GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
It's all wet. Well, there's this nor'easter out there, but its main snow impact is off to our west, especially in NY State. We'll start with a mix of rain and snow (with no accumulation forecast, at least at lower elevations), then as things warm up see all rain through the morning and into the afternoon. Temps will get into the mid-40s and a dry slot will work its way in late in the day and temps will get into the mid-40s as things gradually clear out. Mid-30s tonight.Head swivel. Betsy Vereckey was headed home from Dan & Whit's, avocado safely stowed away, when a pair of dark eyes off in the woods caught her attention. "You know when you have a feeling you’re going to see something?" she writes. She realized it was a barred owl and turned around to catch it on video. "Thank God no one else was behind me on Union Village."Lebanon closes Court Street until November. It's been a habit the past couple of years once the weather warms: The street between Three Tomatoes and Mascoma Bank has been shut to cars to boost outdoor dining. This time around, the city's working on lighting and sidewalks, then planters and the tent will go in.Residential treatment center for moms in recovery (and their kids) coming to APD. The hospital and Families Flourish Northeast, a nonprofit begun in 2020 by a team of psychiatrists, behavioral health providers, women’s health clinicians, and Upper Valley community members, have signed an agreement to provide "trauma-informed residential substance use disorder treatment for pregnant and parenting women in a warm, safe, and supportive community," as an APD press release puts it. It will be located in The Homestead, Alice Peck Day's original "cottage hospital" on Mascoma St.Dartmouth keeps relaxed testing, masking policies in place despite case rise. We won't know the most recent Covid numbers until later today (though NH reports that Hanover tops the state), but as cases grow on campus, writes Carly Retterer in The Dartmouth, the college has no plans to stiffen current voluntary testing and masking policies. Faculty may request but not require masks; Retterer talks to one who "wouldn't hesitate" to ask if cases climb. Says a student, "being able to socialize at a level deeper than we ever have...so far in our college careers is something that I’ve really appreciated.”SPONSORED: Help your neighbors make ends meet. As reported in yesterday's Valley News, the number of people visiting food shelves has drastically increased as families struggle with the burden of high food and fuel prices. You can help ease this burden and ensure that everyone in the Upper Valley has enough to eat by making a gift to Willing Hands this spring. So far, 800 community members have contributed this year. Our goal is to reach 1,000. Will you join us? Sponsored by Willing Hands.“The car, literally 5 to 10 seconds after I got him out, the car went all up in flames." Teen brothers Vincent and Jake Heck of Hillsboro, NH, were on their way to Maryland with their family when they saw a pickup swerve off Route 9 in Nelson and hit a large rock. Before their car had even stopped, Vincent tells WCAX's Scott Cook, he had hopped out. He got the truck's driver out and he and Jake carried him away from the flames and gave him CPR until medics arrived. “I consider my brother a hero,” Jake Heck says. “I did what I could do."Covid-testing frontier comes to NH. You may have read the other day that the FDA has given emergency approval for a system that can use saliva to test quickly for Covid outside the lab—like, in schools or at airports. It was developed by MicroGEM, a British firm with a branch in Virginia—and they plan to make the laser-printer-sized machines in Hudson, NH, reports David Brooks in the Monitor. Right now, 24 people work at a facility acquired by MicroGEM last year; the company hopes to add 80 more.Plant-based dairy substitute comes to NH. Peterborough, to be precise, where Nuttin' Ordinary makes a cheese spread out of cashews. David Brooks took a tour recently because "it’s a local example of a new industry that has been super-charged by concerns about climate change: Plant-based replacements for meat and dairy products." The company's raised about $800K locally, and is doing $2.2 million in sales, he writes—but argues that weighing the climate cost of shipping in cashews against cheese made by a local dairy "is a greenhouse-gas calculation that stumps even experts.""Is the world ready for wingless hovercraft levitating over cities and hotrodding through congested air corridors?" The NYT has noticed Burlington's Beta Technologies, the fast-growing startup building battery-powered aircraft and aiming to reshape the air (and ground) cargo-delivery industry. Ben Ryder Howe profiles the company, its rapid growth, its ambitions...and its VT vibe. Its plans include sprinkling the country with "solar-powered charging stations made out of shipping containers, some equipped with showers, bunks and kitchenettes. (The cabinetry is Vermont maple.)""They kinda laughed about we were backwards, because we were doing things the way former generations had done them." But in a dicey economy, being a dairy farmer who's been steeped in farming all his life, knows how to fix or jury-rig anything, and prefers bartering services to cash has its advantages. On Rumble Strip, Erica Heilman spends time with Forrest Foster, a Hardwick VT "independent dairyman" who, she says, is "always practical and always generous, and these things are always the same thing."Oops. Here's guessing this won't be appearing in any Ford truck ads soon... A few weeks ago, an F-150 belonging to a group called the Transglobal Car Expedition sank through the arctic ice northwest of Taloyoak, in Nunavut. Not surprisingly, locals are steamed. "We live off the land. We’re not farmers. We’re hunters and gatherers, and we need our game to be clean,” one told the CBC. They're worried about fuel or other liquids leaking—and the vehicle's been located about 8 meters down, "in the heart of the aquatic life zone," writes Jilli Cluff on Explorer's Web, where shifting ice may rupture the truck.
