their prospects for the future.
At 8 pm, Dartmouth Next hosts Tony Award-winning Broadway producer Daryl Roth, in conversation with theater prof and Chair of the Humanities Peter Hackett about "Why Is Theater Important In Times of Crisis?" Roth has produced no fewer than seven Pulitzer-winning plays, including August: Osage County; Clybourne Park; How I Learned to Drive; and Proof. She also produced Kinky Boots and Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart.
Sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith anchor the Atlanta-based group Rising Appalachia. Their musical tastes pretty much wander the world, though American roots music lies at the heart of what they do. It infuses "Stand Like An Oak," a folk tribute to "innate sturdiness" Smith wrote last year. The backdrop to this video, by the way, is Asheville, NC's Echo Mountain Recording studios. Nice spot.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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