GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly sunny and definitely cooler. That cold front from Canada came through last night, trailing a nice, cool air mass behind it. Some clouds this morning, but they'll clear out pretty quickly. Temps today maybe grazing 70, gusty winds from the northwest, and very fine sleeping weather tonight, with temps getting down to below 40.Eye-level with an oriole. Etna photographer Jim Block spent the first few weeks of May coursing the Upper Valley for birds, dropping as far south as Charlestown and reaching Boltonville in the north, but mostly he spent his time around Lebanon, Hartford, Hanover, Norwich, Thetford, and Enfield. The result was a rich trove of photos: mergansers, ruby-crowned kinglets, bobolinks, catbirds, vireos, a green heron in the West Leb wetlands, and what feels like scores of others, chronicled day by day."It was like a ball of fire." That's Corinth Fire Chief Ed Pospisil describing what firefighters found when they arrived at a double-wide mobile home in Corinth early Tuesday morning. They were unable to get inside, where 21-year-old Max Thurber, a 2017 Thetford Academy grad and student at Northern VT University was trapped. State police identified Thurber yesterday, reports Anna Merriman in the Valley News. He “was one of a kind, and none of us who knew him will ever forget him,” one of his high school teachers remembers. Thurber's mother, Diane, was able to escape the fire and is in intensive care in Boston.Dartmouth campus unsettled over college response to student deaths. Last Wednesday, a freshman, Elizabeth Reimer, died at home in New York—students say she is the third this academic year to die by suicide, though the college has not confirmed it. Students held a vigil Friday, and Monday night the Student Assembly requested the cancellation of Tuesday classes to give students a chance to grieve; the college rejected the idea. Red-painted graffiti went up at spots around campus early Tuesday morning, including "3 deaths too many" on Pres. Phil Hanlon's driveway, reports The Dartmouth.SPONSORED: Is our recent unseasonable heat a sign of the summer to come? NOAA's latest summertime forecast predicts temps trending even above their recently re-calculated 30-year "new normal." They've just released tools that let you drill down locally to see what things might look like. With such heat heading our way, now is the time to think about solar to capture that sunshine and electric heat pumps to help you stay cool this summer. For links to the cool NOAA tools and ideas on how to take the fight against global warming into your home, hit the maroon link. Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.Uh-oh. Labor shortage hits the beach. Or, at least, Thetford's Treasure Island, which has had to delay its opening past Memorial Day because it can't hire staff. In Sidenote, Nick Clark looks at the issue and concludes it's unlikely that it's due to unemployment benefits. Instead, he writes, "while housing is likely not the only factor driving the Upper Valley's labor shortage, it is clear that when low- and middle-income workers cannot afford to live here, they won’t be here to fill jobs, either. In other words: no housing, no workers. Housing is where jobs go to sleep at night."Norwich conservation lands to get rare cattle for grazing, plus a farm-to-table livestock farm. They'll be showing up at the Brookmead Conservation Area, the 350 acres owned by the Upper Valley Land Trust that surround Norwich Farm Creamery. The cattle are Devons (that's a red Devon in the Vermont state seal) owned by livestock farmer John Hammond, who runs North Star Livery in Cornish. Meanwhile, other pastureland will be used by E. Thetford's Tinkhamtowne Farm, owned by Bret Ryan, who raises beef, pork, goats, lamb and eggs to supply local restaurants, retailers, and farmstands.Lebanon school board opts to keep school resource officer. The 5-4 vote, writes Tim Camerato in the Valley News, "rebuff[s] calls from racial justice advocates who favored eliminating the post." Advocates of retaining the position, currently held by Police Officer Gregory Parthum, argued that retaining an officer at the school to respond to assaults, harassment, and other issues has value. Advocates of eliminating it contend that students, especially those of color, feel uncomfortable with an armed officer patrolling the halls. Voters narrowly supported a nonbinding proposal in March to axe the position."He runs like a feathered velociraptor while he chases us down the driveway..." That's Mary Beth Westward, a New London photographer, describing a ruffed grouse that's adopted her husband, Todd. The grouse—they call him Walter—showed up while Mary Beth and their daughters were away, and has pretty much taken up residence. "Greets [Todd] in the morning and escorts him to