GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Partly sunny, warmer. Summer-like temps won't arrive until tomorrow, but we're headed there today as high pressure builds in and the weak overnight disturbance that left us this morning's clouds dissipates. Highs today in the mid-70s, breezes from the northwest. Lower 50s tonight. Oh yeah, that drive was worth it. Last Friday morning, Bob Wagner got out way early to head up to Groton State Forest in VT to catch the sunrise and the mist over the water. Daybreak was as beautiful as he expected. What he wasn't expecting was the moose."Whoa..." That's what Ken Rower writes. He's the tree warden in Newbury, VT, and he's got a correction: Yesterday's photo was not of Japanese cherries. "Flowering crabapples, rather, planted by the 4-H Club in the 1960s," he says. "They bloom for a long week and then we live with their antic structure the rest of the year." Those madcap crabapples...Lebanon declares moderate drought. As it did last October, the city is asking residents "to voluntarily refrain from lawn and landscape watering and to limit the amount of water used outdoors for other purposes." It's also prohibiting lawn and landscape watering outright between 8 am and 7 pm. Upper Valley towns, businesses stick with mask regs for now. But they're wrestling with it in the wake of last week's CDC relaxation for vaccinated people, reports the Valley News's Tim Camerato. Lebanon's sticking with its ordinance, in part because the state medical society recommends that cities keep their mask mandates. Hanover's ordinance remains in place, too, and local businesses such as Farm-Way and the Co-op Food Stores are keeping theirs. Woodstock's village trustees, however, voted last night to lift the mandate both indoors and outdoors for people who are fully vaccinated. On affordable housing, Thetford wonders if it can pull itself up by its bootstraps. The Upper Valley's lack of affordable housing puts small towns in a bind, Nick Clark writes in Sidenote: Families with kids don't move there, hurting schools, and state and federal money tends to go to places with existing infrastructure. So a group in Thetford has begun meeting to plot an alternative: renovate and revitalize existing structures—barns, garages, abandoned commercial property—into housing, with each succesful project funding the next. And each one, as Clark notes, is "one more than none."Dartmouth researchers find lack of fresh snow causing Greenland to grow darker and warmer and melt faster. A team led by earth sciences prof Eric Osterberg gathered data for the study in 2016 and 2017 over a two-summer, 2,700-mile snowmobile trek across part of Greenland's ice sheet. Persistent high pressure systems since the 1990s are pushing snowstorms to the north, and as existing snowflakes on the ice sheet age, they become more rounded, less reflective, and more prone to warming. Norwich Creamery fate draws wider attention. Well, outside the region, anyway. In Lancaster Farming, an online magazine devoted to farm issues in the region around Lancaster, PA, Paul Post writes that the Creamery's Chris Gray "credits his grandparents and aunt and uncle...for giving him a love for farming during childhood visits to their homes near Lancaster." Post covers the basics of the situation—VT Technical College's search for a buyer for the property, the Norwich Farm Foundation's offer for less than the college wants, and state Ag Secretary Anson Tebbetts' interest in brokering a deal.Morels. But her lips are sealed. They're coming up now, Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast writes; she just stumbled on a patch and isn't telling where. Interestingly, you shouldn't eat them with alcohol, Michigan says on its cheat sheet for telling the real ones from the fake (and toxic) ones. Also out there in the woods this third week of May: blackburnian warblers, yellow-rumped warblers, marsh marigolds, and the spectacularly named trailing arbutus, which you'll find in "sandy to peaty woods or clearings."Speaking of peat: NH's wildest spots? Fens and bogs. Well, and also mountaintops. But in a Something Wild episode that NHPR just reposted, Ron Davis, a retired wetland scientist from the University of Maine, Orono, explains that peatlands (bogs are peatier than fens) make life tough for plants, only some of which have managed to adapt. Mammals have a tough time there, too; there's not much for browsers to eat. As for humans, it's tough if not illegal to develop them, and “they're not easily traversed, so many people have never visited them because it's difficult to walk in them,” Davis says.Gender-reveal explosion nets disorderly conduct charge. You remember: Last month Anthony Spinelli and his family set off 80 pounds of tannerite in a quarry in Kingston, NH, laced with blue chalk. The explosion could be heard 25 miles away. Everyone involved cooperated with police, explaining they'd picked the quarry because they thought it would be safe. The state's disorderly conduct law applies, among other things, to people who make "loud or unreasonable noises in a public place." Despite reports of property damage, police were unable to find any, writes Jason Schreiber in the Union Leader.NH schools, by the numbers. The state Department of Education has revamped its online portal to make it easier to use, offering data on everything from a school or district's population to student achievement, expulsion rates, college and career readiness, per-pupil expenditures, average class size, and the like. There are actually two portals: You can drill down into any school or district on the School and District Report card, or run comparisons between them on iExplore.That is one heck of a battery... NH Electric Coop is installing a 2.4-megawatt battery storage unit next to its 2 MW solar array in Moltonborough, David Brooks reports on his Granite Geek blog. It's the first utility-scale electricity-storage project in the state, Brooks believes, and in its press release, NHEC says that by discharging it during hours of peak electric usage, the battery will save members some $2.3 million over a dozen years on regional market and delivery charges, "while reducing demand on the grid."