GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Showery, hot, muggy. There's a cold front headed our way from the west, bringing with it a chance of showers all day and a slight chance of thunderstorms this afternoon, though they'll likely be "garden variety," the weather folks say. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, high in the upper 80s, dewpoints in the 60s, winds—gusty this afternoon—from the west. Mid-60s tonight.Those cool, wet days had to be good for something! (Besides the greenery and the water table and the crops...) And they were. They paved the way for this unusually brilliant rainbow (there's even a second, if you look closely) with Ascutney in the background, taken from Brownsville, VT by Jo Keiller.Twin Pines to expand affordable housing in Woodstock. It's adding eight units to its Safford Commons complex off Route 4, reports Jasmine Taudvin in the Valley News. Four are under construction now, with applications slated to open in September (unlike the 28 existing units, they'll be for sale, not rent), while work on the other four will begin sometime in the next two years. They'll definitely be welcome, Taudvin writes: Merchants and businesses have been struggling to find local workers. "Any improvement in affordable housing is beneficial,” says village board of trustees chair Jeffrey Kahn.“Food should make you want to dance.” That's Eddie Moran, who started with his light green Taco's Tacos food truck at Colburn Park and now owns and runs Lalo's Taqueria on the Leb Mall, talking to NHPR's Daniela Allee. Allee visited him for an NHPR series on Latino-owned restaurants around the state (it's a tough gig, but someone has to do it). Moran got his start working for his parents, who own Gusanoz, before striking out on his own so he could experiment more. About his tacos, Moran says: “It should be two or three bites of just an explosion of flavor." SPONSORED: Pompanoosuc Mills Independent Sale extended 1 more day! We’ve always taken our independence seriously. That doesn’t mean we’re not accountable... far from it! Our stakeholders are our customers, our team, our community, and our planet. To us, being an independent business means the freedom to do things according to our values. It allows us to measure our success in ways that add up to more than the bottom line. Read our full statement and shop the sale at the link above. Sponsored by Pompy Mills.D-H shifting from "remote by necessity" to "remote by design." As many as 2,000 of the hospital system's employees will work remotely at least part of the time, reports the VN's Nora Doyle-Burr—about 13 percent of its system-wide and 20 percent at DHMC in Lebanon. The benefits, says D-H VP Brenda Blair: the ability to recruit staff from outside NH and VT; less need to force new hires to run the Upper Valley housing gantlet; and internal surveys show that a lot of workers like working from home.Lost... and found: A story in two posts. "At some point last night," read the first post on the Norwich listserv on Sunday morning, "a small flock of sheep and their guard donkey wandered out of their fenced field. Last seen about 6 p.m. There are 4 ewes, 8 lambs, 1 silver ram, one donkey with a halter on." (Sorry, no link.) Word got out. A bit over an hour later, this appeared: "Sheep and Unity the donkey found and all is well, though everyone is rather wet! Thank you listserv!" "The Red White and Blue I’ve come to know has no creed, credo, or dogma attached." That's in photographer John Gilbert Fox's artist statement for his new exhibition at AVA Gallery. Fox, writes Susan Apel on her Artful blog, is "angered and anguished by what he regards as the recent appropriation of the flag by only one political party," though the exhibit doesn't dwell only on the flag—the color combination (or hints of it) shows up in other photos, too. AVA is now open for in-person visits, and the exhibit runs through July 23.Speaking of flags... There's one by the headstone for Richard and Bathsheba Wallace in the Thetford Center cemetery on Tucker Hill Road. In Sidenote, Hannah Smith tells their stories. Richard left his farm by Hubbard Hill in 1777 to fight the British, and that September was one of two volunteers (the other was from Newbury, VT) who swam two miles across Lake Champlain carrying communications from American forces attacking Fort Ticonderoga across British naval lines. Bathsheba, meanwhile, was a midwife—present at the birth of over 1,666 babies, including 21 pairs of twins, Smith writes.LISTEN restarts in-person community dinners today. The popular free sit-down meals in WRJ, which went grab-and-go only at the start of the pandemic, will be available from 4:30 to 5:30 pm Monday through Saturday, reports Liz Sauchelli in the VN. The to-go option will also still be available, at least at the start. “We don’t want people to feel uncomfortable,” says community meals manager Larry Lowndes. “If they’re not ready to come sit down and eat we shouldn’t force them.”Fawns are venturing out. The youngest may still be tucked away, Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast writes, but those born earlier are getting their legs. Newborn fawns have almost no scent: Their mothers help keep them safe "by staying at a distance except when they’re actively nursing." Also out there in the woods this first week of July: fierce Eastern Kingbirds (highly territorial); milkweed (and the toll it takes on insects); ovenbirds; green bottle flies; and—the heart leaps!