Daybreak Tuesday 10/12/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

A little warmer, sunnier (fingers crossed). I dunno, seems like we waited a good long time for the promised sun to appear yesterday, so take everything with a grain of salt. In theory, the high pressure in place above should help produce fewer clouds, especially in the afternoon. It will also bring us temps a few degrees warmer than yesterday, reaching the low 70s later in the afternoon. Fog to start, light winds, down to around 50 tonight.Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, indeed! There's something about autumn that just begs to be photographed, and Upper Valley photographers have been busy. So busy that the only recourse is to create an album with their very cool fall photos. You'll find it at the link.Dartmouth endowment grows an "eye-popping" $2.5 billion. That's how The Dartmouth describes the endowment's year-over-year 46.5 percent jump, after an average of 12.8 percent per year over the previous decade. As a result, the college will eliminate the expected parent contribution for families making up to $65,000, give eligible employees a 3 percent bonus, and boost student workers' minimum wage from $7.75 to $11.50 an hour. Other wealthy universities' endowments have seen similar increases.Upper Valley's tight housing market has employers scrambling. "Getting applicants and new hires interested in moving...is only the first step," writes Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin. "Finding them a place to live is, for some, a higher priority." At Simbex, in Lebanon, the executive team scours rental postings and sends them to recruits. D-H "has seen a number of talented recruits eagerly apply at the prestigious hospital, only to back out reluctantly" when they couldn't find housing, he reports. The hospital has an employee whose sole job is to find housing for new hires.SPONSORED: Artistree's Music Theatre Festival presents The Honky Tonk Angels at the Grange Theater, Oct. 14-31. The creator of Always... Patsy Cline brings us The Honky Tonk Angels, featuring over 30 classic country tunes with a hilarious story about three gutsy gals who pack up and follow their dreams to Nashville. The all-hit song list includes “Stand by Your Man,” “9 to 5,” “Coal Miner's Daughter,” and many more! Oct. 14-31. The Honky Tonk Angels is presented by special arrangement with Ted Swindley Productions Inc. Proof of vaccination and masks required. Sponsored by Artistree."You know, life is tough. I thought, this is not the time for me to sit and do nothing."  That's Fereshteh Forough, talking to NBC News's Andrea Mitchell at the Hanover Inn. Mitchell profiles Forough and Code to Inspire, the computer programming school for Afghan girls she founded in Herat Province. The Taliban takeover forced Forough to take Code to Inspire online, encrypting it to protect identities. "We're going to create a virtual space for the girls to feel safe...get them educated, and then find them jobs online," she tells Mitchell. Who asks, "Can the Taliban stop you?" "No," says Forough. "They can't."Dartmouth's West End construction delayed by labor, supply chain shortages. The Irving Institute and the new Center for Engineering and Computer Science were supposed to have been ready this fall, reports The Dartmouth's Pierce Wilson, but now it's looking like it won't be before the end of the year—if then. "Project management services director Patrick O’Hern said that his team is skeptical as to whether or not contractors will complete the construction by the end of 2021," Wilson writes, "noting that there is still 'a lot to be done' before either building is ready for use.""Precious little to do but eat sugar and await death by frost." That's how yellow jackets are spending their time these days, writes Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast. Which is why, this second week of October, you're likely to find them feasting on rotting apples and other fruit. Also out there these days: palm warblers, white-throated sparrows (which probably include "a lot of recent recruits from Canada), ladybeetles, and mice busy caching acorns, nuts, and seeds. And, as Elise points out, moving into your house.Speaking of caching acorns... That's what red-bellied woodpeckers are doing a lot of these days, too, writes Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog. If you see one carrying something in its bill, try follow its flight, she advises. "If the bird happens to land, see if it tries to put the item in the crack of a tree or into a crevice. The list of items stored by this woodpecker includes acorns, nuts, seeds, fruits, fruit pulp, kernels of corn, suet, peanut butter, whole peanuts, and even insects."That mysterious boom remains mysterious. “I would look for a natural event, something coming into the atmosphere past the speed of sound,” the Weston Observatory's John Ebel told WMUR. But Hanover resident Tom Ciardelli raises another