GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Hey, at least it's a change. There's a cold front coming through later today, which will bring with it showers and thunderstorms, especially this afternoon, with a possibility of gusty winds, small hail, and a slight chance of a tornado (there was one Monday in Addison, VT). The actual high will be in the upper 80s, but it's going to remain quite humid, so will probably feel about like yesterday. On the other hand, the low tonight's in the mid-60s, modestly better than last night.Just some reminders that being outside can actually be pleasant.
A monarch on a pink poppy in E. Thetford, by Tom Monego;
And Halloween pennant dragonflies in Windsor, by John Pietkiewicz.
ValleyNet finds "financial irregularities." State, feds investigate. The news came in a press release yesterday from CFO Stan Williams and board chair Carole Monroe, and "appears to be an incident involving a trusted outside contractor," they wrote. In an interview with Daybreak, Williams took pains to say that while the lost money "is not an insignificant sum," both ECFiber and Lyme Fiber—whose systems ValleyNet operates under contract—"remain very strong financially." He added, "This does not cast any shadow on the municipal [fiber] ownership model" but stemmed from ValleyNet's accounting practices.Lebanon man arrested in Hanover after threat to "shoot up" Ramunto's. Yesterday morning, Leb police got an anonymous tip that Jonathan Nolen—who is "well-known to police in Lebanon and Hanover...mostly related to issues of mental health," Darren Marcy writes in the Valley News—had threatened revenge against someone who was at Ramunto's. Hanover officers spotted Nolen walking into the Howe Library, across the street from the pizzeria, with a backpack, which was found to contain a 9 mm “ghost gun” loaded with ammunition, and a hunting knife. Nolen was placed in Grafton County jail.SPONSORED: Niles was injured while skateboarding in Lebanon. Hear about his Emergency Room experience at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in this short video. The same emergency physicians who provide care at APD also provide care at DHMC. Experience short wait times and friendly staff. We don’t want you to become sick or injured, but we are always here for you when you do. Sponsored by APD.Need to cool off? Lebanon has opened up both the Kilton Library in West Leb and the main library in downtown Leb as cooling centers. And VT's health department has released a map of places around the state with air conditioning or water to splash in that are open for anyone needing relief. They include the Montshire, UVAC, Hartford's Sherman Manning Pool, the Bugbee Senior Center, the Wilder Club & Library, the Quechee Library, the Hartland Library, the Norman Williams Public Library. And, of course ponds and lakes.New WRJ dance festival aims to be "accessible to everyone." Tomorrow through Sunday, dance will take over the Briggs, White River Ballet Academy, Open Door, Northern Stage, and Veterans Park, as the Junction Dance Festival stretches its fledgling wings. There will be workshops—from ballet for beginners to how dance, nature, and writing interact—as well as performances and eight short dance films, most of them shot nearby. "It's kind of taking over this whole town in a very intrinsic way, sort of threading into these existing spaces and animating them," dancer Erin McNulty tells Seven Days' Meg McIntyre.“We have a restaurant, grocery store, and the rocket." If you've been through Warren, NH, you know what Warren Village School principal Michael Galli is talking about. It's a Redstone rocket smack in the center of town, part of the same family of rockets that carried NH native Alan Shepard into space. Galli talked to Bud McLaughlin of Alabama's Redstone Rocket newspaper about how it got there: Ted Asselin, a Warren native stationed at the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama in 1970, decided it would be cool to have in town, borrowed a truck and 60-foot trailer... and well, the rest is local history.The first American-manufactured globes came from Bradford. And in particular from the farm workshop of James Wilson, who never traveled far outside New England and "didn't have much formal schooling beyond training as a blacksmith," writes Cathy Resmer in Seven Days. Wilson's the subject of a new exhibit at the Vermont History Museum in Montpelier, which showcases several globes—"up close, it's hard to take your eyes off them"—and tells his story, from first seeing a European globe at Dartmouth to manufacturing his own, terrestrial and celestial, for customers across the country.And hey, if you happen to be in NYC this summer, there's a slice of the Upper Valley Off Broadway. That would be the musical Between the Lines, which opened about ten days ago but had its moment of birth in Samantha Van Leer's head years ago when she was daydreaming in