Daybreak Wednesday 1/20/21

A TREAT TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!

Slight chance of snow showers. That low pressure system arrived last night, and we may still get a little snow out of it today. Otherwise, the skies will be partly cloudy pretty much all day—more in the afternoon than in the morning. Temps up to round 30 today, low teens overnight, winds from the northwest.A golden eagle in winter. Peter Connolly and his mom, Priscilla, climbed Wright's Mountain in Bradford on Sunday. They'd just gotten to the overlook when Peter, who ordinarily lives in Boston, saw a bird soaring on thermals, majestic over the snow-filled trees. It was a golden eagle. Which, writes the VT Center for Ecostudies' Chris Rimmer, "would be a VT lifer for me. Goldens are decidedly uncommon in VT (they breed well to our north). It's fairly rare, though not unheard of, to have one around in midwinter. I'm envious!"Also exceedingly rare in midwinter... In Wilmot, Marc Beerman looked out his window yesterday afternoon and saw "this little guy"—a not-that-little black bear—helping itself to sunflower seeds. "I thought it was safe to leave the feeders out during the coldest months, but guess I will be bringing them in at night year-round," he writes. Just so you know.Proof that sheep like discarded Christmas trees! Because... those weren't goats in yesteray's pic at Hogwash Farm, they were Jacob's sheep. Owner Leslie O'Hara writes: "EVERYONE calls them goats even though they baaa incredibly loudly at all their fans... They're a super old heritage breed, very hardy and distinctive. The lore is that they're the spotted sheep from the Bible, hence 'Jacob's sheep,' and they're very popular with religious farmers. They act like goats (hence the tree-eating)." Thanks to eagle-eyed, sheep-discerning readers NL, ML, and TH!"A hummingbird of a mammal." Writer and naturalist Ted Levin saw a short-tailed weasel's tracks in the snow yesterday. Their hearts beat 400 times a minute, he writes in his latest blog post. They're high-strung, kinetic, and always hungry. "A long, thin body sheds heat. Surface area to mass ratio very high. Curls in a disc to stay warm. Eats (almost always) to produce it. Stores hapless rodents in burrows and cavities. Lines temporary den with victim's fur. Always on the move, a small, itinerant hunter, itself vulnerable. Particularly to an owl."SPONSORED: Was your New Year's resolution to finally deal with everything you've been putting off? And if so, have you created your Will yet? No? Then register for a free webinar on Thursday, Jan. 28th at noon to learn why you need one and how to create one. Hosted by Everything in Order, an Upper Valley company that helps people create essential legal documents—and not just in VT and NH. Register now at the maroon link. Space is limited. Sponsored by Everything in Order.NECR seeks 10-year lease on W. Leb tracks, control over portion of rail yard. New England Central Railroad's bid to continue leasing the state-owned rails between Leb and WRJ will be considered by the Executive Council on Friday, reports the Valley News's Tim Camerato. NECR also wants to maintain control over a portion of the Westboro yards—which would allow it to sublet to propane offloader Superior Plus (which bought Rymes last year). Meanwhile, the city is focused on demolishing dilapidated buildings in other parts of the yard, Camerato writes.Fourteen months later, Eaton's Sugar House blaze still a mystery. The VN's Anna Merriman catches up on what's happening with the arson investigation into the fire that destroyed the popular Royalton restaurant back in October, 2019. The answer: Not much. State police investigators won't talk. "They don’t seem to have any leads," owner Cliff Eaton says. He's got the property—which he bought in 1963—up for sale, though he tells Merriman he's also gotten lots of community support for rebuilding.NH readying vaccine website for Friday rollout. Starting at 8 am that day, NH residents 65 and older will be able to schedule a vaccine appointment (at https://www.vaccines.nh.gov/). The state's expecting high volume. “I don’t have a crystal ball, and can’t say 100 percent that nothing bad is going to happen, but we have all the resources on this program right now,” Beth Daly, who runs the health department's Bureau of Infectious Disease Control, told NHPR. Todd Bookman covers the ins and outs and details.Meanwhile, load on NH hospitals is easing. Numbers are still double what they were in the spring, but they're down from the peak of 322 hospitalized Covid patients at the start of this month, Bookman reports. Locally, D-H has dropped slightly from its weekly average peak a couple of weeks ago, according to federal data, but Valley Regional is up a bit. The question on health care workers' minds, as one puts it: "Are we really headed down at this point with our numbers ... or is there more to come?"Keeping track of broadband expansion in NH. There's definitely progress being made, David Brooks writes on his Granite Geek blog. It's not just ValleyNet's work with Lyme or Hub66's new partnership with Enfield. In Bristol, over by Newfound Lake, they're using CARES Act money to connect homes to fiber. Same in Mason, a bit west of Nashua. And, of course, the NH Electric Cooperative has made broadband part of its mission, starting in Lempster. The state hasn't made things easy, he writes, by blocking municipal broadband."North Woods Law" regular injured in snowmobile accident. Veteran NH conservation officer Christopher Egan was pursuing two snowmobilers Monday night up near First Connecticut Lake Dam when he hit a bumpy patch, his right leg hit the trail, and his machine rolled, fracturing his leg at the boot top. He was alone and got himself off the trail, where three snowmobilers eventually found him and stayed with him until state police arrived. He had surgery yesterday at Concord Hospital and is expected to be out of work for three months.VT governor, health commissioner to quarantine after possible Covid exposure at press conference. The move comes after a contractor who worked at the pair's two most recent press conferences tested positive yesterday. Neither Gov. Phil Scott nor Health Commissioner Mark Levine has been vaccinated yet. Some 17 people were at the briefings, reports Seven Days' Colin Flanders—typically, administration officials, staffers, broadcast journalists, and a sign language interpreter.VT towns get go-ahead for town meeting mail-in voting. Gov. Phil Scott yesterday signed legislation allowing towns to mail ballots to all registered voters, or to postpone voting until spring if they decide to opt for in-person voting. Legislators "rushed to get the bill to Scott's desk early this legislative session so that local officials had time to alter their plans ahead of important deadlines," Flanders writes. "Public warnings must be filed at the end of this month, while ballots must be finalized by February 10."“Whatever you need, we’ll figure out a way to make it happen and support you." That's Monica White of VT's Dept. of Disabilities, Aging, and Independent Living, describing the state's rapid response team that has helped keep Covid outbreaks in nursing homes from raging out of control. VTDigger's Katie Jickling profiles the approach to helping slow the spread of the virus among the state's vulnerable populations. Even with vaccines, it'll be needed for a while. “In terms of when we could reasonably anticipate a reduction in facility outbreaks, I think we’re still a ways away from that yet,” says White.

