Daybreak Thursday 5/7

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Let's just quote: Today "a narrow ridge builds ahead of some potent energy in advance of an anomalous upper low." In other words, there's high pressure up there for now, but then we've got this downright freakish Arctic air descending on us tomorrow. Which we'll get into then. The upshot: a really nice day to start, temps climbing to 60 or above by mid-afternoon, which is also when clouds will start moving in. Chance of rain tonight, temps back into the 30s.Oh, hey, speaking of Québec, did you feel that earthquake yesterday? Neither did I, but there it was: preliminary magnitude 3.1, centered just north of the border and east of Lake Champlain.

Okay, let's see...

Both states, by the way, have announced new testing regimens.

Woodstock, other towns gird for influx of second-homeowners. They haven't gone so far as to shut off water service to some second homes, as Scituate, MA did recently. But Woodstock sent out a round of letters to homeowners from NY asking them to abide by the two-week quarantine rule, and plans a second set soon. Lamdin rounds up the attitude—wary but, mostly, polite—in towns around the state.Dartmouth grad student's work with llama antibodies suddenly in the limelight. Daniel Wrapp is a PhD candidate at Dartmouth and a researcher at UT-Austin's McLellan Lab, and four years ago he and his team began studying llama antibodies and how they respond to SARS and MERS. Llamas produce two types of antibodies: one that is similar to humans', and another, smaller type that has “some interesting properties that potentially make them valuable therapeutic candidates,” Wrapp says. Including, it turns out, the ability to bind to the spike protein that covers the surface of SARS-CoV-2, neutralizing it. Their study has just been published in Cell. "No current plans" for layoffs at Dartmouth, but they "are part of a tool-kit." The college's executive VP, Rick Mills, CFO Michael Wagner, and Provost Joe Helble met (remotely) yesterday with VN editors and reporters and talked over its finances. They see a $76 million drop in revenue for the spring term, which is about 7 percent of the $1.1 billion fiscal year operating budget, and another $10 million in summer-term losses. It's delaying projects like replacing its steam plant. Even so, says Mills, "We are not an institution that is questioning whether we will be able to open in the fall.”“Why does a chicken coop have only two doors?” That joke lead-in appeared recently in the Randolph Herald's classifieds. It was placed there by Randolph librarian Jessamyn West, who's kind of a library activist (the tagline on her blog, library.net, reads "putting the rarin back in librarian since 1999") and happens to be a fan of the Herald. She wanted to find a way of supporting it through the crisis, and wound up buying several weeks of ad space to fill with jokes, which she's been crowd-sourcing from her followers.   Harpoon to bring back original ale to benefit frontline, restaurant workers in VT, Boston. The beer, originally brewed in 1986, will be called For The Frontline, with proceeds going to the Vermont Community Foundation, the meals-for-healthcare-workers effort Off Their Plate, and the Boston Resiliency Fund, the Globe reports. Also, if you order directly from them for pickup or delivery now, you can buy a beer for a healthcare worker, to be delivered once the Windsor taproom reopens.Some trailheads in the Whites reopening. The White Mountain National Forest closed many of its sites at the end of April "as part of a tactical pause to assess operations" and prepare for summer. They're now phasing things back in, and have re-opened trailheads at the Welch-Dickey loop, the Great Gulf Wilderness, and other popular sites. Click on "See More Information" at the link for a full list.NH's meat-processing industry chugs along despite national turmoil. The state has four USDA-approved slaughterhouses which, like Vermont's, are tiny compared to the big players. But that's been their strength during the pandemic: their small workforces are playing it safe. "There’s a guy who never missed a day of work in five years, he wasn’t feeling well so he stayed home to be sure. Nobody wants it here,” says Peter Roy, owner of PT Farm in North Haverhill. VT relaxes "stay home" rules. In a new executive order yesterday, Gov. Phil Scott declared that Vermonters may "resume limited social interactions and gatherings of 10 or fewer, preferably in outdoor settings," as long as physical distancing is observed. Non-essential travel should still be limited, and anyone who leaves the state for more than a day for non-essential travel is still required to quarantine at home for 14 days. Starting today, low-contact outdoor rec facilities—ballfields, trail networks, golf courses, tennis courts and the like—can reopen. Full executive order at the link.Even before yesterday, cell data shows Vermonters were moving about more. Andrea Suozzo, Seven Days' data guru, looked at mobility data from Descartes Labs and Google: During the four weeks after the stay-home order in March, Vermont had some of the lowest mobility rates in the country. It's risen over the last two weeks, though even then it was still 81 percent below its baseline number. Why? Visits to grocers and pharmacists seem to be holding steady, but visits to parks are spiking on nice days and weekends.They're also ratting out their neighbors more. The state has an online reporting tool that lets Vermonters report people they suspect are violating the "stay home" order, and Seven Days snagged a bunch of them. The complaints ranged from a grocery clerk with no mask standing too close to customers, to New York second-homeowners apparently going shopping, to crowds at basketball courts. Other commenters have registered their unhappiness with the whole idea, including one who put their location as “Upyoursville.” Summer in VT will see fewer tourists. At his press conference yesterday, Scott said, “My message is to stay home, if you can, and not come to Vermont at this point in time.” Which is one reason why Tom Kavet, the Legislature’s economist, forecasts a 41 percent drop in the state’s rooms and meals tax, most of that from lost tourism revenue. He also tells VTDigger that Vermont resort owners are anticipating a 70-90 percent decline in revenue this summer. The state tourism department is launching a campaign to encourage Vermonters to go visit other parts of the state this summer.So what's it actually like to be a contact tracer? "I thought I'd be anointing the sick rather than interviewing the sick," says Daniel Daltry, who was a religious studies major before becoming a social worker, and, eventually, the guy in charge of Vermont's contact-tracing efforts. The state will be ramping up—it intends to add 40 or 50 more to its existing staff of 53—and it's involved work, starting with establishing enough rapport with the "index patient" to jog their memories enough that they can recall everyone they've spent time with over the previous two weeks. 

