RABBIT RABBIT, UPPER VALLEY!
The warming trend starts. Actually, it really started yesterday, when languid southern air began moving into the region to set up shop for the next few days. Of course, you really won't notice if you step outside into the bitterly cold morning, but by this afternoon it'll be inching toward the 30s, and tonight it's only dropping into the lower 20s before... but we'll talk about that tomorrow. Winds today from the southeast, clouds moving in throughout the day.Weasel in winter white. Or ermine, if you prefer. Most likely short-tailed—as Mike Zwickelmaier writes, it "just sat there while I ran inside to get my camera, but only let me get two good pictures once I got back"—and the only way to know for certain if it's short- or long-tailed, naturalist Ted Levin explains, is to measure the tail. Seriously, does any weasel sit still for that?
Changes to Covid rules at D-H, Hop.
The hospital system announced that as of yesterday it will allow one visitor per day for Covid-negative adult patients, two to accompany pediatric patients, and up to three visitors at a time for end-of-life patients.
Meanwhile, as of today the Hopkins Center has changed its policies to require patrons to show proof of one of the following: full vaccination and booster if eligible; negative PCR or NAAT test within 72 hours; negative antigen test within 12 hours; are a current Dartmouth student or employee.
No, it's not likely to collapse anytime soon. After what happened in Pittsburgh Friday, you might be wondering about the Lyme-E. Thetford bridge, whose deteriorating condition Sidenote's Nick Clark has been detailing of late. The railing doesn't meet current safety standards and has big areas of rust—as does the entire bridge. The state's inspection calls its structural condition the "minimum tolerable." The bridge is “structurally deficient” by federal standards. Still, Clark writes, "This does not mean that the bridge is unsafe. It means the bridge must be monitored and maintained consistently." Details at the link.
Tunbridge "may soon be a two-store town again." It had lost both its general stores over the last five years, but back in October Lois and Mike Gross bought the N. Tunbridge General Store and are planning to reopen it soon. And now, reports John Lippman in the Valley News, LA transplant John Houston (who's been visiting Tunbridge since 2014) has bought the Tunbridge Store building in the main village and is aiming to reopen it, as well—though he's still feeling his way forward. SPONSORED: You're Totally My Jam! At Blake Hill, JAM is our one true Valentine! Celebrate with a jammy brunch with pals, enjoy an afternoon of baking heart-shaped, jam-filled treats, or finish your day with a romantic charcuterie board! Visit Blake Hill any day 10am-5pm, shop online for local pickup, or ship directly to your loved ones. However you celebrate, spoil them (and yourself) with jam...sweet, savory and spicy experiences await! Say "YOU'RE MY JAM" to our Jambassadors for 20% off in-store purchases of all jams now thru 2/14/22! Sponsored by Blake Hill Preserves.College rejects student workers' union plan, sends it to a vote. The Dartmouth reported Friday that in a letter to the Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth, President Phil Hanlon said the college had decided that it will take a vote under National Labor Relations Board procedures to determine if SWCD has the support of a majority of student dining workers for a union. The group earlier this month announced that most student workers had signaled their intention to unionize. Hanlon added that Dartmouth is “willing to explore ways to streamline the election process” with the student group."Interim" no more: Dartmouth names David Kotz provost. The word came in a campus-wide email yesterday; Kotz had been acting provost since July of last year, replacing Joe Helble, who moved on to the presidency of Lehigh. Kotz, a computer scientist, is still the lead researcher on an NSF-funded effort to reduce security risks in consumer-based smart technologies—but he'll mostly be spending his time steering the college's Covid response and "and keeping the campus as open as possible" as well as "elevating Dartmouth’s academic profile," writes the college's communications office.Haven, St. Paul's housing plan draws concern from neighbors. At a public meeting last week on the plan to expand the homeless shelter and build new apartments for low-income tenants, neighboring residents cited ongoing issues with vandalism and disorderly behavior around the existing Haven shelter in WRJ, reports Frances Mize in the VN. “For me the heart of the issue is safety. And I’m living in a place where I don’t feel safe,” said one resident. Several Hartford High teachers countered that the Haven's proximity is "an asset" to the school. “The motto of The Haven is 'hope and possibility.' Sometimes it takes a long time for those to emerge," said Haven director Michael Redmond."Who Was Jason Moots?" That was the print headline on Jim Kenyon's VN profile yesterday of Moots, who was 45 when he died in the woods behind Riverbank Church, off Sykes Mountain Ave. in WRJ. "Why write an 'A Life' about a middle-aged man with a substance use disorder who was homeless when he died?" Kenyon asks, and essentially answers: