GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Patchy fog to start, then back to one of those why-would-you-want-to-be-anywhere-else days. High pressure's building in and, other than a blip tomorrow, we're in for a string of near-perfect days. Few clouds to speak of today, highs reaching toward 80, breezes from the south, upper 50s tonight.High up and close to the ground: Thetford from two angles.
Last week, John Pietkiewicz took his first balloon ride ever. Here's the early-morning view looking west above Post Mills;
And here's Janice Fischel's close-up of not-your-usual planters at Cedar Circle Farm yesterday.
The
Valley News'
s Nora Doyle-Burr reports that the shortage has become "critical" at DHMC and associated DH clinics in recent weeks, and the hospital is centralizing its stock of local anesthetics in response. Doyle-Burr wasn't able to talk to DHMC's pharmacy manager, but Gifford's manager, Jane McConnell, tells her that the shortage began about six months ago and is affecting all departments—and that drug manufacturers aren't explaining what's causing it. "If I knew that, I would know where it’s headed," she says. "I just know it’s not there.”
You may remember that COVER Home Repair is fielding all-women crews of volunteers this summer. Two of them will be in Windsor and Charlestown, and the
Eagle Times
's Dylan Marsh writes that they're aimed at encouraging "women and non-binary folks to learn new skills and gain confidence in the construction field." "We’ve been fortunate to have on staff a female carpenter that has worked in the trades her entire career, and who is passionate about teaching," says COVER director Helen Hong.
Smirkus hits the road again. It's been three years since Circus Smirkus set up its tent on Fullington Field in Hanover, but the traveling youth circus will be back next week. In Seven Days, Maggie Reynolds caught up with it as troupers prepped for the opening shows of "On the Road Again," which includes local acrobat Miki Hertog-Raz in his final year with the troupe. The show follows the troupers cross-country, through Niagara Falls and Yellowstone to Hollywood, then back the other way. "It is very like Smirkus," says troupe member Freddo Buford, "because we are a big road trip going from place to place."SPONSORED: Three unique chamber music concerts with world-class musicians. Next week is the inaugural season of Oak Hill Music Festival, a classical chamber music festival bringing world-class musicians to the Upper Valley. Masterworks by Mozart, Schubert, Franck, and Stravinsky, and shorter works with influences ranging from jazz and film scores to Hindustani music. Wednesday, July 13 and Saturday, July 16 at 7:30 pm at First Congregational Church of Lebanon, and Friday, July 15 at 7:30 pm at Norwich Congregational Church. Tickets at the link. Sponsored by Oak Hill Music Festival.Early NH secret ballots go on view. Until 1891, David Brooks writes in the Monitor, ballots in the state were printed by the political parties, which made a voter's choice easy to see. That changed with the 1892 election, after the state adopted the "Australian ballot"; to press the point home, NH in the early 1900s made it illegal for a voter even to display that ballot. Now, a two-year state archives project has conserved early examples—sample ballots from, so far, the 1892, 1896, and 1900 elections. Meanwhile, Brooks points out, the new affidavit ballot law opens a crack in the state's long ballot-privacy efforts.Change to NH hearing process on emergency mental health admissions brings improvement. Before the state circuit court took over the involuntary admissions petition process earlier this year, writes NH Bulletin's Annmarie Timmins, the state routinely missed a three-day petition deadline, meaning that even those who were a danger to themselves or others were released. Since the court took over, just four of 694 petition hearings have resulted in someone being released over a missed deadline. But a proposed state change may result in people being held in ERs for as long as nine days, advocates argue.VT Supreme Court ruling limits auditor's purview over state contractors. The decision came in a case involving OneCare, the state's accountable care organization. The Court sided with OneCare after it refused State Auditor Doug Hoffer's bid to review its salary information, arguing that unless the auditor is mentioned in the contract, the office isn't guaranteed access to records. This has implications for Hoffer's oversight over all state contractors, from paving contractors to mental health providers, reports Vermont Public's Lexi Krupp. Hoffer hopes to work with legislators to make that authority explicit.VT corrections boss plans 60-hour work weeks for prison staff. You may remember that last week, workers at the state prison in Springfield were put on five 12-hour shifts a week as an "emergency" measure to deal with staffing shortages. Now, reports VTDigger's Alan J. Keays, corrections commissioner Nicholas Deml wants to implement the same hours system-wide. The move, he says, would be temporary; his plan is eventually to move to seven 12-hour shifts—or 84 hours—over 14 days, with a three-day weekend per pay period. The department will negotiate with the union over pay "enhancements."Think buying a house these days is tough? Try being a renter in VT. Renters in the state "are almost twice as likely to be financially burdened by their housing costs as residents who own their homes," writes Derek Brouwer in Seven Days. And now the issue's gotten even worse, as high demand is leading to skyrocketing monthly rents and evictions. "Historically low vacancy rates give property owners extraordinary power to push rents upward as they see fit," Brouwer writes, as he talks to Burlington-area renters struggling to find affordable new digs and landlords justifying rent boosts of hundreds a month.Should we start a pool? At about 10:30 Tuesday night, the second truck in a week got caught in Smuggler's Notch after its driver ignored the warning signs. Sadly, this time the VSP played it straight: "The operator of the vehicle was identified as Amtonio Baldomero (37) of Miami, FL. Baldomero stated he observed the several warning signs prohibiting tractor trailers from traveling through the notch but continued to follow his Google Maps."Do we need to get ready for backpackers shlepping the Hanover/Norwich sidewalks...in mid-winter? Winter hiking on the AT has "entered a boomlet," the Appalachian Trail Conservancy's New England director tells Outside's Grayson Haver Currin. True, they're mostly short-duration; the Conservancy's tracked only 8 winter thru-hikes ever. Currin focuses on Scott Benerofe, who this past winter did the AT's 2200 miles north-south, often on snowshoes, sometimes crawling to avoid being blown off ridgelines, heading to shelter when the weather got too extreme. “A lot of people have told me how relatable my hike seems," Benerofe says, "because it’s pretty clear I’m just some dude.”The Thursday Vordle. Time to check it out!
