Daybreak Tuesday 10/5/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Drier, maybe a bit warmer. We can't see it, but there's a ridge of high pressure building in over the region; we'll feel its effects starting tomorrow. In the meantime, today we get fog and a chance of rain in the morning, then mostly cloudy skies—though less so as the day goes on. Highs in the upper 50s, lows around 50, not much wind to speak of.What's a couple of weeks among friends? The leaves may be turning, but they're doing it more slowly than they did last year. Case in point: these two photos from roughly the same spot along Mink Hill Road in Bradford, by John Pietkiewicz.

Newport NH nursing home outbreak ends with no deaths, just 1 hospitalization. The most recent outbreak at Woodlawn Care Center, reports Nora Doyle-Burr in the Valley News, involved 12 cases among staff and residents, 11 of whom had been vaccinated. But the facility's last outbreak hospitalized six and killed four, and its administrator credits the difference to vaccines. All residents and 80 percent of the staff have been vaccinated. Doyle-Burr also reports that amid an uptick of cases in Canaan, town officials are urging residents to get vaccinated and wear masks.Highest property tax rates in Windsor and Orange counties? Not where you think. In Sidenote, Nick Clark's been writing about how hard it is for working Vermonters to afford to buy (or keep) a house. One big factor: property tax rates. And no, he writes, the state property tax credit isn't always a help. He combined municipal and homestead rates (think education for primary residences) and found that Springfield, Windsor, and W. Fairlee rank at the top in the two counties. Bethel, Vershire, and Thetford round out the top six.SPONSORED: Join Chris Thile at the Lebanon Opera House next Tuesday! Grammy-winning mandolinist/composer/vocalist Chris Thile, founding member of the critically-acclaimed bands Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers, moves effortlessly between bluegrass and classical in this Oct. 12 solo concert. The MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow was the host of NPR's Live from Here with Chris Thile (formerly known as A Prairie Home Companion). Well-known for his wide-ranging musical collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma, Béla Fleck, and others, he's just recorded his first true solo album. Sponsored by LOH.Shaker Museum lands $50K grant to celebrate 250th anniversary of Shakers' arrival. That came in 1774, and the museum is planning two exhibits, which a new grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities will help make possible, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News. One, online, will feature artifacts that originated in Enfield but are now held in other museums. The other will be in-person, highlighting Enfield’s Shaker Village, which lasted from 1793 to 1923. Both exhibits are slated for 2024.Wood ducks hanging out on... well, wood. It's the first week of October, and Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast checks in with what's going on out there in the woods. Or in this case, along the river, where she and Tig Tillinghast spotted about 50 wood ducks perched in trees and Tig got a nice pic of four of them. Also: some "festive" sharp-scaly pholiota mushrooms; wild cucumber (cool to look at, not to eat); some beautiful selfheal, which continues to bloom; and a young, female yellow-rumped warbler passing through.But if you really want to check out birding hot spots... Some years back, the VT Center for Ecostudies' Nathaniel Sharp came across a guy who'd created a map of birding hotspots for Ohio. “How cool would it be to have something like this in Vermont?” Sharp thought. Well, this summer the guy—whose name is Ken Ostermiller—moved to VT. And he's created Birding in Vermont, which includes info from bird alerts to over 1,200 birding hotspots around the state, all "on one easy-to-maneuver [site] that one could spend hours exploring," Sharp writes on the VCE blog.It's all common sense, but... Hunting season in the Twin States has started up, and NH Fish & Game is out with some advice for hikers. First, obviously: bright colors, especially blaze orange. But they also recommend sticking to established trails, going during broad daylight, and making some noise. You can get to the NH season dates under their first item, "Be aware of your surroundings." Here are VT's.Sununu calls for removing legislative fiscal committee chair; House speaker balks. The issue is Rep. Ken Weyler's continued spread of Covid misinformation—most recently, he sent committee members a report claiming that octopus-like creatures live in the vaccine and that Spanish Flu deaths occurred only among the vaccinated, reports Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin. "These latest absurd emails have accelerated the urgency that the speaker needs to take action,” Sununu said. Speaker Sherman Packard dismissed the incident as "sharing constituent information" with committee members.NH utilities commission approves funds to help low-income residents pay electric bills—but just for two months. Ordinarily, writes Amanda Gokee in NH Bulletin, the program runs for a year, from October through September. This year, however, the PUC only agreed to two months—and that only after it was petitioned by the state's utilities. The commission "said it would need more time and information before making a decision about the budgets for the rest of the year," Gokee writes. About 28,000 customers are enrolled in the program.Like Cold Hollow cider? You'll have to go there... or order online. The mill based in Waterbury Center, whose jugs can be found in supermarkets all over New England, has announced it's pulling the plug on wholesaling this year, writes the Waterbury Roundabout's Lisa Scagliotti (via the Rutland Herald). The biggest problem: Supply-chain issues are keeping it from getting the apples it usually relies on from growers in New York State (where workers are in short supply). So they'll limit sales to their own store and start shifting online.As more people head for the trails, VT trail experts grapple with how to make them sustainable. Partly, of course, it's the fine points of water flows and anticipating foot traffic. But, reports VPR's Nina Keck, more than 70 percent of the state's recreational trails cross private land. Which means that lasting relationships with property owners are also vital—a lesson Kingdom Trails learned in 2019 after three landowners shut down access because of poor behavior by some mountain bikers. Meanwhile, enthusiasts want Act 250 updated for modern trail development.VT Covid case rates remain high, but they're falling. In mid-September, the 7-day case average stood at 218 cases per day, writes VTDigger's Erin Petenko. Now it stands at 166, including yesterday's 192 new cases. September's death toll was 42, she notes, but recent case numbers give "some evidence of better days ahead." NH's 7-day case average is 460 per day, a 5 percent increase over the previous 7-day period.Flying monkeys astride a rooftop in Burlington? They're your Wizard of Oz nightmares come to life... maybe. The sculptures atop Burlington’s old Union Station are among an oddball handful of VT’s “quirkiest” attractions, according to folks at The Travel. Also in Burlington: the World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet—some 50 feet high. Or there’s Barre’s two-fer of quirk: the voice-throwing Whispering Statue and 74-foot-long Largest Zipper in North America. Of course, Post Mills' Vermontasaurus cracks the list, but how did they miss WRJ’s Main Street Museum? Its reams of weird could fill a 50-foot filing cabinet.Meanwhile, in Alaska today is Fat Bear Tuesday. It’s the culmination of Fat Bear Week, with an online contest to name “the fattest of the fat” in AK’s Katmai National Park. But how do we really know which bear beefed up most for hibernation? Kylie Mohr writes in Atlas Obscura about a park biologist’s inventive (and safely distant) way to calculate their weight. Lidar! A laser scanner can measure a bear’s length, height, girth—and bum. “I got a laser return from the butt of Otis, one of the more famous brown bears up there,” says park biologist Joel Cusick. “I thought, ‘Wow, this just might work.’”Can you do Photoshop without opposable thumbs? Looks like BBC sports announcer Andrew Cotter has a new book coming out. It's about—what else?—Olive and Mabel, and in his latest video he thanks them for contributing. Mabel was responsible for the word "are" and spelled it wrongly. Olive was charged with finding some photos of things she'd done, but Cotter's a little dubious about the results, given the unlikely places she shows up.

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

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Love has a triumph and Death has one:time, and the time after.We have none.Only the sinking of the stars around us.  Reflection and silence.Still, the song beyond the dustwill rise beyond us.

— From "Songs in Flight" by

the Austrian poet and novelist Ingeborg Bachmann

, translated by Michael Lipson.

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