GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly sunny, a little warmer. We're still sitting nicely under high pressure, and as its center moves to the east we'll see winds shifting to come from the south, hence the slightly higher temps: somewhere around 70 today, low tonight in the mid 40s.Former education secretary Rebecca Holcombe to run for VT state House seat. The 55-year-old Norwich resident confirmed to Seven Days' Kevin McCallum yesterday that she's collecting signatures for the Norwich/Thetford/Sharon/Strafford seat being vacated by Tim Briglin and expects to make her run official by Thursday—which is the filing deadline. “People are tired. Families are exhausted. Teachers are really questioning whether they can keep going,” Holcombe, who ran for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2020, tells McCallum. "People need to know we have their backs."Leb Co-op manager files racial discrimination complaint.
That's the news Valley News columnist Jim Kenyon broke on Sunday, writing about Doren Hall's filing with the NH Human Rights Commission after he was passed over for the job of Co-op general manager. Hall, who ran grocery stores in a variety of states before taking over the Co-op's Lebanon store in 2016, tells Kenyon about comments from other employees, alleges that management was slow to take strong action against abusive and racist customers, and says the general manager issue was the straw that led him to file the complaint. “The Co-op claims to be about diversity, but it’s all a facade," he tells Kenyon.
In response, Amanda Charland—the woman who did get the job—said in a statement to Kenyon, “We seek to be equitable in all things done by our business. We support the right of employees to question if our practices of fairness have been applied properly.” And that should have been key to the story, former Co-op board president Don Kreis argues in a letter to the VN, instead of Kenyon's focus on customers' and employees' remarks. The fact that some people are racist "doesn't make the Co-op a racist organization, simply for having made a difficult personnel choice that smashed the organization’s glass ceiling after 76 years," Kreis writes. Letter (plus a bit more to Daybreak) at the link.
Rumors of rise in date-rape drugs fly on Dartmouth campus, but haven't shown up in reports to the college. In a three-bylined investigation, The Dartmouth today explores concerns by students and the leadership of the college's Greek community that "roofies"—sedatives including Rohypnol, from which the term derives—are being used widely at frat houses. Though stories abound and the Dick's House health center has seen "some increase" in students arriving believing they've been "roofied" during the last two terms, the paper reports, it hasn't shown up in official Title IX complaints.SPONSORED: Help the Mascoma Community Healthcare Center serve the Upper Valley. For five years, the Center has provided primary health and dental care to people of all ages and incomes, with insurance and without. Located in Canaan, NH, it serves patients from all over the Upper Valley, both in NH and in VT. On June 7 and 8, the Center will be participating in NH Gives, and donations made through NHGives.org will help it continue its mission of providing care to anyone, regardless of ability to pay. Sponsored by a friend of the Mascoma Community Healthcare Center.NH tries to shift treatment centers toward a "zero-restraint practice" for children. Over the span of a year in 2020-21, reports NHPR's Alli Fam, there were nearly 2,000 reported incidents of restraints being used in NH residential treatment facilities for children. Advocates, like Dr. Kay Jankowski, who leads the Trauma Interventions Research Center at DHMC and Geisel, argue for a child-by-child approach; using physical restraint to get control of kids who are having an outburst often just re-traumatizes them and makes things worse. Facilities are making mixed progress, Fam reports.With veto of bill banning school mask mandates, Sununu chips away at limits on public health powers. “Just because we may not like a local decision, does not mean we should remove their authority,” the governor wrote in his veto message on Friday, drawing praise from the NH branch of the NEA and condemnation from Republicans and "parental freedom" advocates. There were nearly 60 bills in the legislature trying to limit state power on pandemic-related health measures, writes Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin, and most either failed or were scaled back. Just a couple are headed to Sununu's desk.Bill requiring NH hunters to label their game cameras on private owners' property dies. Remember that last week negotiators figured they'd come up with a compromise to let hunters keep up the practice of using game cameras on other people's property while protecting landowners' privacy rights? Turns out the original bill's sponsor didn't like the changes, which he thought were anti-hunter, and so derailed it, reports NH Bulletin's Amanda Gokee. “It had morphed into a hideous creature that had to be killed,” GOP Sen. Terry Roy tells her.Hey, if Tech can have an accelerator, why not Forest Products? In fact, reports David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog, it does: The Forest Products Accelerator will run for four months this summer at Northern VT University in Lyndonville. It will offer expertise, contacts, and advice to startups based anywhere in the US trying to innovate in three areas: improving forest operations; finding new uses for low-grade wood, sawdust, and resins; and improving systems that use wood heat or biofuels. “This region is a perfect spot to pilot and launch these technology-driven companies,” says its manager.Changes coming to VT school funding formula. Gov. Phil Scott yesterday signed into law a measure that has the effect of shifting more education funds to schools with proportionately higher numbers of low-income students, students learning English, or students living in rural areas. The bill changes the "weighting" of students under VT's complex school-funding formula, and will affect school taxes in towns across the state once it starts phasing in during fiscal year 2025, reports VTDigger's Peter D'Auria.VTDigger founder Anne Galloway to step down as executive director. In a letter to readers yesterday, Galloway—who over the past 13 years has turned the nonprofit news organization into a national model for state- and even local-level journalism—writes that "it's time to let VTDigger thrive on its own." She says she'll be returning to her investigative journalism roots (and to her garden for the summer), but also drops the intriguing line: "I am an entrepreneur at heart, and I have a knack for finding tech and business solutions for journalism. I look forward to taking what I’ve learned at VTDigger to a bigger stage."Long before Elon Musk, privatized space research took place in northern VT. In the 1960s, in the heat of the Space Race, a Canadian aeronautical engineer named Gerald Bull envisioned a cheaper, more efficient way to launch satellites into orbit. Not by rockets, but by large, extremely powerful guns. VPR’s Brave Little State unearths quite the story—rife with intrigue—about how Bull’s Space Research Corporation, straddling the VT-Canada border, began with some promise of success before it devolved into ballistic arms dealing with apartheid South Africa and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.“If there’s a massive number of people riding here, even if only one percent of them are jerks, that can still be a lot of people." Ever since Kingdom Trails took off around E. Burke, mountain biking has become the Northeast Kingdom's biggest economic engine, writes Heather Hansman in the NYT (gift link, no paywall). With success, though, have come real challenges, and as the Kingdom Trails Association tries to cater to visitors while working with residents, it has to navigate bikers' behavior, a local economy that's less about longtime locals, and skyrocketing housing prices. Hansman explores.These miniature dioramas of everyday objects are relentlessly fun. Start with the fact that their creator, a Japanese artist named Tatsuya Tanaka, has been making a new diorama every single day for the past ten years. Then just give in to awe as you scroll through his work on Digital Synopsis. It’s one thing to see in an object its miniature “other”; it’s a level of genius to execute it so cleverly each time, every day. Strips of staples placed upright become a cityscape. With a tiny car and some figurines, a sewing machine turns into a gas station. That dry-erase board must, of course, be an ice rink. (Thanks, LL!)The Tuesday Vordle. If you're new to this, it's the Upper Valley version of Wordle. Each day, Vordlewiz Kevin McCurdy chooses a five-letter word related to an item in the previous day's Daybreak. Don't let his efforts go to waste!
