GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Still sunny, warmer, calmer. High pressure's still with us for today at least, and with air moving in from the southwest we'll see temps get into the mid- or upper 50s and maybe some clouds this afternoon. All in all a fine drying day. Down into the upper 30s and a slight chance of showers after midnight as a system moves this general direction from the Tennessee Valley.Just hanging out in a tree. When Amber Wylie and some friends first saw this porcupine in Strafford, it was moving slowly in broad daylight—and walking in circles. Worried about rabies, they watched it closely, noticed a lot of missing quills, and decided it had been attacked and was trying to recover. Checking on it later, Amber writes, "I was delighted to see that it had found its way to relative safety in a tree." She stayed far away and quickly got this shot with a telephoto."We’re at a place where I can no longer wait my turn"—Hartford's Becca White to run for state Senate. The 27-year-old Democratic state rep yesterday announced that she will run for the Windsor County senate seat regardless of what the three Democratic incumbents—Alison Clarkson, Dick McCormack and Alice Nitka—decide to do. She's making housing affordability, income inequality, and related issues her chief campaign priorities—as well as her relative youth. “There are more landlords (in the General Assembly) than there are renters,” she tells the Valley News's Darren Marcy.Claremont: "On the upswing" vs. "It's gotten worse." You can find spice and teas from around the world downtown—and drug dealing and empty storefronts. DHMC is trying to reserve apartments for its workers at a renovated mill complex downtown—but the city's still saddled with "poor quality" housing stock and at least one developer despairs of much new housing coming online. The Union Leader's Michael Cousineau goes in-depth on Claremont's signs of hope, its strengths and challenges—and what it might take to reinvent itself. Oh, and he calls Lebanon its "high-tech neighbor to the north."Hartford schools finance director hired for Windham Northeast schools. Jim Vezina, who has worked for the Hartford schools for the last decade—as well as school districts in Newport and Lebanon—is due to start in the four-town school district based in Westminster, VT on May 1, reports the Brattleboro Reformer's Susan Smallheer. The Windham schools' finance office has "been in turmoil" for several years, Smallheer writes, which accelerated after a letter from the district's auditor in December criticizing its financial management led to the resignation of Vezina's predecessor.SPONSORED: VINS Owl Festival. Visit the VINS Nature Center for our annual Owl Festival on Saturday, April 16 for a day of all things owly! Gather with live owls from all over the world, discover their life stories, join in a craft, and play games. Spice up your experience by dressing as your favorite owl! You never know whooo you’ll run into. And the next two Fridays, April 8 and 15, please join us virtually from 6-7 PM for Virtual Owl Fridays and a pair of intriguing lectures on owls near and far. Sponsored by VINS."Wanted: Women in love." Stephanie Caccioppo teaches computational neuroscience at the U of Chicago—but before that, she taught at Dartmouth. Which was where she carried out an experiment with what students called "The Love Machine." In an excerpt published in Popular Science from her new book, Wired for Love, she describes the professional disdain she faced for wanting to study the neuroscience of love, and the computer program she developed that, essentially, tested the power of positive emotions...but which students thought could help them make up their minds between possible partners.“Wake boats have become practically a religious divide." That's 90-year-old James Hughes, who has lived on Lake Fairlee for 35 years, talking to the VN's Claire Potter. As you may remember, a grassroots citizens group—with strong representation from Lake Fairlee—has petitioned VT's Dept. of Environmental Conservation to regulate where wake boats can operate. They cite environmental concerns, including the impact on shorelines and increased likelihood of cyanobacteria blooms. Potter explores the issue in depth.Crawling out of the mud: the crawdads, peepers, and bees. Up come the crocuses, while robins make their nests. Yep, the signs are multiplying, and it’s safe to say (but knock on wood): Spring is come. The ever-studious VT Center of Ecostudies shares its latest field guide to nature’s biggest movers and shakers in April—a tacit reminder of how much our souls rely on reanimation