RABBIT RABBIT, UPPER VALLEY!
Ahhhh.... Cooler air has been streaming into the sky above us since last night, and though yesterday's front has passed through, there's still enough going on up there to give us a slight chance of showers all day, a chance this evening, and a likelihood toward tomorrow morning as a new front moves in. Mostly cloudy today, highs in the upper 70s—though a bit warmer in the southern part of the region—with winds from the north. Down to the low 60s tonight.You don't want to get a Jack Russell terrier indignant. At least, not if you're a young bear wandering through a yard to check out the bird feeder. The barking dog sent it up a tree, writes Woodstock's Bonnie Hammerschlag; her husband's pot-banging eventually encouraged it to leave.Lack of workers slows roundabout project. With a variety of projects in and around Hartford, writes Anna Merriman in the Valley News, there's a shortage of subcontractors to work on the sidewalk and curbing parts of the $6.8 million Sykes Mountain Ave. roundabouts. The roadway part also needs final paving. Delia Makhetha, the project's spokesperson, tells Merriman that officials don’t expect the delays to affect the project’s planned completion date in October.Woodstock makes room for Sunday/Monday food trucks. The move by the village board of trustees, Gareth Henderson writes on his Omni Reporter blog, "was prompted by staffing shortages in the restaurant sector, resulting in fewer eateries being open on Sunday and Monday." It allows two food trucks at the Green, and will last through October foliage-tourist season. So far, one truck—The Lazy Cow, a "mobile ice cream café" owned by Hanover's Ashley Sigl—has established regular hours (11 am to 7 pm). Trustees are also hoping for one of the region's lunch trucks, but they, too, are having trouble finding help.Deer ticks made a lot of progress in 15 years. There's a new study by a team of medical geographers in Canada mapping the average risk of encountering Lyme-disease carrying ticks as they moved northward from 2000 to 2015. They melded field data on tick populations with satellite data, Emily Cassidy writes for NASA Earth Observatory, essentially mapping the effect of climate change on deer-tick populations. Though the study's aimed at Canada, the maps include NH and VT, and the growth of high-risk red areas in the two states (and NY) is notable. NH community mental health centers poised to expand. The Executive Council yesterday unanimously approved a contract that will bring $52.4 million to the state's 10 centers, allowing them to create mobile crisis teams, serve more low-income residents, add supported housing beds, and in some cases expand their outreach into their communities. Still, Annmarie Timmins writes in NH Bulletin, there are obstacles: the state has yet to find someone to run its crisis response unit's call center, and finding staff will be a challenge—many of the centers are already short 25-40 employees. Executive councillors may delay reproductive health funding. State funding contracts for Planned Parenthood and other providers expired yesterday, and normally, writes Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin, the Exec Council approves a contract to cover care provided after June 30. But yesterday, GOP councillors warned they might not approve that contract—even for services like pap smears—until DHHS audits the organizations to ensure they're not using state funds for abortions. State officials, DeWitt writes, "say they don’t anticipate completing the audit and having a report until the end of the year." New VT tax exemption for menstrual products goes into effect today. The move, passed by the legislature in May and signed by the governor in early June, exempts tampons, sanitary napkins, and other items from the state's 6 percent sales tax. “This particular tax was something that hit a particular category of people and not others,” Cary Brown, executive director of the VT Council on Women, tells Seven Days' Alison Novak. “I think that there was a sense that we can do better than that now. Our tax policy can be better and fairer than that.”From parents enslaved in Virginia to a hilltop farm in Grafton, VT. Daisy Turner was born and raised in Grafton, and lived to be 104. The last five of those years, she told story after story—about her ancestors in Africa, her enslaved grandparents, her parents' lives, and her own—to Vermont Folklife Center founder Jane Beck. Now some of those stories have been turned into an oral history by a group of New England cartoonists... one of whom, Grafton's own Ezra Veitch, who met Turner when he was young, joins forces with Seven Days' Dan Bolles to tell the story of the new book. Definitely meta here."This hand alone has caught more fish than most people—this hand. No fly rod, no line—just the hand." Independent radio producer Erica Heilman recently took a drive around the Northeast Kingdom with retired state fish biologist Len Gerardi. They stopped off at Willoughby Falls—there's a famous fishing stretch below the falls—and the Clyde River, which runs from Island Pond to Lake Memphremagog