Slate Ridge owner subject to protection order. The order, by a Rutland County Superior Court judge, keeps Daniel Banyai, the owner of the weapons training facility in West Pawlet, VT, from coming near or using any "electronic communications" to contact or post about Slate Ridge's next door neighbors, Mandy Hulett and her family. Over the last few years, Slate Ridge's FB page has posted about the Huletts in ways that “any reasonable person would interpret...as threatening to cause physical harm to Hulett and her family," the judge wrote. The order is in effect for two years.From the Mixed-Up Files of Mr. Aditya Singh. Who, for the last three months, has somehow managed to live undiscovered in a secure area of Chicago's O'Hare Airport. The 36-year-old California man flew to O'Hare in October and then allegedly was too scared to get back on a plane because of Covid. So... he just stayed. Over the weekend two United employees confronted him and he showed an airport worker's ID that had been reported missing in October. “The court finds these facts and circumstances quite shocking for the alleged period of time that this occurred,” is how the judge phrased her reaction.Let's say you put a GoPro on your model train. And then let your cat hang out on the tracks. What would that look like? Thanks to a guy in West Yorkshire, England, now you can see. The cat's name, by the way, is Mittens.

And the numbers...

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Okay, time to catch up to a worldwide phenomenon. For about the past year, a Scottish postman-musician named Nathan Evans has been posting sea shanties to TikTok. Then he did a version of an old New Zealand shanty, "Soon May the Wellerman Come." And as happens on TikTok, over the next few days others chimed in—basses and baritones and sopranos and fiddlers—and the thing just... took off.

. As a commenter says, "This really is what I love on the internet. One dude has a song stuck in his head and 10 people jump in to make it beautiful."

(Thanks, AFG!)

Want to catch up on Daybreak music? Check out the Spotify playlist generously maintained by Sarah and Nelson Rooker!

Written and published by Rob Gurwitt         Banner by Tom Haushalter    Poetry editor: Michael Lipson  About Rob                                                    About Tom                             About Michael

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