Daybreak Tuesday 4/14/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Sunny but cooler. That was some wind last night, eh? There'll be some left over today, though it won't be as gusty and ought to die down by later in the day. And then, of course, there's the cold front that brought us the winds, which will leave temps at best in the low 50s today. We'll see some more clouds tonight and temps will dip below freezing, but otherwise things ought to be calm.

So, let's see...

"The same approaches we use for political polling can be used to answer how widespread and how deadly the coronavirus is."

That's Dartmouth math prof Dan Rockmore and political scientist Michael Herron in an article on

The Conversation

, a site that brings academic thought to a wider audience. Rockmore and Herron argue that, given the US's inability to test everyone, the way to learn how extensive and deadly Covid-19 really is, is to test randomly. If it's done right, they argue, with a large enough sample that its demographics mirror the country's, "the infection and case fatality rates...should be very close to the actual rates in the whole U.S. population."

Valley News asks for direct reader donations. Following the lead of its sister paper, the Concord Monitor, the Valley News yesterday announced that it's turning to readers for direct support. With advertising revenues at "a near standstill," it's set up a crowdsourced fundraiser through Vital Communities and hopes to raise $50,000 over the next month. "We are counting on readers who depend on our work and believe in professional local journalism," the paper writes on its fundraising page.Dartmouth dean tells students to shape up. Dean of the College Kathryn Lively yesterday sent an email to undergrads saying a "relative few" have held parties in frats, congregated in groups, and "berated and yelled at" college employees. She warned that the college has the right both to expel students and derecognize their organizations. "In the context of the pandemic and public health crisis, you should expect that both individual and organizational disciplinary consequences will be swift and severe as circumstances warrant,” she wrote. Who knew the wicker moose at DHMC was named Thidwick? Well, if you work there, you probably did. Anyway, he was wearing a face mask yesterday."Hope our staff returns." Bud Marsh, of Marsh Brothers Deli in Lebanon was talking to blogger Paul Hyson about how things are going there. The small deli on School Street has laid off most of its staff, shortened its hours, and is closed more days a week now. "We are paying the bills but not profiting," Marsh says. It's also started a "crock pot frenzy," making meals like chili and chicken pot pie, then filling patrons' crock pots.Dartmouth labs join Covid-19 research efforts. The college's Charlotte Albright takes a look at three of the efforts tackling different facets of the challenges the virus presents. One, led by husband-and-wife researchers David Leib and Audra Charron at Geisel, is aimed at creating a new, improved test and getting it past regulatory hurdles. A team at DHMC worked with the NH state lab to develop the hospital's own, automated (and much faster) test, allowing it to reduce the state's backlog. And a team at Thayer is working with another at U of Texas-Austin to trying to understand antibody responses to COVID-19 and identify antibodies with therapeutic potential.Shut out of seeds from the big guys? You can buy local. Yesterday's item about High Mowing Seeds brought a pointer to Hartland's All Solstice Seeds, which also produces organic seeds. "All are regionally adapted, open-pollinated—which means you can save your own seeds—and are often rare or endangered varieties," writes Sylvia Davatz, who started Solstice back in 2009 and a few years ago passed it on to Brian Stroffolino. "Brian has also received a large number of seed orders recently," she writes, "but is still able to fill them." Meanwhile, there's an unexpected source for produce, meat, and dairy. Ordinarily, Upper Valley Produce in Wilder sells wholesale, to restaurants and grocery stores. But they've now started up curbside pickup for individuals and families. You can call or email them your order ($35 minimum), and it'll be packed and waiting for you at your scheduled pickup time. (Thanks, AC)Co-op requiring employees to wear masks starting tomorrow; chains sourcing masks. Shaw’s, Hannaford, and Price Chopper tell VTDigger's Ellie French they've been trying to obtain masks for employees for weeks, and though they've encouraged them to wear their own, only now are their orders "coming to fruition." Grocery store employees "have just as much risk going to work every day is front line health care workers,” says the head of the VT grocers association. “Stores are doing everything they’re able to — they’re just nonexistent right now.”"As long as people are allowed to leave their houses to buy food, your decision to disallow farmers’ markets is ridiculous and incredibly hurtful." Strafford Organic Creamery's Amy Huyffer sent off an angry open letter to VT agriculture secretary Anson Tebbetts, on his decision to tell the state's farmers markets to remain closed. "There is...a small bright side in the way people are tuning into and