GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
But not what you'd call warm, either. Any snow left will taper off early as last night's system heads out, eventually making way for a shift in the weather later this week. Today we get temps bumping around in the mid-30s, winds and gusts from the northwest this morning, and clouds dissipating over the course of the day. Down to the mid-20s tonight.
Betwixt and between: from the air. We're not fully into stick season yet—there are still leaves on a good number of trees, even if they're mostly yellow and brown now—while in lots of places everything's rimed in white (or buried, depending on where you are). Taken all together it's beautiful, as you can see from Lisa Lacasse's drone shot of Hartford's beaver ponds the other day. Betwixt and between: from the ground. Meanwhile, yesterday morning Lauran Colson was passing by the old Cushing Cemetery at the corner of Cloudland and Old River roads in Woodstock, and got this...Off-campus Halloween parties draw police, Dartmouth investigation. One involved about 20 undergrads, including members of the football team, at a house in Lebanon; police cited 19 students for underage drinking. The other, in Hanover, drew more than 50 people, and though some fled police were still able to identify a majority. College officials are looking into the events. “Just when we thought things were going so well,” Hanover town manager Julia Griffin tells the Valley News' Nora Doyle-Burr.Skiway, Oak Hill to host NCAA championships... in 2025. The last time the college hosted the men's and women's alpine and nordic ski championships was in 2003, and this will be only the third time in all. "While most of the skiers who will one day compete in this event have yet to begin collegiate racing or even the recruitment process," The Dartmouth's Emily Lu and Andrew Doerr write, "planning for the 2025 championships has already started. Upgrades at Oak Hill include widening the course to meet race standards and ensuring there will be adequate snow."In compromise, Strafford, Sharon to vote on Ashley Community Forest in January. The 256-acre forest, which straddles the two towns, was bought in 2018 by the Alliance for VT Communities, the group formed to counter Utah engineer David Hall's NewVistas project. The alliance planned to donate the land to the towns jointly, but the selectboards want to own the parcels separately. Rather than vote on the matter today or at town meeting in the spring, they've opted for a special town meeting Jan. 18. (VN)SPONSORED: Find yourself at KUA. On Saturday, Nov. 14, Kimball Union Academy is hosting a virtual open house at 1 pm. Students and faculty will walk you through its academic offerings and robust opportunities in the arts, athletics, and signature programs. The independent Upper Valley boarding and day high school offers students a transformative educational experience with individual growth and development at its core. Register at the maroon link or contact the admissions office at [email protected]. Sponsored by KUA.Well, there's at least one great blue heron still around. It's the first week of November, and Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast has a photo of it fishing in a local wetland the other day. Some elbow-throwing dark-eyed juncos are still around, too. Meanwhile, out there in the woods you can also catch pearly everlasting—"a tough little wildflower"—and cattails beset by the shy cosmet moth, as well as ground-cedar, a clubmoss much smaller than its ancestors 390 million years ago, which "towered over ancient forests."And there's something else in the water. Dartmouth researchers distributed prepaid water-testing kits to 11 health clinics in NH and VT, asking docs to give them to families with private wells and little kids. About a third returned the kits to the state for analysis, and of those, 14 percent were found to have unsafe levels of arsenic, which Dartmouth researchers have linked to high rates of bladder cancer in the region. Dr. Carolyn Murray, who led the recent study, wants primary care docs to encourage testing regularly. Annie Ropeik's NHPR piece includes a map of areas in both states at risk of elevated arsenic levels. NH's police-misconduct stance may change. Remember how NHPR last week premiered a new show, Document, whose first season is on the secret "Laurie list" of officers with credibility issues? Well, on Friday the state Supreme Court ruled that the list is a public document, handing a win to InDepthNH's Nancy West and other media outlets, including the VN and the Monitor. Now a lower-court judge has to decide if releasing it would violate officers' privacy. NHPR's Lauren Chooljian and Jason Moon parse what it all means.Hot dogs and scrapple: "Not something that you want to boost the immune systems during a pandemic." Eileen Liponis is executive director of the NH Food Bank, and—as also happened in VT—the USDA recently switched its Farmers to Families contractor. These days the food comes from a Delaware-based company, and Liponis says its quality, especially meat, has dropped noticeably. The state's congressional delegation is asking USDA to investigate, but in the meantime, the agency has given the contract for the next round to a company based... in Maryland.Draft NH vaccine plan gives first glimpse at strategy. The state plans to distribute a Covid vaccine in four stages, with priority for areas with the highest case counts. First round goes to first responders, high-risk health workers, and older residents in nursing homes or overcrowded settings. Next will be school staff and people at higher risk. Then children, young adults, and workers in essential industries. Then everyone else. Most possible vaccines require refrigerating