Daybreak Tuesday 8/11/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

The most oppressive day of the week. That's what the weather service says. Temps and dewpoints are rising, bringing us a high today near 90 and a "heat-index" high around 95. There's a chance of scattered rain and thunderstorms all afternoon and into the night in advance of a cold front that's headed our way ("cold," of course, being relative). Low tonight only around 70. This time, fog, trees, and morning light from eye level. August brings fog to these parts, so Quechee photographer Lisa Lacasse was out on a hill in Thetford yesterday morning, shooting the mist and the trees across the way and the cornsilk sunlight sifting through... And some numbers...

Well that went well. It took just a day after returning to campus for some Norwich U cadets to land in hot water for failing to follow Covid-19 health guidelines—socializing without masks or distancing. President Mark Anarumo met with the students yesterday and says he "accepted the explanation that all people at the event had been living locally for more than two weeks," the AP reports. The college also reported yesterday that three newly returned students have tested positive for the coronavirus and have been isolated.Fairlee aims to turn Route 5 into "more of a Main Street." The community-led Main Street to Morey project has just installed new outdoor seating, lawn games by the library, and signs pointing the way to local hiking and biking trails. More's planned. “People want more places to gather, they want more activities to do, especially family-friendly activities. They want to be able to walk and bike more safely. They want traffic to slow down, they want to really shine a light on all the things to do,” says community planner Rebecca Sanborn Stone. (VN)You can go see art again, but just a few of you at a time. Blogger Susan Apel writes that AVA Gallery has reopened for visits to see Carla Kimball's Solitude, the photography exhibit that was three days into its run when the gallery shut down back in March. "This exhibition was a stunner from the beginning, and has only grown in resonance after months of world-wide, imposed solitude," Susan writes. You'll need a reservation, which means you'll have the gallery to yourselves, which seems... fitting.   Mt. Ascutney Hospital's employee of the month for August is... everyone. Its entire staff, that is. “The arrival of the novel coronavirus was a tremendous stress to our entire organization and to our communities,” CEO and chief medical officer Joe Perras writes in the announcement. “I am proud to say that all of my colleagues stepped up to the challenge, and they did it together, working side by side with stamina, flexibility and ingenuity.” But yikes, just imagine the jostling for that employee-of-the-month parking space!SPONSORED: Got lawn questions? Theron Peck's got answers. Chippers' own "Mr. Grass" has launched a weekly Zoom webinar to discuss VT and NH lawns. You can join him each Thursday at 9 am for a half-hour discussion about the lawn issues he's currently seeing, steps you can take, and what you should be planning for the remainder of the season and next year. Theron will answer questions that were either submitted prior to that day’s Zoom meeting or during the meeting. Let a local expert advise you on your lawn! Register at the link above, and check out his advice on the Chippers blog. Sponsored by Chippers.Leaf rolls, jelly babies, blackberries, meadowhawks... It's August, week 2, and Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast is finding lots out there to write about. The rolled-up leaves on hardwoods are moth larvae sheltering in place. Jelly babies are fungi (boletes are popping up, too). Blackberries need no explanation; what they need is eating. And Meadowhawks are not birds; they're bright red dragonflies. Elise includes a link to an entry on the wonderfully named Cherry-faced Meadowhawk in VCE's Atlas of Life.And there's some good news for moose, for a change. A cold snap last November cut into the tick population, leading to lower calf mortality. In recent years, that's averaged an unbelievable 70 percent; this past year it was more in the 50 percent range. “We’d like to see much lower mortality, but this is better," says NH Fish & Game moose biologist Henry Jones. At 3000-4000, NH's moose population is about half of its historic high.  “They’re all happy and giggling and smiling and joking for a half hour on the phone, and then when I see them in person, it is a two minute conversation." That's John Dye, who owns Sole Training, a personal training company in Portsmouth and one of NH's relative handful of Black-owned businesses—71, according to one list in circulation. NHPR's Todd Bookman takes a look at the challenges of being a Black entrepreneur in the state. Expressions of support are part of the package, but so are isolation, coldness and outright hostility.Sununu picks a fight with the neighbors. "People are coming from all across the country, especially in the Northeast," NH's guv tells CNBC, touting the state. "You’re in New York, you have a mayor who doesn’t know what he’s doing...It’s like they put a big sign on the Brooklyn Bridge that says ‘the last one out, turn out the lights.’" He's exercised about MA, NY, and CA "pickpocketing" taxes from Granite Staters—both old and new—whose employers are in those states but who don't physically go to the office.NH's school funding system "inequitable for students and taxpayers." Testifying to the state's Education Funding Commission yesterday, researchers noted that school districts with higher needs—and smaller districts—require more spending per student to achieve average outcome levels. They also found that on average, districts with the lowest property wealth have the highest local education property tax rates. The state Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of the current system next month.Numbers of uninsured Granite Staters rise substantially. According to a study by the National Center for Coverage Innovation, 96,000 adults in the state, about 11 percent of them, now lack health insurance, up 3 percent since 2018. "It's an awful picture," The Dartmouth Institute's Elliot Fisher tells the Monitor, and the number's probably low, since the study only went through May. Nationally, the picture's even worse, and, notes Fisher, "The burden of a loss of employment and loss of insurance is going to fall squarely on the poor.” Despite possible record participation, VT secy of state expects preliminary primary results tonight. As of yesterday afternoon, town clerks had received over 110,000 absentee ballots; two years ago, primary voters cast 107,000 ballots altogether. But clerks have been counting ballots for days, Jim Condos noted at a press conference yesterday, and rules for accepting absentee ballots are “much more lenient” than in other states that have had problems processing them. All ballots are due in by 7 pm tonight.Scott's hands-off approach to school reopening draws fire.  With each VT district on its own, they're "all over the map," writes VTDigger's Lola Duffort. Online, face-to-face, hybrid, parents' choice—districts are trying everything, and some superintendents are facing school board revolts. “It’s our normal set of inequities–on steroids–with a frame of life or death,” says Senate Ed Committee chair Philip Baruth. Former Education Secy Rebecca Holcombe, running for governor, argues that her former department has failed to lead. "As one superintendent said to me, ‘It’s hard to drop the ball if you don’t pick it up.’”Are national parks really America's best idea? That's the question Outside asks as it excerpts nature writer David Gessner's new book, Leave It As It Is. In a nuanced essay on the twin original sins of Teddy Roosevelt and other creators of the national parks—seeing American wilderness as empty, when in fact Indians had been using and "manicuring" it for thousands of years; and then expelling tribes from the land that would become parks—Gessner writes, "We are right to question Theodore Roosevelt. But we are also right to question our questioning, particularly on the subject of preservation... Parks work. Whatever its limitations, and murky history, Yellowstone remains the largest wilderness in the lower 48 states."

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From laden boughs, from hands,from sweet fellowship in the bins,comes nectar at the roadside, succulentpeaches we devour, dusty skin and all,comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,to carry within us an orchard, to eatnot only the skin, but the shade,not only the sugar, but the days, to holdthe fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   the round jubilance of peach.

From "From Blossoms," by Li-Young Lee.

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Go eat a peach. 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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