GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunnier, a bit warmer. Also, not as windy. Should be a beautiful day out there, though the northern parts of the region will see more clouds. Temps today reaching the mid 50s, with airflow high up keeping any weather systems from bugging us. Temps into the high 30s tonight. Winds from the north.The geometry of stone, concrete, iron, and water. Janice Fischel was in Brattleboro on Sunday, hanging out under the I-91 bridge over the West River, and caught this eye-pleasing pic.Brush fire closes 12A near Cornish/Claremont line. Dry conditions and high winds fueled the blaze, which may have been sparked by a tree coming down on a power line, reports the Valley News's John Gregg. “The whole east side of Route 12A is pretty well blackened,” Cornish Selectboard Chair John Hammond told Gregg late yesterday afternoon, adding that the fire “came up to [a rental house he owns] and went right around it.” Firefighters from several towns responded, but conditions were difficult: “It’s so windy, unless they completely extinguish it, it doesn’t take much to flare up again,” Hammond said.Truck driver walking on I-91 dies in Hartland crash. The accident occurred at the base of Miller Hill, right on the Hartford/Hartland line, around 5:50 am yesterday. Gary Starr, a 66-year-old trucker and farmer from Jay, VT, pulled over in the breakdown lane, set his flashers and put down warning triangles behind the truck, then "for unknown reasons" was walking in the southbound travel lane, state police report. A car coming around a bend in the highway hit him. I-91 southbound was closed for five hours while police investigated.Entertainment Cinemas in Leb files for bankruptcy. It was part of an uptick of NH bankruptcy filings in March, notes NH Business Review's Bob Sanders. Three other companies and 88 individuals filed, "the first sharp increase in filings since the pandemic began," Sanders notes. The Miracle Mile cinemas' Chapter 11 filing lists less than $50,000 in assets and between $500,001 and $1 million in liabilities.Watch the skateboarders? Critique the graffiti? Gaze at the river? You can do all of that at Leb's Riverside Park, Susan Apel writes on her Artful blog. The Rusty Berrings Skatepark, of course, has been around for a while, and it's "not just for brave and physically agile skateboarders," Susan writes. "It’s also for those of us with old vulnerable bones; someone, after all, has to watch and appreciate the athletic maneuvers." Now, there's also a Graffiti Park, a "corridor" of eight canvases set up by Leb Recreation, Arts, and Parks (its new name, Susan notes), already covered with some eye-catching work. Okay, it's serious now: Maple buds are opening, you can hear wood frogs out there, and, if you look carefully, ramps are starting to emerge. This last is music to a cook's ears, though there's a reason they're called "spring ephemerals." Thankfully, Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast includes a link to an article on their growing habits. Also out there in the woods this first full week of April: a bobcat Tig Tillinghast caught on his game camera at a food cache. Oh, and of course, white blobs of salamander spermatophores in vernal pools."The four-inch songbird with the ten-foot song." That's how writer and naturalist Ted Levin describes the winter wren, though he points out that Donald Kroodsma, "birdsong guru" at UMass, says the winter wren is the "pinnacle of complexity among songbirds." They're exuberant singers, able to be heard above the wind, with long trills and cascades of warbles. They've been divided into three species, Levin notes; ours, fortunately retains the "winter wren" moniker, now separate and distinct from the Pacific wren and Eurasian wren.240-year-old sugar maple, second-largest known, comes down. The tree, one of two planted over two centuries ago to flank the doorway of a home in Kensington, NH, was 7 feet in diameter and over 100 feet high; it was dying and had to be removed for safety reasons. “It’s been the guardian of us. I don’t know what to say. We grew up with it. It’s been special to the whole family,” Janet Buxton, whose family has owned the house since 1954, told the AP's Michael Casey. The tree is part of a trend, says Kevin Martin, who used to run NH's Big Tree Program: "We have been losing quite a few lately.”It was a busy weekend for rescuers in