RABBIT RABBIT, UPPER VALLEY!
Probable light snow. There's a fast-moving system moving through today from the west, bringing a slight chance of snow showers this morning and a likelihood of about an inch this afternoon and evening. After a cold start this morning, temps will climb through the 20s by late afternoon, then only drop into the low 20s overnight. Winds from the south.Putting things in perspective.
Remember how happy many of us were to get 7-8 inches of snow on Friday? Bill DeFlorio sends along this photo from the winter of 1970-71, the snowiest winter in VT according to his chart, with 145.4 inches in Burlington and almost certainly more in Randolph Center, which is where this photo was taken. "It does give a sense of what winters used to look like," he writes.
And Willem Lange, moved by yesterday's video of ice flow on the White, writes, "You want ice jam ice? Try this chunk on the bank of the Coppermine River (in Nunavut) in late July. I call it 'Garden Gnome with Ice Cake.'"
Doing some last-minute cramming? Voting in most VT towns is today and in many NH towns is a week from today, and the Valley News's local government page is now chock-full of its reporters' quick roundups of what's on the region's ballots. Community power in Piermont, whether to take the first step toward a town manager in Charlestown, the school resource officer in Lebanon, whether to move to all Australian balloting in Enfield, tech center renovation in Newport, a ban on single-use plastic bags in New London.... Plus, of course, budgets.NH Electric Coop approves broadband expansion to members in Grafton County towns. The coop's board yesterday approved a move to bring high-speed internet to 17,000 members in 32 towns around the county, among them Canaan, Dorchester, Grafton, Hanover, Haverhill, Lyme, Orange, Orford, Piermont, Rumney, Sugar Hill, Warren, and Wentworth. In a press release, the board lead on the project said that the service will cost about $50 a month for 100 megabits-per-second and $90 per month for gigabit service.SPONSORED: Double your impact by donating a CSA share to Willing Hands. Love local produce? Love making sure everyone in our community has enough to eat? Consider donating a full or partial CSA share from your farm of choice, and Willing Hands will pick up the produce and deliver it to over 80 food shelves in the Upper Valley. You'll be directly supporting our local farm economy and our food-insecure neighbors. It's a win-win! A two-minute video at the link explains it all. Sponsored by Willing Hands.On average, 58 percent of Dartmouth students applied for financial aid over the last five years, third in the Ivies. But percentage of total cost covered has dropped to last. The Daily Princetonian's Elaine Huang looked at data from the Common Data Set, a collaborative project among institutions of higher education to track financial aid stats. Columbia doesn't participate in the CDS, but for the other seven schools, Huang puts the numbers into easy-to-read graphs, from percentage of applicants determined to have financial need to total cost vs. average financial aid package.Chelsea planning commission urges AT&T to move on from proposed site for cell tower. It's the third proposal for a tower in town, writes Claire Potter in the VN, part of the company's contract with VT to build an improved communications network for first responders. But the site off Creamery Road ran into staunch opposition from locals concerned about its visibility and proximity to the school. The First Branch Unified School District opposed the tower, Potter writes, in part because some parents insisted they would not enroll their children in Chelsea's school if the tower were built.Proposed D-H clinic in Bedford may hit a roadblock at the ballot box. On March 8, town voters will get to decide whether D-H may move forward with construction on a new, 45,000-sq.-ft. facility according to plan, or seek a special waiver from the Bedford planning board, reports Michael Kitch in NH Business Review. The opposition comes in the form of a ballot measure designed to limit large medical providers from leveraging their non-profit status to pay less in taxes. D-H, which has been in the community for 35 years, insists it is “committed to paying [its] fair share” and calls the claim “a scare tactic.”Sheep Rock, Frog Rock... Just two of NH's "Rocks that Rock." For a "radio field trip," NHPR's Rick Ganley heads out with father and daughter Dan and Uma Szczesny, authors of a guide to 25 of the state's most interesting boulders. They started trekking to them during the pandemic. The 4,000-footers and 52 With a View aren't accessible to everybody, Dan notes. "We wanted to make a list that it didn't matter how old you were or if you are differently abled.” And best of all, there are "like five billion gazillion" rocks named after people or things, says seven-year-old Uma.Sununu vetoes bill to require civics exam for college students. The measure, passed by the Senate last month, would have required public and community college students to pass the federal naturalization exam. Sununu pointed out that starting next year, all high school students in the state will have to pass a similar exam, and noted that the measure would be the first time the state imposed a universal graduation requirement for college. “I am concerned that this would create a precedent for future Legislatures to mandate extreme requirements,” he wrote in his veto message.Wait. Ticks in winter? Yep, writes David Brooks in the Concord Monitor. He'd long heard that they can show up if temps climb above 42, but was dubious. "Surely they can’t emerge so quickly from a New Hampshire winter, can they?" he writes. So last week, when things warmed up, he got out a Big Bird towel and dragged it around his yard. Nothing came up in the grass. But when he dragged leaves alongside the garden bed? Deer tick. Unless the ground is covered with snow, if it warms up play it safe, he says.For Vermonters wondering about Russian products in the state, the biggest import is rubber. In the Vermont Daily Chronicle, Guy Page writes that the state imports $33 million of goods from Russia annually, almost half it in rubber or rubber products used by various manufacturers. There's some Russian-made vodka, and following NH's lead, Gov. Phil Scott yesterday ordered it off liquor store shelves. As for oil and gas, Page writes there's a single outlet in the state: Lukoil is a Russian oil company, and it's got a gas station in WRJ, near the VA, one of a bunch of locations it bought in 2005.VT prosecutors flagged 13 VT police officers with credibility problems last year. VT's "Brady-Giglio letters" are warnings from prosecutors that an officer's credibility is questionable in court. Unlike NH, the state has no centralized list, reports VPR's Liam Elder-Connors, but records obtained by VPR show issues ranging from problems with timesheet recording to the three state troopers caught allegedly making fake Covid vaccination cards to a Springfield officer accused by his department of sexual misconduct, neglect of duty, and other infractions—who was unknowingly hired and soon fired by Woodstock.New survey puts VT 7th in percentage of LGBT residents. The national survey, from the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute, finds 5.2 percent of Vermonters identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans; 23 percent of them have children—which actually puts Vermont in 40th place nationally for LGBT individuals with kids. The state is known for "comparatively high legal protections and cultural acceptance," writes Erin Petenko in VTDigger, which may make people more willing to identify openly as LGBT or to move there in search of a welcoming environment.Panda bear sea angel. Threadfin snailfish. Psychedelic jelly. Strawberry squid. Credit scientists for accessing their inner poets to name these deep-sea creatures. And by all means go full-screen here: Suspend yourself among this pageant of jellies, cephalopods, and all manner of eerily iridescent life in the waters near the Monterey Bay Aquarium. If not for the images’ amazing sharpness, you might think you’re browsing a portfolio of fish concepts—wild ideas that couldn’t possibly be real. Then the silky jelly pulses perfectly, the feather star becomes a fountain of symmetry, and you’re sold.