shoring up their local food systems," she writes. "Make laws with fines if you have to, use idle sports fields to spread people out, but don’t get in the way of people buying food from Vermont farms.""Maybe people are discovering new habits and realizing that local farmers are here for them. We’ve been here all along, but no one was paying attention.” That's New Hampshire farmer Carol Soule, owner of Miles Smith Farm in Loudon. Monitor columnist Ray Duckler writes that small farms selling vegetables, meat, and eggs have been thriving during the crisis, as shoppers embrace locally produced food. Farmers are crossing their fingers it lasts. "They hope it’s the start of something different," Duckler writes. "A new way to shop. Why change once the enemy has been beaten?""Success in an art museum is typically measured by either audience or great reviews. And we don’t have access to either."  That's John Stomberg, director of Dartmouth's Hood Museum, explaining its efforts to engage audiences beyond tours of the collection. Webinars, conversations, art paired with curated playlists, its "Recreate a Work of Art" program — all try to look at art in the new ways that online-only interaction allows. "I might not be able to measure it, but deep meaningful experiences for one person at a time is where it’s at," Stomberg tells The Dartmouth's Veronica Wihham.NH requirements put stumbling blocks in way of some newly unemployed. The problem, writes the Monitor's Ethan DeWitt, is that the system requires a work history and minimum earning level for each of the quarters in 2019, and some people -- because of illness or some other unforeseen event that kept them from working for a day or two — can't meet it. The federal stimulus funds are meant to address some of those problems, but NH hasn't yet rolled the new protocols into its IT system, so applicants who ought to qualify are being rejected. The best they can do, the state says, is keep applying until they're accepted."Tourist season is going to be incredibly different and it's going to be rough." In a wide-ranging interview yesterday, NH Gov. Chris Sununu spoke with NHPR's Rick Ganley about where things stand in the state and what the next few months might look like. They covered everything from testing to nursing homes to the state's health infrastructure to the stay-home order — "We're still hitting 30, 40, 50, cases a day... and we'll probably be bouncing around with these types of numbers for quite some time" — to reopening for tourism. "My guess is probably not this summer," Sununu says, because states like MA, where tourists would come from, are "still going to be dealing with very serious issues down there."Meanwhile, NH officials' argument over who controls federal aid for the state heads to court. Last week, as you'll remember, Sununu announced he was creating the Governor’s Office for Emergency Relief and Recovery to determine how the state will spend more than $1.2 billion coming to it from the feds. Leaders in the Democratic-controlled legislature argue that under the state constitution, only the legislature has the power to make appropriations. They've filed suit in Hillsborough County Superior Court.Vermont may be seeing cases plateau. In a press conference yesterday, state health commissioner Mark Levine noted that the number of new cases appears to be leveling off. "We'll see if that is a sustained phenomenon, or just a trend over several days," he said. Meanwhile, Gov. Phil Scott warned against complacency. "We will continue to watch the trend, and our hospital capacity," he said, and suggested he might mandate face coverings later this week. Asked how he'd respond to a call from President Trump to reopen earlier than he feels it's safe, Scott said he'd rely on health experts, not the White House.Click for the bear cubs, stay for the news. With so many more people staying inside, says Bedford, NH animal control officer Steven Paul, animals are exploring more widely than usual. That includes mother bears with their cubs — earlier this week, Paul got the pic of three of them up a tree that tops this Union Leader story. “Obviously, with less people around, critters feel more safe,” says state bear biologist Andrew Timmins. He suggests not just removing your birdfeeders, but if you keep chickens or goats, installing electric fencing to protect them.

Uh-oh. It's here. The emerald ash borer has been documented in Plainfield, the VN's Tim Camerato reports. And there are infestations in Croydon and New London as well. “I think if you looked really hard in Cornish, you’d find it in Cornish. You look really hard in Enfield, I bet you’d find it in Enfield,” says Sullivan County Forester Dode Gladders. Towns have been expecting it, adds Hartford tree warden Brad Goedkoop. “It’s time to think about protecting the trees that we want to protect and making a move on that.”Tractor-trailer rear-ends car on I-91 in Hartford. The accident happened during yesterday morning's downpour around 11, at the Mile 72 marker. There were no injuries, but the Nissan Altima had extensive rear-end damage and had to be towed away.That was a heck of a sunset they had up on Grand Isle, VT yesterday, as the skies cleared up there.  

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