NH. Just as hair-raising as the skier who slid 1,000 feet down Mt. Washington on Saturday, on Sunday night, state conservation officers found a Massachusetts woman who'd fallen 20 feet off a rock ledge, onto rocks below, as she was trying to make her way down Mt. Monadnock in the dark after her cellphone died. She was injured badly, and rescuers carried her to a pickup, which took her to an ambulance. She was transferred by helicopter to a hospital in MA yesterday, reports the AP. NH businesses, including D-H, Mascoma Bank, and Hypertherm, oppose NH bill barring teaching about systemic racism. The measure, up before the full House this week, would keep public schools, organizations, and state contractors from discussing the idea that the state or the US is racist or sexist or that meritocracy and a “hard work ethic” are inherently oppressive. The bill "would not only harm the ability of New Hampshire businesses to be competitive, it would severely harm the state’s image as business-friendly," the 88 companies write, reports NH Business Review's Jeff Feingold.ZAFA Wines owner Krista Scruggs faces sexual misconduct allegations. Lauded over the last few years for her impact on the wine industry and the growth of the "wild wine" movement, Scruggs has had a tough year. Last fall, the state shut her business down for operating without a license to manufacture or distribute wine. Now, reports VTDigger's Grace Elletson, she's dealing with a wave of social-media accusations for "verbal harassment, groping and sexual coercion." Scruggs denies them, but on Instagram apologizes for having been “inconsiderate and thoughtless.”Scott criticizes "racist response" to VT vaccination policy for BIPOC residents. VT's governor yesterday condemned national disparagement of the state's move to open vaccinations to BIPOC Vermonters regardless of age. Conservative commentators, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have been lambasting VT in recent days. Scott cited the disparity in vaccination rates and research on greater hospitalization risks. "Many Americans, and many Vermonters, still have a lot to learn about the impacts of racism in our country and how it has influenced public policy over the years,” he said in a statement.Wait! Town meeting season isn't over yet. Now that it's warming up, 50 VT towns are getting set to hold meetings they'd rescheduled from March. Vershire and St. J are among the towns voting today, reports VTDigger's Kevin O'Connor; it's the only Upper Valley town meeting this month. Hartland, Barnard, Sharon, Tunbridge, Brookfield, and Corinth will all meet in May.You know who else got busy during the pandemic? Headstone manufacturers. Or, to be more precise, Barre's granite industry. Turns out, 2020 was "the busiest year that we’d ever seen,” Paige Gherardhi Lamthi, of Buttura & Gherardhi Granite Artisans, tells VPR's Anna Van Dine. Companies throughout the industry, in Barre and elsewhere, are hiring. Maybe it's all because, as Mark Gherardi says, "the virus has kind of woken people up to the fact that, boy, you know, our mortality isn’t secure,” or that people have saved some over the past year, and are attending to tasks they'd been putting off.Jackfruit wood, goat skin, crushed turmeric paste... At least, that seems to be how the yazh, an ancient Indian instrument, was made a couple of millennia ago. But while there were loose descriptions, no one knew how they sounded—though literature from the 6th-3rd century BCE said it "produced the sweetest sound mankind had ever heard." Now, though, Tharun Sekar, a 24-year-old luthier, is turning them out from his workshop in Chennai... along with other ancient instruments. After all, he points out to Atlas Obscura's Radikha Iyengar, guitars are only 500 years old. Here's a yazh being played.Ever wondered what "eagle eye" really means? Who better than an eagle to show you? This comes from 2015, but it's astounding every time you look at it. That year, Jacques-Olivier Travers, a falconer who has pioneered techniques to reintroduce endangered eagles to the wild and founded a group called Freedom Conservation, brought an imperial eagle named Darshan to Dubai; Darshan was taken to the top of the Burj Khalifa, from which he was released with a mini camera on his back, recording the flight, to go find Travers. You can see the moment he spots him—and plunges to his waiting arm. (Thanks, JT!)
So...
