Daybreak Tuesday 6/16/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Warming trend! Yesterday was cloudier than forecast (at least, east of the Greens). I dunno, gremlins? In the meantime, today's forecast starts out cloudy but that sure looks like sunny skies out there. Whatever the skies bring us, it'll be dry, with temps climbing from the mid-40s first thing toward 80 this afternoon, then back to the high 40s overnight. No wind to speak of.Just a quick usage note for those of you who are new to Daybreak. A comment from a reader yesterday made me realize that some of you may not know that most of these maroon headlines you see are clickable: They'll take you to a source webpage. Look for the little underlines. And go wild!Oh, except for this one.

Hanlon announces Dartmouth will replace weather vane. The 9-foot-long, 600-pound weather vane atop Baker Library, which dates to 1928, had drawn criticism from Native American students as a “patronizing and stereotypical depiction of Native peoples.” “It’s just a cruel mockery of Native Americans,” Hanover resident David Vincelette told the VN last week. Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon, in a statement yesterday, said, "It is clear that the images portrayed on the weather vane do not reflect Dartmouth's values." A working group is being pulled together to recommend a design for a replacement.Were Windsor principal's free-speech rights violated? In a followup to the Mt. Asctuney School Board's decision to place principal Tiffany Riley on leave for a Facebook post, the VN's Tim Camerato reports that the issue could wind up in court. Asked about it at a press conference yesterday, VT Gov. Phil Scott said, "When you have someone that is expressing their right to free speech, to be penalized for that in that manner, I think, is problematic." Camerato talks to employment attorneys and others about the legalities. Quick update: Michael Fanger, the 79-year-old man who wandered away from his Lebanon home, was found yesterday morning after a night outside by a passerby on Etna Road. He was in good condition, and taken to DHMC.Literary North launches its first "Constellation." And Susan Apel's been poking around. Literary North, of course, is the locally born, wide-ranging champion of the literary arts in VT and NH. Constellations are collaborative projects, and its first, Ekphrasis, is a collection of writings—poetry, essay, fiction—inspired by particular works of art; the deadline for submitting was yesterday. As Susan says, "It provides a great afternoon of reading and clicking, maybe followed by some Googling if you find something that catches your eye and won’t let go."Oh, man! Fireflies! Blackberries! And spittle bugs! It's the third week of June, and Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast runs down what's out there right now. Toads are on the prowl and fireflies have gone from a scattering to lighting up fields at night. Blackberries are blooming right now. Butterflies are everywhere you look. A lot of young Canada geese have grown into adolescents, and ruffed grouse chicks are out and about—they can fly at five days old. Oh, yeah, and the spittle bugs... you'll just have to read about them."People are maybe a little more emotional if their buttercream isn’t mixing properly..." Eater's Erin Berger joins the parade of writers chronicling King Arthur Flour's role in getting America through the pandemic. The baker's hotline staff, she writes, are doing far more than just answering ingredients questions. "A caller may technically be asking about how to halve a recipe, but what they really want to talk about is how they’d usually make a full recipe to share with their grandchildren." KAF's "teaching culture," Berger says, primed it to "be a source of comfort during quarantine." (Thanks, JF!)The reopening state of play on the two sides of the river. With much of NH opening fully to indoor dining yesterday while VT restaurants are still at a quarter capacity, WCAX took a look at the differences between the two states. In Woodstock, Mon Vert's Sam DiNatale said, "People who don't have an outside patio, I can't imagine it making any sense to them financially" to reopen. One B&B owner says, given the restrictions, he's holding off. Meanwhile, NH inns with up to 20 rooms can reopen fully, and Lyme's Tami Dowd says "it looks like we are going to have some full weekends, which will be a good thing,"The reopening state of play in New Hampshire. NHPR runs down where things stand as of yesterday: restaurants in the northern and western counties back to indoor dining (as long as tables are 6 feet apart); larger hotels at 50 percent, smaller ones open fully; museums and galleries open as of yesterday, but at 50 percent capacity; libraries back open, with books to be quarantined for 72 hours. Movie theaters and performing arts centers can reopen June 29, but guidelines are still being drawn up.The reopening state of play nationally. Fodor's lays out all 50 states as of yesterday. No travel through the Navajo Nation in Arizona; parts of some national parks in Colorado are back; Florida's wide open, though (yes, there's some irony here, given trends in case rates) if you're from NY, NJ or CT you have to self-quarantine; Hawaii's discouraging visitors; and Yellowstone's back open, but only for day use.Task force recommends absentee ballots for NH voters. In the past, absentees were available for residents with disabilities or who were traveling out of state at the time of the election. But the group asked by Secy of State Bill Gardner to come up with plans for November says absentee ballots are the safest alternative to turning out at the polls. One big challenge it foresees: counting them. “It’s a reasonable estimate that we could have 50 percent absentee [participation],” one panel member says. “It does not take simple math to think we are going to get buried in absentees.”VT's state of emergency extended another month. As Gov. Phil Scott said at his press conference yesterday, the move is largely administrative, "just a vehicle or mechanism to do all the things we need to do to manage our response.” In particular, he pointed out, the move gives state officials the tools to manage the pace of re-opening, and the ability to slow it down or reverse it if new spikes—such as the recent 83-case outbreak in Winooski—emerge. The state of emergency is now scheduled to expire July 15.You've got a snapper the size of a dinner platter laying her eggs in a heavily trafficked part of your yard. What do you do? That's the question from Carolyn Haley, of E. Wallingford, VT, via the latest "Dispatch" from the new Vermont Almanac. There's lawn mowing, foot traffic, even cars... Naturalist David Carroll responds that relocating them is a serious project, but the nest is deep enough to withstand mowing above it and even stepping on it. "Leaving it up to fate with minimal thought beyond avoiding heavy impact or digging would seem the best route to take," he writes."We're here. We're birding. Get used to it." That's Debbie Archer, who coordinates education programs for Audubon Vermont, walking in the woods with Stuck in Vermont's Eve Sollberger and talking about Black Birders Week (it was the week before last). Archer and Tykee James, a co-organizer of the event who is also coordinator of government affairs for the National Audubon Society, talk about the importance of visibility—and their experiences—in a field stereotyped as mostly white. "Things...like hiking and kayaking and canoeing, somehow the idea that black people don't do those things exists," says Archer. And speaking of birds... Here's a remarkable murmuration of starlings last week at Potteric Carr Nature Reserve in Yorkshire, England. So... will your lightbulbs betray you? Researchers in Israel announced last week that it's possible to listen in on a conversation in a room that's hundreds of feet away by measuring the minuscule changes in light output caused by sound waves vibrating the glass envelope of a lightbulb. "Any sound in the room can be recovered from the room with no requirement to hack anything and no device in the room," says one of the researchers. In a moment of genius, they generated a recording of the Beatles' "Let It Be" clear enough that "the name-that-tune app Shazam could instantly recognize it," Wired reports. Finally, Daybreak has a new poetry editor. His name is Michael Lipson, and he's a clinical psychologist in Great Barrington, MA, who leads a weekly online meditation group and, not coincidentally, is my best friend from childhood. He's also one of the funniest, most thoughtful people I know, and has an astonishing array of poems stashed away in his memory to pull out when the moment seems apt. I turned to him for help a couple of weeks ago and he was so quick with just the right response that I jokingly asked if he wanted to be Daybreak's first poetry editor. And, well, here he is. Please welcome him.

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Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.

-- Matthew Arnold, from "Dover Beach"

See you tomorrow.

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