the truck," she writes on FB. "Waits by the front walk for him at the end of the day. Keeps him company when he does work around the house...Not a day goes by that he doesn’t let us know he’s part of our family."Gilford, NH police reveal arrest warrant for Marilyn Manson. Look, it's just not that often that Daybreak gets to link to People mag, so even though you're probably seeing this story everywhere you turn: The warrant was actually issued in 2019, but Manson and his legal team have ignored it, so on Tuesday the Gilford police made it public. It charges Manson with two misdemeanor counts of simple assault that at a Bank of NH Pavilion concert in August that year for, People reports, spitting and "shooting his snot" at a videographer who was filming the concert. US Justice Department sides with MA on tax fight. You'll remember that NH has sued MA for trying to collect taxes on work done during the pandemic by New Hampshire residents for Massachusetts employers—even though they no longer crossed the border for their jobs. The Supreme Court is trying to decide whether to take up the case, and asked the US Solicitor General for an opinion. Yesterday, the acting Solicitor "rejected the argument that New Hampshire, as a whole, was injured by its neighbor’s actions," reports NHPR's Todd Bookman, and argued that the case does not warrant the Court's intervention.
Care about energy in NH? Got thoughts about priorities? On his Granite Geek blog, David Brooks notes that the state's Office of Strategic Initiatives is updating the 10-year state energy strategy and is seeking public comment. He cites an unnamed organization that encourages residents to comment on issues from expanding the state's EV charging infrastructure to establishing targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to modernizing building energy codes. If you are moved to comment, here's the state's page.VT political columnist Dave Gram steps down. Gram, who revived Seven Days' "Fair Game" column in January, announced yesterday that the chronic health problems are forcing him to step down "much sooner than I wanted." Gram, after a long career at the AP, had been fired from his talk show at WDEV before taking on the post. And his editors have already tapped a replacement for "Fair Game": longtime WDEV host (and, later, VTDigger columnist) Mark Johnson, who will pick up the column next month."No one seemed to want to have a fight.” That comment by a lobbyist pretty much sums up the VT legislative session that just finished. Senate Pres. Becca Balint and House Speaker Jill Krowinski "worked well together," writes VTDigger's Xander Landen, and made a point of not sending Gov. Phil Scott legislation that would stoke a fight. The reason? The pandemic forced all sides to work together, and the deluge of federal bailout money made consensus easier. On the other hand, next session, Landen writes, political leaders take up issues they set aside, such as pension reform and education finance reform.Want to visit where Kipling wrote The Jungle Book and started Just So Stories? You can—if you rent it. Kipling and his family spent three years at Naulakha, in Dummerston, VT, where he "wrote prolifically" between 1893 and 1896, Seven Days' Amy Lilly notes. The property is now owned by the Landmark Trust USA, which rents it to as many as eight guests for three days to a month (for $520 a night). The house was designed to look like a ship and still contains the Kiplings' furniture and artwork. If you can't stay there, the Trust is opening the property to the public June 6-7 for its annual rhodendron tour. Want to go see a PZL.23 light bomber? Not the actual plane, flown by Poland in its failed attempt to stop the Nazi invasion in 1939, but a dead-on model of it hangs above the used book section of the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough, NH. So, for that matter, do "a galaxy" of model airplanes, writes Robert Bernier in Air & Space. They are all the work of Bill Johnson, who was a special ed teacher for teens and turned to the “focused, predictable, creative activity" of building model planes as a way to de-stress. Over the years he created a huge collection—which the Toadstool took on after he retired.Bees get their Avedon. Josh Forwood is a British wildlife photographer, and like much of the world, he was stuck at home during the pandemic. He had created a bee hotel for solitary bees in order to keep his garden pollinated, and eventually noticed that the bees would fly into their hotel hole, peer out for a bit, then take off again. So he set about taking their portraits—which display a remarkable diversity of looks. “I hope that people will think twice before crushing a wasp or a bee beneath their shoe," he tells My Modern Met's Jessica Stewart. "They likely will completely ignore you if you ignore them."