And the numbers...
Dartmouth has begun updating its numbers only on Tuesdays, so they'll be in this spot tomorrow.
NH cases continue to rise, with a 7-day average now of 266 new cases per day, versus 236 on Thursday. The state reported 294 new cases Friday, 313 Saturday, 293 Sunday, and 143 yesterday, bringing it to 306,193 in all. There was 1 new death reported during that time; the total stands at 2,465. Under the state's rubric of reporting only people actively being treated for Covid in hospitals, it reports 18 hospitalizations (+9 since Thursday). The state reports 288 cases in Grafton County (+13 since Thursday), 57 in Sullivan (+2), and 157 (+13) in Merrimack. In town-by-town numbers, it says Hanover has 196 (-1, still the most of any town or city in the state); Lebanon 32 (+9); Plainfield 25 (-2); Claremont 13 (+2); Enfield 12 (+2); New London 8 (-3); Canaan 6 (+at least 2); Charlestown 6 (+at least 2); Newport 5 (+at least 1); and Haverhill, Piermont, Orford, Lyme, Rumney, Grafton, Grantham, Wilmot, Sunapee, Cornish, and Newbury have 1-4 each. Warren and Springfield are off the list.
VT's case numbers continue to grow, too. The state reported 277 cases Friday, 313 Saturday, 261 Sunday, and 150 yesterday (these are PCR test numbers, and do not include self-reported numbers from Vermonters taking at-home rapid tests), bringing it to 120,352 total and up to a 7-day daily average of 257 compared to 224 Thursday. There were no deaths during that time; they remain at 623 all told. Hospitalizations have also risen: As of yesterday, 44 people with confirmed cases were hospitalized (+9), with 3 in the ICU (-4). Windsor County has seen 72 cases since Thursday and 176 over the past two weeks, for 8,928 overall, while Orange County gained 34 cases on the state's tally: It's at 4,930, with 77 in the past two weeks.
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Today at 12:15, Dartmouth's Irving Institute hosts former CIA director and MIT professor emeritus John Deutch for a talk, "50 Years of Energy Policy: Lessons for the Future." He'll be addressing how the past nine presidential administrations have approached energy issues and policy, and lay out a proposal for how most effectively to meet the challenge of climate change. It will be both online and in Room 80 of the new Irving Institute.
And today at 4 pm, Dartmouth's Dept. of English and Creative Writing and the 7th grade at Crossroads Academy present "Earth is the right place for love": A Robert Frost Celebration, in person at Sanborn Library. You're welcome to bring a Frost poem to recite, or just to show up and listen.
This evening at 6, VTDigger founder Anne Galloway is the featured speaker for the third in InDepthNH's series of online talks about the future of local news. She'll be talking about how Digger grew from a tiny nonprofit startup in 2009 to become a statewide news organization with a staff of 32 (including 23 in its newsroom). No cost, but you'll need to register.
This evening and again tomorrow at 7:30, the Hop presents actor, writer, director, and artist-in-residence Roger Guenver Smith with his solo performance of Otto Frank. You may know Smith from his acting—in films like Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X. Or from his solo shows, like A Huey P. Newton Story and Rodney King. Smith was performing this last in Amsterdam when he visited the Anne Frank House and became intrigued by her father—who gave her the diary she kept as a gift, was tenacious in advancing her legacy, and drew both admiration and scorn for how he played his role. "He exists in our collective imagination because we need him to," Smith wrote as he developed the show. "His is a voice of reason in an unreasonable world which conceptualizes war as theater and he bears witness to its immorality, and its irrepressible popularity."
And this week on CATV, you'll find Dartmouth's Alexis Jetter talking with Nabiha Syed, CEO of the investigative journalism startup The MarkUp, about free speech and WikiLeaks creator Julian Assange; VT Reps. Becca White and Jim Masland talking about the differences between the state House and the state Senate; and writer Edith Forbes' talk at the Norwich Bookstore about Tracking a Shadow: My Lived Experiment with MS, a memoir of her 25-year, self-designed experiment with a non-pharmaceutical approach to multiple sclerosis.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud;Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globed peonies;Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.— J
ohn Keats,
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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