Daybreak Tuesday 3/31/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Ssshhh, don't say this too loudly, but we're due some sun today. Yesterday's low is slowly moving off-coast, and clouds will be knocking off for the day through the morning. They'll be moving back in eventually, but not until tomorrow, so we'll just be happy with whatever we can get. Winds from the north this afternoon, highs in the mid-to-upper 40s, down into the 20s tonight. Let's just dive right in, shall we?

Here's why the White House backed off its mid-April return to normal...  A team at the U of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics & Evaluation built a state-by-state projection model for deaths, hospital beds and ventilators needed, along with projected peaks. They assume social-distancing guidelines are in effect until the end of May. They'll be updating it, which is good, because their numbers for NH are already low. Still, as a relative gauge, NH and VT look to be in okay shape. ME, definitely not. And the US as a whole? You don't need me to tell you. (Thanks, BB!)And heck, while we're geeking out... You've probably never heard of Unacast. It's one of those data companies you mistrust, collecting and analyzing cellphone location data to sell to various industries. But it's now up with a "Social Distancing Scoreboard" that uses the distance our cellphones travel to create a rough measure of whether we're staying put. VT gets an A, with a 43 percent drop in average distance travelled; NH, at 37 percent, draws a B (as do Windsor, Orange, Grafton, and Sullivan counties). Note: It doesn't measure whether people are staying six feet apart. (Thanks, JS!)Covered Bridges Half Marathon postponed a year. "It is with heavy hearts," race co-chairs Mike Silverman and Nancy Nutile-McMenemy started their email to runners and volunteers yesterday, announcing the race will next be held on June 6, 2021. If you're registered for this year, they'll transfer your registration. "We’ll all just take a pause, be with our families, help out in our communities any way we can, and pick up in June 2021 for our 29th race," Silverman and Nutile-McMenemy said.Hartford pool project delay on SB agenda tonight. Meeting remotely, the Hartford Selectboard is set to consider whether to push back reconstruction of the Sherman Manning Pool by a year. Voters in March approved the project, which was to begin construction in June of 2021. The move being considered tonight would bar town staff from pushing plans forward until next March, which would shift the start of construction to 2022 and the pool's opening to 2023.DHMC and other hospitals struggling financially. In a recent internal email to staff, President and CEO Joanne Conroy noted that postponing routine and elective procedures has hit the hospital's bottom line, the Union Leader reports. “(It) has become clear that we will not be able to achieve our $65.9 million (3.3%) budgeted operating margin,” she wrote, and said the hospital is weighing whether to postpone construction of its new patient tower. Hospital spokesperson Audra Burns would not comment: “Joanne’s Journal is an internal communications document that is not intended for public distribution,” she told the Union Leader in an email. "We miss the positive energy that, in a more perfect world, you would be bringing to campus today." That was Dartmouth Pres. Phil Hanlon in an email to seniors yesterday, the first day of the spring term. In a bittersweet rumination on what he called "this lousy hand we've all been dealt," he told them that this is their moment. "I encourage you to put all you've learned—and will learn this term—to work to help your friends, your families, and your communities through this crisis and to show your younger classmates what leadership, compassion and humility are all about," he wrote. What to read now? VPR's Vermont Edition today will be talking to the Yankee Bookshop's Kari Meutsch, along with librarians from Hyde Park and Brattleboro, to get their recommendations. Airs at 1 and again at 8. "Thank you! Hugs later." That was the sign on Joan Lake's front porch in Grafton, VT Sunday, as residents passed by in a long, festive parade honoring her 90th birthday. Fire trucks festooned with balloons, cars decorated with lights, noisemakers, a kazoo version of "Happy Birthday"... and Lake greeting everyone from a distance, wearing a tiara and waving a wand with a star and ribbons. She felt bashful about the attention, VPR reports, “but one of my friends said ‘Turn it around, because everybody is thinking about the virus. And this is giving them something else to think about,’ so that made me feel better.”SPONSORED: Want to ensure a dependable supply of fresh vegetables this season? Your local CSA farm is here for you. Sign up for a share from Root 5 Farm that you can customize to your preferences. Small, medium, and large boxes are available starting at $20/week. It’s easy to maintain a healthy diet when you organize your meals around a weekly box of local organic produce. 11 convenient pick up locations around the Upper Valley. Visit www.root5farm.com to watch a video and learn more.Mt. Washington Avalanche Center closes early. Yesterday, in fact. Why? They didn't want to encourage backcountry activity by continuing to put out their daily avalanche forecast. “At this time, the need to reduce exposure of workers and forest visitors to the novel coronavirus outweighs the value of providing avalanche safety information to backcountry travelers,” the center said. Also, part of Tuckerman's is now closed, but that happens every spring.So Dean Kamen calls up Fred Smith, FedEx's CEO, and says, “Fred, I need these packages delivered really fast.” The packages he's talking about? Medical masks, gowns, and other supplies from China. Kamen, the Segway inventor who runs DEKA Research and Development in Manchester, is basically building his own supply chain for New Hampshire, the Union Leader reports. DEKA's also working on sterile water for IV solutions, a new material for medical masks, and a project in clinical trials to allow dialysis at home.There's always a silver lining... At his press conference yesterday, Gov. Chris Sununu said that he's scrapped the state's educational assessment tests, explaining that parents and teachers already have enough to cope with and don’t need “onerous standardized tests from Washington.” He also extended business filing deadlines to 6/15. In his portion, state epidemiologist Benjamin Chan gave props to DHMC for helping the state reduce its coronavirus testing backlog.Scott asks 14-day quarantine for out-of-state travelers. "If you don’t need to come to Vermont, please don’t,” he said at a press conference yesterday. The order applies specifically to people coming from hotspots like NYC, Florida, and Louisiana, and applies to Vermonters who are returning from those places as well. Scott's order also directs that hotels, motels, B&Bs, Airbnbs, and private camping facilities and RV parks must close except for people like visiting nurses, doctors, and the like. The Springfield Holiday Inn Express was one of 44 establishments found out of compliance over the weekend.Here's what that looks like... Down in Pownal, in the southwestern corner of the state. VTDigger lays off staff, Free Press to face furloughs. In a sign that the news industry's struggles are extending beyond traditional ad-supported organizations, Digger, a nonprofit, has cut three staff members, Seven Days reports: a part-time newsroom employee and two members of the business staff. They're the first layoffs in its 10-year-history; until the crisis, the organization had been growing steadily. In addition, Gannett, the chain that owns the Burlington Free Press, announced yesterday that staff at all its papers will be furloughed one week a month through June.For many VT workers, the new federal unemployment package works. That's the conclusion of the Public Assets Institute, the Montpelier fiscal think tank. With federal benefits boosting those from the state, they write, "a Vermont full-time minimum wage worker would receive just over $850 a week; a worker earning the average weekly wage would get a little less than $1,100 in state and federal benefits. To meet the basic needs of a Vermont family of four, two adults each need to earn $815 to $900 a week, according to the Joint Fiscal Office."Shaw's worker in Middlebury tests positive. That marks the sixth location at which the grocery store chain has identified cases in New England. Two others are up the river, in Woodsville and Littleton. Last week, the Hannaford in Barre "closed for deep cleaning after that company learned an associate 'may have' tested positive for the virus," Seven Days reports.Are you a small business owner or sole proprietor trying to figure out the just-passed federal relief act? The staff of Maryland US Sen. Ben Cardin, who's the ranking member on the Senate's small-business committee, has put out a guide to navigating the act. Loans, grants, counseling... they cover it all. 

