GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Any snow showers this morning will come to an end. High pressure's building in, and at some point after noon it's going to start getting sunny. Highs in the high 20s, gusty winds from the north. They'll calm down in the evening, but it'll be dropping into the teens.Just a quick note: Yesterday's item about HereCast brought several inquiries wondering whether its shutdown would affect Daybreak. No, it won't. I do post on HereCast and will be sorry to see it go, but there's no other connection. However, if you have friends who read Daybreak on HereCast (or get to it through Facebook), encourage them to sign up for the email version, so there'll be no interruption once HereCast goes dark. Fullest coverage of that, by the way, is in the Eagle Times.School board considers police resource officer for Hanover High. “We really think that the time is right for a thorough consideration of this,” school Supt. Jay Badams told the Dresden board at a Nov. 19 meeting, citing a 2017 security audit and confusion over the lockdown during the DHMC shooting two years ago. The school would essentially hire a Hanover police officer, who would be both a security presence and an active participant in school life. The board intends to schedule a community forum on the question. (VN)DHMC, UVM, Norwich U team lands sustainable food grant. The hospital is joining forces with the two universities and food services giant Sodexo to use a $250,000 award from the Henry P Kendall Foundation to invest in new equipment for food processors in the region. This will allow processors to buy and prepare more locally grown produce for a variety of institutions, including UVM, Norwich and the hospital.Bethel, Royalton schools uncover $450K deficit. The discovery came during a recent audit, and as a result the White River Unified School District has put in place a spending freeze: no new equipment, working overtime, or attending workshops and conferences without permission. Turnover in the business office, new accounting software, and fewer students than expected tuitioning in all lie behind the problem, Supt. Bruce Labs tells the VN.Okay, it's Manchester, NH, but it's still cool. WMUR took a time-lapse of the scene outside from sunset Sunday to sunrise Monday. It's 37 seconds of cars coming and going, then suddenly nightfall, snow, more snow, a blanket of snow, and then like *that* the plows clear the roads and the sun comes up...We just had our first real storm, so it must be a good time for holiday gift ideas for gardeners. Henry Homeyer's up with a pack of possibilities, including pruners, a harvesting blade, weeding tools, a lifetime investment of a wheelbarrow, books, planting trays.... You could get lost in dreams of spring."People are very excited about participating in the [energy] storage market." If you happen to be one of the 1,100 GMP customers with a Tesla Powerwall who weathered the Halloween-storm outage in fine humor, you know what the spokesman for regional grid manager ISO New England is talking about. But Seven Days' Kevin McCallum says that storage is "charging to the forefront of Vermont's vibrant renewable energy economy" in other ways, too. Including a financially risky gambit called "peak shaving." For first time, VT State Police graduate more women than men from police academy. The 10 recruits joining the force will bring the numbers to 41 female troopers out of 315 sworn personnel, about 13 percent. "That’s among the highest, if not the highest, percentage for state police agencies in New England," a VSP spokesman tells the Times Argus. "It’s also the highest number of female troopers VSP has had at any point, best as we can tell.”"Let's Talk Cannabis," says VT Dept of Health. It launched a new cannabis-education website yesterday featuring short, to-the-point answers to questions that teens, parents, adult users and health-care providers might have. Driving under the influence in VT is illegal. Kids who learn about the possible consequences of drug use from their parents are less likely to use them. Using while pregnant is not a good idea...Cauliflower crust? It's a ruse! That's Nancy Cain, co-founder of Brattleboro-based Against the Grain, the $20-million-a-year gluten-free baked goods maker. VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen profiles Cain, a former college prof, and her husband, Tom, whose company is best known for frozen pizza — it turns out 20,000 a week. And Cain is constantly experimenting. “We do a lot of R & D with Beyond Meat, with jackfruit, coconut, pea protein, tiger nuts,” says Cain. “The most recent one I just got was defatted sunflower flour."Teens with acne get higher grades. That's just one of this year's "52 things I learned," the annual compendium by consultant and former journalist Tom Whitwell. It's Daybreak on steroids. No babies born in Britain in 2016 were named Nigel. Songs are getting shorter because Spotify pays by the song, and two three-minute songs pay double a six-minute song. And just for Norwich: At least three companies fell victim to audio fraud in which an AI-trained voice clone of the CEO called a senior financial officer to request an urgent money transfer. Careful: You could easily spend the day in there.
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Williams, the much-lauded writer in residence at Harvard Divinity School, has a new collection out,
Erosion: Essays of Undoing
. The book is at once highly personal and highly political, as Williams grapples with loss of the places, nature, and people she loves. "How do we find the strength to not look away from all that is breaking our hearts?” she asks. And answers: "The world is so beautiful, even as it burns, even as those we love leave us.” 7 pm at the Norwich Congregational Church, presented by the Norwich Bookstore.
Or you could head to Grantham to hear Thomas Farmen read from and talk about Bessie's Story: Watching the Lights Go Out
. Farmen, a retired boarding-school headmaster who now lives in Unity, kept a journal while his much-loved dog Bessie went blind. And learned from her in the process. "She gingerly manages the two steps onto the patio and then hits her shin on the porch, which is one step higher. No complaints or anguish, just a careful lady coping. My God, I hope I can age with that same courage, grace and dignity," he writes. 6:30 pm at Grantham town hall, lower level.
Here's the bar/pub scene for the rest of the week, thanks to Nancy Cardenuto.
Okay... Off to face the day. See you tomorrow.
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