—the early promise of wild blueberries. Last week's rain? Not enough. "We are actually hitting record low values in our stream flows and in our groundwater wells," VT state climatologist Leslie-Ann Dupigny-Giroux tells VPR's Mitch Wertlieb. "So, we're hitting daily record [lows]. That's really, really, really concerning." The drought is acute across northern ME, NH, and VT, she says, the culmination of relative lack of rain and high temps at unusual times. Though conditions are worst in ME, both NH and VT face striking shortfalls: The Northeast Kingdom needs almost 11 inches of rain for its aquifers to recover. "Those are huge numbers," she says.“I’ve never seen so many fake medical record cases." It's been a banner year for insurance fraud in NH, reports the Monitor's Teddy Rosenbluth. False claims for missing valuables, fake disability claims, and above all, bogus medical claims, including one family in which everyone, including young kids, claimed injuries in separate ATV accidents. The state's acting insurance fraud director says he blames the pandemic, Rosenbluth writes. "People had lots of time on their hands to doctor documents and access to work computers loaded with the software to do it—a quarantine project of sorts."
"Pretty soon school districts are going to have to start making decisions about where they pay tuition. And they’re doing this in the absence of any guidance from the state, the legislature or the courts." On VTDigger's "Deeper Dig," education reporter Lola Duffort parses the decisions school districts now face as they try to reconcile the Supreme Court's 2020 Espinoza decision prohibiting districts from denying money to religious schools because they're religious, with VT's "no compelled support" clause protecting residents from supporting religious indoctrination or institutions they don't believe in.Looking to not get trampled by the hiking crowds this summer? The Green Mountain Club has some suggestions for alternatives to Mansfield, Abe, Killington, and other popular hikes. There's the Skyline Trail between mounts Worcester and Hunger, for instance, or the remote loop starting with the Beaver Meadow Trail in Morristown up, eventually, to Morse Mountain. They've got three other recommendations, as well, including the Butler Lodge Loop in Underhill and Ludlow Mountain (which you probably know as Okemo).Never had a pachamanca? Now you can! Though here's guessing seats will be tough to snag now that the NYT's Priya Krishna has just profiled Esmeralda, the new once-a-month gathering in Andover, VT (west of Springfield) hosted at their second home by JuanMa Calderón and Maria Rondeau, who own a Peruvian restaurant in Somerville, MA. And what's a pachamanca? An 800-year-old Andean technique of cooking a community meal in a pit lined with stones—"like pressure cooking and searing at once," Krishna writes. “It is like an act of faith,” Calderón says. “It is part of the memory of Peruvian people.”
The NH and VT Covid data people took the long weekend off, too, so we'll catch up on the numbers tomorrow.Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
At 6:30 this evening, Fairlee's summer music series starts up again with the Vermont National Guard's 40th Army Band—which spent a chunk of the pandemic assisting with the state's response and, more recently, its vaccine effort. In more normal times, the band tours the state playing a variety of music, from classical to contemporary to patriotic. On the town common.
And at 7, renowned political cartoonist Jeff Danziger—who got his start cartooning for the Rutland Herald and Times Argus—will do a Zoomed book launch and reading for his new book, Lieutenant Dangerous: A Vietnam War Memoir. The memoir, being published today by the Upper Valley's own Steerforth Press, is "equal parts personal history, rants, war history and political commentary. In clear language he describes both the horrors and absurdities of war and the toll it takes on a soldier," writes Peter Cobb in the Herald. Hosted by Phoenix Books, no charge, but you'll need to register.
The garden is very still,It is dazed with moonlight,Contented with perfume,Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.Firefly lights open and vanishHigh as the tip buds of the golden glowLow as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet. Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring,Only the cat, padding between the roses,Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered patternAs water is broken by the falling of a leaf.
— From
by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
See you tomorrow.
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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