Because no one else will. Moots, who struggled with mental illness and substance use and was busted last summer, worked for three years behind Dan & Whit's deli and meat counter and then at the Norwich Inn before he suddenly left.UV towns get funds to revamp zoning laws, boost housing development. The seven towns (Bethel, Hartford, Randolph, Rochester, Strafford, Thetford, and Woodstock) were among 41 in VT to land state money to update their zoning bylaws to "expand opportunities for needed homes." They'll be working with the Two Rivers regional planning commission, Nick Clark reports in Sidenote, to review what's on the books and look at such possible additions as allowing "accessory dwelling units" and an array of other housing types that would provide denser development while staying true to local character.“When I’m in the woods, I feel like a creature that’s finally found its way home." That's Norwich's Nick Krembs, whose post-retirement docket is full to bursting: trail maintenance work all around the Upper Valley and beyond; serving as a Meals on Wheels driver; gleaning for Willing Hands; helping to support asylum-seekers and refugees. On AARP's "Staying Sharp" site, Nissa Simon profiles Krembs (with photo by Norwich's Lars Blackmore) and what volunteering has meant to him. (Article is behind AARP's members-only paywall, sorry about that. And full disclosure: The author is my mom.)Come for the chocolate-hazelnut roll recipe. Stay for the food-system smarts. For the last three years, Charlotte Rutledge has been head recipe developer for King Arthur. Bakers around the world got to know her through her Sunday recipe emails. Now she's headed out on her own (at least for the moment), starting with a new twice-monthly newsletter, Balanced Diet, that premiered on Sunday. On the title: "I am not about to tell you all what you should or shouldn’t eat," she explains. "Instead I hope to enhance your eating habits by either inspiring you to cook or bake or teaching you something about food (or the system behind it) that you didn’t know before."
Nearly 180 degrees. That's how far fishers can rotate their hind feet, which makes it possible for them to descend trees headfirst. What's interesting, though, is that while fishers can climb trees, they prefer to remain on the ground, Mary Holland writes in Naturally Curious; they generally climb only when harassed. A passing of the torch at NH mental health advocacy org. In his 11 years at the helm of NAMI NH, Ken Norton helped transform the national conversation around mental illness. As Annmarie Timmons writes in NH Bulletin, Norton created one of the nation’s first suicide prevention programs, and the nonprofit’s crisis intervention modules have since been sought out by the Pentagon, tribal nations, and other countries. With Norton’s retirement, deputy director Susan Stearn steps up to lead NAMI NH through a critical period, as families’ demand for their services has tripled since the pandemic began.“All of us are just exhausted. [But] we’re exhausted with friends.” That's Tim Lahey, director of medical ethics at UVM Medical Center, talking to Kaiser Health News's Sarah Varney about how, in spite of it all, Vermont may still have something to show the rest of the country on Covid. Varney puts things in perspective: Despite the surge, it's the most-vaccinated state in the nation, it's got the lowest Covid hospitalization rate, and its "collective measures do appear to be protecting residents from the worst of the contagion’s damage." So who gets the bragging rights? VT? NH? NJ? Definitely Ecuador, which will have its first-ever female winter Olympian and its first alpine skier in Beijing this month. Sarah Escobar, whose parents are Ecuadorean immigrants, is from New Jersey, grew up skiing in Stowe, went to Waterville Valley Academy in NH, and is now a first-year at St. Mike's. Her dad, Fabian, will be there with her as a ski tech, as will St. Mike’s assistant ski coach, Nick Stagers, reports NECN. "I'm literally living my dream," Sarah Escobar says. "My main goal is to finish." "I'm so ready to pass the torch." Bill Koch has been a cross-country skiing legend ever since he pioneered skate skiing and won the US's first winter Olympics XC medal in 1976. It was a long drought after that, until Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins won gold in 2018. Koch has always been understated—"Have you lived in Vermont all your life?" a reporter once asked. "Not yet," Koch answered—and he still is, writes Kevin O'Connor in VTDigger. But he talks to O'Connor about that 1976 race, his competitive years, his return to VT...and the legendary photo of him skiing along a Hawaiian beach.Italian maker of wooden hat blocks is the last of his kind. The hand-carved wooden block molds the shape of the hat—a once milliner’s method that today only a few still practice. And Gian Piero Bellucci might be the only person still making these wooden blocks. Craftsmanship Quarterly’s Luisa Grosso has a story and a short film about Gian Piero, 89, who runs the small Tuscan workshop where as a boy he learned the craft from his father. It’s a poignant portrait of a man whose life-long passion is undiminished, even as old-style hat-makers disappear, and who admits, “After me, this job will no longer exist.”
And the numbers...
