GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
"How 'bout this?" March asks. "Lion-like enough for you?" It'll be sunny today, but these winds will continue. And, of course, it will be a good bit colder than yesterday. Temps will barely climb out of the teens, and with steady winds out of the northwest of 22-28 mph and gusts into the 40s in some spots, the Weather Service has issued a wind chill advisory. At least it'll be bright out there... Temperatures remain in the teens tonight before starting to climb again.Meanwhile, here's the sun coming up...
Over the hills of NH as its light hits the snowy hillside (and the birds) in front of Carol Dempsey's in Norwich, in a 20-second video;
And over the beach on Cat Island in the Bahamas, where you've gotta figure it's warmer than here, from Peter Storrs.
And though it's nothing to do with daybreak, have you ever looked really closely at an old split-rail fence? There's art in there, as Annemieke McLane suggests in this photo from Strafford.
With Dartmouth spike, Hanover pulls back. Still North Books and Lou's have gone all-curbside again, reports the Valley News's Anna Merriman. “I don’t want to be the place where it spreads,” Still North owner Allie Levy tells her. And several restaurants have noted that students are "trying to push the envelope" by gathering there in larger groups than are allowed on campus. Which prompts Lou's owner Jarrett Berke to say he won't go back to indoor dining until he sees "students observing the quarantine requirements/suggestions that Dartmouth published.” Which, students tell Merriman, is starting to happen.Dartmouth extends indoor limits through at least Friday, says distance, mask-wearing, no-guest requirements non-negotiable. In an email to students late yesterday—just ahead of today's one-year anniversary of the first case confirmed in the Upper Valley—Provost Joe Helble noted that the rise in cases is "consistent with what other campuses have seen" when students stop wearing masks and gather for parties or other get-togethers. Anyone found not observing the guidelines, he said, "may therefore forfeit the privilege of on-campus enrollment for the remainder of the academic year."SPONSORED: Want to make a difference? The Special Needs Support Center is looking for a passionate, talented, honest, and responsible person to join our small team in co-creating a community where people with special needs, across the spectrum and throughout the life span, can live their best lives. Interested? Please send your resume and cover letter to [email protected]. Full job description at the maroon link. Sponsored by the Special Needs Support Center.Also looking: The Wilder Center in Wilder. As Susan Apel writes on her Artful blog, the shift a decade ago "from one-time church to cultural center brought new life to Wilder’s bend-in-the-road with concerts, lectures, corporate meetings and weddings." Now, Chet Clem of Lyme Properties is trying to find a "Head Honcho to help us re-imagine and re-open the Wilder Center as a multi-purpose music, arts, and event space... The hope is that it will become a place for live music, movies, speaker series, and similar events that add to the culture and conversation in the Upper Valley.""We forgot some of the trickier bits of songs and our pitch might have wobbled once or twice. But no one cared!" This past Sunday, members of the We The People theater troupe and friends gathered in their cars in a Hanover parking lot and, thanks to tech provided by the UV's Choral Arts Foundation, sang their hearts out. They did "Tomorrow" from Annie, and "I Whistle a Happy Tune" from The King and I, and "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha, the show they were about to mount when the pandemic hit. "Fortunately," director Perry Allison writes on her blog, "I was far enough away from the assembled crowd so that no one could see the tears in my eyes."Sadly, no dignitaries in top hats were there to greet him. But this chipmunk did pop out of his burrow, appear to inspect his shadow, and then disappear inside again, reports Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast. It's the first week in March, sort of between-times out in the woods: deer are running low on food and snow fleas are gathering in patches of thousands...and red squirrels are licking sap from maples (though maybe not today) and those light yellow stains next to some trees are tannins leaching out as winter winds down. And speaking of the occasional sign of spring (and yellow snow)... In Thetford, Ted Levin came across red fox tracks in the snow and "spots of bright yellow pee, a classified ad announcing presence and desire... Today, a fox. Tomorrow, perhaps, a raven or a peregrine back at the nearby Fairlee Cliffs or across the Connecticut River on Holt's Ledge. Then, the running of sap, the arrival of redwings, the departure of crossbills and redpolls. A hermit thrush at dawn. The magistery of northbound geese, whose call stirs the blood, theirs and mine. And before you know it... a crocus in the dooryard."“You see that disk? We made all the white stuff." The disk, as it happens, is on the new Mars rover, and the "white stuff" is a reflective optical coating made by New London, NH's Avian Technologies. The company, as David Brooks writes on his Granite Geek blog, is "unknown to most people because it doesn’t sell to consumers; it makes things which enable other companies to make things." Art Springsteen, who owns the company with his wife, Kathryn, will have plenty of chances to take pride in their work: The disk is part of a color-calibration apparatus used by the rover in many of its photos.Accusations of abuse at NH's youth detention center grow. They began as a lawsuit against the Youth Development Center in Manchester last January by three dozen adults who allege they were abused there as children. Now, reports the AP's Holly Ramer, the suit has expanded to include 230 people who say they were abused between 1963 and 2018. They allege both sexual and physical abuse—rapes, beatings, fights organized by counselors, and more—committed by some 150 staffers over the years. The AG's office launched a criminal investigation in 2019 that's ongoing.Bow coal plant will be the last one standing in New England. Merrimack Station, the target of protests by climate activists, will remain online through 2025, reports NHPR's Annie Ropeik. The other power plant currently using coal, Bridgeport Harbor Station in CT, shuts down in June. “This is our reliability market—it’s the commitment to be there to ensure there’s