Daybreak Thursday 9/3/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Mostly sunny, back into the 80s. It's only for a day, but after yesterday's meh weather, definitely welcome. Fog in the usual spots and morning clouds should dissipate pretty quickly, and we should reach low 80s (at least in the valleys) by late afternoon. There's a cold front coming through later; no rain along with it, but it'll pull temps down for the next few days. Low 60s overnight.Snack time! Nancy Nutile-McMenemy was out kayaking on Silver Lake in Barnard the other day, and got some nice loon pics, including this one seeming not quite sure how to handle the crayfish it had caught.Dartmouth Covid-testing dashboard goes live. The college is tracking the tests it performs on students and staff, as well as confirmed cases and people in isolation (those who've tested positive) and quarantine (those who've been exposed). The site will be updated Mondays and Thursdays. Undergrads arriving next week will report to a testing tent at the corner of Rope Ferry Road and Maynard Street, where as many as 1,800 people a day can be tested. One undergrad has tested positive in pre-arrival screening, student health clinical director Ann Bracken told yesterday's "Community Conversation."Hanover limits gatherings. Ahead of Dartmouth students' return, the Selectboard on Monday night passed an emergency ordinance limiting gatherings in or on residential properties to 10 people. Hosts will also be required to keep records of guests' names and contact info. First violation gets a warning; second a $200 fine; third... they're not sure yet.Dartmouth-led team develops treatment to help fight drug-resistant bacteria. The effort targets methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the most deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the US. The team, led in part by Thayer prof Karl Griswold (and including two of his companies) has engineered a new antibacterial agent that can hide from the body's immune system. This, says Griswold, makes it possible to dose "multiple times in order to treat even the most highly refractory [ie, treatment-resistant] infections.”Hanover/Lyme state House primary draws a crowd. The contest for the four seats in the Grafton 12 district has eight candidates, only one of whom—Democrat Sharon Nordgren—is an incumbent. Three incumbents are stepping down. The candidates "largely share similar policy positions — increasing the minimum wage, creating an independent redistricting commission and making access to health care more affordable," writes the VN's Tim Camerato, but bring an array of different backgrounds. Camerato runs down who's who.Well, she made it. Vera Rivard's swim across the English Channel lasted 14 hours, 10 minutes, unofficially. She left the water near midnight, local time, in Wissant, a beach village near Calais. The shortest route from Folkestone, writes the VN's Greg Fennell, would have been to Cap Griz-Nez, 21 miles, but tides and marine traffic put her on a course that wound up at 33 miles. Rivard is the first American woman to swim a Channel crossing in two years. And he's off... Colin Pope, a Sharon Academy alum who manages The Skinny P's Quechee spot, heads out today on his bid to traverse all 48 4000-footers in the Whites in one go. It's called the "White Mountain Direttissima," and if he completes all 220 miles (and 80,000 feet of elevation gain), he'll become the 15th person to do it. He'd hoped to set a speed record (currently just over six days), but sprained his ankle some weeks back; now he's planning on 10 days. Note: that link to follow his progress won't go live until his GPS starts pinging.Lebanon wants input on community center idea. Since the spring, a team created by City Manager Shaun Mulholland has been looking into whether there's interest in the city for developing a community center, and if so, what it should offer and how big it should be. The group now wants the public to weigh in—and not just Lebanon residents. They've got a 10-minute survey at the link to gauge interest in different activities and features, support for funding mechanisms, and whether there's interest in a center in the first place.NH hospitals sue VT. APD, Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, and Valley Regional in Claremont—the first two are part of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health—charge that the Vermont Agency of Human Services discriminates against them by paying them lower Medicaid reimbursement rates for Vermont patients than it pays to Vermont hospitals. The suit echoes one that DHMC won in 2015, and is D-H's bid to extend parity to its smaller hospitals. Report on NH lake health finds changes both bad and good. The report, the first of its kind, looks at water quality trends in 150 of the state's lakes and ponds over the past few decades, reports NHPR's Annie Ropeik. Among other things, it finds increases in warnings about fecal bacteria and cyanobacteria, warming in about a fifth of the state's lakes, ice-out dates a full two weeks earlier than in the 1930s, and more road salt running into lakes. On the other hand, lakes are less acidic, and though more are affected by invasive plant species, efforts to find alternatives to herbicides are growing.

NH absentee-voting regs take the national stage. On Tuesday, the American Federation of Teachers brought suit (as they've done in some other states) to force NH to extend the deadline for mail-in ballots, cover their postage, and allow wider use of absentee ballot dropboxes. State officials say changing the current rules would create confusion among voters, and the Republican National Committee and Trump campaign are now seeking to join them in fighting the lawsuit, reports NHPR's Casey McDermott.Wondered about that emerald ash borer charge on your GMP bill? Or as a Seven Days reader put it to the staff, "WTF?" So deputy news editor Sasha Goldstein looked into it. Turns out that borer-infected trees die in unpredictable ways, with possibly fraught results for power lines. So GMP is mapping ash trees—it estimates they make up 10 percent of the trees along its right of way—and then removing those at greatest risk. They're not alone. VT Electric Coop has its eyes on 17,000 trees along its lines.“I don’t ever want to say that a pandemic is an opportunity... But I do think that now is the time that we need to start getting ourselves out there." That's the town manager of Chester, VT, just west of Springfield, talking about Chester's new effort to market itself to Covid refugees. United Van Lines just put VT (along with ID, OR, and SC) atop of the list of states with more people moving in than leaving, and towns "are noticing," reports VPR's Howard Weiss-Tisman. So places like Chester are tweaking their marketing to go beyond attracting tourists.St. Michael's runner outruns, outclimbs, outlasts angry bear. Rachel Smith, who's on the cross country team at St. Mike's, knows what you're supposed to do: talk calmly and make yourself look big. But after she ran between a mom bear and her cubs one evening a few weeks ago in the Adirondacks, the bear wanted none of it. Smith ran screaming into the woods, scrambling to stay ahead, and finally made it up a tree, crushing a surrounding stand of smaller trees to block her path and throwing her shoes, socks, and sports bra at the bear to try to scare her off. With temps in the 40s, clenching the tree, she spent the night there. Runner's World has the story.The owners of Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller "made beautiful contributions to the arts and to the preservation of some of the finest things in America." You probably knew all the stuff in Sally Pollak's "Vermonting" road-trip-to-Woodstock Seven Days article about VT's only national park, but I sure didn't. It encompasses what may be the oldest "planned and scientifically managed forest in the nation." Right now it's got a set of sculptures celebrating Hudson River School artists. And it's got a 450-year-old hemlock.If you want to go a little farther afield, you could walk 70 miles through Vermont... and then 4,530 more to North Dakota. And on the way, cross 10 national forests and over 100 state parks. That would be the North Country National Scenic Trail, which finally made it into VT last year (to Middlebury). And while more than 20,000 people have completed the AT, North Country Trail Association director Andrea Ketchmark knows of fewer than 20 who've done the NCT, reports Seven Days' Margaret Grayson. Game on, people! 

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It's coffee break, so let's go contemplative and stirring today: Parisian guitarist Stéphane Zubanu Diarra and Barcelonan singer Nuria Rovira Salat—known as "Zu & Nuria"—

the classic

bolero/son

 written Miguel Matamoros as he was on his way home to Cuba in 1930 and first performed by the Trio Matamoros the following year.

Still in awe of that runner. Remarkable story. See you tomorrow.

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