of the tiny creatures under our feet. And overhead: inaugural dragons and butterflies aren’t too far off. You’ll know the woodcock’s chatter when you hear it. Hope is a Red-winged Blackbird gliding past. (TH)Arguing that guv, legislature won't agree on congressional lines in time, five NH voters ask court to step in Citing Gov. Chris Sununu's plan to veto the legislature's proposed redistricting plan, the plaintiffs, who include former Democratic House Speaker Terie Norelli, write, "With no sign of a political compromise on the horizon, the [legislature] and Governor Sununu appear to be at an impasse... As a result, it falls to the judiciary to protect the constitutional rights of Plaintiffs and voters across this state." The case was filed in Hillsborough Co. Superior Court, reports NH Bulletin's Amanda Gokee.“You have to live life to the fullest. Don’t put off plans.” That's an expert speaking: NH's chief medical examiner, Jennie Duval, who spends her days with the corpses of people who didn't expect to die right then. Teddy Rosenbluth's profile in the Monitor is partly about how understaffing has affected her office—the rise in overdose deaths over the past decade and an inability to find an extra pathologist has meant some suspected overdose victims have gone unautopsied. But Rosenbluth's also talks to Duval about the emotional weight of the job and the lessons she's drawn from it.In VT schools, not all Covid vaccine rates are equal. Overall, writes VTDigger's Peter D'Auria, 64 percent of the state's public school students 5 and up have received two doses of the vaccine. But that hides disparities, he reports: a small number of districts around Burlington have an 80 percent or higher vaccination rate, while a dozen districts, including Rivendell and Windsor Southeast, have a rate below 50 percent. Most fall between 50 and 79 percent. Map at the link.Former Flynn artistic director veers out of the theater and into the ring: Will become executive artistic director for Circus Smirkus. Steve MacQueen, who resigned from Burlington's Flynn Theater just over a month ago, will start in his new role at the end of this month, he and Smirkus board chair Michele Levy confirmed yesterday to Seven Days' Jordan Adams. "My real dream leaving the Flynn was to find a nonprofit arts job that was somewhat of a left turn from doing standard proscenium-theater theaters," MacQueen tells Adams. "It's kismet.""She turned to me with tears in her eyes. 'That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my entire life,' she said." "She" was an elderly woman in the Netherlands, the only witness beside photographer Søren Solkær to a half-hour-long murmuration of starlings. Solkær spent three years following European starlings across their migration routes, and in the NYT he writes about—and shares plenty of photos of—murmurations and what we know about how they happen. (You may hit the Times's paywall, but if you do, just enjoy the video peeking over the popup.) (Thanks, JF!)Okay, try not to squeal over these lambs and their “mule nannies.” If you haven’t tapped that link yet, for goodness sake, what are you waiting for? This Instagrammer found out about a farming tradition in Italy, whereby newborn lambs—unable to make the distance from high elevation to the plains on their own—hitch a ride with mules. All snuggled into pouches stitched into the sides of a saddle, just their heads and preposterous ears poking out, their mothers close by for feedings along the way…as if clickbait had tiny hooves and could mew. (Thanks, JC!) (TH)
Let's do the numbers...
First off, the CDC at the end of last week put all four Upper Valley counties at its lowest level for cases (including Windsor, which had been labeled "High" before then). In fact, only two counties in all of New England aren't at Low: Washington and Essex in VT, both of which are at Medium.
Dartmouth case numbers have dropped a smidge, with 119 active cases reported yesterday (compared to 126 on Thursday). The college's dashboard reports 50 undergrad cases (+11), 58 among grad and professional students (-21), and 11 among faculty/staff (+3).
NH cases are holding steady, with a 7-day average now of 125 new cases per day, no change from last week. The state on Friday reported 144 new cases, 161 on Saturday, 131 Sunday, and 102 yesterday, bringing it to 303,010 in all. There were no new deaths reported during that time; the total remains at 2,452. Under the state's new rubric of reporting only people actively being treated for Covid in hospitals, it reports 6 hospitalizations, down 1 from Thursday. The state dashboard is down, and so no county or town numbers.