Dartmouth reports 25 active cases among students (down 9 from last week) and 4 among faculty/staff (up 2). There are 48 students and 6 faculty/staff in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 30 students and 13 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
Colby-Sawyer's down to 1 case among students, none among faculty/staff, with 1 person in isolation and 5 in quarantine.
NH reported 414 new cases yesterday, for a cumulative total of 86,125. There were no new deaths, which remain at 1,249, and 84 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 3). The current active caseload stands at 3,287 (down 444). The state reports 138 active cases in Grafton County (down 17), 50 in Sullivan (no change), and 320 in Merrimack (down 18). In town-by-town numbers, the state says that Hanover has 32 active cases (down 9), Claremont has 18 (down 2), Lebanon has 14 (down 5), Sunapee has 10 (down 1), New London has 10 (up 1), Newport has 9 (up 1), and Charlestown has 5 (up at least 1). Haverhill, Piermont, Warren, Rumney, Canaan, Enfield, Grafton, Plainfield, Grantham, Springfield, Wilmot, Cornish, Croydon, and Newbury have 1-4 each.
VT reported 116 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 20,267. Deaths remain at 229, and 23 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 9). Windsor County gained 2 cases and stands at 1,220 for the pandemic, with 86 over the past 14 days, while Orange County added 1 new case and is at 572 cumulatively, with 35 cases in the past 14 days.
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This evening at 6, Dartmouth's Dickey Center dives into the history and travails of the Rohingya, the Myanmar ethnic minority that has faced intense persecution by the military in that country and displacement abroad since 2017. Four panelists and moderator Alka Dev, of The Dartmouth Institute at Geisel, will talk over history, human rights, and health issues.
This evening at 7, the Montshire hosts Dartmouth paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva talking about his new book, First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human. It took a lot of evolving to happen, DeSilva writes in this dive into science, history, and culture, and underlies many of the other attributes that make us human, from technology to language to, possibly, compassion, and altruism. Online, you'll need to register.
Also at 7, Woodstock's Norman Williams Public Library hosts "Book Jamming for Book Groups and Readers of All Stripes." The Book Jam Blog's Lisa Christie, Yankee Bookshop co-owner Kari Meutsch, and Liana Kish, who teaches English at Newton North High School, outside Boston, will talk over book ideas in a range of genres and styles that will work for book groups or anyone looking for something good to read. Online, you'll need to register.
Also at 7, the Dartmouth Political Union presents activist and Smith College prof Loretta Ross. Ross teaches a popular class on "challenging the call-out culture," which she's turned into a book: Calling In the Calling Out Culture. A radical Black feminist, Ross was one of the signatories of an open letter in Harper's that was widely denounced for its challenge to "cancel culture." "There’s such an irony for being called out for calling out the calling-out culture,” she said last fall. "We should be able to have uncomfortable conversations."
Also at 7, the Vermont Center for Ecostudies is back with this month's Suds & Science, as VCE biologist Jason Hill talks alpine plant communities with ecologist Simone Whitecloud of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab. Her research focuses on plant life in the Arctic and high in the Whites, and asks, "Do different plant species actually facilitate each other in harsh environments by modifying soil moisture or moderating the localized effects of weather?"
At, um, 7 this evening, Here in The Valley debuts a new live online jam session. You may remember that back in the pre- times, fiddler Jakob Breitbach convened a popular weekly session at The Filling Station in WRJ. Now you can sit in without ever leaving home—and if you miss this one, they'll be happening every week.
Finally, all this week, Dartmouth and the Hop are hosting an international symposium on police violence. Today's session, on "Mapping, Sound, and Surveillance," begins at 7 pm. Tomorrow's includes a session on white supremacy and the Jan. 6 insurrection, and a keynote on "Building A World Where Breonna Taylor Would Still Be Here." Full schedule at the link.
I stay;But it isn’t as ifThere wasn’t always Hudson’s BayAnd the fur trade,A small skiffAnd a paddle blade
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