possibility. He grew up near the satellite tracking facility in New Boston, NH, and notes that it's on the site of a WWII practice bombing range. "At that time, the area was littered with exploded and unexploded ordinance," he writes. "When unexploded bombs were discovered, they were removed via controlled detonation, one of which I witnessed." Full email at the link.NH Exec Council to try again—at police training facility. After its Sept. 29 meeting was abruptly cancelled when people protesting vaccine-related contracts with the feds took over, the state began looking for a more secure meeting place. So tomorrow morning, the councillors will meet at the Police Standards and Training Council, where NH's law enforcement officers train, reports Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin. They will again consider two federal contracts totaling $27 million to beef up the state's vaccination efforts.“These people had a fully developed society as much as you or me or anybody… thousands of years ago." Robert Goodby teaches at Franklin Pierce, and for the last two decades he and his students have been excavating archeological sites in the Monadnock region. As David Brooks writes in the Monitor, it's hard to piece together 13,000 years of life and culture in NH, in part because buildings were made of woodland materials—which rotted. Now, Goodby's published a book on his findings—and on the "many reasons for the [historic] near-invisibility of Native Americans in northern New England."  VT health officials warn cyanobacteria blooms are continuing into fall. It used to be that once the heat of summer was done, the hardier among us could safely plunge back in the water. But not this autumn, reports the AP (or, in fact, several previous autumns). “People continue to be out enjoying the state’s waters, so it’s important to be aware that cyanobacteria may still be present, and to keep children and pets away from blooms along the shorelines,” says state environmental health scientist Bridget O’Brien. VT dedicates money to raise mobile homes out of flood plains. When Tropical Storm Irene swept through VT, some of the hardest hit were mobile-home communities located in flood plains. In the decade since, little had been done to mitigate the threat of future storms. Now, reports VPR’s Howard Weiss-Tisman, federal relief funds have been allocated to encourage VT’s at-risk mobile-home owners to relocate or accept a buyout, especially if their home can't be moved. The problem: Where would residents go? Fund administrators admit they still need a “better, more cohesive way” to implement the program.That was one heck of a crime spree. It began Sunday evening in Colchester, VT, WCAX reports, when a Middlebury man allegedly pulled up next to a car, pointed a crossbow at the driver, and demanded a debit card. As police were responding to that call, they got another about a robbery at a nearby Cumberland Farms, then about a crash in Winooski, then about a Shell station robbery in Burlington. They finally caught up with the guy back in Colchester, where he rammed a police car... and then more up the road in Essex. Police say they're unsure what lay behind the blowup.Sometimes, a TikTok speaks volumes. And stops your thumb in its tracks. So your Tuesday rabbit hole can start with this vid: “The book had too many words in it”—a TikTok of a guy struggling to hoist a hefty dictionary onto a high shelf...followed by the optical illusion that happens next. And then again. And one more time... How did he do that? TikToker Jon Deutsch is a virtuoso of the form, using stop-frame animation to turn mundane situations (frying an egg, sweeping a messy floor) into brief, looping, gamified realities.

And to catch up...For the time being, Daybreak is reporting Covid numbers on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:

Amateurs, we gathered mushroomswhich smelled of camphor and the fog-soaked earth.Chanterelles, puffballs, chicken-of-the-woods,we cooked in wine or butter,half expecting to bekilled by mistake.  "Intense perspiration,"you said late at night,quoting the terrifying field guidewhile we lay tangled in our sheets and heavy limbs,"is the first symptom of attack."Friends called our aromatic fungi"liebestoads" and only ate the onesthat we most certainly survived.Spore prints littered our tablelike nervous stars. Rotting capsgave off a musky smell of loam.

—From "Fall," by

Robert Hass

. 

See you tomorrow.

Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.

Want to catch up on Daybreak music?

Check out the Spotify playlist generously maintained by Sarah and Nelson Rooker.

Written and published by Rob Gurwitt         Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter    Poetry editor: Michael Lipson  About Rob                                                    About Tom                                 About Michael

And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! You can subscribe at: 

Thank you!