And the numbers...
Dartmouth is dropping again, with 68 active cases reported yesterday, compared to 95 on Thursday. The college's dashboard reports 38 active undergrad cases (-20 since Thursday), 17 among grad and professional students (-7), and 13 among faculty/staff (no change). There have been 116 combined new cases among students over the previous seven days, as well as 20 among faculty/staff. 36 students are isolating on campus, 19 are isolating off-campus, and 22 faculty/staff are in isolation.
NH has dropped some, with a 7-day average now of 282 new cases a day, compared to 330 as of last Thursday. The state reported 529 new cases Friday and 194 yesterday, but doesn't provide the data for the days in between. Its total is now 298,362. There have been 7 deaths reported since Thursday; the total now stands at 2,377. Hospitalizations have dropped slightly: 92 people are currently hospitalized (-3 since Thursday). The state reports 1,467 active cases statewide(-596) and 147 (-43) active cases in Grafton County, 76 (-25) in Sullivan, and 98 (-83) in Merrimack. In town-by-town numbers, the state says Hanover has 58 (-11 since Thursday), Claremont has 23 (-13), Lebanon has 21 (+1), Newport has 18 (+1), Grantham has 10 (+3), New London has 8 (-4), Canaan has 8 (no change), Charlestown has 8 (+2), Haverhill has 6 (-4), and Piermont, Rumney, Lyme, Grafton, Enfield, Plainfield, Cornish, Sunapee, Wilmot, and Unity, have 1-4 each. Orford, Wentworth, Orange, Croydon, Springfield, and Newbury are off the list.
VT saw lower numbers over the weekend, reporting 224 new cases Friday, 185 Saturday, 87 Sunday, and 70 yesterday, bringing it to 112,364 total. There were 5 new deaths over that time, with 598 all told. Hospitalizations are holding steady: As of yesterday, 35 people with confirmed cases were hospitalized (-2 since Thursday), with 2 of them (-4) in the ICU. Windsor County has seen a slight uptick with 179 new cases since Thursday and 189 new cases over the past two weeks, with 7,385 for the pandemic; Orange County gained 29 cases during that time for a total of 3,269, with 89 over the previous two weeks. Case numbers in Upper Valley towns in VT dropped a bit last week, with 171 new weekly cases tallied last Wednesday vs. 193 the week before: Springfield +81; Hartford +11; Bradford and Newbury +10; Chelsea and Windsor +9; Corinth +5; Killington and Randolph +4; Fairlee, Thetford, and Woodstock +3; Bethel, Hartland, Royalton, and Weathersfield +2; Bridgewater, Cavendish, Reading, Tunbridge, and W. Windsor +1; and there were no new reported cases in Barnard, Pomfret, Sharon, Strafford, Vershire, or W. Fairlee.
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Bethel University launches today, with classes running throughout the month, some some online, some in person. The free, community-run pop-up's sessions are taught by volunteers, from a beginner's course in useful everyday knots to evolutionary thermodynamics to a study of American sonnets. Plus a whole lot more: catalog at the link.
A note from Daybreak poetry editor Michael Lipson:
As you may remember, each month of poems this year has a common theme—which we'll reveal afterward. The theme of February's selections was repetition, as in
Groundhog Day
: Jane Hirshfield, with a lighthouse sweeping its ray; Rilke, whose "deep life" rustles louder again; the internal repetition of David Lehman's
Denial
("Hungover am I not,"); and finally, Keats's nightingale heard repeatedly through history.
A slight departure for March: Today and throughout the month (and, actually, once in April) we're posting reader-suggested poems, starting with...
The strangely radiant skies have come to lift us out of winter's gloom,A paler more transparent blue; a softer gold light on fresh snow.It is a naked time that bares our slightly worn-down hopes and cares,And sets us listening for frogs, and sends us to seed cataloguesTo bury our starved eyes and noses in an extravagance of roses,And order madly at this season when we have had enough of reason.
— From "March-mad" by
, submitted by Beverly Boke.
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.
The Enthusiasms Archives. A list of book recommendations by Daybreak's rotating crew of local booksellers and writers who want you to read. this. book. now!
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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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