GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Varying sunniness, warmer. There's high pressure building in, and though we start out in the 30s today, we'll be up into the low or mid 60s by early afternoon. More clouds than sun to start out this morning, but we should get good sunshine through the middle part of the day, especially in the northern parts of the region. Light winds from the north, down into the low 40s tonight.The waters beckon. A triptych from around the region the last few days, as lakes and ponds open up and get reflective again... (Though remember: That water's still really cold!)
In Weathersfield, VT, Nancy Nutile-McMenemy was out on Beaver Pond, which is a small wetland that in early spring is watery enough to kayak on. "Lots of birds—Canada Geese, ducks, song birds," she writes. That's Ascutney in the background.
On an early-morning ride, Jay Davis was out along Goose Pond in Canaan.That's Moose Mountain off in the back there.
And John Pietkiewicz had been driving far and wide looking for good views to photograph when he got this moment on Lake Fairlee—just a couple of miles from home. "Sometimes," he writes, "after traveling around the countryside for hours...I capture something within several miles of home and/or right in my own backyard."
Norwich board pressed to "rethink" policing in town. As the selectboard prepares to meet tomorrow night, reports Chris Katucki on his Norwich Observer blog, a group of residents are asking that it delay replacing Jen Frank, who recently took over as chief in Windsor. This runs counter to Town Manager Herb Durfee's recommendation that a delay "is not in the best interests of the Town." But it would offer a chance to gauge whether the town needs a force of its current size, several residents write. The letters are in this week's selectboard packet, starting at p. 4.New NH-side vaccination clinics arriving. In the Valley News, Nora Doyle-Burr reports that Dartmouth is working with the state to prep for vaccinating students on campus or "in the nearby area" after out-of-staters become eligible to sign up next Monday. Meanwhile, DHMC began running indoor vaccination clinics on Saturday, and this week is opening up drive-through clinics, which you can choose by opting for "Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center — Colburn Hill Drive Thru" on the state's vaccine signup site. SPONSORED: Learn why every adult should have a Basic Will and how to create one for less than $40. Register for this free webinar on Thursday, April 22 at noon to learn everything you need to know about why you should have a Basic Will and what information you'll need to create one. Hosted by Everything in Order, the Upper Valley company that helps people create essential legal documents easily and inexpensively—wherever you live in the US. Register now at the maroon link. Space is limited. Sponsored by Everything in Order.No reverse-osmosis here! Back in the Norwich woods, there's a sugar shack with the fetching name Canada's Worst Nightmare on a rough-hewn sign over the door. It's where Dan Goulet, Eamonn Donovan, Graham Webster, and Ryan Johnson spend their maple season, and for the past year and a half Norwich blogger Demo Sofronas has been writing about (and photographing) what they're up to. His first posts were in 2019. Before this past season ended, he revisited them for a photo essay on how the back-to-basics operation—buckets, wood-fired evaporator, wood split by hand—is faring. Loons are back. And among them, writes Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast for this second week in April, is a loon that was rescued in 2013 on Lake Fairlee after swallowing a fishing line; he was banded at the time and has been coming back to these waters every year since. He's the lead photo on "This Week in the Woods," which marks its one-year anniversary this week. Also out there right now: elms are blooming, ephemeral wildflowers are showing their delicate petals, and winter dark fireflies—"lanternless members of the firefly clan," Elise writes—are making their way up the grooves in tree bark.Whitewater park coming to Upper Valley's doorstep. Mill City Park, billed as New England's first whitewater park, is an economic development bid by Franklin, NH to take advantage of the Winnipesaukee River, which flows through downtown. There'll be kayaking, boogie boarding, whitewater rafting, and surfing on perpetual waves being built into the river by the nonprofit behind the effort. Its hope is that for every two people on the water, more will come to watch, which will spill over to the struggling town's restaurants and businesses. Construction starts this summer, writes Kristi Palma on Boston.com.Dunkin', Pepsi, one bottle of hand sanitizer... and lots of Bud Lite. Arnie Alpert lives in Canterbury, NH, and this year's roadside litter pickup offered him a chance to take an inventory. Writing in InDepthNH, he tallies the proceeds from a two-hour jaunt: 153 cans, 87 plastic bottles, and 23 glass bottles—with Bud Lite making up a fifth of the cans and over half the bottles. But there were also plenty of coffee and drink cups (Dunkin' and McDonald's), and for roadside trash, he writes, "Pepsi appears to be kicking Coke’s corporate butt."NH's good vaccine news mixes with not-good numbers. More than half its adults have had at least one vaccine shot, David Brooks writes in the Monitor. "So why aren’t my friends and I happier?" Because the case numbers are dire—they look a lot like the start of last fall's surge, and the test positivity rate is getting close to the 5 percent mark that says things are getting out of control. It's unclear, he writes, what's going on: variants, possibly, or perhaps "the fact that certain groups have been ignored—minority groups, not-born-here college students, prisoners—which helps the virus keep replicating."UNH graduation plans test limits of large-gathering safety. Unlike Dartmouth, Keene State, and Plymouth State, which are limiting graduation to students, the state's flagship university is planning a four-day event with two guests per graduate—which will translate into thousands of people attending, writes the Monitor's Teddy Rosenbluth. It's hoping that requiring a negative recent Covid test or proof of full vaccination—plus masks and distancing—will keep people safe, though plans may change if virus numbers do.
Sixteen times in a month. That's how many times CarrieRae Shamel, a medical social worker for BAYADA Hospice, climbed Camel's Hump last summer in a bid to keep herself mentally and physically healthy as the pandemic blew through the eldercare facilities where she was working. VPR's Nina Keck talks to Shamel and a colleague, Heather McAllister, about the trauma of watching so many people sicken and die all at once. "The PTSD from COVID, you’re going to see for years and years to come,” McAllister tells her.
