BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES, UPPER VALLEY!
It's going to get wet. Mostly cloudy and showery today in the runup to the main event, highs only in the mid-70s. The models keep showing the track of what's left of Isaias ("ees-ah-EE-ahs" to you) shifting westward, and at the moment it's a little unclear whether it'll come straight up the CT River Valley or to the west. The heaviest rains will be west of the storm center, higher winds to the east. There are flash flood warnings in effect for much of the region starting this afternoon, especially central VT, with winds on both sides of the river gusting up to 50 mph tonight, strongest in higher terrain, and a "low-end threat for a tornado or two" in eastern VT. Things start to calm down after midnight. Yeah, okay, rats-on-stilts and all. But they're cute... Herb Swanson caught a doe and two fawns in his back yard in Lyndonville yesterday morning. And, the numbers...
NH added 26 new positive test results yesterday, bringing its official total to 6,660. It reported no new deaths, leaving that total at 417. There are now 5,848 official recoveries (88%), and 395 current cases. Grafton County remains at 103 cumulative cases, Sullivan at 40 and Merrimack at 458. There are 6 current cases in Grafton County as a whole, 5 in Sullivan, and 19 in Merrimack (down 1), with between 1 and 4 current cases reported in Lebanon, Grantham, Claremont, Charlestown, and Sunapee.
VT added 1 new case yesterday, (in Chittenden County) bringing its total to 1,427. There were no new deaths, which remain at 57. One person is hospitalized. Windsor and Orange counties remain at 71 and 16 cumulative cases, respectively.
Some 3,500 of them, in fact. Yesterday's lunchtime forum, hosted by D-H CEO Joanne Conroy, gave America's top doc a chance to talk about school re-opening, mask wearing, the politicization of mask-wearing, and a vaccine (he's optimistic there'll be one early next year). In addition, the
VN
's Nora Doyle-Burr reports, although Dartmouth plans "robust" initial testing of students and ongoing wastewater testing to identify dorm hot-spots, Conroy and others at D-H "said they are preparing for an increase in cases in the region as students return to Dartmouth and other schools in the Twin States."
Joshua White, the chief medical officer at Gifford Medical Center, is out with a commentary on what it will take to be in this fight for the long haul. "Large swaths of the United States appear almost to have thrown in the towel and submitted to the ravages of COVID...as if we might negotiate with a virus," he writes, arguing that this region cannot go down that path. He notes that doctors and nurses better understand how to treat Covid and that a vaccine is coming, and in the meantime, social distancing and mask-wearing are "a display of respect and another way not to impose risks on your neighbor."
As VT's Aug. 11 primary approaches, the VN's tracking the legislative races...
Yesterday, Tim Camerato highlighted the Windsor/W. Windsor/Hartland House race in which four Democrats are competing for two seats, including the one that Zach Ralph is giving up. Incumbent John Bartholomew of Hartland, former Rep. Paul Belaski of Windsor, Brownsville's Elizabeth Burrows (who chairs the Mt. Ascutney School District board) and Hartland town moderator Jennifer Grant are running.
For earlier coverage, including the primary to replace outgoing Rep. Sandy Haas in the Bethel, Pittsfield, Rochester, and Stockbridge seat, and the Chelsea-area House primary in Orange County, you can check out the VN's politics page.
Helali chairs the Vermont Progressive Party's Orange County Committee, and would apparently be the first CPUSA federal candidate on the ballot since Gus Hall and Angela Davis ran for president and vice president in 1984. "Our campaign was born from the need to move beyond the failures of capitalism, to build socialism, and to usher in a new era of peace for the nations of the world," he said in his announcement. The seat he's running for, of course, is held by Democrat Peter Welch.
That was Elise Tillinghast's blithe email intro to this week's
Northern Woodlands
roundup of what's out there in the woods. She's talking about white baneberry, also known as Doll's eyes, which are highly toxic to humans, though ruffed grouse are happy to snack on them. Also going on: white-tailed deer fawns are getting more independent (though as Herb's photo above suggests, they haven't demanded the car keys yet), cicadas are out and about, and lobster mushrooms are popping up.
