GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, warmer. Those clouds yesterday were thanks to an upper-level trough of low pressure that swung through during the day and last night, but now high pressure at the surface is in control. So there'll be plenty of sun today, temps rising almost to 80, wind from the south. Mostly clear tonight, low 50s.Birds do their thing; we just get to watch...
"Loon chicks are hatching around the Upper Valley," Newbury photographer Ian Clark writes on his blog. Last Sunday morning, he happened on two chicks that a pair of adult loons he's been following had just hatched, still on their nest and then venturing into the water. One note: Keep your distance from loons with chicks. "Even if you aren't a threat, you may distract the parents from something that is a danger to the chicks," he writes. "Loon chicks face tough enough odds, don't make it worse."
And in Woodstock, Lauran Corson caught these cedar waxwings feasting on a neighbor's bushes in the rain the other day. Various squirrels and a gray catbird also came by. "By evening," she writes, "the bush was stripped clean."
Lebanon Opera House to reopen. Its indoor season starts Aug. 25, when legendary guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson hits the stage for the venue's first full-capacity show since it shut down March 13 last year. Fully vaccinated audience members will not be asked to wear masks; those who are not will be "encouraged" to wear one. “My basic message is let’s just take care of each other,” LOH director Joe Clifford tells the Valley News's Liz Sauchelli. “We only have one chance to do this right, this reopening.” The Opera House's outdoor Nexus Festival will take place on three stages Aug. 13-15."Find me a more romantic bookstore setting than this!" As Sam Kaas and Emma Nichols settle in as the new owners of the Norwich Bookstore, in Seven Days Travis Weedon profiles the changing of the guard. He captures a recent interaction with a regular customer who "expressed to a longtime employee that she'd miss the store's generous rewards program. (The employee assured her it's staying.) Next, she bemoaned the inevitable changes in staff. (There won't be any.) Well, she wasn't sure what she would do when the store closed down to remodel. (Also not happening.)"SPONSORED: Announcing an exciting, homegrown podcast: Bold Ideas From Vermont. The pandemic has forced us to rethink almost every aspect of our lives, so where should we look for inspiration? Host David Roth thinks the solutions are close to home. On the Bold Ideas podcast, he'll be joined by co-host Meg Polyte and guests with deep experience in Vermont and around the nation to discuss bold ideas, grounded in Vermont know-how and guided by the state motto, "Freedom and Unity." Check it out at the maroon link and listen anywhere you get your podcasts. Sponsored by the Bold Ideas Podcast.Dartmouth lifts most Covid restrictions. In his last Community Conversation before heading to Lehigh University, Provost Joe Helble announced that starting today, people who are vaccinated will no longer need to wear masks indoors or out; most spaces on campus will return to full capacity; limits on the size of gatherings will be lifted; and Covid testing protocols will shift to once a month for students and employees who have been vaccinated. The Hop, Hood, and library remain closed to the general public. In addition, employees must be vaccinated by Sept. 1 unless they have a religious or medical exemption.Leb moves to apply "welcoming" ordinance to towns using its landfill; towns object. The ordinance, which bars city employees from sharing people's immigration status with the feds, extends to all city agencies, and City Manager tells the VN's Tim Camerato that when the city starts allowing residents of 23 area towns to get permits for the city landfill, their town clerks will have access to Lebanon's permitting system. So a new agreement with those towns requires them to comply with the ordinance. "It just doesn’t feel like it’s germane to a solid waste agreement,” Hanover Town Manager Julia Griffin tells Camerato.With longtime library director's retirement, Thetford gets yet another opening to fill. After nearly 35 years steering the Latham Library on Thetford Hill and the Peabody Library in Post Mills, Peter Blodgett is stepping down; children's librarian Emily Zollo will take over as interim director, Liz Sauchelli reports in the VN. Meanwhile, writes Laura Covallo in Sidenote, the town also lacks a public works manager, listers clerk, and zoning administrator, and is looking to fill two vacancies on its road crew.325. That's the number of bee species that citizen scientists and researchers at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies—in a project led by Norwich-raised Spencer Hardy—have identified in Vermont. "There's so much basic stuff we don't know about bees," Hardy tells Seven Days' Margaret Grayson, who writes about the efforts behind the Vermont Wild Bee Survey. "They're small. They're hard to identify. The lack of resources for easy identification is definitely limiting." One of the pleasures, Hardy points out, is that while "at some point we know all the birds that are here," new bee species are still out there waiting to be found.Proctor Academy preps year-round ski jump. The private day and boarding school in Andover, NH is modifying its 18- and 38-meter jumps, which it shares with high school teams from Sunapee, Concord, and Plymouth, to make them usable with and without snow, reports Theodore Tauscher in the Concord Monitor. Before this, the school's athletic director says, skiers from New England have had to travel to Lake Placid or out to Park City, Utah, to train during the summer. NH is the only state in the country with competitive ski jumping at the high school level, Tauscher writes.So, just what does "extra virgin coconut oil" mean? Vermont Law School's Center for Agriculture and Food Systems has just unveiled a new website designed to help consumers wade through the jargon on food packaging and to demystify what's marketing and what's got actual legal meaning. The project got its start in 2015 as a joint effort with Dartmouth's DALI Lab; the new version is redesigned to be easier to use and to take into account dietary supplements, plant-based proteins, and new standards on bio-engineered foods.And