“We’re seeing the tidal wave coming, and we have an unvaccinated workforce.” Jed Davis of the Farmhouse Group, which operates five restaurants in the Burlington area, is part of a group of restaurant owners that has been pushing Vermont to start vaccinating restaurant workers a bit ahead of when the state opens vaccine signup to everyone over 16 next Monday. Workers have been hit especially hard by the virus, reports VTDigger's Mike Dougherty, and restaurants have struggled as single cases shut them down for up to 10 days. “We’re just completely frustrated" by the state, says one owner. Make Way for Cubs. Sarah Leland was driving along Merrymeeting Road in Merrimack, NH this weekend when she noticed a mom bear and cubs off to the side. The mother started to cross the road, so Leland stopped her car to block traffic and caught this video, which she sent in to WMUR. What a bit of music can do. Originally, this was just footage of a crow sashaying along a fence-top. Then radio producer Eleanor Kagan added Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams Come True" as a soundtrack, and suddenly... it's just got that little extra something. (Note: It'll load with sound off.)
Some numbers...
Dartmouth reports 10 active cases among students (down 4 from last week) and 3 among faculty/staff (down 2). There are 21 students and 7 faculty/staff in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 11 students and 10 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 380 new cases yesterday for a cumulative total of 89,229 (the 7-day daily average of cases has now increased 13 percent over the week before). Deaths remain at 1,257, and 118 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 11). The current active caseload stands at 3,384 (up 151). The state reports 204 active cases in Grafton County (up 7), 54 in Sullivan (up 7), and 297 in Merrimack (up 8). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Haverhill has 23 active cases (up 2), Newport has 20 (up 4), Lebanon has 16 (down 2), Hanover has 15 (up 1), Claremont has 12 (up 2), New London has 7 (down 1), Enfield has 6 (no change), Grantham has 6 (no change), Sunapee has 6 (up 1), and Piermont, Orford, Wentworth, Rumney, Canaan, Orange, Cornish, Croydon, Wilmot, Charlestown, and Newbury have 1-4 each.
VT reported 91 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 21,291. There were 2 new deaths, which now number 233, while 29 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 5). Windsor County gained 1 new case and stands at 1,247 for the pandemic, with 74 over the past 14 days, while Orange County added 7 new cases and is at 637 cumulatively, with 92 cases in the past 14 days.
News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
At 7 this evening, the Norwich Bookstore hosts investigative reporter, former military intelligence analyst, and defense-establishment expert William Arkin, talking with ProPublica reporter and Pulitzer winner James Bandler about Arkin's new book, The Generals Have No Clothes: The Untold Story of Our Endless Wars. In it, Arkin looks at how military and civilian leaders have created and nurtured a "perpetual war machine" in the decades since 9/11 and its effect not just on US policy, but our daily lives. An evening with two deeply knowledgeable journalists who remain at the top of their game. Registration email at the link.
Turns out, there's a science to mud season, and at 7 this evening the See Science Center in Manchester explores it. Two research scientists at UNH's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, Alix Contosta and Danielle Grogan, will discuss how NH is getting muddier as the "vernal window" lengthens, and how the shift from winter to summer affects the ecosystem in general.
Also at 7, Audubon Vermont presents "Rollback Recovery: the Next Generation of Environmental Protections," a Zoom webinar hosted by two of its environmental policy research interns, Sofia Alston and Caroline Crowell. It's one of a series of conversations among young environmental activists, this one focused on the role that state and local governments are playing as they try to address the rollback of federal environmental and climate regulations in recent years.
At 8 pm, the Hop hosts longtime percussionist, composer, activist and educator Warren Smith in a "Coastin' Creative" music conversation with Coast Jazz Orchestra director Taylor Ho Bynum. The list of greats Smith hasn't played with is probably shorter than the list of those he has: Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Roberta Flack, and Miles Davis, among others. He is, the Hop writes, "a fountain of living history." Free, open to the public, no tix needed.
Running through Thursday, Randolph Union HS is streaming its audio production of Titanic: The Musical. Putting the show together was an epic in itself, involving not just students and faculty, but alumni from around the country and Mat Eisenstein, Titanic’s original Broadway pianist, "who played and recorded the tracks in his living room for them," the VN's Liz Sauchelli writes in a story about how it all came together. Tix are $9.
Today's your last chance to order dinner and/or show tickets as part of the Norwich Women's Club's spring gala. The event itself is Sunday, when you can tune into a viewing of Northern Stage's The Lodger, with a to-go dinner from the Norwich Inn (including a main course from them, drinks, and My Brigadeiro dessert).
Finally, anytime this week you can check out what's on at CATV, including a show featuring Abenaki writer and language teacher Jesse Bowman Bruchac talking with Middlebury linguist Conor McDonough Quinn; a Bennington show on diversity and inclusion with economist Lopamudra Banerjee; and a lecture on amphibian migration.
Come out into the sun and bathe your eyesIn undiluted light. On the old brassOf winter-tarnished grass,Under these few bronze leaves of oakSuspended, and a blue ghost of chimney smoke.Sit and grow wiseAnd empty as a simpleton.
Soon the small snake will slip her skinAnd the gray moth in an old ritualUnseal her silk cocoon.Come shed, shed now, your winter-varnished shellIn the deep diathermy of high noon.The sun, the sun, come out into the sun,Into the sun, come out, come in.—From "Come Out Into the Sun," by Robert Francis
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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