Daybreak Tuesday 12/15/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Wait! What's that... that... thing up there? High pressure today and Arctic air settling in, so we get a sunny, cold, blustery day. Highs today only in the mid-20s, down into the low single digits overnight, winds from the northwest.I was only half-joking about the sun. A reader on the VT side writes, "Is it just my imagination, or have we had a lot of cloudy days in recent weeks? We have a new solar array and can keep track of its output online, and hence we can get a sense of how many cloudy or sunny days we've had. In November, the first ten days had only two or three cloudy days, followed by (13!) cloudy days, followed by a week with five cloudy days. Of the first 12 days of December, 10 were cloudy.  So, from November 11th to yesterday, we had 28 cloudy days and only four sunny days." (Thanks, JT!)Who? The other evening as dusk fell, Tunbridge's Michael Sacca went out to see if he could find a barred owl his wife had seen hanging around. "My path took me on a loop and I had pretty much resigned myself to not seeing it," he writes, "when, just a couple of hundred feet from our house, I spotted a shape low on a slope." He inched closer... and managed to snap a few exposures before it took off.Cases at Richmond Middle School, Thetford Academy; new death at Hanover Terrace. In a local roundup, the Valley News reports that the Dresden schools are following up with close contacts after a new case was reported at the Richmond school in Hanover; meanwhile, a student at Thetford Academy has tested positive, but the case is isolated. At Hanover Terrace, a fifth resident has died, while 21 of the 63 residents who tested positive have recovered. In addition, 12 of 27 staff members who'd tested positive have also recovered.Thetford will keep suspended employee in one of his two jobs. As you may remember, the town last month suspended Nathan Maxwell from his positions as town rec director and interim public works director after an email and phone call firestorm set off by a TikTok comment made by a user with his name. The town suspended him with pay while it investigated. Now, reports the Valley News's Anna Merriman, interim town manager Tom Yennerell says Maxwell will regain his public works post, but lose his position with the rec department. Randolph woman arraigned, ordered held without bail in stabbing death. Victoria Griffin entered a not-guilty plea yesterday to a charge of second-degree murder after the death Saturday of Concepcion Cruz. The stabbing occurred during an argument after she went to a store—she told investigators Cruz was angry that she'd gone without him and returned without beer, VTDigger's Alan J. Keays reports. Police documents say she remembers seeing knives on the kitchen counter but “then ‘blacked out’ and was not sure what occurred next.” When she “came to” she saw Cruz on the kitchen floor. "Having grown up in the era of television rather than radio, I felt disconcerted with nowhere to rest my eyes." Susan Apel sat down the other day to listen to Northern Stage's "radio" version of It's a Wonderful Life. She found herself closing her eyes, letting scenes from the classic film—which she's seen dozens of times—serve as "a visual complement to the snappy dialogue of Northern Stage actors as they re-created the story of George Bailey and his search for meaning." It's all a pleasure to re-visit, she writes, especially with the production's sound effects and "musical, home-grown" commercials.SPONSORED: Looking for some light in your life? St. Thomas Episcopal Church Hanover invites you to experience faith, hope, and love this Advent.  We offer interactive services via ZOOM, including Sung Compline on Tuesdays, and Sunday worship throughout Advent to lead you deeper into the mysteries of this season. Find out more at the maroon link. Sponsored by St. Thomas Episcopal Church.Okay, so you know all those stunning sunrises we've been getting treated to? Well, explains Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast, "there’s faster air circulation in the cold months, and a slowing down of the photochemical reactions that cause haze. The result is brighter sky color." But that's not all that's going on out there. Here we are, the third week in December, and the "irruption" of birds from Canada continues, various fungi—like crowded parchment fungus and birch polypore—are everywhere you turn, and winterberry is adding little shots of color to the edges of marshes."Woodstock Ski Hill, 1940s." A little unclear where it is—the back side of Suicide Six? A different hill nearby? Mt. Tom? Regardless, it's a pic on Reddit of a modest base lodge, skiers in knickers, some very fine-looking cars parked way closer together than you'd find today... along with a brief history of the Model T-then-Buick-then-Ford-tractor-powered rope tow, which was built by David Dodd of Newbury VT using rope spliced together by Billings Farm oxen teamster Gus Buckman.Migration into NH has been picking up, especially among young adults. New Census estimates are out, and Kenneth Johnson, a veteran demographer at UNH's Carsey School of Public Policy has parsed the numbers. Between 2015 and 2019, he writes, an average of 8,300 more people moved to the state than left it for elsewhere in the US, and of those newcomers 18-29-year-olds "had an average annual migration gain of 3,800," while in-migration of people in their 30s more than doubled. Do it for the rattlers: Bring back fires and grazing. Okay, not really. But a paper from NH Fish & Game, pointed out by David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog, argues that suppressing "disturbance regimes" has allowed undergrowth to flourish, which has reduced basking habitat for timber rattlesnakes. Fish and Game biologists want to help the endangered rattler population grow, and since the snakes need spots to warm up—especially pregnant females—taking down trees that shade otherwise open, rocky ledges may be one approach.VT estimates that three-quarters of unemployment recipients may be cut off at end of year. Though about 10,000 people are getting traditional state unemployment benefits, writes VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen, another 18,000 are receiving them under federal CARES Act programs due to expire, as well as the nearly 900 whose extended benefits are ending this week. At the same time, Allen reports, the state labor department says that "at some point in the near future" it will reinstate the requirement that recipients actively look for work to continue receiving benefits.Sorry NH bees: Come Jan. 1 your honey won't be "local" on the VT side of the river. The Agency of Agriculture is updating what the "local" and "made in Vermont" labels mean. Right now, "local" can include food made within 30 miles of the point of sale. After New Year's, it will have to be grown or tapped in Vermont, derived from an animal that lived "for at least one third of its life or one year" in Vermont, processed from raw agricultural ingredients more than 50 percent of which "by volume, excluding water" are local to VT...Remember those Wildlife Photos of the Year? There are more. Each year, London's Natural History Museum chooses 100 photos from among 49K+ entries. You may recall when those were announced back in October. Turns out, though, they then choose another 25 finalists for the "People's Choice Award." Burrowing owls, an Australian long-nosed dragon up-dog, a heartbreaker of the last male northern white rhino on the planet... Voting lasts into February. Definite time-sink alert.Inexplicably, there are no superhero squirrel photos in the lot. If you get the timing just right, you can photograph a squirrel looking like it's just stuck what's come to be called a "superhero landing"—three-point, one arm raised, looking ready to rumble à la Spidey. Kicked off by Reddit, these squirrel pics have been going viral. What's actually going on? It's how they scratch their stomachs with a hind leg, The Verge points out.

And the numbers...

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Today, when I could do nothing,I saved an ant.It must have come in with the morning paper.It must have first walkedthe morning paper, as if loosened inktaking the shape of an ant.Then across the laptop computer — warm —then onto the back of a cushion.Small black ant, alone,crossing a navy cushion,moving steadily because that is what it could do.Ant, alone, without companions,whose ant-heart I could not fathom —how is your life, I wanted to ask.I lifted it, took it outside.This day, when I could do nothing, I did this.

— By Jane Hirshfield, excerpted from

"Today, When I Could Do Nothing"

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