NICE TO SEE YOU AGAIN, UPPER VALLEY!
Well, the "heat index" is back. It's a made-up number, like "wind chill," only you can't just add layers. Today, the combination of warmth and humidity will make it feel like it's getting toward the mid-90s, the weather folks say, even though the expected high is more like 90. There's a Great Lakes low pushing through, bringing a chance of scattered rain and thunderstorms this afternoon, maybe with some hail. That chance lasts through the night and into tomorrow. After which [thumping heart] things start to cool down. Jim Block looks up. Or, rather, points his camera in that direction. The Etna photographer just posted a series of cloud photos he took during the last few weeks of spring. Sunrises and sunsets over Lake Sunapee, the clouds lit dramatically from below; some big-sky panoramas; nice shots of Pillsbury State Park; a stunner of the Milky Way over Lake Sunapee...William Daugherty looks down. Or, well, his drone does. The Plainfield drone artist was flying over various spots on the Connecticut over the weekend around Burnap's Island in Plainfield. Canoe campers, people fishing, kayakers, a dog hard at work fetching sticks... It's full-on summer.Been a while...
NH added 105 new positive test results over the last four days, bringing its official total to what you'd think would be 5,558. There are 4,290 (77%) recovered cases and 339 deaths (up 8 since Thursday), yielding a total current caseload of 929. There were 6,425 tests over that time. Grafton County remains at 76 cumulative cases, while Sullivan remains at 24. Merrimack County gained 5, and stands at 392. Claremont, Lebanon, Plainfield, Charlestown, and Newbury each have between 1 and 4 active cases.
VT reported 28 new cases over the last four days, bringing its official total to 1,163. Nine more people have recovered, bringing that total to 926. No one is currently hospitalized, and deaths remain at 56. Windsor and Orange counties are still at 55 and 9 cases over the course of the pandemic, and in town-by-town numbers released Friday, Hartford remains at 13 cumulative cases, Woodstock at 8, and other towns in the region between 1 and 5. The state added 3,862 tests over the past four days; it's now done 58,607 altogether.
Here's hoping the rain actually materializes. Over the weekend, the VN's John Lippman noted that rainfall the past two months has been more than 3 inches below normal for Windsor and Grafton counties. Farmers are fretting, and those who can irrigate are working hard to do so—“I’ve had a pump going for 22 hours a day for the past five weeks from the White River,” says Hurricane Flats' Geo Honigford—but many worry about fields that depend on rain. Though Edgewater's Pooh Sprague is philosophical. "This is the year that everything got gummed up for everybody anyway,” he says.Canaan man victim of apparently unprovoked bear attack. It happened last Friday night, as he was unloading an air conditioner from his truck. The bear came up behind him, pushed him against the truck, and "stuck its claws in his lower back area," according to NH Fish & Game. The man chased the bear off and had his wounds treated. Fish & Game has set a trap nearby, and will kill the bear if it's captured.APD, D-H make The New Yorker. They—and in particular the D-H system's telemedicine program—feature in a new piece by John Seabrook, a longtime writer at the magazine, on "The Promise and the Peril of Virtual Health Care." It's more than that, of course: a look at how the hospital system is navigating the pandemic, at the challenges of providing health care in rural northern New England, at tele-health nationally, and at how it works right here. "The Dartmouth-Hitchcock hub closely reflects the founding idea of telemedicine. It’s space medicine, brought to a rural setting on Earth," Seabrook writes.Hanover Co-op makes the NYT. It's part of a larger article on how small businesses are navigating re-opening while facing "a patchwork of rules and guidelines being issued at the city, county, state and federal levels." The article says that it can be expensive, noting that the Co-op's four stores have been open throughout at a cost of some $400K, according to spokesman Allan Reetz. Much of that has been for employee bonuses, but the stores have also spent on equipment, signage, communications, and plexiglass dividers.Chelsea, Tunbridge voters again reject school budget; Strafford re-vote passes. Both measures were on the ballot Saturday. The proposed $6.98 million Chelsea/Tunbridge budget went down 266-143, reflecting tensions in the merged district and leaving the school board looking at transportation and athletics budgets for further trimming. "We really don't have a lot of wiggle room" chairwoman Kathy Galluzzo tells the VN's Tim Camerato. Strafford's $3.3 million budget passed after the board cut about $27,000 from a failed March measure.