And in the numbers...
Dartmouth reports no student cases and 1 among faculty/staff. One student and 2 faculty/staff members are in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while no students and 4 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 67 new cases yesterday for a cumulative total of 98,470. There were 2 new deaths, which now total 1,346, while 49 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 3). The current active caseload stands at 416 (down 5). The state reports 21 active cases in Grafton County (down 4), 9 in Sullivan (down 6), and 31 in Merrimack (down 2). In town-by-town numbers, for the first time in quite a while no UV towns are above the 1-4 range. Haverhill, Rumney, Hanover, Canaan, Lebanon, Claremont, Newport, Newbury, and Unity have 1-4 each. Sunapee is off the list.
VT reported 26 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 24,162. There were no new deaths, which remain at 255, while 11 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 1). Windsor County gained 1 new case and stands at 1,468 for the pandemic, with 60 over the past 14 days, while Orange County added no new cases and remains at 814 cumulatively, with 25 over the past two weeks.
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Today at 4:45, the Cleopatra Mathis Poetry and Prose Reading Series at Dartmouth hosts novelist Kiran Desai. Desai won the Man Booker Prize in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss (which must have made for interesting conversation with her mother, the novelist Anita Desai, who's been shortlisted for the prize three times). Kiran Desai is currently at work on her third novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Her online reading will be followed by a Q&A.
And this evening at 6 (gates open at 5:30) Feast and Field kicks off its 2021 season with Gloucester, MA-based fiddler and folksinger Emerald Rae. As was the case last year, shows will be at Fable Farm in Barnard, and you'll need to reserve a spot and, if you want one of their locally sourced dinners, to pre-order when you make your reservation.
At 7 pm, the Norwich Bookstore hosts a conversation between acclaimed writers Julia Alvarez and Jill McCorkle, both of whom have new novels out. Alvarez was a trendsetter in the '90s, helping "blaze the trail for Latina authors to break into the literary mainstream," as the NYT put it last year in its review of Afterlife, Alvarez's first novel for adults in over a decade, which reviewer Francisco Cantú found "anchored not just in easy humor and sharp observation, but in her fine-tuned sense for the intimacies of immigrant sisterhood." McCorkle's Hieroglyphics, also published last year, "gathers layers like a snowball racing downhill before striking us in the heart with blunt, icy force," Kirkus wrote in a starred review. The bookstore has lifted its usual cap on online attendees due to interest in this event.
Also at 7, the Summit on the Future of Vermont closes with a livestreamed storytelling event on the theme, "Why I Choose Vermont," hosted by Burlington's Moth StorySlam producer Susanne Schmidt (a storyteller herself). It includes Abenaki educator Judy Dow, comedian Marlin Fisher, Snelling Center president Mark Snelling, and others.
And finally, the Upper Valley Senior Center in Leb, which throughout the pandemic has been delivering meals to seniors there and in Hanover, is gearing up to deliver more hot meals to Meals on Wheels recipients this summer and is looking for volunteers. The typical route takes an hour to an hour-and-a-half, and meals are free on the day you volunteer.
Back in 1988, David Byrne was in Rio, rummaging through record store bins looking for material for a samba compilation he was planning for his new label, Luaka Bop (named for a tea from Sri Lanka). He picked up an album with barbed wire on the cover: It was Estudando o samba (Studying the Samba) by Tom Zé, who'd been one of the leaders of Brazil's Tropicália movement in the '60s and fallen into deep obscurity afterward; by the time Byrne found his album, Zé was considering going to work at his cousin's service station. The album wasn't actually samba, but Zé's offbeat approach, edgy sensibilities, and complex pop music appealed to Byrne, and Zé became the first artist directly signed by the label, which has been promoting his work ever since. Here's "Mā" from Estudando o samba and now on Luaka Bop's Brazil Classics 4. 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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