GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Okay, I'll never scoff at a stray lobe of vorticity again. But today's better: It drifted off overnight, and though we're looking at fog again first thing—because August in the valleys—then it'll be cloudy and then sunny, high in the mid-70s. Winds from the west, down into the mid-50s tonight. A Walk to Paradise Garden at Daybreak. Only rats, it's not. It's a walk to the beach at sunset that never happened, either. Etna photographer Jim Block goes on a photographic journey set off by a reader's reaction to his sunset photo the other day—via Maxfield Parrish's famous "Daybreak," W. Eugene Smith's equally famous "Walk to Paradise Garden," and one of his own favorite photos. He ends up with a fanciful composite...that you wish were real. Here, however, is daybreak. Atop Mt. Cardigan. Rob Adams and his daughter Caroline got up at an unspeakable hour yesterday morning, were at the trailhead in the dark, and made it to the top before sunrise. Then waited.Meanwhile, back here on the ground...
NH added 19 new positive test results yesterday, bringing its official total to 7,036. It reported 3 new deaths; that total is now 427. There are 262 current cases around the state (up 2), including 5 in Grafton County and 6 in Sullivan (no change), and 13 in Merrimack (up 1). Hanover, Canaan, Grantham, Claremont, and Charlestown have between 1 and 4 active cases each.
VT reported 3 new cases yesterday, bringing its total to 1,533, with 121 of those (down 4) still active. There were no new deaths, which remain at 58 total, and 2 people are hospitalized. Windsor County remains at 75 cumulative cases and Orange County at 18.
Dartmouth delays undergrad arrival to gauge reopenings elsewhere. During yesterday's "Community Conversation" livestream, Provost Joe Helble said the college wants to track other colleges' experiences before it starts handing out arrival dates and room assignments. He noted that testing on other campuses suggests that between two and six of 2,300 arriving undergrads could be positive for Covid, though pre-arrival testing could screen them out. None of 750 returning grad and professional students has tested positive so far.The Route 120 Corridor Study is out and seeking public comments. The Upper Valley Lake Sunapee Regional Commission is developing transportation plans for major traffic corridors in the region, and the stretch of 120 between Lebanon and Hanover is the most traffic-heavy of them all. The study is full of interesting information (page 9, the map of key challenges, is eye-opening), and the commission has an ambitious list of projects. They're open to public comment before Aug. 31 to [email protected].Plainfield debates mask mandate, New London passes mask resolution. “The virus doesn’t care about the town lines.… It will travel over the town lines, and we decided we would do our part to bring forth this ordinance,” said Selectboard chair Rob Taylor at last night's meeting. The proposed measure would be similar to Enfield's, and has support from all three SB members, but was tabled until Aug. 26. Meanwhile, New London on Monday required masks to be worn in public places, but without "the penalty teeth of an ordinance," the VN's John Gregg writes.Area school districts scramble to staff up. The VN's Nora Doyle-Burr reports that Dresden, Lebanon, Randolph, and other districts are looking for teachers, substitutes, nurses, and other staff as the logistics of pandemic schooling boosts needs. The shortage of substitutes is especially acute, she writes. "This is a serious matter—if a large number of teachers call out sick on the same day, we won’t have enough adults to properly supervise the students," says Orange Southwest Superintendent Layne Millington.“Our challenge is how to maintain our sense of community while being physically disconnected from customers." Chris Prost and Michelle Oeser own and run Polyculture Brewing Company, the Croydon-based nanobrewery that, back in another life, had a weekly summer beer garden and regular tastings. The NH News Collaborative's Kelly Burch profiles them and their pivot from "meetiing almost every customer face to face" to selling through retailers like Jake's and, soon, the Hanover and Lebanon Co-ops (ignore that "Hannaford Co-op" in the story). Black River Action Team celebrates 20 years. It's been two decades since Kelly Stettner and her husband were walking along the river and she commented on all the trash along its banks. “I said, ‘Can’t somebody do something about this?’ and my husband said, ‘You’re somebody’.” Now, BRAT's annual river cleanup is a huge event, and Stettner and her allies monitor the river's health, do environmental education and outreach, and keep the river's cleanliness in the public eye. Stephen Seitz has a profile in Mountain Times.Can't get enough of those timber rattlers in NH? Ted Levin checks in on Tuesday's item with this: "When I was a grad student at Antioch NE, in Keene, in the mid-70s, timber rattlesnakes were still on Wantastiquet. The last official one reported in Hinsdale was in 1980, though some claim to have seen them more recently. The building of the Hinsdale Walmart helped do them in."First woman to run nonstop across NH does it again in VT... with ME next. Katie Spotz, an endurance athlete who has a pile of Ironmans and ultra marathons under her belt, not to mention an 8-day, 3000-mile bike relay race across America and a 3,038-mile solo row across the Atlantic, is raising money for Lifewater International with a planned Sept. 5 run 137 miles from the Canadian border to Freeport, ME. Her warmups? 