Daybreak Tuesday 9/28/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Mostly cloudy, then sunny. There's still a slight chance of rain into the morning, but mostly we'll see clouds through the morning, then clearing skies to take us into evening. Fortunately, though, there'll still be some clouds around overnight, because there's also cold air filtering into the region and things would be getting frosty otherwise. Highs in the mid-60s, lows tonight in the low 40s, maybe upper 30s in spots.All of which says, Let's cast a fond look back at summer. Which Etna photographer Jim Block has just done on his blog: stunning rainbows, the Lake Queen's arrival in Sunapee (you remember that boat and its epic journey north, right?), sunsets to remember, hikes to remember, birds to remember...Covid forces Springfield VT schools to close. Over the last few weeks the town has seen the highest rising case rate in the region, and yesterday all schools were cancelled when "roughly one-quarter of the district’s 1,300 kids were forced to quarantine after at least a dozen tested positive," reports WCAX's Adam Sullivan. That's all to the good, high school senior Olivia Ennen tells him. "A lot of people interact with each other during our free time, so there is really no way to know who has it and who doesn’t,” she explains.Woodstock's Lincoln Covered Bridge damaged—again. This time, reports Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News, it was a truck towing a flatbed carrying heavy equipment, including a backhoe, which struck several beams before the truck stopped. Two years ago, a truck pulling a backhoe took out every beam and forced the bridge to close; this time, VTrans engineers decided the bridge is safe for traffic and it's been reopened. Reddit user u/cloppies has a pic.SPONSORED: Join us in October for a foot-stompin' good time at the Grange Theatre. Artistree’s Music Theatre Festival welcomes the reopening of live theater entertainment with the country musical The Honky Tonk Angels, written by Ted Swindley. Directed and choreographed by Gary John La Rosa, music direction by Josh D. Smith, with a three-member cast accompanied by a live six-member country music band. The two-week limited engagement is set for October 14-31 at The Grange Theatre at Artistree! Sponsored by Artistree.So, why is the Leb Opera House called an opera house? Or the ones in Claremont and Barre... and Boston? How do venues that are more likely to stage stand-up comedy or country music get away with being opera houses? In her latest Artful post, Susan Apel poses the obvious question too few of us have asked. Sure, structural differences between opera and theater stages may be one reason. But a century ago, a small town aiming for respectability and high-class tourists might call its theater an opera house, Apel says, “to class up the joint”—even if vaudeville was on the bill."Shooting at a target within the target." The Leb High School boys' soccer team is off to a 7-0 start, and one big reason, writes Tris Wykes on his Octopus Athletics blog, is a 6' 4" exchange student with "a flop of bright, blond hair" from Riga, Latvia named Krists Putans. He'd had been here all of three days, Wykes writes, when he broke in alone on the Hanover goalkeeper during a scrimmage and scored easily. "On the jubilant visitors’ sidelines, glances were exchanged. The new kid had polish." More than that, actually. Leb has outscored opponents 41-1 since its opener, and Putans has had a leg in 19 of those.As Charlestown businesses fret about loss of customers, Route 12 repair likely to take a long time. The road has been closed south of town ever since a heavy rainstorm in July compromised its integrity, reports Patrick O'Grady for the VN. The result is that a lot of traffic that used to pass through downtown now can't get there. “A lot of our customers (from the south) are not coming here. They are going to the competition," says one store owner. The problem: Before the road can be repaired, a neighboring rail embankment needs to be stabilized. NH education department wants to bar remote learning. A proposed rule, reports Ethan DeWitt in the NH Bulletin, would require in-person instruction throughout the school year, except for bad-weather days or in the case of individual students. Notably, it would keep schools from going remote when Covid cases rise. The board isn't expected to vote on the change until December, DeWitt writes, and then it needs to pass a joint legislative committee before being re-approve by the board.NH struggles—and so far fails—to meet demand for Covid tests. Especially for school-age children, reports NHPR's Sarah Gibson. School nurses, following public health guidelines, are sending kids home if they've got any of a number of Covid symptoms—including a headache—and they can't return until they've tested negative. But, Gibson notes, pharmacies have sold out of rapid tests, many clinics are under-staffed and backed up, and many of the state's free testing sites have closed, leaving parents desperate to get their child tested facing steep fees. Meanwhile, it's still pretty much impossible to know how many cases there are in NH schools. Media coverage of the state's outdated school dashboard doesn't seem to have improved things, reports Nancy West on InDepthNH. Some information is weeks old; other data hasn't changed since last year. “It could create a lot of misunderstanding, confusion among people who don’t know what information is correct,” says the state school boards association's Becky Wilson. With vaccine mandates for health care workers coming, some NH nursing students say they'll leave their programs. Though there are dire predictions from some politicians of what one calls a "critical health care workforce shortage," it's unclear how extensive the problem might turn out to be, writes Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin. The Community College System "acknowledged it's been an issue" but won't put numbers on it. Plymouth State says no students have withdrawn. UNH says it's "not aware" of any issues. Timmins talks to several students who've left or are considering it.New documents show Shumlin administration was aware of EB-5 fraud a year before projects shut down. The documents are among 600 pages of records unsealed last week by a US District Court judge, report Alan Keays and Anne Galloway in VTDigger. The records, they write, "also outline the lengths to which state officials went in concealing the fraud from the public and the press." One confidential document from an anonymous state official in the spring of 2015 reads, "Every project appears to be involved in an array of deceptive practices."Border Patrol may be able to roam under federal law, VT Supreme Court rules, but evidence may not be valid in state courts. Friday's 3-2 decision, writes Seven Days' Derek Brouwer, draws a distinction between the agents' border searches and "roving" patrols within 100 miles of the border. "Within the interior of Vermont, the federal interest...no longer outweighs the state interest in protecting the privacy and dignity of Vermont citizens," Justice William Cohen wrote for the majority. Where searches violate the state constitution's search and seizure protections, the evidence will not be admissible in state court.Policy-making officials in Vermont towns are overwhelmingly older white men. In surveys and a demographic analysis of 562 town leaders, students at UVM's Center for Research on Vermont found that overall, 77 percent are older than 50 and that women make up 79 percent of town clerks—but only 33 percent of selectboard members and 24 percent of town managers or administrators. A full 97 percent of respondents identified as White. Officials cited infrastructure, budgets, and lack of growth as top issues, and expressed concern about inconsistent or sparse coverage of local government."I don't think people think much about Vermont at all." That’s NH state senator David Watters with his two cents on the age-old border dispute with his next-door neighbors. VPR’s “Brave Little State” tries to get to the bottom of the twin-state feud and why it endures. Hartford state rep Becca White says her VT pride comes from social safety net programs that helped her growing up. Meanwhile in NH, says Watters, people “want to be left alone, and they want to go their own way.” But is this rift as arbitrary as the CT River border itself? An Abenaki woman explains: “It was never the boundary for us…It was just the highway.”My dear Mr. Stalin... About a month ago, Australian historian Evan Smith reached out to fellow historians with a question: "What is the thing that most made you go ‘wait, wut?’ in the archives or in your research?" The answers have poured in: love letters between women from 1760, partially written in blood; John Wayne's prediction at a charity dinner that Watergate "will be a footnote" in history; 17 tubes of processed opium in the Dutch archives from 1946 Indonesia. And a 1931 letter from an NYU debate team prepping to discuss capitalism and looking for Josef Stalin's insights.

Catching up...For the time being, Daybreak is reporting Covid numbers on Tuesdays and Fridays.

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