and is known for its landlocked Atlantic salmon. They met up with several longtime anglers. Tales, you can imagine, were told."Who wants to go to the asbestos mine?" More cartoons! Because it's Seven Days' annual cartoon issue. So writer Sally Pollak and illustrator Michael Tonn joined up with Ryan Miller, lead guitarist for the alt-rock band Guster, on a "weird and wonderful" tour of the Northeast Kingdom. Miller, who lives in VT, specializes in finding odd places around the state—he used to have a VT PBS show and now publishes a newsletter, Weird and Wonderful World. They wander around Eden, visit Alexander Twilight's home in Brownington, bravely take on Hill Farmstead and Jasper Hill in Greensboro..."I buy the ugly ones." Those would be the meteorites that master bladesmith Bob Kramer—who makes some of the world's best and most expensive knives—has been buying for their iron, which he heats, purifies, and works into steel blades. “It’s like forging concrete,” he tells Craftsmanship Quarterly founder Todd Oppenheimer. “It just wants to crumble. It doesn’t knead like dough.” Still, he perseveres: The meteorite knife he made for Anthony Bourdain sold recently for $231K. This is a sidebar to a longer profile of Kramer and the exacting world of knife-making that's well worth your time.
And in the numbers...
NH reported 28 new cases yesterday, bringing it to an official total of 99,504. There was 1 new death, which now number 1,372, while 15 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 2). The current active caseload is at 162 (up 2). The state reports 7 active cases in Grafton County (no change), 10 in Sullivan (down 4), and 13 in Merrimack (down 2). In town-by-town numbers reported by the state, Claremont has 9 active cases (down 1), while Rumney, Lebanon, and Cornish have 1-4 each. Newport is off the list.
VT reported 4 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 24,410. There were no new deaths, which remain at 256, while 7 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 1). Windsor County saw 1 new case and stands at 1,521 for the pandemic, with 15 over the previous 14 days, while Orange County had no new cases and remains at 822 cumulatively, with none over the previous two weeks.
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If you're in the mood to get out and about today, Hanover Adventure Tours is hosting another of its Thursday community rides—via e-bike if you want—starting at 5 pm at its location on Route 5 North in Norwich. This one covers the two sides of the river, including time for a dinner stop in Hanover.
And at 7 pm, the Norwich Public Library and the Norwich Congregational Church kick off a long weekend of community readings of Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech, "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" This one will be at the congregational church, with volunteers reading the speech a paragraph at a time. Over subsequent days, there will be community readings—and chances to talk about the speech and its resonance—on both sides of the river, including at the gazebo on the Quechee Green at 11 am July 3, in Claremont at Broad Street Park at 6:30 pm that evening, and at Colburn Park in Lebanon at 11 am on July 4. The Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire has a full list of readings around the state here. Vermont Humanities used to sponsor them on the VT side but has stopped, explaining, "While reading Frederick Douglass’ work is a powerful experience for many, it can only be one piece of the long overdue conversations that our communities need to have."
Reading Deeper
As concerns about the Delta variant of the coronavirus mount, I'm resuscitating this section briefly for a Scientific American piece that goes into what's known about it at the moment. “It is the most hypertransmissible, contagious version of the virus we’ve seen to date, for sure—it’s a superspreader strain if there ever was one,” Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine and an executive vice president at the Scripps Research Institution, tells SA's Tanya Lewis. On the question of how dangerous it is, Lewis writes, there's some evidence that it may result in more serious disease, though it's too early yet to say whether or not it's more deadly. The Pfizer (and, it was announced yesterday, Moderna) vaccines appear to be largely effective against it after two doses, at least for hospitalization, though much less so after a single dose. Experts expect localized outbreaks as the variant spreads in places where vaccination rates remain low and where people tend to spend a lot of the summer in air-conditioned buildings. On the horizon: A new version of the Delta variant called “Delta Plus,” which may or may not be more resistant to monoclonal antibody treatment.
"Just a little reminder to simplify things every now and then and have a good time while you do it." That's Tyler Hubbard, half of the country duo Florida Georgia Line, talking about their 2018 song, "Simple." Yep.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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