GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Cooler, maybe some rain. There's low pressure bringing in colder air aloft, and with it a chance of showers all day and a possible thunderstorm in the afternoon. Overall, we'll see a mix of sun and clouds, temps in the upper 70s, down into the mid-50s tonight.Just chillin'... Usually, writes Nancie Severs, loons will dive and resurface somewhere else when kayakers get nearby. But when one's got a chick on its back "it's a photo op like none other." Which she lucked into on Grafton Pond (NH) the other day.Suicide Six unveils name change to Saskadena Six. It's an Abenaki word meaning "standing mountain" and, reports Anne Wallace Allen in Seven Days, was chosen with input from Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Band. There was actually a move 50 years ago to change the ski area's name—which was coined 90 years ago—but that fizzled out for unknown reasons, Woodstock Inn president Courtney Lowe tells Allen. "I completely understand folks that don’t like change, but we knew it was inevitable that we’d have to move forward with this. We feel as a foundation, as a company, that it’s the right thing to do.”Yet another local sets Fastest Known Time for running NH's 48 4,000-footers. Just a few weeks ago, a new mark was set by Geisel student Will Peterson in 3 days, 12 hours and 36 minutes. Now, writes Benjamin Rosenberg in the Valley News, professional endurance athlete and West Fairlee resident Alyssa Godesky, who just moved there from Lebanon (and before that, Virginia), has finished in 3 days, 8 hours and 56 minutes, winding up last Saturday. Godesky also set the women's FKT for 2018 on the Long Trail and the women's record for the 46 Adirondack 4,000-footers in 2020.12,000. That's how many AT hikers have spent the night at Daniel Quinn's place in Woodstock. Quinn is a steeplejack by trade—he moved to town from Maryland in 1992 after repairing the collapsed white oak ceiling of the First Congregational Church, writes Sally Pollak in a Seven Days profile. And his spot on Route 12 is next to the AT—because that's where he wanted to be. "This is a sacred place," he tells Pollak. Hikers clearly agree: One group stayed two weeks, giving poetry readings, telling stories, playing music, helping out. "It was two of the best weeks ever," Quinn says.SPONSORED: da Vinci at the Montshire! Explore da Vinci’s inventions brought to life at the special exhibition, "Leonardo da Vinci: Machines in Motion" this summer at the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich. The celebrated thinker's innovations paved the way for the invention of many modern machines and devices. Now, visitors get a chance to see and touch the early forms of his machines—and to set them in motion during this renowned international exhibition’s first visit to northern New England. Sponsored by the Montshire Museum of Science.Train collides with pickup in S. Royalton, driver unharmed. According to the VT State Police, yesterday morning 63-year-old Larry Severance of Royalton stopped his F-150 at the edge of the crossing, which has no bars or lights, looked both ways, then started onto the tracks—which is when he saw a train coming at him at 40 mph. He tried to back up but "did not remove the vehicle from the tracks in time." He was taken to Gifford, but had no apparent injuries. “The bushes in some areas of the crossing are overgrown, and it does make it difficult to see an oncoming train,” a VSP spokesman tells VTDigger.NH State Police conduct new search in Maura Murray case. In a press release, AG John Formella said that yesterday's search of an area off Rte. 112 in Landaff and Easton was "not the result of new information in the case," but rather "a more extensive search surrounding areas that had been previously searched in a more limited fashion." But authorities are staying mum on why they're revisiting those areas 18 years after Murray, a U Mass-Amherst student, disappeared on a February night after an accident along Route 112 in Haverhill.Leb Planning Board okays apartment complex. Again. In a sense, nothing new happened at its last meeting. But Darren Marcy's piece in yesterday's VN explaining how nothing new happened is fascinating. You'll remember the board approved developer Mike Davidson's plan for a 152-unit complex across from Colburn Park last month. But some board members were uneasy with plans they'd approved for 99 on-site spaces and a lease next door for another 100. So they wanted to reopen discussion...until Davidson's rep, Tim Sidore, said they'd shelve the project if that happened. Marcy details what happened.CRREL researcher invents