Daybreak Tuesday 12/22/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Mostly cloudy. There was a weak system passing by to our south overnight and there's a low headed our way, but the main impact looks like it'll be in the form of some breeziness this afternoon or tonight—as opposed to north and west of us, where they'll be getting snow. There's some chance of a break in the clouds to the east as the day goes on. Winds from the northwest, temps reaching into the higher 30s, down into the teens tonight.You'd think they were made for snow. A Scottish Highlander steer as the snow falls at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, taken by celebrated Vermont photographer Peter Miller. Moderna vaccine makes it to WRJ. Staff at the VA Medical Center yesterday began receiving some of the 900 doses delivered there after the FDA gave emergency authorization for the drug on Friday, reports the Valley News's John Gregg. The hospital plans to vaccinate 200 workers by tomorrow, then start offering the vaccine to veterans.Now the lawyers are getting involved in Dartmouth sports cuts. Writing for InDepthNH, Damien Fisher reports that a California attorney sent a letter to college president Phil Hanlon last week warning that cutting the women's swimming, diving, and golf teams put the college out of compliance with Title IX, and that if it doesn't reinstate them, "we will seek a preliminary injunction immediately reinstating and preserving these teams." College spokesperson Diana Lawrence says Dartmouth's aware of the letter and will be responding.Used outdoor gear shop open in WRJ. Gear Again is the brainchild of Bridget Cushman, who was working for the Gates Street branch of Fat Hat Clothing when it shut down for the winter. She approached Fat Hat owner Joan Ecker, who offered the use of the space across from Northern Stage. “I had always tried to convince someone else to open one of these stores and nobody snagged on that idea," Cushman tells Junction mag's Isaac Lorton. "I think it’s because I wanted to shop there.” Base layers are selling quickly these days, she says, as are xc skis and snowshoes.Fire hoses on the Norwich green: It could only mean one thing. Sunday morning, Norwich blogger Demo Sofronas was out for a walk around town when he noticed Deputy Fire chief Matt Swett, Fire Captain Peter Griggs, and a dedicated group of fellow "hosers" getting ready to fill the town skating rink. He stopped to get some photos of the whole thing, the hoses snaking over snow piles and across the green to where the town Public Works Department had set up the rink boards last week. It's hard to look at that last pic and not reflexively go check your skates... and curse the upcoming thaw. 

SPONSORED: Looking for some light in your life? St. Thomas Episcopal Church Hanover invites you to experience faith, hope, and love this Christmas season. We offer interactive services via ZOOM, including Sung Compline on Tuesdays and two special Christmas Eve services to lead you deeper into the mysteries of this season.  Find out more at the maroon link. Sponsored by St. Thomas Episcopal Church. 