French class at Hanover High. That turned into her bestselling 2012 young adult novel collaboration with her mom, Jodi Picoult. Now, the story about a young heroine who lives in our world but is in love with a fairy-tale prince is drawing a range of reviews at the Tony Kiser Theater, with hopes of hitting just plain Broadway.Just 2 percent. That was NH's jobless rate in June, the lowest it's been since 1976, according to a new estimate from NH Employment Security. The estimated number of unemployed residents, reports NHPR, is 15,540, meaning that 11,760 fewer people are out of work than were a year ago. Hiring was strongest in the public sector, manufacturing, and construction—though there are still fewer people working than before the pandemic.NH faced a critical loss of lawyers to defend indigent clients; high-priced lawyers stepped in. But that's just a stop-gap. Brutal caseloads and pandemic concerns drove dozens of public defenders out the door in recent years, writes Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin, and the need grew so desperate that state Supreme Court justices asked private attorneys to step in. They did. But the state has not made progress on raising defenders' pay or reimbursement rates for contract lawyers, without which "recruiting and retaining lawyers for indigent defendants will remain a significant challenge."NH's loons are faring just fine this year. "We’re seeing more of the nests that have hatched, and successful nests are hatching two chicks more often than average,” Loon Preservation Committee biologist John Cooley tells the Monitor's David Brooks. The group expects this year's number of breeding pairs to about match last year's 326. They include five of the loons that were among the 10 rescued in January after being trapped by ice on Lake Winnipesaukee.Tips on staying cool from a land without air conditioners. You wouldn't want to stretch the analogy too far, but at least in this respect, Great Britain is kinda like northern New England. So it's generous of the BBC to look into the question, and they've got some advice. You know some of it, like staying out of the sun at midday. There's mixed evidence on light vs. dark clothing, but loose-fitting clothing helps. So does blowing air over a cool wet sheet (or bowl of ice). Intriguingly, a thin sheet at night might be better than no sheets at all (it helps the body control the temperature next to our skin).Just don't anyone tell her about the Tunbridge Fair, okay? Last month at the Virginia-Kentucky District Fair, held yearly in Wise, VA, a woman named Linda Skeens pretty much wrapped up the Baked Goods awards. But then people noticed that she also snagged best overall canned tomato, best overall relish, best overall jelly (grape)... And 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in best embroidered pieces. She remains intensely private, but a Dallas radio host tracked her down. "You do realize that everyone on the internet wants you to cook for them," she told Skeens. "I'm busy cooking for my family," Skeens responded.
Clearly, the guy's got an in with the photography gods. Speaking of Virginia, there's this photographer named Jason Rinehart who specializes in images of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Last week, watching the weather forecast, he noticed a storm was going to hit right around sunset. He got up to an overlook and started photographing as a double rainbow spread over the horizon. Then, suddenly, a lightning bolt flashed... and he captured it all.The Thursday Vordle. If you're a newcomer, this is the Upper Valley version of the Wordle, using a word related to an item in yesterday's Daybreak. What have you got to lose?
And the trends...
On Tuesday, Dartmouth reported there have been 83 active cases during the last 7 days, about on a par with past weeks. There were 23 undergrad cases, 9 grad/professional cases, and 51 faculty/staff.
Reported NH cases have fallen a bit, with a 7-day average now of 227 new cases per day versus 241 last week. There were 11 deaths reported over the past week, bringing the total to 2,615. Under the state's rubric of counting only people actively being treated for Covid in hospitals, it reports 33 hospitalizations (+14). The NH State Hospital Association reports 129 inpatients with confirmed or suspected cases (+38) and another 47 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): 217 in Grafton County (+61 from last week), 97 in Sullivan (-2), and 315 in Merrimack (+20). Town-by-town numbers are mixed: There were 48 reported over the past two weeks in Lebanon (+19), 36 in Claremont (-2), 20 in Hanover (+3), 17 in Newport (+4), 16 in Enfield (+9), 15 in Charlestown (+3), 10 in New London (+1), 9 in Sunapee (no change), 8 in Grantham (-5), 8 in Canaan (+1), 5 each in Haverhill, Wentworth, Rumney, and Lyme, and 1-4 in Warren, Orford, Dorchester, Plainfield, Cornish, Springfield, and Newbury.