“The system is failing these children. My child needs help.” The number of children struggling with mental health challenges "has surged during the coronavirus pandemic," VTDigger's Katie Jickling reports, "stretching the resources available at every nexus of the mental health system." There are 780 staffing vacancies at the 10 agencies designated by VT to provide care for kids and their families, inpatient beds are at capacity, emergency rooms are filling up, and parents feel alone. “It’s exhausting, and I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing,” says another mom whose son had a psychotic break in October.“Nobody sneaks into your room and leaves a few dollar bills on your night table while you’re sleeping. But that’s what you’re saving every day..." Mike Fink is an energy data analyst for Efficiency Vermont and a proselytizer for tackling greenhouse emissions by making homes more energy-efficient. In a guide that was funded by Efficiency Vermont and put together by Seven Days' marketing arm, he lays out the steps for the curious, from getting an energy audit to buying heat pumps to going solar to electrifying your car, garden equipment, even your snowblower. VT State Police investigate string of Northeast Kingdom armed robberies. They began Dec. 1 in Orleans, when a "thin white male approximately 6 feet tall" robbed the Family Dollar. Since then, four more stores and banks have been hit, most recently the North Country Federal Credit Union in April, also in Orleans, where a shorter suspect left the bank on foot, stole a bicycle, and then was seen being picked up by a car. Detectives, the VSP says, "are working to determine whether any of the five cases are connected."A ten-by-ten-by-five-inch chest with 22 pounds of gold coins, gold dust, golden frogs, a golden dragon bracelet... If you're a longtime Daybreak reader, you know about perhaps the world's most famous treasure hunt, the one for the treasure chest hidden by Forrest Fenn somewhere in the Rockies in 2010. Daniel Barbarisi, a journalist and chest-searcher, has been writing about his own search, the searches of others—five people died trying to find it—and the aftermath of its discovery by a 32-year-old medical student. Suddenly, Barbarisi got a chance to go see it: Now he writes about that, too, in Outside.Yeah, this may actually be what pure joy looks like. But it's not so much the little three-year-old girl on a trampoline in Jackson, Wyoming as it is Kona, her Rottweiler, who's clearly got a circus contract waiting whenever she wants it.
And...
Dartmouth reports 2 student cases (up 1) and remains at 2 among faculty/staff. No one is in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 2 students and 5 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 104 new cases yesterday for a cumulative total of 97,774. There was 1 new death, raising the total to 1,333, while 46 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 4). The current active caseload stands at 1,169 (down 105). The state reports 74 active cases in Grafton County (down 3), 47 in Sullivan (down 2), and 98 in Merrimack (down 14). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Claremont has 21 active cases (down 2), Lebanon has 16 (up 2), Newport has 10 (down 1), Enfield has 8 (down 2), Sunapee has 5 (up at least 1), and Haverhill has 5 (no change). Piermont, Warren, Orford, Rumney, Lyme, Hanover, Canaan, Grafton, Plainfield, Springfield, Croydon, Newbury, New London, and Unity have 1-4 each. Cornish is off the list.
VT reported 29 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 23,912. Deaths held steady at 252, while 11 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 1). Windsor County gained 4 new cases and stands at 1,440 for the pandemic, with 75 over the past 14 days, while Orange County added no cases and remains at 805 cumulatively, with 49 cases in the past 14 days.
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At 6 pm, the Connecticut River Museum down in Essex, CT, hosts Hanover Conservancy director Adair Mulligan for an online talk, "The Connecticut: New England's Great River." Mulligan—who spent two decades as the conservation director for the Connecticut River Joint Commissions—will give an armchair tour of the river and its natural history, talk about the issues involved in managing its health, and describe efforts by citizens up and down its length to create a vision for its future. $5 for members, $10 for non-members.
At 7 pm, Phoenix Books hosts former VT cartoonist laureate and MacArthur fellow Alison Bechdel, talking about her new book, The Secret to Superhuman Strength. Bechdel, whose Dykes to Watch Out For series first brought her to national attention, turns her eye to her own—and others'—fascination with physical fitness and exercise. No charge to register.
Also at 7, Portsmouth's Music Hall and UNH host Suzanne Koven, a primary care doc and the first writer-in-residence at Mass. General Hospital, in conversation with author Andrew Solomon (Far From the Tree). Koven has a new memoir out, Letter to a Young Female Physician. It builds from her widely read 2017 essay thatdescribed the challenges faced by female physicians, including her own personal struggle with “imposter syndrome,” and goes on to talk about her efforts to balance life and work, deal with the issues—including sexism, pay inequity, and harassment—that women in medicine face, and confront the twilight of her career during the pandemic. Tix are $5.
Also at 7, as happens every Tuesday, fiddler Jakob Breitbach hosts a "live-band karaoke" with Route 5 Revival, this week with special guests Joy Gaine and Mike Wood. You can submit your own music videos, Zoom in live to sing a song while the band plays along, or just put it on, sit back, and listen. $2 minimum, $10 suggested.
Finally, at 8 pm, the Hop hosts composer, bandleader, and trailblazing jazz cellist Tomeka Reid, in a "Coastin' Creative" conversation with Coast Jazz Ensemble leader Taylor Ho Bynum. She and Bynum are regular collaborators, and are working together on a book on the history of creative music told from the artists' perspectives.
Day and night, the lake dreams of sky.A privacy as old as the mountains...
— From
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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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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