Daybreak Tuesday 11/10/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Looks like it'll be the warmest day of this stretch. High pressure remains in control today, before approaching low pressure and a cold front tomorrow bust up this little idyll we've been enjoying. Fog and clouds to start, but the sun will come out and we'll get back into the lower 70s today. Winds from the south, down only to around 50 tonight. The sun's setting, time to head in for the season. These past few days, the summer-like temps have given every outdoor pursuit an elegiac quality, a bow to what lies behind us. On Sunday, Fairlee's John Nolan and his dogs, Charlie and Raelyn, were out for a day of boating on the river. John caught the sun going down as they headed back to shore from their final outing of the season, the water calm, the bare trees growing dark along the banks.Leb city manager proposes layoffs, trimmed infrastructure plans. With the city facing a "significant" debt load and reduced revenues, City Manager Shaun Mulholland's proposed budget calls for laying off two public works employees and one in the assessing office, the Valley News's Tim Camerato reports. In addition, Mulholland proposes cutting the city's capital improvements budget by $1.1 million, though it still includes renovating the downtown public library and improvements to Spencer Street.Facing winter, Hanover restaurants move forward on joint delivery effort. Though Lou's Jarrett Berke tells The Dartmouth's Ben Fagell that he's been surprised by how many people are willing to eat indoors, his and other restaurants still will be at reduced percent capacity. So Lou's, Murphy's, and Boloco are exploring a delivery cooperative allowing them to cut ties with DoorDash and other Silicon Valley apps. In addition, though the outdoor-dining tents are gone—the town worried about snow loads—Hanover is exploring widening sidewalks and permanent seating in parking spaces, Fagell reports.Drive to Grafton or Sullivan County, open your trunk, remain in the car... Missed this the other day: In a message to parents on how VT's restrictions affect travel to the NH side of the river, the Hartford School District notes that "The state of Vermont has just clarified with us that there is an approved way for Vermont residents to obtain goods from Upper Valley businesses" across the river. Including takeout. You can call ahead, order, pay over the phone or online, then drive over and have items placed in your trunk. "There cannot be face to face interaction with employees of the businesses," they state. Upper Valley gets its second candidate for VT House speaker. Woodstock Democrat Charlie Kimbell said yesterday that he's in the race to succeed Mitzi Johnson, who (pending a recount) lost her House seat last week. On Friday, Bradford's Sarah Copeland Hanzas and Burlington's Jill Krowinski announced they were interested in the speakership. Kimbell, who directs sales and marketing for the Woodstock-based software company MISys, has been on the more moderate side of the Democratic caucus."Don’t be afraid to not know what you’re doing." Before she got Still North Books & Bar off the ground in Hanover, Allie Levy bounced around, working in the outdoor industry in NYC and CO, then in books and publishing. But the Upper Valley kept calling her, she tells The Dartmouth's Shera Bhala in a Q&A. The pandemic, she says, threw a wrench into her plans to focus on the bookstore as a gathering place, and these days she's busy figuring out how to start offering food again while staying safe, "which has been a fun challenge."The Head of the Charles was virtual, but Peggy Sadler's first place is real. Every year, the Upper Valley sends rowers to compete in the marquee regatta. This year, writes Margie Elsberg in a letter to Daybreak, instead of "packing the two-day Charles River course in Boston with almost 2,000 boats, 11,000 athletes and more than 200,000 spectators," the event went online. And after years of trailing Seattle's Jan Stone, Sadler—who with her husband, Paul Gross, owns Designer Gold in Hanover—edged Stone out, taking first in the Women’s Grand Veteran 80+ category. More results at the link.Hooded mergansers court, reindeer lichen thrive, and a fungus turns moths into zombies. Second week in November and there's as much going on in the woods as ever, writes Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast. As mergansers pair up, white-breasted nuthatches are "bouncing around the trees, often in pairs, and in a near-constant state of yammering back and forth." There are ferns and lichens to notice out there. And there's Cordyceps, which takes control of an insect's movements, directs it to land on a tree that's optimal for spore distribution, and... oh never mind. It's breakfast.Marty, the