NPR has just taken a look at states' fiscal picture nationally from March to May, and it's not pretty. Overall, according to the Urban Institute, the pandemic could cost them $200 billion in revenues by next June. VT's revenues fell 28 percent compared to last year; NH's, 10 percent. The link takes you to the VT writeup, but you can click on any state on the graph as you hover over it—you'll find NH near the top over on the far right.
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, reports NHPR's Annie Ropeik, finds a heightened risk of extreme flooding caused by climate change at some 800 sites along the East and Gulf coasts, including at the former Pease Air Base in Portsmouth and the Coakley Landfill in Greenland and N. Hampton. Ropeik points out that last month's FloodFactor map also found heightened creek and river flooding risk at a series of non-coastal NH Superfund sites.
It's not just NH: Bear complaints nearly double in VT. WPTZ notes that Fish & Wildlife had to euthanize two bears in Waterbury last week, and officials believe the new composting law isn't helping. "We know in the past month we've received more than 100 reports [of bears] getting into compost,” says wildlife biologist Forrest Hammond. “The big thing is to make sure it give[s] off almost no scent at all by mixing in a lot of dry material. Three times as much dry material as your kitchen waste you're putting into it.” Vermont's Census response rate still sucks. Sorry, there's no other way to put it. The state ranks 47th in the country (out of 52, because Puerto Rico and DC are also included), with a 56.4 percent response rate. To be sure, that's up from 54.9 percent the week before. Still, as state librarian Jason Broughton points out, once the count's done, "you're locked into" the federal funding levels that result for the next decade. Chittenden County, by the way, has a 72 percent response rate; Windsor County, a mere 49.7 percent.This is something you probably won't see at your local skate park. Isamu Yamamoto is 17 and a world freestyle skateboarding champion. Here's his World Freestyle Round-Up 2020 Online Showdown submission from a couple of weeks ago. You'll never look at a skateboard the same way again. (Thanks, AS!)
News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
"The Woodstock Area Relief Fund anticipates that many local residents will be significantly impacted by the lapse of the $600 per week supplemental unemployment income," they write. If you live in Woodstock, Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret, or Reading, they're offering financial assistance of up to $1,000 to anyone who's unable to meet basic household needs—rent, food, childcare—due to the pandemic downturn. WARF, which originally set out to raise $100,000, has already taken in over half a million dollars in donations, and donated some $320,000 of that. Apply or donate at the link.
This evening at 6, former Dartmouth president Jim Wright will be talking to fellow Marine (and Iraq War veteran) Phil Klay, who is a (virtual) Montgomery Fellow at the college this year. Klay's first novel, about "what happens after we do violence in the middle of a complex conflict," as he puts it, is due out in October. Klay's obviously hard to fluster. He started a recent interview with the Dartmouth News office apologizing for the sound of jackhammering outside. "My street caught fire yesterday—there were flames coming out of the manholes," he said. "That's 2020, always full of surprises." He and Wright will be talking about "life at Dartmouth, in the military, and in our world today."
Reading Deeper
Ed Yong, a science writer at The Atlantic, is one of the unalloyed journalistic stars to emerge from the pandemic. He's just published a (non-paywalled) piece, "How the Pandemic Defeated America." He doesn't pull punches: a government "denuded of expertise," a "bloated, inefficient health-care system," racist policies and the "decades-long process of shredding the nation’s social safety net" all come in for blame. So do the country's "shortsighted leadership, its disregard for expertise, its racial inequities, its social-media culture, and its fealty to a dangerous strain of individualism." But Yong is interested in looking backward and starting to account for where this country went wrong because he's worried about what comes next. "Despite its epochal effects," he writes, "COVID‑19 is merely a harbinger of worse plagues to come.... To avert another catastrophe, the U.S. needs to grapple with all the ways normal failed us."
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
-- Franz Kafka
Stay safe and dry! Power permitting, 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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