material that removes water contaminants using sunlight. "There is little, if any, uncontaminated water left on our planet," Emily Asenath-Smith says in an Army Corps of Engineers press release, "and many of these contaminants are not removed by traditional water treatment methods.” The material developed by her team uses the energy in sunlight to break down contaminant molecules into benign by-products. This will initially make it possible for the military to make water drinkable in remote areas—but it's not hard to think of other uses. Next step: a water treatment device.If things look crowded on the Dartmouth Green August 6, there's a good reason. It's because the college's Class of 2020 will finally get an actual, in-person commencement ceremony that day. It'll be almost the whole deal: regalia, bagpipes, a procession, remarks from President Phil Hanlon, the announcement of the graduates’ names as they walk across the stage, and a keynote speaker: Geeta Anand, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and dean of UC Berkeley's journalism school. About half of the class's members so far have said they'll be showing up, writes Hannah Silverstein for Dartmouth News.NH House majority leader on abortion: "I encourage folks to be happy with where we're at and comfortable that that's where it's going to stay." In a conversation aired yesterday, House GOP leader Jason Osborne told NHPR's Rick Ganley that he doesn't expect tighter restrictions on abortion even if his party wins more seats. They talked over plans for next term if the GOP retains its majority, including revisiting a parental bill of rights, and talked around Osborne's recent notoriety for tweeting a suggestion that people buy more AK-47 ammunition instead of hot dogs ahead of July 4.Meanwhile, Osborne's company has fired all its employees and faces multiple lawsuits. In NH Business Review, Bob Sanders digs into the decline of Mammoth Tech Inc., which used to employ hundreds of people in NH and OH. Osborne and his father, who founded the debt collection company in 1964, own 90 percent of the company. They laid off the workforce in March, and face a class action suit for failing to give their employees notice, a lawsuit by their Manchester landlord for not paying rent, "a $1 million judgement for stiffing a staffing agency," and a disability discrimination suit, Sanders writes.Burnout, pandemic stress, fewer new teachers, the housing shortage—school districts struggle to find staff for the fall. "For many districts," writes Alison Novak in Seven Days, "the hiring season—which typically tapers off when school ends—will last all summer." Some districts are still scrambling to replace staff who are leaving; others are resorting to unusual strategies for schools, like hiring bonuses or, in the case of the Woodstock-area district, connecting with the Woodstock Economic Development Commission to find landlords with rental housing that's affordable for new teachers.“Social media is a very fast-paced and very lawless place." And it would be fair to say that neither Emma Rose McCadden nor the target of her quickly viral post, Chiuho Sampson—the chef and owner of the acclaimed Burlington Chinese restaurant, A Single Pebble—enjoyed the experience. On Saturday night, McCadden and her husband went to celebrate their second anniversary. McCadden's service dog came along, and Sampson barred him—a legal violation. McCadden caught their exchange on video and posted it. Then the online hordes descended. VTDigger's Peter D'Auria tells the whole sorry tale."Antiques Roadshow" got 17,000 applications for its Vermont taping. In California? 16,000. And in all, reports WCAX's Elissa Borden, about 3,000 people turned up at the Shelburne Museum on Tuesday for the final stop on the show's 27th season tour. The season itself airs in January, so we'll have to wait until then to see if there were any treasures hiding for decades in northern New England attics. But Borden did get some jewelry looked at by star jewelry appraiser Kevin Zavian. Mid-20th century Rhode Island, he told her. "Probably somewhere from $60 to maybe $80... You're loaded."There's a reason this guy goes by @aaronthepoolshark on TikTok. And I could practice for a year and still not pull off this shot that Belgium's Aaron Vancopponelle makes look effortless.The Thursday Vordle. Word.
And the trends...
Dartmouth hasn't updated its dashboard since last Friday, but back then it reported there had been 81 active cases during the previous 7 days, up from the 59 reported the previous Tuesday. There were 23 undergrad cases (+8), 9 grad/professional cases (-3), and 49 faculty/staff (+17).
