GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Today will be like yesterday, only more so. Sun all day, temps into the mid-50s again, maybe a degree or two warmer because there's some air flowing in from the south. Clear the first part of tonight as well, which is fantastic, because tonight and tomorrow are the Super Pink Moon (named for pink phlox), with the moon about 17,000 miles closer than average (which is what makes it super). We could get used to this, but this is New England, so we won't: Chance of rain and then snow in the early hours tomorrow.Even so, it is so spring out there! Peepers are just out, birds are nesting, bees are collecting. Down in Weathersfield, Andrea Miller was out over the weekend and got some stunning pics, including a pair of Great Blue Herons making their nest (at the maroon link) and this bee done with its shopping at some Coltsfoot.Let's just take a quick look at some numbers...
New Hampshire is at 715 cases, up 46 from yesterday. Of those 151 have recovered. Grafton and Sullivan counties remain at 41 and 6 cases, respectively. One note: 192 cases, or about 27 percent, are among health care workers, including dentists, home health aides, and primary care docs.
Vermont is up to 543 positive test results, up 31, with 23 deaths total. Again, no numbers on people who've recovered. Windsor and Orange counties remain at 22 and 4 officially reported cases, respectively.
It's a graphic on Instagram that tallies cases by country from March 2, when China had about 80,000 and the rest of the world only small numbers, to April 2, when the world crossed the million mark. It captures in full visual force not just how quickly the pandemic spread, but how terribly rapidly it grew in this country. Keep an eye on the US flag down at the bottom after it makes its first appearance March 4.
(Thanks, JF!)
Law enforcement officers from around the region, including towns and state police, paraded their cars in tribute to medical workers yesterday at DHMC, the VA, Mt. Ascutney Hospital, Central VT Medical Center, and elsewhere. As Hartford officials noted in a news release, "The weight and stress of this crisis is borne by these medical personnel, along with countless others, everyday, in the performance of their duties. We applaud them and support them!"
. Tomorrow, Upper Valley Strong will launch a hotline, staffed by the River Valley Club's FitKids Childcare, to help match needs with providers. But as the
VN
's Nora Doyle-Burr notes, "child care is not delivered by a single coordinated system," and NH and VT are working with a collection of agencies, hospitals, and school districts to connect caregivers with families. One issue: A lot of child care centers have closed, and their furloughed employees can make more from unemployment than by going back to work.
Janet and Tim Taylor have been running Crossroad Farm in Post Mills for only four decades, so you can understand how I might have left such Johnny-come-latelies out of yesterday's list of farms getting ready to feed us... (palm to chagrined forehead).... Had my brain not frozen when I was putting the list together, I'd have mentioned that they have a stand both at their farm and, of course, just a hop and a skip south of King Arthur Flour in Norwich. Their CSA (at the link) lets you pay in advance at a discount, then choose whatever you want as you work through it."Helping feed hungry folks and being out and about is uplifting for both proprietor and patron." That's Martha Esersky Lorden, who owns the bright orange Martha's On A Roll food truck you may have seen about last year. She talks to food blogger Paul Hyson, who's dedicating his new incarnation of Upper Valley Edible Explorations on Medium for the next few weeks to the pandemic's impact on the local food industry. Lorden plans to open May 1 as usual, but with some changes.SPONSORED: Not more baked goods! Perhaps you’ve been baking, and eating what you bake, a bit more than usual. Fear not: not only is the Sourdough Dance-Off not edible, it will help you burn off that stuck-at-home spare tire while engaging muscles of creation and collaboration that might also want a workout. And it’s only one of the ways the Hopkins Center offers to engage artistically with others while staying safe at home. Watch-parties for film and performance, study guides and more are all part of Hop@Home, the Hop’s new online programming arm. Find out more and sign up for weekly H@H updates at the link. Sponsored by the Hop.You've probably seen those "self-isolate for 14 days" signs aimed at visitors when they enter Vermont. Tunbridge has a different approach. "Visitors," the sign says when you enter town (pic at the link), "Please Quarantine." But then it adds a twist: "Help us help you," with a phone number. That gets visitors to the town's Neighbors Helping Neighbors network, which will run errands, do shopping, whatever people from away need in order to stay put. The sign was designed by Cecily Anderson, a Tunbridge graphic artist who also painted the "Tunbridge sends love and thanks to essential workers" sign you saw a couple of weeks ago.