D-HH back in the black. The good financial news for the hospital system comes thanks to $19.1 million in federal stimulus payments, reports the VN's Nora Doyle-Burr, which helped reverse the $84 million operating loss reported at the end of the fiscal year this past summer. In addition, revenues have been growing as patients return for care that had been postponed earlier in the year, according to CFO Dan Jantzen. There's a direct line from the Tip Top Building in Hartford to the day in 1835 when baker Everett Smith first tasted "Hanover crackers." I'll let you connect the dots, but that's just one of the historical sinkholes you can drop into along the Hartford Historical Society's work-in-progress timeline of town history. It starts with members of Eleazar Wheelock's church getting a charter to found the town, moves quickly to the family lore that Thomas and Ann Hazen, roofing their new home after resettling from Woodbury, CT, heard the Battle of Bunker Hill, and winds up at the new courthouse opening in 1990.Most fitting new word of the week? "Subnivean." It means "occurring or living under the snow," and its what mice, voles, and other small mammals are doing right now—as their predators adapt, notes Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast. We're into the fourth week in December, and there's a lot to notice out there, including how eastern pines deal with snow, possible reasons many beech trees hold onto their leaves throughout the winter, the spread of northern cardinals (they didn't arrive in the Northeast until around 1900), and, especially at this time of year, various lichens and mosses. 15-25 seconds at a time. That, says Mary Holland on her Naturally Curious blog, is how long red foxes sleep before waking up to check their surroundings, then going back to sleep. Though in dense cover, she writes, they might go for an hour before looking around. In winter, unless there's a hard wind, they'll "typically choose a slightly elevated patch of ground, curl up in a ball, tuck their noses under their tails and sleep with nothing more between them and the elements than a dense coat of hair."  The need to track temps isn't new, but demand is skyrocketing, which is great news for one NH company. MadgeTech is based in Warner, and it makes devices and software that allow companies and others to measure temperature constantly. Which has suddenly become a pressing need, as Covid vaccines—which have to be kept cold—get shipped out to pharmacies, hospitals, and doctors' offices around the world. So MadgeTech—named for the founder's aunt, who funded the computer on which he wrote his first software—is ramping up, writes the Monitor's David Brooks in this profile of the company. How NHPR tracks Covid numbers. Early in the pandemic, data reporter Casey McDermott tells Morning Edition host Rick Ganley, the state wasn't providing much in the way of useful information about how cases were evolving over time. So she and her colleagues built their own dashboard, which has become perhaps the most user-friendly source of ongoing data for statewide numbers (you can see it here). What does she wish the state did better? More consistent and regular reporting on clusters and outbreaks beyond long-term care settings, she says.  NH, VT (and ME) guvs decline to sign on to regional Transportation and Climate Initiative. The multi-state agreement, which would cap greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, charge a fee based on fossil fuels sold, and then use the proceeds to fund lower-carbon transportation alternatives, was officially announced yesterday, with MA, RI, CT, and DC pledging to join in. NH Gov. Chris Sununu announced last year that the state would have nothing to do with it. VT Gov. Phil Scott is hedging his bets—the state is among a group of eight states pledging to remain involved in planning, but not yet willing to join. VT Foodbank will take over food box program, return sourcing to local vendors. The federal effort that fed thousands of families during the pandemic will shut down at the end of the year, but yesterday, the Foodbank announced that it will spend $1.4 million to keep it going in VT through February, reports the Rutland Herald's Keith Whitcomb, Jr. It will be run by the VT-based Abbey Group, which held the original federal contract before the USDA shifted it to out-of-state firms. “We’re keeping the money here in the state of Vermont and the Abbey Group is going to purchase as much food as possible from local Vermont farmers and producers," says the Foodbank's Nicole Whalen.  "It was one thing when it was just grandma renting out a bedroom, but it’s not grandma renting out a bedroom anymore.” That's Lynn Green, who owns and runs an inn in Bennington, talking to VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen and Erin Petenko about upcoming efforts in the legislature to strengthen regulation of short-term rentals, à la Airbnb and VRBO. The state Chamber of Commerce, which is making the issue a priority, believes the rentals pose unfair competition to established inns, in part because their compliance with state regs is voluntary and they don't have to pay registration fees. As night follows day, with snow come skiers. They're supposed to quarantine before arriving in VT, of course, but as VPR's Henry Epp points out, after Thursday's storm "pictures circulating on social media showed crowded lift areas and resort parking lots full of cars with out-of-state license plates." He asks Molly Mahar, president of the VT Ski Areas Assn, whether anyone's really checking up. "You know, you really can't tell," she responds. "And I think...it would be up to the state, I guess, and they have not been able to sort of articulate how that happens... [We're] really asking for people's cooperation."As well as the occasional monolith. I know, I know. Just sayin'... The nine-foot high steel object showed up last week, just before the snow, atop Riverside Farm in Pittsfield, VT, site of the Spartan Death Race. “We do the Spartan Death Race, these are men and women who are super hardcore, super fit, endurance junkies. They’re spectacular people, they can do basically anything they put their mind to. It would have taken a bunch of folks that size to go to that much effort and get it up there,” Riverside's general manager tells the Rutland Herald's Keith Whitcomb Jr. (he's been busy). “I honestly don’t know.”You can do amazing things by setting a ball rolling. As Daybreak readers know, the pandemic's brought mind-boggling creativity to the genre, but some people were clearly ahead of their time. Back in 2011, a Japanese company working with a carpenter and a sound designer built a giant xylophone in the woods of Kyushu, Japan. Set the ball gently rolling, and as it makes its way down a slight incline the structure, running through the trees, plays Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" with remarkable felicity. The video? It's an ad for a cellphone, but hey, whatever it takes for great art.

And the numbers...

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The way a crowShook down on meThe dust of snowFrom a hemlock treeHas given my heartA change of moodAnd saved some partOf a day I had rued.

— "A Dust of Snow," by Robert Frost

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