And the trends...
On Tuesday, Dartmouth reported there had been 59 active cases during the previous 7 days, down from the 59 reported last week. There were 15 undergrad cases (+3), 12 grad/professional cases (-5), and 32 faculty/staff (-7).
Reported NH cases have dropped a bit, with a 7-day average now of 211 new cases per day versus 236 last week. There were 12 deaths reported over the past week, bringing the total to 2,594. Under the state's rubric of counting only people actively being treated for Covid in hospitals, it reports 19 hospitalizations (+1 from last week). The NH State Hospital Association reports 83 inpatients with confirmed or suspected cases (+7) and another 46 Covid-recovering patients. As you'll remember, the state now reports positive cases in the last 14 days: 141 in Grafton County (-42 from last week), 109 in Sullivan (+12), and 313 in Merrimack (-18). Town-by-town numbers have been dropping: There were 32 reported over the past two weeks in Claremont, 22 in Hanover, 20 in Lebanon, 18 in Newport, 14 in Grantham, 12 in Charlestown, 11 in Sunapee, 10 in New London, 8 in Haverhill, 6 in Enfield, 6 in Wilmot, 6 in Lyme, 6 in Piermont, and 1-4 in Orford, Rumney, Canaan, Orange, Plainfield, Springfield, Cornish, Croydon, and Unity.
Vermont continues to rate community transmission levels as low (so does the CDC, except for southwestern VT), with its weekly surveillance report yesterday reporting 531 new cases over the week between June 26 and July 2, vs. the 653 reported the week before. But as Erin Petenko notes in her VTDigger wrapup, the data "comes with a caveat: The basis for Covid case data—PCR testing—is at its lowest point in a year, according to health department data. The state conducted about 1,110 tests per day in the past week, compared to 3,000 to 4,000 tests per day during the BA.2 surge." The state also reported 53 new hospital admissions over the week, up 20 from last week. Specifically, VTDigger's charts show 30 people were hospitalized with the virus as of yesterday, vs. 25 a week ago. There have been 3 deaths so far in July; overall, deaths fell sharply in June, with 12 reported for the month versus 32 in May.
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At 4 pm today, Dartmouth's French Institute on Cultural Studies hosts Bill Yosses, who for seven years spanning the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies served as White House Pastry Chef. Among other things, he was responsible for managing Michelle Obama's South Lawn garden and bakery. He'll be talking about food culture as it relates to our general thoughts about ourselves, our rituals, beliefs, identity, and personal health, as well as about the importance of bridging science and our everyday lives in pursuit of informed ethical, medical, and political decisions. In person at Haldeman Center 041.
And of course, it's Feast & Field at Fable Farm in Royalton. Gates open at 5:30, music begins at 6 pm with a double bill of rocker, blues musician, and follow-his-own-path innovator Bow Thayer along with folk-blues-rocker Krishna Guthrie (yep, Arlo's grandson).
Also at 6, the town of Windsor will host Americana's Most Wanted for a free concert at the bandstand. The band, a Who's Who of Upper Valley players—Rob Oxford, Mike Wood, Gary Hutchins, Steve Hennig, Ford Daley—will be playing tunes by Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, and other greats.
And also at 6 up in Haverhill, Court Street Arts brings in NYC-based jazz guitarist Abe Ovadia, reimagining the American Songbook from Coltrane to Santana and talking about jazz history, improvisation, and more.
At 7 this evening, the first of Village Harmony's two teen ensembles makes its sole appearance in the Upper Valley at the Norwich Congregational Church. South African songs and dances, songs from Georgia and the Balkans, shape-note singing, and more.
And at 7:30, this summer's Meetinghouse Readings in Canaan get underway at the old Canaan Meetinghouse. The venerable and highly popular series pairs a novelist and a poet: Tonight it's NYT-bestselling writer, essayist, and now—with All the Secrets of the World—novelist Steve Almond, and Vermont-based poet (and program director for the Ruth Stone House) Bianca Stone. William Craig, who founded the series, returns to the mic as emcee tonight after a decade away.
At 8 pm (seriously, how you gonna choose tonight?) the Lake Morey Resort kicks off a summer of outdoor Thursday-night community concerts (all free except one on July 21) with Boston's Adam Ezra Group—if you missed them at Whaleback last week, this is your chance. Down by the waterfront. (Thanks, BW!)
Finally, anytime, you can check out CATV's highlights for the week: lectures from Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center, including Columbia economics prof Morgan C. Williams, Jr. on the first empirical estimate of the race-specific effects of larger police forces in the U.S.; the impact on climate of reviving and conserving old-growth forests; and Oren Lyons, 92-year old Faith Keeper for the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation in the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and his son, Rex Lyons, hosted by Friends of Hanover Lacrosse, talking about the indigenous origins of the sport and much more about the Haudenosaunee.
Randall Poster grew up in the Bronx and eventually became a music supervisor for big-name movie producers—Scorcese, Wes Anderson, and the like. He didn't pay much attention to birds until the pandemic, when, like a lot of people he started spending time outside. “There was so much that was unknown and unknowable that we were comforted by the fact nature was still doing its thing," he says of the legions of people like him. So when he learned just how dire the situation facing songbirds is, he hatched a plan: use his connections to launch a fundraiser for bird conservation. Which is now called The Birdsong Project, with a 242-track boxed set of songs and readings by some very big names, inspired by and often integrating birdsong. Here's one example:
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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