“Independent primary care practices in Vermont will collapse if you do not provide relief and payment reform immediately. We will soon run out of CASH to pay our staff!” That was White River Family Practice physician Michael Lyons in a letter to VT legislators and state officials in March. As patients stop coming to private practices, they're scrambling to stay afloat, VTDigger reports. The docs at White River Family Practice have stopped taking their salaries; others are laying off staff. And all are adapting to new insurance protocols, using tele-health where possible, and worried about running out of protective gear. “We must be prepared for things to get worse before they get better." That was VT's Phil Scott atyesterday's press briefing, at which Health Commissioner Mark Levine also said that anyone who has coronavirus symptoms is now eligible for testing; that about 10-12 percent of tests in Vermont are coming back positive (compared to triple those figures in some hotspots elsewhere); and that the most optimistic model has the peak in cases coming as soon as this week, though others show it closer to the end of the month.Sununu restricts guest lodging. At his press conference yesterday, the NH governor followed Vermont's move and announced that hotels, motels and short-term home rentals are being shut down, except for those serving essential workers and vulnerable populations. Campgrounds can remain open, for now. “We can’t emphasize enough that people are healthier in your own home and home state,” Sununu said. “We look forward to welcoming you back in New Hampshire when this public crisis is abated.”Concord Monitor launches donation drive. In a letter to readers yesterday, editor Steve Leone and managing editor Jonathan Van Fleet announced that for the first time in its history, the paper of record for the state's capital city is turning to them for direct support beyond subscriptions and advertising. The new fund is run through the nonprofit Local Media Association, which represents local papers large and small throughout the country. The Monitor is owned by Newspapers of New England, which also owns the Valley News.NH nonprofits, too, are struggling. “Nonprofits are making layoffs right now. Nonprofits are closing right now,” Katie Merrow, VP at the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, tells NH Business Review. Many have seen fundraisers and other income streams dry up, and in a survey by the NH Center for Nonprofits, two-thirds said they've already had to cut services. At the same time, of course, those that directly serve people in need are trying to ramp up emergency assistance, food help, and the like. In response, NH Charitable is trying to get $5 million out to nonprofits in need over the next few weeks.Oh, sure, happens all the time. A family out for an escape-quarantine walk in the woods near their house in Deerfield, NH, went down a side trail in hopes of seeing a moose, and instead found a crypt from the 1850s, built by former residents. Families back then "typically built crypts in the winter when the ground was too frozen to bury people, or when they couldn’t afford plots in the graveyard," NHPR reports."By my count, about half of the sixty or so cars in the lot have out-of-state plates." NHPR's Sean Hurley went and checked out Mount Monadnock last weekend, the most popular hiking destination in NH. It was crowded with both Granite Staters and out-of-staters, though everyone was being respectful of others. "I spoke to about 20 people as I hiked around the trails. No one had yet heard about the governor’s 'Home Hike Challenge,' meant to encourage them to stay around their homes," Hurley reports. "And everybody reported having a beautiful day on the mountain." As usual, Hurley is best listened to. Not that you would, but in case you're traveling to other states... USA Today has a useful rundown of states that have imposed self-quarantine orders for people traveling to them. In New England, they include Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
New effort aims to broaden awareness of Upper Valley medical technology cluster. The Upper Valley MedTech Collaborative actually launched early in March with a kickoff event honoring Bob Dean, founder or co-founder of Hypertherm, Creare, Simbex, and others. In a press release from the UV Business Alliance yesterday, Greg Lange, of Leb-based Simbex, said, "Through the UVMTC, we now have a mechanism to bring medtech stakeholders together, in order to promote collaboration, encourage investment, grow businesses, support our current employees and attract potential employees.”Aloha Foundation director steps down. Christopher Overtree, who led the organization and its summer camps on lakes Morey and Fairlee for five years, said in an email to the Aloha community that he wants to “return to my work in public health and higher education.” He'll be replaced by interim director Vanessa Riegler, who currently directs the Ohana Family Camp. (VN, subscription reqd)VTDigger staff to form newsroom union. Seven Days reports that 15 of the Montpelier-based nonprofit news organization's 17 editorial staffers have signed a petition seeking recognition. They told executive director Anne Galloway and the board yesterday morning, though they've been organizing since last fall. "There's really no more important time to have a union than when your organization is feeling a financial crunch," education reporter Lola Duffort says. The VTDigger guild will seek better and more consistent pay, benefits, and time off.More on the Census. Yesterday's item brought a point worth making: Not only have some people lost the Census Bureau card bearing their unique ID, but others only have PO boxes, and in that case won't get cards from the Census Bureau at all. But you can either let the Bureau know you'll need an in-person visit (whenever that happens) or get to the form online: Hit the link above, click on "Start Questionnaire," and then on the next page click "If you do not have a Census ID, click here."Well, it's as official as official gets. A spotter plane flying over Lake Winnipesaukee yesterday morning reported no ice in the ports at Alton Bay, Weirs Beach, Center Harbor, Meredith, and Wolfeboro, the spots where the Mt. Washington excursion boat stops in on its rounds. That's means it's ice-out. Nice (but loud) video of the lake from the plane. And there's not much snow left in the mountains, either. Here's a satellite photo from the National Weather Service in Burlington, showing just thin ribbons of white along the spine of the Greens, more over in the Northeast Kingdom, and even more over in the Whites. Things are going to look different to our east after an anticipated snowstorm in Maine and parts of NH on Thursday and Friday.