VT continues to rise a bit, reporting 164 cases Friday, 168 Saturday, 141 Sunday, and 43 yesterday, bringing it to 117,160 total and up to a 7-day daily average of 142, compared to 135 last Thursday. There were 2 deaths during that time; they stand at 619 all told. Hospitalizations have risen a little: As of yesterday, 20 people with confirmed cases were hospitalized (+7), with 2 in the ICU (+2). Windsor County has seen 31 cases since Thursday and 126 over the past two weeks, for 8,752 overall, while Orange County, for unclear reasons, continues to lose total cases: It's down to 4,866, 18 fewer than last Thursday—though it's had 49 in the past two weeks and 2 new ones reported yesterday.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
At 5:30 today, Still North Books & Bar brings in the Center for Cartoon Studies' Tillie Walden and Emma Hunsinger for a reading and celebration of My Parents Won't Stop Talking, their new picture book about patience. As Hunsinger explained it to a book blogger last year, "It was April 2020, and we had just gone into lockdown. Tillie and I had also just decided to try and write a picture book. And because we were waiting for the virus to go away, Tillie said ‘Why don’t we write a book about patience?’ And asked if I remembered anything from childhood about being patient. Right away, I remembered trying to get my parents to leave church... Church would end, and my siblings and I would be SO HUNGRY, and desperate to go home, but my parents had to talk to so many people for what felt like forever." And they took off from there.
At 6 this evening, InDepthNH launches a series of four online conversations on the future and sustainability of community journalism. Tonight's scene-setting talk is by renowned Boston-based media commentator Dan Kennedy, who used to cover journalism for the Phoenix and, after it folded, launched his widely read Media Nation blog. He also teaches journalism at Northeastern. No charge, but you'll need to register—and they'll take donations.
This evening at 7, the Vermont Center for Ecostudies' Jason Hill is back with his popular "Suds & Science" series, which is still online-only. Tonight, he talks to Univ. of Georgia entomologist Christine Cairns about forest bees and the role forest resources play in wild bee populations. Cairns' research focuses on "how forest management, pesticides, and catastrophic wind disturbances affect wild bee communities and nesting success."
Also at 7, the Norwich Bookstore brings in two mystery/thriller writers, Flynn Berry and Sarah Stewart Taylor, for an in-person conversation. Berry's latest thriller is Northern Spy, about a young BBC staffer who becomes a double agent working for the IRA in Northern Ireland in order to protect her son and her sister—who's been doing the same thing.
At 7:30 this evening, banjo legend Béla Fleck takes the stage at the Lebanon Opera House with his all-star band (fiddler Stuart Duncan, mandolinist Sierra Hull, multi-instrumentalist Justin Moses, bassist Mark Schatz, and guitarist Bryan Sutton) as part of their "My Bluegrass Heart" tour. Nothing more needs to be said, except that as of last night there were just a tiny handful of tickets left.
Also at 7:30 in Dartmouth's Loew Auditorium (where you usually go to see Hop films), the college hosts author Torrey Peters for a conversation with women's, gender, and sexuality studies prof Mingwei Huang about gender and creative writing, including Peters' experience as a trans woman at Dartmouth and in the publishing industry. Her 2021 novel, Detransition, Baby, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award's John Leonard Prize for best first book.
It's April, but because of that weeklong break in March there's one more reader-submitted poem to go...
From star to star, from sun and spring and leaf,And almost audible flowers whose sound is silence,And in the common meadows, springs the seed of life. Now the lilies open, and the roseReleased by summer from the harmless gravesThat, centuries deep, are in the air we breathe,And in our earth, and in our daily bread. External and innate dimensions holdThe living forms, but not the force of life;For that interior and holy treeThat in the heart of hearts outlives the worldSpreads earthly shade into eternity.
— "Seed" by
, suggested by Claire Blatchford and selected by poetry editor Michael Lipson.
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.
Want to catch up on Daybreak music?
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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!