sufficient supply to meet consumer demand,” Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association, tells Ropeik. NH school choice advocates likely to get new ally in state education department. McKenzie Snow, a national school choice advocate who spent two and a half years at the US Dept of Education during the Trump administration, has been tapped to run the Division of Learner Support in NH. She's awaiting confirmation by the Executive Council Wednesday. During her time in DC, she promoted Education Savings Accounts, "which give taxpayer dollars to parents to spend on approved educational programs of their choice, including private school and home school," reports NHPR's Sarah Gibson."This is an incredible watershed moment that needs to be documented in a really meaningful and honest way.” That's former VT state Rep. Kiah Morris talking to WCAX's Christina Guessferd about the new YouTube interview show she's launched, "Color Lines in the Green Mountains." Morris, who gave up her seat after four years, following racist threats and harassment, plans to sit down one-on-one with Vermonters on how to address issues that people of color in the state face both in their personal lives and from institutions. The first episode, with former Rutland NAACP head Tabitha Moore, went up on Sunday.If remote work is here to stay, what impact will it have on small-town life? That's a question James Sullivan, planning director for Bennington County, is pondering. He tells VTDigger's Erin Petenko that it could have an effect like online shopping: People are no longer downtown to drop by a café for a break. Or, maybe, they'll be desperate to socialize and will head into town just for that. Brattleboro state Rep. Emilie Kornheiser wonders how remote workers will tap into community life. "Would...more people be volunteering because they’d be looking for ways to connect with other humans? I don’t know,” she says."Is there any experience as instantly rewarding as splitting a log with a single swing of an ax?" Last year, Outside mag's running columnist, Martin Fritz Huber, escaped the city with his family for the Finger Lakes for a bit; there he discovered a lot of rounds of timber just awaiting his ax-wielding skills. More even than splitting, though, he found his sense of order and purpose in stacking wood. A meditation—just as woodpiles are running down and, though it's only March, thoughts are already turning to the work, and zen, ahead.The real eggplant. Helga Stentzel is a Russian-born photographer living in London who clearly has a very fine sense of humor. She takes ordinary objects—grapes, say, or gummy bears, or a head of lettuce, or clothing—and turns them into other objects: a dog peering out of a trash can, a horse hanging on a clothesline, a bunch of grapes that are not grapes, a balloon dog that is grapes... She also does animations, well worth checking out. Oh, the eggplant? Scroll down, you'll figure it out.
So...
Dartmouth now reports 122 active cases among students (up 5) and 2 among faculty/staff. There are 136 students and 4 faculty/staff in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 120 students and 7 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 164 new cases yesterday for a cumulative total of 75,588. There were no new deaths, leaving the total at 1,170. Meanwhile, 90 people are hospitalized (up 3). The current active caseload stands at 2,363 (down 169). The state reports 237 active cases in Grafton County (up 12), 42 in Sullivan (down 2), and 163 in Merrimack (down 22). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Hanover has 104 active cases, Claremont has 15 (down 5), Enfield has 8 (down 1), Newport has 7 (no change), Lebanon has 6 (down 1), Sunapee has 6 (up 1). Haverhill, Piermont, Orford, Canaan, Grantham, Springfield, Plainfield, Cornish, Charlestown, Grafton, New London, and Wilmot have 1-4 each.
VT reported 85 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 15,284. It added 1 death to reach 205 all told. Meanwhile, 24 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 1). Windsor County gained 5 cases to stand at 1,053 for the pandemic, with 63 over the past 14 days. Orange County added 2 additional cases and stands at 512 cumulatively, with 36 cases over the past 14 days.
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This evening at 7, the Vermont Center for Ecostudies is back with its popular "Suds and Science" series, though this time it's online. VCE biologist Jason Hill will host an interactive event with Dr. Angela Laws, a conservation biologist specializing in endangered invertebrate species, to talk about insect conservation in a warming world. She works with pollinator restoration projects throughout North America on climate-related threats. Free, but you'll need to sign up.
Also at 7, Woodstock's Norman Williams Public Library hosts Woodstock-based journalist Julia Cooke as she launches her new book, Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am. Cooke, herself the daughter of a former Pan Am exec, delves into both the corporate trajectory and the individual stories of Pan Am in the '60s and '70s, when stewardesses were "required to have a college education, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer"—and adhere to a dress code that required girdles, white gloves, and slips (“grooming lessons took nearly as much time as first-aid training”).
And also at 7, Gibson's Bookstore in Concord hosts journalist and author Mark Kurlansky (Cod) talking about his new book, The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing with NH writer Steve Angers (who also owns N. Conway's North Country Angler). The book, says Kirkus, is "stuffed full of trivia, data, lore, and anecdote—a pleasure for any fan of trout fishing." Expect full-on fly and rod geekery.
Finally—guess when!–the Portsmouth Music Hall's "Writers on a New England Stage" hosts Nobel-winning economist and NYT columnist Paul Krugman. The livestream conversation will focus on his 2020 book, Arguing with Zombies, a collection of his columns. Tix are $23, which includes the book for pickup, or $35 if you want it shipped.
Dear March - Come in -How glad I am -I hoped for you before -Put down your Hat - You must have walked -How out of Breath you are - Dear March, how are you, and the Rest -Did you leave Nature well - Oh March, Come right upstairs with me -I have so much to tell -— From "Dear March - Come in," by Emily DickinsonSee you tomorrow.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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