Ed Brown denied release for coronavirus concerns. The Plainfield tax evader's lawyer had argued that Brown's age places him in the “at-risk” group for the coronavirus, as does his "longstanding history of poorly-controlled high blood pressure.” A federal judge rejected the move without comment.Same with Frank Sanville. The Royalton man was charged with murder in March, 2018 in the fatal shooting of his wife, Wanda, and has been held without bail since then. In this case, Judge John Treadwell had plenty of comment, 44 pages of them, which boil down to, “The possibility that Defendant may contract COVID-19 in the facility does not constitute medical indifference.”Jockeying already starting for Hennessy Senate seat. At least two Hanover-area Democrats have said they'd like to replace two-term state senator Martha Hennessy, who announced the other day she won't run for re-election. The VN's John Gregg reports that Lyme's Beatriz Pastor, a Dartmouth Spanish and comp lit prof and former state rep, and Dr. Jim Murphy, a retired orthopedic surgeon who was chief medical officer at New London Hospital, say they're likely to run for the Democratic nomination.They flip (baseball) bats in Korea. This could go below in "Staying Connected," but what the heck, it's baseball season. ESPN is broadcasting/streaming Korea's KBO League games, some live, some rebroadcast, and you mostly have to get up early (I mean, like, 5:30 am) to see them. But in honor, they've just re-published Mina Kimes' 2016 article on the "jubilance" of Korean baseball: "The Art of Letting Go: In MLB, bat flips have long symbolized disrespect. In South Korea, they are art." A fun, oh-so-diverting read.And while we're celebrating spring... Lambs gambol, of course, but turns out they're kind of fond of running flat out, too—once, that is, they can run. There's a Twitter hashtag, #lambing2020. You can get lost in there... 

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Cuban-born Miamian (by way of NYC) Dafnis Prieto does a way-too-short minute-and-a-half

in which he's the whole dang band: drums, rhythm, keyboards, feet, absolute finger-tapping head-bopping pleasure.

(Thanks, DG!)

Oh! Right! Why does a chicken coop have only two doors? Because if it had four doors it would be a chicken sedan.

Don't blame

me

. See you tomorrow.

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