Reported NH cases are rising, with a 7-day average now of 241 new cases per day versus 211 last week, while the CDC's county-level tracking finds "high" community transmission rates across northern NH, including Grafton and Sullivan counties (scroll below the summary to the map). There were 10 deaths reported over the past week, bringing the total to 2,604. Under the state's rubric of counting only people actively being treated for Covid in hospitals, it reports 19 hospitalizations (same as last week). The NH State Hospital Association reports 91 inpatients with confirmed or suspected cases (+8) and another 44 Covid-recovering patients. As you'll remember, the state now reports positive cases in the last 14 days (given the current testing vagaries, don't take these as accurate, just as a relative indicator of where things stand): 156 in Grafton County (+15 from last week), 99 in Sullivan (-10), and 295 in Merrimack (-18). Town-by-town numbers are mixed: There were 38 reported over the past two weeks in Claremont (+6), 29 in Lebanon (+9), 17 in Hanover (-5), 13 in Newport (-5), 13 in Grantham (-1), 12 in Charlestown (no change), 9 in Sunapee, 9 in New London, 7 in Enfield, 7 in Canaan, 7 in Rumney, and 1-4 in Haverhill, Piermont, Wentworth, Lyme, Orange, Plainfield, Cornish, and Newbury.
Vermont rates community transmission levels as low, with its weekly surveillance report yesterday reporting 457 new cases over the week between July 3 and July 9, vs. the 531 reported the week before. However, the CDC's county-level data shows "substantial" or "high" community transmission across the southern half of Vermont, including Windsor and Orange counties, as well as in the northwest corner of the state (scroll below the summary to the daily map). Meanwhile, VT reported 33 new hospital admissions over the week, down 20 from its previous report, and noted that just 1.77 percent of staffed hospital beds have Covid patients. But as Dartmouth's Ann Sosin pointed out in a Twitter thread the other day, "Vermonters consulting [health department] guidance want to know their risk of infection, not of finding a hospital bed, to protect themselves and others and plan their lives." She urged clearer, more complete messaging from the state on what's going on. Meanwhile, VTDigger's charts show a rolling average of 78 new cases a day, up from an average of 66 a week ago.
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Up to a thousand dogs all in one place... And today through Sunday, starting at 8:30 am, you get to see them at the Tunbridge Fairgrounds. Today and tomorrow, it's the Woodstock Dog Club's AKC All Breed Dog Show; on Saturday and Sunday, the Green Mountain Dog Club takes over. There'll be judging by breeds and by abilities: Over the four days, the WDC writes, "there will be 4 All Breed Conformation Dog Shows, 5 Obedience, 4 Rally Trials and Scent Work. There will also be a 4–6 month old Puppy competition and on Friday, a Best 6-12 month old Puppy competition. Best Veteran competition will be Saturday."
And being Thursday, of course,it's Feast & Field at Fable Farm in Royalton. Gates open at 5:30, music begins at 6 pm with É.T.É, a Quebecois trio—violin, cello, Irish bouzouki—that plays traditional Quebecois and Acadian music inflected with folk, jazz, progressive rock, and classical music, not to mention toe-tapping and step-dancing.
And at 7:30, it's the second of this summer's three Meetinghouse Readings in Canaan at the old Canaan Meetinghouse. The venerable and highly popular series pairs a novelist and a poet: Tonight it's much-admired local novelist Ernest Hebert—his latest, Whirlybird Island, set firmly in fictional Darby, NH, explores the lasting impact of war's trauma—and Vermont poet Matthew Olzmann, whose recent collection, Constellation Route, "delivers hard truths wrapped up in humor and imagination," Allie Levy wrote in Enthusiasms earlier this year. William Craig will be at the mic as emcee.
Here's É.T.É—it's the first initials of its members, Élisabeth Moquin, Thierry Clouette and Élisabeth Giroux, but also (if you take out the periods) the French word for "summer"—
See you tomorrow.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
The Enthusiasms Archives. A list of book recommendations by Daybreak's rotating crew of local booksellers and writers who want you to read. this. book. now!
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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