Dartmouth's numbers are dropping more rapidly, down to 319 total active cases (from 520 Thursday). The college's dashboard yesterday reported 245 active undergrad cases (-160), 31 among grad and professional students (-26), and 43 among faculty/staff (-15). There have been 676 combined new cases among students over the previous seven days, as well as 106 among faculty/staff. 218 students are isolating on campus, 58 are isolating off-campus, and 52 faculty/staff are in isolation.
NH's new cases are also dropping. The state reported 2,004 on Friday, 1,598 Saturday, 1,187 Sunday, and 486 yesterday, bringing its total to 276,856; its 7-day average of 1,312 is 37 percent lower than its previous average. There have been 16 deaths reported since Thursday; the total now stands at 2,209. Hospitalizations have also been trending downward: 303 people are currently hospitalized (-84 since Thursday). The state reports 10,436 active cases (-4,106 since Thursday) and that there are 947 (-216 since Thursday) active cases in Grafton County, 414 (-33) in Sullivan, and 1,158 1,702 (-544) in Merrimack. In town-by-town numbers, the state says Hanover has 316 (-105), Claremont has 170 (-14), Lebanon has 132 (+4), Newport has 97 (-8), Haverhill has 46 (-38), New London has 43 (-40), Enfield has 40 (-8), Grantham has 39 (+9), Canaan has 37 (-3), Charlestown has 28 (-9), Sunapee has 16 (-1), Plainfield has 14 (-6), Grafton has 10 (-4), Newbury has 7 (-6), Unity has 6 (-7), Orford has 9 (-2), Rumney has 8 (no change), Cornish has 6 (+1), Lyme has 5 (-3), and Piermont, Warren, Wentworth, Dorchester, Orange, Wilmot, Springfield, and Croydon have 1-4 each.
VT continues to trend downward, though weekend numbers are typically low. It reported 893 new cases Friday, 494 Saturday, 593 Sunday, and 317 yesterday, to bring it to 104,472 total. The state reports 7 additional deaths since Thursday, bringing it to 536. Hospitalizations have dropped a bit: as of yesterday, 96 people with confirmed cases were hospitalized (-12), with 26 of them (-1) in the ICU. Windsor County has seen 91 new cases since Thursday, with 6,855 for the pandemic and 516 new cases over the previous two weeks; Orange County gained 45 cases during that time for a total of 3,034, with 296 over the previous two weeks. Upper Valley VT towns reflect the statewide trend, with 692 weekly cases reported at the end of last week compared to 959 the week before: Hartford +124; Springfield +99; Windsor +45; Royalton +44; Randolph +42; Bradford and Newbury +35; Hartland +32; Thetford +25; Chelsea +23; Sharon +22; Norwich +20; Bethel +19; Corinth, Strafford, and Weathersfield +13; Woodstock +12; Fairlee +11; Tunbridge +10; Cavendish, Killington, and W. Windsor +9; Reading and Vershire +7; Bridgewater +6; Pomfret +4; and Barnard and W. Fairlee +2.
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At 5:30 pm, just about when you're getting hungry, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center hosts an online cooking demo right on time for today's Chinese Lunar New Year: artist and chef Cai Xi of the Brattleboro-based Cai’s Dim Sum Catering will teach you how to make dumplings from scratch. Recipe (makes 50 dumplings) and ingredient list at the link.
At 7 pm, the VT Center for Ecostudies' popular "Suds & Science" program is online (you'll have to supply your own beer) with VCE's Jason Hill talking to Jay Kelly, who co-directs the Center for Environmental Studies at Raritan Valley Community College in north-central New Jersey. Kelly will be talking about the "Impacts of Overabundant Deer and Invasive Plant Species on Forest Understories in Northern NJ," and about how urban/suburban deer populations affect forest health.
Also at 7, the Poetry Society of NH hosts novelist and poet Ace Boggess, who did five years in prison in West Virginia for armed robbery after he tried to steal Oxycontin to feed an addiction. He'll be talking about prison life—and about poetry about prison life. PSNH says this is not an evening for kids—you have to be over 18 to attend. Email Jimmy Pappas at [email protected] if you have questions or would like to tune in.
Finally, you can check out CATV's full plate of suggestions for the week: A night of street music and a tribute to Dave Clark filmed by Chad Finer at last June's First Friday in WRJ; the Dartmouth Political Union's conversation with journalist Glenn Greenwald; and on CATV's YouTube channel, Francesca Harper as Billie Holiday performing "What A Little Moonlight Can Do" from a JAG Juke Joint a few years back.
Its vision sweeps its one pathlike an aged monk raking a garden,his question long ago answered or moved on.Far off, night-grazing horses,breath scented with oatgrass and fennel,step through it, disappear, step through it, disappear.
—
, "Lighthouse"
See you tomorrow.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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