Daybreak Tuesday 2/22/22

GOOD TWOSDAY MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Colder, definitely wetter, flood watch in place starting tonight. After yesterday's mild temps, cold air moved in last night and it's going to keep us at around or below freezing all day. So when rain finally reaches us, probably later this afternoon, it will most likely fall as freezing rain until a mass of warm air arrives in the evening and overnight, raising temps to the low 50s by daybreak tomorrow. There's an ice warning (with possible slick roads) for tonight, then snow melt, ice jams, and rain all combine to produce that flood watch.Before last week's Hunger Moon disappears from memory... You don't need me to tell you that a bright full moon on snow is one of the peak pleasures of living around here. And it makes for some pretty atmospheric photography, too. This is from Sharon Wight, early in the morning in Lebanon."If an order came in, we got giddy." It's been seven months since three Hanover restaurateurs launched UVER, their homegrown attempt to level the local meal-delivery playing field against the national giants that dominate it, like Uber Eats and DoorDash. At first, it had the four restaurants they own and two drivers—including executive director Chris Acker. Now they're up to a dozen of each (with restaurants in Lebanon and WRJ as well), and hope to expand to Enfield. Growth has been measured, explain Acker and Lou's owner Jarrett Berke in this Daybreak story, but they've got plans...A better way to see VT town-meeting previews. If you missed yesterday's item or had trouble navigating the Valley News's "e-edition" pages, they've now uploaded links to their town meeting previews onto a more user-friendly page.College puts Garipay housing plans on hold. At their annual winter term meeting late yesterday afternoon, Dartmouth faculty members voted overwhelmingly to request that the Lyme Road plan for new undergrad housing "be paused pending review and further consideration of how the plan affects Dartmouth’s primary mission as an undergraduate institution,” reports the college's communications office. Executive VP Rick Mills responded that the initial planning phase will be extended three months to "broaden our evaluation of the project."Where the school board candidates in Hanover stand. There are eight of them on the ballot next week, which is enough to make anyone's head spin. So an informal, non-partisan group of Kendal residents led by Susan Holcombe sent them three questions, asking why they're running and for their views on school vouchers and NH's "divisive concepts" law. The Kendalites have made the responses public for anyone—not just Kendal residents—to check out.SPONSORED: Is there a connection between childhood trauma and incarceration? Join the UVM Health Network's chief of psychology, Aron Steward, for Dismas House's next free lunchtime lecture on Friday as she discusses this question, particularly for women. Dr. Steward specializes in reduction of aggression and violence, and trauma prevention and intervention. "Our culture views anger, aggression, and violence as criminal behaviors," she says. "I view it as mental health behavior arising from trauma." Let's learn together as a community.  Sponsored by Hartford Dismas House.DHMC tugs at the heart strings. Last November, a pregnant 20-year-old Macenzee Keller, deathly ill with Covid, was put on a ventilator in Manchester's Catholic Medical Center. Her son was born by C-section and Keller was transferred to DHMC—where, says one nurse, "There were times where we were wondering how or if she would be able to recover." For two months, Keller's mom took care of the baby... and Keller did, indeed, recover. She met her son for the first time a few weeks ago, and DHMC's got the video.Kinda like high school—for ex-Olympians. That's how Upper Valley freestyle skiing icon Hannah Kearney describes her stint as a broadcast analyst at NBC's campus in Connecticut during the Beijing Olympics. “I was like, ‘Oh, there’s Lindsey Vonn and her dog walking through the cafeteria.'" She talks to the Boston Globe's Hayden Bird about calling events, freestyle medalist Jaelin Kauf, and her own favorite New England moguls runs. The story was behind the Globe's paywall for a few days; now MSN's got it for anyone to read.NH schools can no longer go remote for Covid reasons. The legislature's joint Committee on Administrative Rules voted unanimously on Friday to put in place the rule specifying that if a public school does close because of high case numbers, it has to tack on an equivalent number of in-person days at the end of the year. The state board of ed followed suit a few hours later, reports Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin. Parents can also request remote learning on an individual basis."Just as Patagonia sells rock-climbing jackets to bankers, Carhartt now sells logging pants to baristas." In the NYT (possible paywall), Jasper Craven—of the Northeast Kingdom Cravens—pens an ode to Carhartts, the hipsters to rappers to carpenters who favor them, the company's ability to pivot as the economy and its clientele shifted, and above all to Caplan's Army Store, the St. J clothing institution that carried them and was forced to close during the pandemic. And to Gary Ely, Caplan's in-house tailor for 70 years, who still shows up to the now-empty store nearly every morning.Speaking of the Northeast Kingdom... VT Fish & Wildlife is proposing a fall moose hunt for the region in an effort to thin the herd there, reports the AP. Moose density is higher than in other parts of the state, which is giving winter ticks a leg up. “Research has shown that lower moose densities in the rest of Vermont support relatively few winter ticks that do not impact moose populations,” the state's moose project leader writes. “Reducing moose density decreases the number of available hosts which in turn decreases the number of winter ticks on the landscape.”When it comes to long wait times for specialty medical care in VT, there's no short-term answer. That's essentially what financial commissioner Mike Pieciak tells NBC5's Stewart Ledbetter in an interview about the state's new report on long wait times. They talk over the state's response to the hospitals' objections to the report and what lies ahead. It will take recruiting more specialists—in the face of an aging physician population—as well as regulatory changes, Pieciak says. But in the short term? "If you're confronting the long wait time and you have the ability, call around and try to find another specialist."VT contractor sets out to build workforce housing for his own employees, discovers it's too expensive. "The numbers just don’t pencil, even being a contractor," Tanner Romano, who owns a construction company based in Brandon, tells VTDigger's Fred Thys. The issue? Costs from regulations, engineering, permitting fees, and even his own construction costs meant "he would have to charge more in rent than his employees could afford. And the project would not have qualified for subsidies for affordable housing because his employees made too much," Thys writes.Six thousand miles of roads, bike lanes, and sidewalks. That, believe it or not, is how much Montreal's massive snow-clearing effort handles every time the city gets a moderate or heavy snowfall (it averages 82 inches a year). If you've ever spent the night there in winter and been woken by a crazy-loud siren from tow trucks about to tow a parked car out of the way, you know they're serious about it. In The Prepared newsletter, Hillary Predko spends quality time with Montreal’s "spokesperson for all things infrastructure" as he explains how the city doesn't just plow snow, but removes it altogether.Quick! Name five native edible plants around here. Or: How many days until the moon is full? Or: How many feet above sea level are you? About 50 years ago, a naturalist named Peter Warshall created a "test" to help build watershed awareness. Wired founding editor and former Whole Earth Review publisher Kevin Kelly revised it in 2003, but never really made it easily accessible. Now he has, along with some more updates, on his blog The Technium. Thirty questions (starting with "Point north") aimed at helping you to "elevate your awareness (and literacy) of the greater place in which you live." 

NO NUMBERS TODAY:

NH and VT's Covid data folks took Presidents' Day off. Update tomorrow.

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The voice I hear this passing night was heard         In ancient days by emperor and clown:Perhaps the self-same song that found a path         Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,                She stood in tears amid the alien corn.

—

From "Ode to a Nightingale"

by John Keats, on the voice of the nightingale and Ruth 2:1-16.

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