Daybreak Tuesday 1/19/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Can't quite believe I'm saying this, but...more sun than clouds. At least, in the morning: There's a weak low pressure system headed our way that will cloud things up later in the day, but let's take what we can get. Highs today in the low 30s, lower 20s tonight, winds from the west.Now here's something to do with those old Christmas trees! Give them to a farmer who has goats. Janice Fischel was driving by Hogwash Farm in Norwich Sunday and saw this goat buffet going on. "I had never heard of this phenomenon," she writes. "The goats seemed very happy about denuding the trees—bark and all." It's actually an old tradition; sheep like them, too.LISTEN closes two VT stores, at least through February. The move comes because of declining business at the thrift store on Maple Street and the furniture store on North Main Street, both in WRJ, reports the Valley News's Nora Doyle-Burr. With need for the organization's services high, “this hurts to have that income stream greatly limited and needing to be shutting those locations down," executive director Kyle Fisher tells her. "But we certainly can’t afford to run them at a loss with the needs in our community right now."Two Upper Valley natives head to jobs in Biden administration. Jon Finer, who grew up in Norwich, went to Hanover High, was a reporter for The Washington Post, and then worked in the Obama Administration, will become principal deputy national security advisor. And Tyler Moran, who grew up in Canaan, went to Mascoma Valley High, worked in the Senate and then the Obama Administration, has been named special assistant to the president for immigration on the Domestic Policy Council. The VN's Tim Camerato profiles them both.In the woods: otter tracks, rove beetles, beaver meadows... It's the third week in January, and Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast writes that despite their name, river otters "will often cross significant stretches of dry land as they make their territorial rounds," and includes a link for help identifying their tracks in snow. Also, why beaver meadows don't grow over quickly once the beavers decamp, the intriguing behavior of rove beetles, and why there's plenty to admire about carpenter ants (as long as you're not doing it in your house).Why you'll find birds hanging out on sanded or plowed dirt roads this time of year. On her Naturally Curious blog, Mary Holland writes that birds that eat hard seeds and nuts—like American Goldfinches, Common Redpolls, Snow Buntings, Tree Sparrows and Eastern Bluebirds—rely on swallowing grit to digest. It lands in the gizzard, which is where food gets ground into digestible bits, and helps the mashing process. With most of their world covered in snow and ice, roadsides offer a ready grit supply.Martin Luther King, Jr. gave only one speech at Dartmouth. And yesterday, VPR linked to the audio. It was in 1962, and students, faculty, and locals packed into Dartmouth Hall to hear it. King had actually been invited twice before: the first time he was kept from coming by court action against him in Alabama; the second time he arrived on campus only to learn rioting had broken out against freedom riders in Montgomery and so headed back south. "I am very happy that my criminal instincts were suppressed at least for a while so that I didn’t have to be in jail this time," he joked as he began.Bomb threat closes Pease. But not for long. The threat, faxed in yesterday morning to what is now officially Portsmouth International Airport at Pease, said there was an explosive somewhere at the airport and demanded money. Local and state police and their K-9s swept the airport and found nothing, and it reopened at noon. Portsmouth police are investigating, reports NHPR."It's going to be a long two years." That's Republican NH House Speaker Sherman Packard to WMUR's Adam Sexton after Democrats assailed him for stripping Merrimack Rep. Rosemarie Rung of her committee assignments over a tweet in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol mayhem. "These terrorists need to be locked up," she wrote. "I want to know who is from NH besides the police chief from Troy, NH." Packard accused her of contributing to the lockdown of Troy's town hall. Democrats knock Packard for ignoring posts by two GOP legislators they believe crossed the line into racism and anti-semitism. NH legislature starts in on police transparency by hearing bill to shut it down. Actually, there'll be two bills up for discussion today, reports the Monitor's Ethan DeWitt. One would "directly exempt any information in an officer’s personnel files from becoming public under the state’s right-to-know law." The other would make some police disciplinary hearings public—unless one of the parties objects that confidential information could be disclosed. Both bills are sponsored by Republican senators, amid a push by Gov. Chris Sununu toward more transparency."I could never live with thinking that one of these amazing people that live here went to their general store and got sick." As Covid numbers bump upward in VT ski towns, VPR's Mike Dougherty and Emma Cotton take a "deeper dig" into how they're coping. Dougherty talks to Heather Hebert, whose Jacksonville General Store is the first one in VT on the way to Mt. Snow—after being overrun at Christmastime, they made the hard decision to go all-curbside. Also, Cotton talks over the impact on the ski industry. "The owner of Killington," she says, "told me that it's a survival year for him."VT state treasurer's report kicks off debate over state pension funds. On Friday, Beth Pearce called for "extraordinarily painful" decisions after noting that the gap between the pension system's assets and what it owes continues to grow by leaps and bounds. She called on the board that oversees the system to reduce or eliminate cost-of-living adjustments for current employees. Not surprisingly, the teachers' union took exception, calling instead for higher taxes on the wealthy. This is just the start of the debate; expect it to last a while.After two years of study, VT tax commission recommends shifting education funding from property to income taxes. The report also suggests broadening the sales tax to almost all consumer goods and services, and expanding the income tax base by luring remote workers. But the "topline" recommendation, write VTDigger's Xander Landen and Lola Duffort, is the change to how schools are funded. It puts the commission's stamp on an idea that's floated around Montpelier for years but failed to gain traction.“If you call something a Vermont product, it better damn be a Vermont product." That's veteran beekeeper Mike Palmer talking to VTDigger's Amanda Gokee about finding honey labeled "local" that's actually from Argentina. Apiarists from around the state have long fretted about misleading labeling—and even adulteration of honey—from away; now, Gokee reports, UVM's bee lab and the state are going to test honey purity with an eye toward differentiating local honey from imported honey to help the state enforce a new labeling law that went into effect Jan. 1.Hungarian adventurer trying to paddleboard across the Atlantic calls it quits after six days. Remember Gabor Rakonczay? And remember that he designed his paddleboard with no shelter? That proved his undoing, after he became thoroughly soaked, was unable to sleep at night, eventually became hypothermic, and began to hallucinate. When he found himself wanting to tear off his life vest and jump into the ocean, he knew he needed to get help—which he did in the form of a helicopter. “I don’t think I’m going to do a thing involving such a risk factor again," he says. "This is the end of it."

So, let's see...

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Will

the change.

Be excited for the fire

in which anything in motion,

adorned

with transformation,

reshapes itself before you.

For the Spirit that designs,

that surveys all the earth,

loves nothing so much

as the moment of change.

—From 

Sonnets to Orpheus 2, XII,

by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated version by Michael Lipson.

See you tomorrow.

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