speaking of food, here's a mystery... At least, to UNH researchers. In a statewide survey, they looked into how many Granite Staters buy locally farmed food and found that overall, half do so several times a month. But digging down, they found the highest percentages in Sullivan, Cheshire, and Grafton counties—ie, along the VT border. "It is not clear why engagement is highest in this part of the state," they write. Maybe, they wonder, it's "local food culture"? Or maybe, as they note, it's that "Vermont consistently ranks highest in per-capita direct sales of farm foods to consumers."Why today's NH budget vote is a nail-biter. You'd think that a GOP-crafted budget in a GOP-run legislature would sail through. Which, in the Senate, it probably will. But, reports NHPR's Josh Rogers, in the narrowly divided House with Democrats united against it, several conservatives are balking for two reasons: some believe the provision creating a voluntary family leave program is "a slippery slope toward a state income tax" (it would in part be paid for by payroll deductions); others object to the House-Senate conference committee weakening limits on the governor's emergency powers. DCYF report finds racial disparities in arrests, detentions, and foster care placements for NH kids. Overall, writes Ryan Lessard for the Granite State News Collaborative (via the Monitor), "Black kids are far more likely to end up with harsher punishments than their white contemporaries when they get in trouble," while "minority children are reported to child services and placed into foster care at rates disproportionate to their population." Dept. of Children, Youth and Families director Joseph Ribsam says he believes bias by decision-makers in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems plays a clear role.Well, that was quick. Earlier this month, for the first time in over a year, no adults were waiting in hospital emergency rooms for beds in a psychiatric facility. But as of Tuesday, reports Teddy Rosenbluth in the Monitor, there were 12 adults and 24 children waiting, suggesting "the issue is far from resolved." In part, he writes, the respite came thanks to a $45,000 state incentive to nursing homes to take geriatric patients from NH Hospital or a long-term care facility for mentally ill adults. This move "temporarily unclogged" the system.“That hill could serve as a giant slalom course." That's an American League talent scout talking about the hill behind the backstop at the U-32 High School baseball field in East Montpelier. Which is where Owen Kellington, an 18-year-old pitcher, plies his skills—and where, for the first time in decades, scouts from the majors are showing up to watch a VT high school kid. “I think the first person who scouted me was a Mets scout,” Kellington tells the Boston Globe's (paywall) Alex Speier. “He said I’m forever going to be known as ‘The Vermont Kid’ because not many kids come out of Vermont at all." (Thanks, ARG!)"It's not really my work. I'm just plagiarizing Mother Nature." Rob Swanson is a photographer for the Islander, the newspaper that covers Vermont's Lake Champlain Islands. He's also a former hang-glider who's "enamored of anything that flies," writes Seven Days' Elizabeth M. Seyler, who's curated a slideshow of Swanson's extraordinary photographs of pollinators—bees, butterflies, dragonflies, hummingbirds—at work.
So...
NH reported 22 new cases yesterday, bringing it to an official total of 99,366. There was 1 new death; they now stand at 1,369, while 15 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 2). The current active caseload is at 180 (down 2). The state reports 2 active cases in Grafton County (no change), 8 in Sullivan (up 1), and 11 in Merrimack (no change). In town-by-town numbers reported by the state, Canaan, Grafton, and Claremont have 1-4 each. Newport is off the list.
VT reported 8 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 24,379. There were no new deaths, which remain at 256, while 3 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 1). Windsor County saw 1 of those new cases and stands at 1,514 for the pandemic, with 16 over the previous 14 days, while Orange County remains at 822 cumulatively, with 4 over the previous two weeks.
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First, a pair of photos: Both the Hop and the New London Barn Playhouse have gotten spaces ready for their summer seasons.
The Barn Playhouse has set up a large tent on the campus of Colby-Sawyer College, where the 2021 season, “Under the Stars,” launches June 29 with four (of five) productions playing in repertory. Janet Miller Haines sends along this photo from above.
And the Hopkins Center, meanwhile, launches Pilobolus today at Dartmouth's BEMA, with a stage and distanced chairs set up amidst the woods at their summer finest. Here's what it looks like.
Which brings us to: It's been 50 years since Moses Pendleton, Jonathan Wolken and Steve Johnson created a dance piece they called "Pilobolus" for Alison Chase's dance class at Dartmouth. The company that came out of it is, of course, still going strong, and this evening at 7 opens a four-day run of "Four@Play" at the BEMA with, in the Hop's words, "four vintage favorites from their stunning repertoire: the 1972 comedic classic Walklyndon, which initiated the company's journey to an American institution; Femme Noir, a solo exploring the image of a fading starlet; the hilariously physical Solo from the Empty Suitor; and their signature mindbending Alraune." There are still some tickets left, but you'll want to move fast.
When she was younger, Sarah Jarosz and her parents made regular trips to Port Aransas, a Texas Gulf town—where she and her mother would take early-morning walks along the beach and admire the Great Blue Herons. After her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and Port Aransas was devastated by Hurricane Harvey, Jarosz found inspiration in those walks: "The bird came to be a symbol of hope for my family during a difficult time, and even now, throughout my travels, whenever I spot a Blue Heron, I always think of it as a good omen; a little reminder of the important things in life, especially family," she said earlier this year. Here's "Blue Heron," recorded live in May.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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