Daybreak Thursday 6/4/20

A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!

Okay, that's more like it. Drier air came in from the west overnight, and with warm air aloft it should be a sunny, warm day today, though some spots may have fog first thing. Temps will climb to around 80 by late this afternoon, and though there'll be some clouds, there will be plenty of blue sky. Winds from the west, lows in the mid-50s again tonight.Jim Block goes blue... and white... and pink... The Etna photographer's been out photographing spring flowers, most of them wildflowers, and many of them close enough that you can almost feel their exquisite delicacy. Four-petaled bluets, five-petaled Wood Forget-Me-Nots, six-petaled Blue-eyed Grass... and the almost perfect symmetry of a dandelion just before it seeds, an equally eye-pleasing starflower, some early lupine, and more.Swallowtails puddle. Yeah, I didn't know, either. But if you come across a little convention of butterflies on a dirt road, explains Mary Holland, that's what they're doing. "This phenomenon consists of clusters of butterflies (predominantly males) gathering to obtain salts and minerals that have leached from the soil into standing puddles and moist dirt." Butterflies have to drink their meals, and while they mostly content themselves with nectar, males like to take supplements.

Just keeping track...

VA Cutoff Bridge to reopen. "It's the update we've all been waiting for!" the Hartford Dept of Public Works wrote on its Facebook page yesterday. "Daniels Construction will be actively working on the expansion plug joint repair in the coming days. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, we anticipate the bridge will reopen to traffic on or before Monday, June 8th.""This is a lifelong process...this work is never done." JAG Productions released a statement yesterday on the murders of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others, and laid out a series of approaches toward effecting change for people in the Upper Valley and beyond. They also list a set of Vermont organizations directly addressing these issues, including Charlotte's Clemmons Family Farm and JAG itself. "Black lives matter. Black stories matter. Black voices matter. Black art matters," the statement reads at the end.Dartmouth will pay salaries through July 31, makes standardized tests optional for admissions for one year. At yesterday's "Community Conversation," Provost Joe Helble said that the college is extending its commitment to pay all salaries by a month; it had previously committed only to June 30. It won't be making a decision about what fall term will look like until the end of June, and so remains uncertain about fall staffing levels. In addition, the admissions yesterday said that applicants for the class of 2025 can share test scores, but don't have to. "Optional truly means optional," Helble said. "We do not want anyone to engage in a guessing game."SPONSORED: Looking for help with home energy management? It's complex, but that's Solaflect Energy's business: We can help by employing the latest advances in cloud-based software, wireless communications, and app-based controls. Our Solar Trackers are integrated to run home electrical devices and batteries, power heat pumps, fuel electric vehicles, and sell power into the grid. Check out the coming digital, bottom-up revolution and other energy megatrends at the Solaflect website. The power is in our hands to make a difference! Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.Primaries, well, pretty much everywhere... The VN's John Gregg offers a preview of VT House and Senate races now that the filing deadline has passed. Zach Ralph's seat in Hartland and W. Windsor has drawn a pile of candidates, since he's retiring. There's a Democratic primary in Barnard/Pomfret and another in Bethel. And in Orange County, former state Rep. Susan Hatch Davis seems to have filed both for her old House seat and to take on incumbent Sen. Mark MacDonald."There is going to be more transparency. And I think recent events really highlight why this transparency is so essential." That's Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the NH ACLU, talking yesterday with NHPR's Rick Ganley about last week's state supreme court rulings holding that state and local personnel practices—including those involving police officers—are not automatically exempt from right-to-know requests. The decisions overturned a 1993 court decision that, Bissonnette said, kept "the public from getting access to information concerning employee discipline and misconduct."NH legislature edges closer to gridlock. In the House Rules Committee, yesterday, Democrats and Republicans faced off over two issues: Dems blocked a Republican move freeze business tax rates, while Republicans gave no ground on a Democratic effort to allow the session to run until June 30; without an okay from the GOP caucus, every bill will need a two-thirds vote to pass when the House reconvenes next week, effectively killing most bills. "COVID-19 has shown us that the way we've been doing business as usual doesn't have to be that way." Vermont, a state accustomed to in-person politics and policy-making, is "hitting some speed bumps" as it adjusts to Zoom meetings, writes Seven Days' Courtney Lamdin. Some residents worry that if they're not in the room, it's easy for public officials to write them off, and understanding technical presentations is harder. But the ACLU's Lia Ernst, quoted in maroon, says people appreciate the easier access, and argues that even after in-person meetings resume, online participation should be allowed.VT child care providers feel forced to reopen, cautious about doing so. They're being asked to come back at full capacity in order to make it possible for parents to go back to work, and though it's not a mandate, the state subsidies that kept them afloat ended on June 1. Owners and directors of 40 child care centers sent the administration a letter saying the move would “put children on the frontline of a virus … when the data does not tell us that they will be safe.” Those who are eager to welcome families back are worrying about staffing, class sizes, and other logistics, VPR reports. Scott expects to lift some indoor dining restrictions tomorrow. At his press conference yesterday, VT's governor said that despite a cluster of new coronavirus cases in Winooski, he's prepared to move ahead with reopening. That would include limited indoor seating in restaurants, though not bars, and "a plan to allow some out-of-state visitors to come to Vermont without a quarantine.”VT ordered hundreds of ventilators. Only 10 have arrived. Seven Days' Paul Heintz reports that at the height of worries about the pandemic, the state had some 450 ventilators on order, but it faced global competition and, in one case, got elbowed out of the way by the federal government. These days, it's pared its order down to 95 critical care ventilators, along with emergency backups being manufactured by UVM and a S. Burlington company. "The state's procurement problems have not posed any risk to public safety, according to officials," Heintz writes. "We don't need them at the moment," Secretary of Human Services Mike Smith said. "We have not come near our ventilator capacity at all." Don't you wish they'd figured it out? If you're in the mood for a road trip sometime soon, you could head to New Boston, NH, to pay respects to the Gravity Researcher Foundation memorial stone there. It reads in part, "Here at New Boston, NH, Roger W. Babson and his associates pioneered in active research for anti-gravity and a partial gravity insulator." Babson, born in 1875, "wanted to find a way to keep planes from crashing and coyotes with 'Help!' signs from falling off canyon cliffs," JW Ocker writes in New Hampshire Mag. There's a similar stone on the campus of Keene College.

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The Woodpeckers recorder quartet met at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, though only one of its members is Swedish—the others are from Norway, Denmark, and Ireland. Here

(Thanks, DW and SD!)

It's going to be beautiful out there once the fog lifts! Have a fine day, and see you tomorrow.

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