Daybreak Tuesday 1/5/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Mostly cloudy, mild for January. You can almost hear the disappointment as the weather folks sling about words like "quiet" and "uneventful." Mostly, things today will look a lot like yesterday afternoon, as persistent cloudiness at night keeps temps from dropping far: We're basically bouncing around between mid-30s during the day and mid-20s at night, though the trend will be slightly colder as the week wears on. Chance of a break in the clouds later today."I seem to find myself driving down Route 4A a lot in my free time." Lebanon photographer Travis Paige has been hanging out around Smith Pond, Half-Mile Pond, Bicknell Brook, and Grafton Pond in Enfield and Grafton, getting shots of various brooks, Big Dog Falls, the smaller but more dramatic Little Dog Falls (a symphony in ice), and, of course, the ponds themselves, stark and beautiful in winter.DHMC's Covid caseload rising. The D-H system as a whole had 39 patients hospitalized with the illness yesterday (there were 319 statewide), with 24 of them at DHMC in Lebanon. That's its highest number during the pandemic, reports the Valley News's Nora Doyle-Burr. She also reports that (as you'll see below) Claremont is seeing a spike in cases; state officials attribute it to general community spread, not to an outbreak in any single setting.Leb opens municipal compost program to the Upper Valley. The move follows a pilot effort last year, which worked with 11 families and diverted over a ton of food waste from the city landfill. Starting yesterday, the city's selling permits ($15-16/year) to residents of the 23 towns in NH and VT allowed to use its solid waste facility; they go on a five-gallon waste bucket, though they're also asking you to put food scraps in a compostable bag. “It’s an operational decision to help the program be a bit less unpleasant,” solid waste manager Marc Morgan tells NHPR's Daniella Allee. More info here.Lebanon City Council to weigh dispute over four old roads. A committee studying the city's Class VI roads says that what seem to be paths through the woods are old public rights-of-way dating to the 1800s and should be turned into public trails. However, writes Tim Camerato in the VN, they cross land owned by the Patch family, which runs Patch Orchards and is expanding its maple sugaring operations, with plans to crisscross the roads with sap lines. The council will decide tomorrow whether to hold public hearings on the issue.SPONSORED: The Upper Valley gets a fitness directory. Connecting health and fitness professionals to you, the Upper Valley Fitness Network shares one-on-one and small group options provided by local personal trainers. Everything customized to your needs: virtual, in-home, or private studio/small gym. For all ages and levels. UVFN also features indoor and outdoor activities in the region each week. Daybreak readers: They’re raffling off a personal training session with the trainer of your choice to one lucky winner! Sponsored by UVFN.80 bucks and this bag of dryer lint can be yours! "About 10 ounces of fuzzy gold! This dryer lint is of the highest quality, truth be told I can barely bring myself to part with it," someone in Springfield VT wrote on Facebook Marketplace yesterday. There's a followup thread on the Upper Valley VT/NH group: Turns out people use dryer lint for all sorts of things, including artwork. (Sorry, you'll need to be a member of that group to see the thread.)"It’s cold, and burdock burrs would like to borrow your coat." That, of course, is how they disseminate their seeds, as anyone with a fleece jacket or a dog knows. But you probably didn't know about the annual Burryman Parade in South Queensferry, Scotland, "in which a man covered head-to-feet in burs walks miles through the town, fortified by frequent sips of whiskey," writes Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast. Also to watch for in the woods this first week of the year: frost cracks, the sunlit bark of yellow birch, and dust lichen.NH behind on vaccination goals, lags VT and ME. As of last Thursday, the state had vaccinated 1.6 percent of its population, using about a third of the doses on hand, reports NHPR's Jordyn Haime. Vermont's rate is 2.6 percent and Maine’s is 2.5 percent. However, says Beth Daly, chief of NH's Bureau of Infectious Disease Control, 13 newly opened vaccination clinics, staffed by the National Guard and the Medical Reserve Corps, will help speed up the pace in the state. For state-by-state figures, Bloomberg's got an easy-to-use map tracking people vaccinated and percentage of available doses used.Reported NH turkey population skyrockets. In its 2020 winter survey, there were 2,309 flocks reported, totaling 40,476 turkeys statewide. That's compared to the 1,372 flocks reported (for 20,224 total turkeys) in 2018. In a press release, Fish and Game turkey biologist Allison Keating says the higher numbers may reflect more people staying home during the pandemic and watching birds. The state's now asking residents to participate in the 2021 winter survey, which you'll find here.NH