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Staying Sane
Ever since late March, Sir Patrick Stewart has been reading a Shakespearean sonnet a day on Twitter. He's up to number 17, which he introduces as one of his favorites. These are relaxed, intimate readings, and you get to watch a consummate actor strive to get it perfect. (Thanks, TD!)
You may be one of the almost 6 million people (probably more by now) who've checked out episode 2 of SomeGoodNews, the quarantine YouTube "news" broadcast by actors John Krasinski and Emily Blunt (who happen to be married to one another). It's the one where, not to spoil things, the Hamilton cast gets together virtually to make one nine-year-old exceedingly happy. Join it around the 8:28 mark if you want to get right to it.
You could also think about burying yourself in Strange Arrivals, a new podcast that digs into the 1961 case of Betty and Barney Hill, the Portsmouth, NH couple who believed they were abducted by aliens one night as they drove through Franconia Notch. It's made by Toby Ball, a crime writer and panelist on the true-crime review podcast “Crime Writers On.” You're not far behind: Episode 1 was last week, and new episodes arrive each Tuesday.
Or you stay up late, cross your fingers, and check out the live cam at the Churchill Northern Studies Center in Churchill, Manitoba, which is located directly underneath the "aurora oval" — one of the best places on the planet to watch the aurora borealis. We may be slightly past peak season, but not by much.
Helping Out
There are plenty of reasons that twin-state food banks are struggling to keep up with demand, but there is one sure-fired way you can help: send money. Here's
,
, and
program, which helps them purchase CSA shares from local farms and donate the food.
(Thanks, GG!)
Reading Deeper
Now that face masks are the stand-up thing to do, knowing how to wear and handle them properly matters. A lot. Craig Spencer, the Columbia emergency medicine doc who's become something of a Twitter star, has a compelling and wise thread on what (and what not) to do. Wash your hands before and after putting it on and taking it off—by the loops. Try not to touch it. Wash it frequently. But most of all: "Masks alone DO NOT protect you. They only help if you use them CORRECTLY. And even then, the best mask is ALWAYS less effective than social distancing."
Whatever you hear from federal elected officials, hospitals around the country are struggling to handle the pandemic. And how do we know this beyond news stories and anecdotes? Why, the federal government. The Office of the Inspector General at HHS, to be precise. It surveyed hospitals a couple of weeks ago, and just went up with the report. They face shortages of testing supplies and long waits for results. They're "turning to new, sometimes un-vetted, and non-traditional sources of supplies and medical equipment." They're reporting shortages of IV poles, medical gas, linens, toilet paper, food, infrared thermometers, disinfectants, and cleaning supplies. It's long, but it's got the details.
So does The Guardian's Samanth Subramanian, who dives deep into the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine. There are at least 43 of them in development all over the world; the challenge is that while actually crafting a vaccine can now be done faster than has ever been possible, "the next two stages – testing vaccines in humans and then manufacturing them for wide use – remain mortally slow." Subramanian takes us inside one effort in particular, run by a Canadian pathologist who is also a professor at Cambridge University's department of veterinary medicine—and who veered off a Gates Foundation-funded effort to find a universal flu vaccine.
Now. "Poetry is the thing that helps me breathe." That's Pádraig Ó Tuama, an Irish poet and theologian, who's speaking literally: He's got asthma. He's also the host of "Poetry Unbound," a podcast series by the public radio show "On Being," in which he reads and talks about a new poem each Monday and Friday. This one went up last Friday,
If you're in a rush, wait until you've got a quiet few minutes to really listen, and then make sure you come back and actually do.
(Thanks, TD)
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