Daybreak Tuesday 9/15/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

How'd your garden do last night? We get a reprieve from any frost the next couple of nights, as pretty much full-on sun warms things into the mid-60s today and lows tonight only drop to the mid- or low 40s. Calm winds from the north. By the way, if the sky looks a little less blue than you'd expect, our sunlight today is filtering through smoke from the wildfires out west, the weather folks confirm. A warmer sunrise in Quechee.... Photographer Lisa Lacasse had her drone up early on Sunday, and got this pic of the Quechee Lakes golf course with a bank of fog and the sky glowing orange over the hills beyond.Two bears killed on UV roads, one was Mink's cub. The first, a yearling, was sighted early yesterday by passing motorists on I-89 North, just before the W. Leb exit ramp. Then, a few hours later, a bus on Route 10 near the Wilder Dam hit and killed a cub. That one, NH bear project leader Andrew Timmins said yesterday, "does appear to be one of Mink’s cubs," an identification later confirmed by Ben Kilham, as reported by the VN's John Gregg. Hanover deputy fire chief Michael Hinsley tells Gregg that officials hope Mink's third cub is still alive and can be found."If everyone's voice is not heard, we want to understand what our problems are." That's Randolph Union principal Elijah Hawks in "Not Okay," the first of two episodes focused on the high school in the Southern Poverty Law Center's new Sounds Like Hate podcast series. RUHS did something not many schools would have done: allowed the SPLC in to explore racism and intolerance and how the school's dealing with them as it navigates two fraught questions—whether to change its mascot, which some people feel resembles a Klansman, and whether to fly a Black Lives Matter flag. (Thanks, JL!)Heads up: Work scheduled to start today on the I-89 bridges over the CT River. The $43.8 million project has been in the works for a long time, and isn't due to be completed until 2025. The bridges are on NH's "red list" of structures in poor condition, and plans call for replacing the deck and superstructure as well as widening them to create merge lanes. Plans also call for the northbound lanes to be closed at some point, forcing traffic onto West Leb and WRJ streets for a time.Upper Valley wells running dry. "A lot of people when they call, they say they’re out of water and they’ve never been out of water before,” bottled-water-supplier Ronald Colton tells the VN's Liz Sauchelli. Part of the issue is the drought, exacerbated by the fact that people are home more and using more water—especially if they've got gardens. Farmers, too, are struggling to keep crops growing. “This is what climate change looks like in Vermont and New Hampshire,” Vital Communities' Becka Warren tells Sauchelli.Drought conditions exacerbate fire near Moose Mountain. The blaze was probably started by a lightning strike, and was on a hill off Goss Road, north of Enfield. It was discovered Saturday night, but it was in difficult terrain and crews couldn't get to it until Sunday morning. Fire teams from Canaan, Enfield, Grafton, Lebanon, Hanover, Hartland, Thetford, Vershire, Hartford, and other towns were called in. “It required a tremendous amount of people,” Hanover chief Martin McMillan tells the VN's Anna Merriman.That blaze may just be a harbinger. Conditions are ripe for us to potentially see a lot of wildland fire ignition if people are not careful," NH forest ranger captain Douglas Miner told NHPR's Annie Ropeik yesterday. He was talking about the dangers posed by drought conditions in the state's woods. Only 100 acres have burned so far this year—including the Moose Mountain fire—but Miner warns that more may be in store, especially on windy days. Most forest fires in the state are started by people, Ropeik reports, and it's "on residents to follow state recommendations to prevent fires from spreading."  "I expect jays to have something to say; rarely do they keep their thoughts to themselves." In Thetford yesterday, the morning belonged to bluejays, Ted Levin writes. They were everywhere, exuberant, "dawn's alarm clock." Just once has he seen jays go silent: when a sharp-shinned hawk chased a flock into hemlocks along the Connecticut. Only after it left, one of them in its talons, did they take up voice again. Yesterday, though, "a band of rowdy blue threads cinches an otherwise dull morning together, utterly common, utterly wild, utterly free." Meanwhile, elsewhere in the woods, meet tippler's bane. It's the third week in September, fall officially arrives a week from today, and Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast has been finding fuzzy orange galls (which protect wasp larvae), ripening wild grapes, twistedstalk, tooth fungus, and alcohol inky caps. They're one of a number of mushroom species that liquify as they get ready to release their spores...only these make you extremely ill if you have alcohol a few days before or after you eat one. Isn't nature wild? Oh, also: ticks. "You have to suck before you get good." Latif Nasser graduated from Dartmouth in 2008, and went on to become director of research at the iconic public radio show Radiolab, as well as host of the new Netflix special, "Connected." The Dartmouth's Coalter Palmer interviews him about...well, all of it, including how a theater kid got into science: It was getting turned loose in the college's collection of historic scientific instruments by history prof Rick Kremer and asked to figure out what they were. "I'd pick the weirdest looking instrument that I could find and then would do tons of research on it," Nasser recalls.NH's two-week average of new cases higher than mid-summer peak. David Brooks, who's been tracking the numbers for his Granite Geek blog, sees outbreaks like the one at UNH and Windham High School as suggesting that "the long-feared autumn resurgence in COVID-19 has begun." The question, he writes, is whether Granite Staters can keep it under control. "If we can keep up our guard – masks, social distancing, being intelligent about gathering together; you know the routine – then we won’t have to shut back down."Scott's press conference lands a star. Ordinarily, the Vermont governor's press conferences feature a parade of administration officials tackling various aspects of the state's pandemic response. Today, however, it will it highlight Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He'll be on the video conference from 11 to 11:30, taking moderated questions from Vermont reporters (one each); you can watch here. St. J gets new downtown brewery to add to its downtown distillery. Whirligig Brewing, owned and run by Peacham's Geoffrey and Gillian Sewake, opened for in-person visits a few weeks ago. It's not far from St. Johnsbury Distillery, which opened its tasting room not long ago. Despite the pandemic challenges, reports VTDigger, regulars have been dropping by Whirligig, including a decent number of non-locals. And Geoffrey Sewake is hopeful the steady business will last into cold weather. “Instead of a dead season, I think there’ll be a sturdy group of people... I think people are itching to get out.”"Currently employed as Explosives Canine Operative for Metropolitan Police." That's Olive (the black lab), who may be overselling herself a tad on a dog dating site in Andrew Cotter's latest Olive & Mabel video. "You can't even find that tennis ball in the flower bed," Cotter admonishes her. And when she clicks for her #1 match...

And the numbers...

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We knew it would rain, for all the morn A spirit on slender ropes of mist Was lowering its golden buckets down Into the vapory amethyst 

Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens— Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers,Dipping the jewels out of the sea, To scatter them over the land in showers. 

— From "Before the Rain," by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Just a little message in a bottle tossed out on behalf of drought-ridden New England and the fire-ravaged west.

(Thanks, Michael!)

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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