or freezing, and the state's also trying to stock up on equipment. Mystery illness persists at VT hospital. For the fourth time in 13 months, staff at Fanny Allen Hospital in Colchester have reported feeling dizzy and nauseated, and on Saturday the hospital moved patients out of its rehab unit to the UVM Medical Center. The incidents began in October, 2019, after which the hospital closed its operating room. They recurred—on different floors—in the spring and then in October, despite investigations, deep cleaning, new air and filtration systems, and hourly air quality tests, reports VTDigger's Katie Jickling."I felt like it was time for this work to see the light of day." Before he was a nationally known pond designer, Thetford's Tim Matson was a photographer; like, that's his photo of author Joe McGinness on the back cover of The Selling of the President, 1968. He wandered the US in the '60s and '70s with his camera, and closer to home did a photo essay/book on Pilobolus. With spare time during the pandemic, he start digging through storage and scanning his old photos. "It was like looking at the work of a different person. I'd forgotten all the places I'd been. Cool places, amazing times." Now he's got a website. Sheesh, the Randolph whale tails are going to get all jealous. This is one of those cases where a picture—or in this case, two—really is worth a thousand words. But long story short, there was this metro train outside Rotterdam that blew through its stop blocks yesterday morning at an elevated station. The first car came to rest...on a whale-tail sculpture emerging from the water below. There were no passengers on board, and the driver was—thanks to the tail—unharmed. "When plastic has stood for 20 years, you don’t expect it to hold up a metro train," said the sculptor.
Headed to the polls today? Here's info on voting locations and hours for:
Meanwhile, here's what to expect in NH. Clerks can't start counting absentee ballots until an hour after polls open, which means that if you submitted an absentee but want to vote in person, or even change your vote, you can show up in that first hour to do so, the Monitor's Ethan DeWitt writes. He's got a full morning-afternoon-evening rundown of how the day will unfold.And in VT... You can register at the polls today if you haven't done so yet (bring passport or driver's license and a utility bill, bank statement, or government document with your address). Also, says VTDigger's Mike Dougherty, some towns are setting up dropboxes for Election Day ballot dropoff.
And those other numbers...
Dartmouth is down to 2 active cases among faculty/staff, and still none among students. In all, 9 students and 4 faculty/staff are in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 4 students and 5 faculty/staff are in isolation as they await results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 105 positive test results yesterday, bringing its official total to 11,320. There were no new deaths, which remain at 483. The state's current caseload is at 1,407 (up 55), including 69 in Grafton County (up 6), 23 in Sullivan (up 2), and 192 in Merrimack (up 9). Lebanon has jumped into a new category with 10 active cases (up 5); Newport now has 6 cases, while Sunapee remains at 5. There are 1-4 cases each in Lyme, Hanover, Plainfield, Enfield, Grantham, Claremont, Charlestown, Unity, Goshen, New London, and Wilmot.
VT reported 23 new cases yesterday, bringing its official total to 2,219, with 335 of those still active (up 13). Deaths remain at 58; 3 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized. Windsor County remains at 128 for the pandemic, with 20 of those in the past 14 days. Orange County remains at 38 cumulatively, 8 of them reported in the past 14 days.
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If you don't feel like braving election returns tonight alone, Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center is hosting a presidential election "watch party." They'll be hosting CBS News national correspondent Chip Reid (who was also chief White House correspondent during President Obama's first term), talking about the larger meaning of the results. Starts at 7.
And just in case you don't feel like braving election returns at all, the Hop's streaming Dead, about a stoner who sees ghosts and mediates between the living and the dead, who teams up with a local cop who just happens to be newly dead himself. In the grand emerging tradition of New Zealand horror-comedy. On demand today and tomorrow.
Reading Deeper
You know this already, but if it's a close race don't be swayed by anyone insisting that the only legitimate election results are the ones that come in tonight. Military absentees can be counted as late as Nov. 23. And as presidential historian Michael Beschloss pointed out the other day, we didn't know the winner for certain by midnight on election night in 1960, 1968, 1976, 2000, 2004, or 2016. Maybe the results will be clear tonight, maybe they won't, but that'll be up to state and local election officials. Probably the most helpful thing I've seen out there is this state-by-state chart from FiveThirtyEight.com detailing when to expect results and why. The chart also goes into the "red shift, blue shift" question: states where ballots tallied early may tilt to one candidate but shift toward the other as more results come in. This is called "counting," and it's how functioning democracies work.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood...And [I] looked down one as far as I couldto where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other.
—With apologies to Robert Frost and
Breathe. See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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