Some numbers...
On Friday, Dartmouth reported there had been 162 active cases during the previous 7 days, a drop from the 197 reported on a week ago. The college says 29 undergrads (-11), 38 grad and professional students (-5), and 95 faculty/staff (-16) had active cases over the previous week.
NH cases are falling a bit, with a 7-day average now of 610 new cases per day versus 639 last Thursday. The state reported 653 cases Friday, 770 Saturday, 509 Sunday, and 264 yesterday, bringing it to 322,511 in all. There were 9 deaths reported during that time; the total stands at 2,524. Under the state's rubric of counting only people actively being treated for Covid in hospitals, it reports 32 hospitalizations (-4 since Thursday). The NH State Hospital Association reports 134 inpatients with confirmed or suspected cases (+1 since Thursday) and another 52 Covid-recovering patients. In what has become a trend, local numbers to start the week are down from the end of the previous week (they then tend to rise again with the Thursday numbers): The state reports 301 active cases in Grafton County (-86 since Thursday), 141 in Sullivan (-13), and 407 (-83) in Merrimack. In town-by-town numbers, it says Lebanon has 75 (-17); Hanover 56 (-54); Grantham 35 (+14); Claremont 31 (-24); Newport 22 (+2); Canaan 16 (-6); New London 16 (+4); Enfield 13 (-5); Plainfield 12 (no change); Lyme 12 (-5); Sunapee 10 (-3); Charlestown 10 (-3); Cornish 6 (no change); Newbury 5 (-3); and Haverhill, Piermont, Warren, Orford, Wentworth, Rumney, Orange, Grafton, Springfield, Wilmot, and Croydon 1-4 each. Unity is off the list.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
For the next two days, at any time you like, Sustainable Woodstock and the Upper Valley Sierra Club are offering up an online screening of Motherload, Liz Canning's 2019 documentary (not to be confused with the 2020 documentary of the same name about ski moms) about bicycles, their social impact, their future.... and replacing cars with cargo bikes. No charge, but you'll need to sign up to see it.
From 10 am to noon today and again on Thursday from 5-7 pm, the Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission and the Vermont Creative Network are hosting a Pandemic Recovery Seminar for "people and businesses working in the Creative Economy"—by which they mean everything from the performing and literary arts to specialty food and drinks to crafts and film and culture in general. They'll talk over business development and resources aimed at helping economic recovery.
This evening at 6, Woodstock's Norman Williams Public Library hosts celebrated poet Jane Hirshfield, online. "I am interested...in poems that know the world in many ways at once—heart, mind, voice, and body," she once wrote. Over the years her work—nine books of poetry, two books of essays about poetry, four books of poems in translation—has won her numerous awards, repeated entry in The Best of American Poetry, and the affection, respect, and attention reserved for the luminaries of her craft. No charge, but you'll need to register.
Also starting at 6, The Space on Main in Bradford is hosting an in-person "Music & Morsels" bluegrass/roots jam and dinner. Food and drink from San Song Kitchen (Korean), Bradford's Sweet ‘n’ Savory Bakery and Vittles House of Brews, and Corinth's Montview Vineyard. Musicians provide the toe-tapping backdrop.
At 7 pm, the Norwich Bookstore presents an online conversation and reading with authors Jeff Friedman and Meg Pokrass and their new collection, The House of Grana Padano. A collection of 95 short pieces of "fabulist microfiction" about families, circuses, magicians, a performing angel, salesmen, a lost pet dragon named Sam...
And also at 7, Here in the Valley's Tuesday Jukebox brings in Sunday Table, the jazz quartet made up of four DHMC medical professionals who got their start doing Sunday afternoon jam sessions in the hospital lobby, with Jason Pettus on keyboard and melodion; Eric Bronstein on string bass; Tom Davis on guitar; and vocalist Grace Crummer. In-person in the TipTop Building's Speakeasy Studios in WRJ, or livestreamed.
A horsereleased of the tracesforgets the weight of the wagon.
—
by Jane Hirshfield.
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!