“We went in thinking that we would be revealing gaps. Our research really showed that was not the case at all.” That's Anne Sosin, who directs the Center for Global Health Equity program at Dartmouth, and recently co-authored a report on how health systems, social service organizations, local governments and others responded to the pandemic. The researchers found a collaborative effort among organizations to protect the region's most vulnerable people, the VN's Nora Doyle-Burr reports—and indications that tele-health is helping overcome pre-pandemic transportation barriers. Full report here.Swallowtails flit, woodpecker chicks fledge, fungus fells flies... We're into the fourth week of June, and Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast runs down what's going on around the woods. She starts with this fungus, Furia ithacensis, that binds snipe flies to the undersides of leaves and... whoa, Elise! It's breakfast time! Hmm... sparrows are out, and American copper butterflies, and Canadian tiger swallowtails, and wild roses, and little hairy woodpeckers... HS graduates, plans. The VN is out with its annual listing of this year's area high school graduates and, in some cases, their post-high school plans. Link takes you to a page with links to the various schools. Darn Tough cuts 50 jobs. That's about 15 percent of the VT sockmaker's workforce. The public announcement came yesterday on its FB page. “Today we had to let go of just under 50 people. A few months ago we couldn’t grow fast enough. There are larger problems in the world, and we get that. It’s always about people though, and compassion.” Though the company has brought back about half its workforce after shutting manufacturing in March, “it’s becoming clear that this is a long-term event,” marketing director Brooke Kaplan says.Don't be lulled by the numbers, VT officials say. “We can’t lose track of the fact that the virus hasn’t gone anywhere,” state health commissioner Mark Levine said at yesterday's regular Monday press conference. “We need to continue to be vigilant, cautious and protective of the most vulnerable in society and in our own families.” His statement came as the state continues to track the Winooski outbreak and trace people who've come in contact with clusters that have shown up in Rutland County and in Windham County around Brattleboro."California has amazing cheese, and here we are sending boxes of cheese to California.” That's a Waitsfield store owner on the pandemic-era lift that news of VT cheesemakers' struggles gave to online cheese sales. VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen writes that with restaurant orders down and tourist commerce uncertain, small cheesemakers have pivoted to online sales, "Victory Cheese" boxes, and other efforts to get cheese in front of eaters. “People will gather,” says Grafton Cheese Co.'s Ruth Flores. “They either do it in a restaurant or they do it in their backyard, but people have to eat."Got to travel? VPR's got tips. Nina Keck says, above all, plan ahead. Especially if you're making it a road trip. Know what's going on in the states you'll be passing through—including the status of campgrounds and rest stops. Get a tuneup ahead of time. Bring cleaning supplies, masks, gloves, and extra food & snacks. Here's the CDC's data tracker for cases in the last seven days.
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The Cobb Forest fen in Strafford has started breaking out in Showy Lady's Slipper orchids. The bloom will build for the next two weeks, and the fen has a boardwalk so that people can see the spectacle without trampling it to death. Mike Hebb writes, "No local wild flower community compares with this in numbers of showy lady slippers. We have found 8 different orchids in this property." Their chief request: Keep to the boardwalk, especially if you've got kids or dogs or are an over-eager photographer.
And on the local curbside-pickup scene, here's an unusual one: Billings Farm will now deliver to your car on Tuesdays: their line of butter and cheeses, Norwich Farm Creamery milk, yogurt, and ricotta, maple syrup. And oh yeah, if you have a hankering for a puzzle...
Tonight's a free, outdoor intro to belly dancing led by Gina Capossela at Kilowatt Park in Wilder, sponsored by Hartford Rec. No experience or special clothing required. Starts at 7:15, and if you can't make it, she's also doing one Thursday at Sachem Field and Saturday at the CCBA pavilion. Register at the link.
And speaking of outdoors, there's a new yoga "studio"—well, okay, actually a tent—in Bethel, called Yoga Farm. It just opened last week, and will run through September. Right now, there are four classes a week and a couple of meditation sessions, but they'll be building out the schedule.
South African guitarist Derek Gripper is something of a force in world music, known especially for his transcriptions of music by West Africa’s masters of the 21-string kora, particularly Mali’s Toumani Diabaté and Ballaké Sissoko. Global Arts Live is hosting a livestream tonight at 8 pm, on their FB page and on YouTube (at the link). (Thanks, AS!)
Reading Deeper
After two years of discussion, the Associated Press on Friday changed its stylebook—which news organizations and others all over the country rely on for guidance on usage matters—to capitalize the B in "Black" when it refers to people in a racial, social, or cultural context. The LA Times, USA Today and NBC News last week also began the practice, and the National Association of Black Journalists has urged other news organizations to follow suit. “It’s certainly long overdue,” says Doris Truong, director of training and diversity at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in Florida. “It’s something that people who are Black have been calling for for a long time.” Sometime in the next month, the AP style arbiters will also make a decision about the W in "white."
Degged with dew, dappled with dewAre the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereftOf wet and of wildness? Let them be left,O let them be left, wildness and wet;Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
-- Excerpted from "Inversnaid," by Gerard Manley Hopkins. (And
by the pseudonymous Tom O'Bedlam, who's got a perfect poetry-reading voice, on his SpokenVerse YouTube channel.)
See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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