62 miles across NH in June and, a couple of weeks ago, 74 miles from Bradford to Burlington. NH AG's office backs independent panel to investigate police misconduct. At a meeting yesterday, Deputy Atty Genl Jane Young outlined the office's recommendations, including a 23-member commission that would include law enforcement, lawyers, and members of the public; a new public integrity unit within the AG's office to prosecute alleged crimes by police officers; and mandated implicit bias training for all prosecutors in the state.Hundreds of NH businesses closed during pandemic. Based on a Yelp survey, report NHPR's Tat Bellamy-Walker and Todd Bookman, 449 businesses either permanently or temporarily closed between March and July. Last month, 280 businesses in the state were marked as permanently closed. On the other hand, new figures show the state added nearly 19,000 jobs last month, mostly in retail, leisure, and hospitality, driving the unemployment rate down to 8.1 percent. Two little sparks of NH weirdness bite the dust. JW Ocker writes in NH Mag that the Country Tavern in Nashua, home to the dinnerware-throwing ghost of Elizabeth Ford, who was murdered in the 1700s by her seafaring husband, shut down in May due to the pandemic. And in Dover the Far Out Diner, with its mural of a giant alien abducting a dog, shut down "after some disputation" when the landlord objected to the owners' Black Lives Matter posters outside.Why is Vermont's Census response rate so low? The state remains 46th for participation, so Seven Days' Margaret Grayson talks to state librarian Jason Broughton, who heads VT's Complete Count Committee. There are several reasons, he says, including the state's preponderance of second homes (17 percent, second only to Maine); pandemic restrictions on hand-delivering packets to homes that only use PO boxes; and "mixed messaging" from the White House and Republican campaign officials. The Trail Around Middlebury, Lake Dunmore, A&W, "No Fair" fair food in Vergennes... What could be better? If you're in the mood to explore, Sally Pollak continues Seven Days' "Staycation" series with a trip to and around Middlebury. The TAM, as it's known, is a 19-mile trail—pathways and sidewalks—that runs in and around the town (a section through Middlebury College is closed right now). It seems a lovely stroll and, as Pollak writes, "walking tends to sharpen my thinking about the usual: food." So she's got that covered, too. Now this is a domino effect. Instead of laying pavers one-by-one on top of a wall, this guy... well, you'll just see. But you need to wait for the end.
News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
Can a democratic system sustain itself in a just way? That's one of the questions that "What the Hell Is a Republic, Anyway?" is asking. It's a work-in-progress exploration of the fall of the Roman republic, written and performed by Denis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson and presented by the New York Theatre Workshop as part of Hop@Home. 6 pm on Zoom, links at the link.
Then there are questions of another sort: "How brown is too brown?" "Can Indians be racist?" Those were questions that Mira Jacob's half-Jewish, half-Indian six-year-old began asking her in the wake of the 2016 election, and as tensions from the aftermath spread into his own family, their conversations became way more complicated. The result was her graphic memoir, Good Talk. This evening at 7, she'll be hosted by Still North Books in conversation with Alexander Chee and Dustin Schell. Via Crowdcast, register at the link.
Also at 7, the Howe is hosting Judith Black as Lucy Stone, the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree (from Oberlin), the first woman hired by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society as a public speaker, and a campaigner for tax resistance and women's rights. Zoom link at the link.
And if it's music you want, The Underground, the recording studio in Randolph, has launched livestreams on Thursdays starting at 6 pm. Tonight, it's Royalton singer-songwriter Alison Turner—AliT—who released her second album last fall and has been writing new songs during the pandemic.
Remember that big online birthday bash for Ringo Starr last month? One of the performances was by Peter Frampton, solo and in quarantine, doing a half-acoustic, half-electric version of "It Don't Come Easy"—Ringo's first UK solo single (mostly written by George Harrison). As one commenter says, "Peter Frampton playing a song for Ringo Starr that was written by George Harrison for Ringo Starr. I think the cool meter just blew up!"See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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