legislators push bill to let towns postpone Town Meeting, apply November vote-counting procedures. The measure, proposed by state Sen. James Gray, incoming chairman of the election law committee, would let towns hold town elections and annual meetings as late as the second Tuesday of July, reports the Monitor's Ethan DeWitt. Gray also proposes allowing election moderators to process absentee ballots ahead of Town Meeting Day. The bill has the backing of both the Senate and House GOP leadership.Meanwhile, NH House members will, indeed, be gathering in their cars tomorrow. Specifically, in Lot A on UNH's campus in Durham, with the session broadcast on an FM frequency so members can listen on their radios. If they want to talk, NHPR's Josh Rogers says, "they're going to have to get out of their cars and speak into microphones held on long boom poles. Messages will be conveyed by staffers driving golf carts in between the socially-distanced parked cars; there are going to be open air vehicles on hand to shuffle lawmakers to bathrooms." Democrats have objected to the whole process; GOP leaders argue House rules do not permit meeting remotely.NH families drop preschool, kindergarten. New data from the state education department, reports NHPR's Sarah Gibson, shows that 36 percent fewer kids are going to public preschool this year, while 14 percent fewer are attending public kindergarten. Because both are optional in NH, she points out, "it’s hard to know whether the changes in enrollment...are due to families forgoing schooling altogether, or if many are choosing home schooling, learning pods, or private options instead."VT's short-term housing policies during pandemic saved lives... and carry lessons for the future. In a commentary published on VTDigger, Dartmouth's Anne Sosin and VT Legal Aid attorneys Maryellen Griffin and Mairead O'Reilly point out that the state's eviction moratorium, rent relief for landlords, hotel/motel rooms for people who were homeless, and moratorium on utility shutoffs all "protected people in difficult housing situations" and contributed to the state's low Covid numbers. This offers "dramatic evidence of the link between housing and health," they argue, and a post-pandemic policy guide.Jill Krowinski goes from door-knocking for Windsor County Democrats to VT House speaker. Not all at once, of course: It took a couple of decades. But as Xander Landen makes clear in this VTDigger profile, Krowinski is nothing if not politically experienced, working as an assistant to former Speaker Gaye Symington, then serving eight years as a legislator and then majority leader before taking over. Says just-departed Speaker Mitzi Johnson, “I think she has a better sense than any previous speaker in this century of the crazy range of issues that land in the lap of the speaker.”"Fishing shanties are versatile. When they are not on the ice, they can be moved to shore to double as whatever sort of shelter you might like." As it happens, yesterday's item about an ice-shanty photo exhibit coincided with a new blog post by Strafford photographer and pond designer Tim Matson about... ice shanties. "Cabin, changing house, garden shed, you name it. You might crank up the wood stove and with the addition of some benches, turn a shanty into a sauna," he writes. "Not a bad idea these days since prefab saunas are Out Of Stock at many places on the internet.""The only place that feels vast enough to hold grief this deep and wide is the top of a mountain, looking out into forever." This ran in The New York Times last week, and has been haunting me ever since: Carrie Thompson's essay on devoting the year following her son's death by suicide to hiking New Hampshire's 48 4000-footers. She did it in all seasons, weeping openly sometimes, hiking through rain and snow and night, sharing heartfelt connections with strangers. "Every step, trail and summit — whether socked in or wide open — has been a way to heal," she writes.You have to wonder what they made of this... A few weeks ago, photographer Mike Mayou was out along the frozen St. Louis River in Minnesota looking for some nice sunset shots when he saw, off in the distance, three bobcats. He had a drone along, so he flew it over and spent a few minutes eyeing the cats as they eyed the small drone. It's an unparalleled close-up. And one that Mayou won't repeat: In a note on the video, he writes that he let the drone get too close. "If the behavior of the animal changes, the drone is too close," he says."I'm just the same as December, 2020. I just changed my name." 2021's feeling the pressure of all those hopes out there, and needs to talk about it. 

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Love on earth

It comes in a thousand forms.A bull rises out of the sea.A swan plunges. A gold rain falls.Or a noble heart perceives in itselfDivine agency.What else is life?Seize it.-- From A Double Sorrow: Troilus and Criseyde Book III, Lavinia Greenlaw's poetry collection reworking Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. And here she is reading it.See you tomorrow.

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