Vermont continues to rate community transmission levels as low, with its weekly surveillance report yesterday reporting 602 new cases over the week between July 10 and July 16, vs. the 457 reported the week before. The CDC also reports "community levels" as low, but as with last week, it shows community transmission levels as high in southern VT counties, including Windsor (vs. "substantial" in Orange). Here's a column from the spring on the difference and why you don't want to ignore the latter. Meanwhile, VT reported 21 new hospital admissions over the week, down 12 from its previous report, and noted that just 1.39 percent of staffed hospital beds have Covid patients. Here's Erin Petenko's VTDigger article summarizing the rest of this week's data.
Oh, and one other thing, A reader writes in about a conversation recently with an EMT at a local walk-in vaccine clinic who says that his team worries that as the latest variant spreads, VT hasn't made people aware enough that the walk-in vaccine clinics are still a viable option for boosters and initial shots, and that anyone who fits the criteria can get one, whether or not they're Vermont residents. Here's the state's info (there's a clinic today from 11-1:30 at the town office in South Royalton).
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This evening at 7 the Upper Valley hosts not one, but two benefit concerts. At Court Street Arts at Alumni Hall in Haverhill, singer Lydia Gray, guitarist Ed Eastridge, fiddler and bassist Jakob Breitbach, drummer Marcus Copening, and pianist Don Saliers give a concert to support Help Kids India, a locally based nonprofit that helps fund three preschools, nutrition, and health care in south India for 170 children from the poorest village families. Tix are $20 at the door.
And on the 1st fairway of the golf course at the Lake Morey Inn, frontman Michael Glabicki of the '90s world-music jam band Rusted Root will lead his successor band, Uprooted, in a benefit concert for the Pride Center of Vermont. Tix are $40 and available online.
Also at 7 tonight and Saturday night, Opera North's production of Mozart's Così fan tutte fills the tent at Blow-Me-Down Farm in Cornish. Two sisters, their soldier boyfriends, a shape-shifting chambermaid, a couple of "Albanians"... and plenty of deception, tests of fidelity, and seduction. A story opera was made for. There are still some (but not many) tickets left for both nights.
Tonight at 7:30, it's the final evening of this season's Meetinghouse Readings at the old Canaan Meetinghouse. Tonight, William Craig hosts poet Justin Bigos, the Vermont-based writer of the collections Double Clothesline and Mad River and the chapbook Twenty Thousand Pigeons; and Maine-based short story writer Morgan Talty, whose debut collection about the Penobscot reservation, Night of the Living Rez, has been drawing raves, including this from NYT reviewer Amil Niazi: "With Night of the Living Rez, Talty has assured himself a spot in the canon of great Native American literature."
Also at 7:30, the Amplified Arts Company opens three nights of its adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma at the Claremont Opera House. As the company puts it, "This highly theatrical adaptation of one of Jane Austen's greatest novels tells the story of Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, and the other families in and around the village of Highbury." Though there's a little more to it than that.
Finally, anytime, you can check out CATV's highlighted programming this week, including two special editions of "Common Ground," with young journalist Annie Hanna of Lebanon hosting VT state reps Becca White and Jim Masland and NH state rep Russell Muirhead to talk about climate change, and Hartford's AJ Fredland talking to the three about education policy at the state level, especially controversies around civics education. Also, a documentary by the kids at Hartland Elementary on what it takes to build a new school composting system.
Yep. "Neo-folk indie soul avant jazz jam grass-icana" pretty much sums it up. That's how bassist Chris Sartori once described Twisted Pine, his Boston-based string band with mandolinist Dan Bui, Kathleen Parks on vocals and violin, and these days (though not in this video) Anh Phung on flute and vocals. But however you want to describe them, they know how to swing.
(Thanks, BW!)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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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