Tomie DePaola died at DHMC yesterday. The much-loved author and illustrator, who was a yearly presence at the Norwich Bookstore and other spots in recent years, had been injured in a fall last week. AP reports he died of complications from surgery. Strega Nona, his best-known character, "originated as a doodle at a dull faculty meeting at Colby Sawyer," where DePaola was in the theater department. Hanover High principal to step down. Ending an eight-year run at the high school, Justin Campbell has announced he's headed to Middlebury Union HS starting in the fall, for both professional and family reasons. Supt. Jay Badams says the district will post the opening soon, but may rely on an interim principal for a while. “It’s an attractive position. The district is strong,” he tells the VN. “I would think there would be a high degree of interest.”

Quick note: The Packard Hill Covered Bridge on Riverside Drive in Lebanon will be closed for three months starting tomorrow. That's the bridge over the Mascoma just before Riverside tees into Hardy Hill and Bank Street Extension. The city says use Route 4 East or Exit 18 instead. (Or, you know, the Rail Trail goes right by, too...)The Norwich SB sets the record straight. SB chair Claudette Brochu emails with some corrections to yesterday's Valley News story about the new contract with Town Manager Herb Durfee. He does not, as the VN story reported, get an additional week of vacation. And his small pay raise is due to "a standard Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase provided to all employees." More at the link.High levels of PCBs found in Squam fish, NH limits consumption. The state Department of Environmental Services yesterday said that the PCB concentrations it's found in smallmouth bass and yellow perch from the lake are high enough to make exposure risky. and their consumption by people over age 7 should be limited to once every four months for bass and once a month for perch. Little children and pregnant women should have less. Or really, reading this, wouldn't you think, like, none?Did you know that Hill Farmstead beers are named after Hills who grew up on the farmstead? Owner Shaun Hill's ancestors came to Greensboro, VT, in the 1780s, and he decided to name his first beer, Edward, after his grandfather, “who was the last person farming here on this land...Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a biography written about them. There’s just this slight flame that flickers for a while and then sort of burns out and they’re forgotten. A little bit of starting the brewery here and naming these beers after Edward and his 13 siblings is, in a way, keeping those ghosts alive." The VT Historical Society and MyChamplainValley.com go deep.

News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, please contribute:

Staying Sane

Helping Out

Reading Deeper

The trees that have it in their pent-up budsTo darken nature and be summer woods---Let them think twice before they use their powersTo blot out and drink up and sweep awayThese flowery waters and these watery flowersFrom snow that melted only yesterday.

-- From "Spring Pools" by Robert Frost.

(Thanks, ML!)

See you tomorrow.

Daybreak is written and published by Rob Gurwitt                     Banner by Tom HaushalterAbout Rob                                                                                   About Tom

And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! You can subscribe at: 

Thank you!