Mt. Washington Observatory's resident cat, dies of sudden illness. The black Maine Coon cat had been a fixture atop the mountain for 12 years. He would "follow weather observers around on the summit cone, chase mice, and coolly greet state park visitors and sometimes their dogs," reports NHPR's Annie Ropeik. He was famous, says observatory manager Rebecca Scholand, for his "stoic-looking photos overlooking the scenery" (slideshow at the link). The observatory expects to adopt a successor early next year.District maps, campaign tactics may have hurt Dems' chances in NH legislative contests. The GOP's sweep of state-level control last week while Dems carried the federal races has the losing party back on its heels. NHPR's Rick Ganley talks to political reporter Josh Rogers about what happened. Partly, Rogers says, with high turnout, Exec Council and Senate maps drawn to favor the GOP a decade ago performed as designed. But Dems' decision to forgo in-person campaigning in down-ballot races also hurt. "Campaigning on the phone or on Zoom is not going to help you make an impression."Even before the pandemic, child care was a problem in NH. It's only gotten worse. Last year, reports Jack Rooney for the Keene Sentinel, there were 20,000 fewer spaces in childcare centers than children whose parents or guardians worked full-time. The key problem: Providers don’t generate enough revenue to pay staff members well and struggle to find employees, yet care is too expensive for many families to afford. Infant care, the most costly category, costs families over $1,000 a month on average, which amounts to double the percentage of median family income the feds consider affordable.Sununu pushes back on masks. As President-elect Joe Biden makes the case for governors to enact mask mandates—while pulling back on his earlier talk of a national mandate—GOP Gov. Chris Sununu yesterday said that while he's fine with letting towns and cities enact their own, "a one-size-fits-all approach out of Washington is not the answer to combatting this crisis – it’s ensuring that each state has the flexibility to attack this pandemic in a targeted, data-driven way." NH is the only state in New England lacking a mandate.The bad news and the good news on VT's numbers. First the bad: Cases "are spreading throughout the state at a fast pace, rather than just remaining at the same level," writes VTDigger's Erin Petenko. And it's clear that the number of close contacts for positive cases is rising as people get tired of being cautious. In addition, the percentage of people tested who test positive also seems to be rising. On the other hand, recent growth is still nothing like the state saw in April, and the state is better prepared both for testing and tracing than it was in the spring.All of this has VT officials on edge. Especially since Burlington announced over the weekend that its wastewater surveillance program has detected a spike in viral RNA in one neighborhood, reports Seven Days' Colin Flanders. While results like that can't pinpoint how many people may have the virus, "wastewater readings can nevertheless be a useful early indicator of the virus' prevalence in a community, with results sometimes proceeding clinical testing by up to seven days," Flanders writes. The state is now following more than 10 outbreaks and over 40 additional "situations" in workplaces and schools."It became pretty clear that to have a remote learning day on a snow day would also be pretty challenging.” That's one school superintendent in Vermont explaining why her Rutland County district opted to keep snow days as a thing this year, despite the option of remote learning. Partly it's logistics, and partly the chance to give kids and families "a sliver of normalcy," writes VTDigger's Lola Duffort. Other districts are opting to switch to remote learning if they know about a storm far enough in advance to prep kids and teachers. But Windsor Southeast? Sorry, kids. No snow days.Behind the uniform. One gift the great newspaper columnists gave us was an appreciation for the rich, complex lives behind the faces and storefronts and doorways people saw every day. This New Yorker film does the same thing: It's a look at one New York City doorman, Yves Deshommes, a Haitian immigrant who's a violinist, an art dealer, a father, and a philanthropist who helped establish two schools on his home island after the 2010 earthquake. The filmmaker, Lydia Cornett, met him when they sat next to each other on the subway. It's a lovely reminder never to see only the surface. (Thanks, DM!)

And the numbers...

An empty day without eventsand that is whyit grew immenseas space and suddenlyhappiness of beingentered me.

-- From

"Priceless Gifts,"

by Anna Swir 

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