GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
After a mild night, another mild day. Pretty much the same deal as yesterday, though there's less chance of morning fog so we should get a longer stretch of sunshine. Highs into the mid-70s again, calm southwest winds. There's a whisper of precipitation in some parts of the region from some weak low pressure scooting through above, but we'll just ignore that. 50s tonight.Last of the monarchs. In West Fairlee the other day, John Pietkiewicz had his eye on some purple asters that were growing at the end of his drive. "I bent down and leaned sideways to capture the background," he writes, "and this monarch flew into my frame, stayed for several seconds and then was gone." One last little gift of this delayed season."Westboro Rail Yard Demolition Hits Tipping Point in West Lebanon." Somebody's having fun over at the VN... That headline perfectly matches Alex Driehaus' photo just below of the sandhouse at the yard as it was being toppled yesterday. It was a "key step" in the project to clear the way for a riverside park, John Gregg reports, and Gov. Chris Sununu and state and city officials were on hand to mark the moment—and, in Sununu's case, to handle the excavator for a few minutes. The city is still negotiating with the state over a lease with the park, but Sununu declared the city's plans "absolutely awesome.""Solarizing the heck out of every possible rooftop." Tomorrow at 1, Hanover is going to cut the ribbon on its latest solar array: the 4,560 ground-mounted panels next to the water filtration facility on Grasse Road. It's the largest single-site array in NH, a town press release says, and when joined with the six rooftop arrays on town buildings, will meet nearly all municipal electricity needs "through group net metering," the release adds. "In battling the impacts of climate change, communities need to be in a leadership role,” says Town Manager Julia Griffin.SPONSORED: Healthy volunteers, ages 18-45, needed for research study. This is a clinical research study at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center to test a new, live oral polio vaccine in healthy adults. We have wiped out 99 percent of polio from the world. We need a new, effective, safe vaccine to take us all the way. Compensation is provided. To learn more, please email [email protected], call (603) 650-1383, or click on the maroon link. Sponsored by DHMC.Covid cases in Claremont, Newport schools. There were 18 in Newport's schools, reports the Valley News's Nora Doyle-Burr, mostly at Richards elementary school. Claremont, meanwhile, reported 29 cases last week, mostly in its elementary schools, and added six more yesterday, with four of those at Stevens High School. Masks are required in shared indoor spaces in Claremont schools; Newport began requiring them after a spike last month, but the school board is considering whether to continue the mandate.Two die in single-vehicle crashes. In a press release yesterday, reports the VN, Haverhill police said that over the weekend 29-year-old Krystal Murray-Brown was driving northbound “at a high rate of speed” when her SUV left the roadway, went over an embankment, traveled 100 feet, and hit several trees. It landed on its side; police and an ambulance crew found Murray-Brown underneath it Sunday morning. And late yesterday afternoon, VT State Police report, 63-year-old Ronald Getz of Newbury lost control of his truck, hit a ditch, and was ejected when the vehicle rolled. He died before police arrived.Mt. Cardigan rescue. NH Fish & Game reported yesterday that on Monday, a 62-year-old hiker from Grafton fell just below Firescrew while descending the Manning Trail and injured her lower leg. Passing hikers called for assistance and gave her extra clothing and food until rescuers arrived. She was carried off the mountain by responders from the Alexandria, Bristol, and Bridgewater fire departments and the Upper Valley Wilderness Response Team, and taken to Speare Hospital in Plymouth.What happens to perfectly fine food that doesn’t sell? Willing Hands' mission to end hunger has Susan Apel marveling at the good they do for the Upper Valley. In her newest Artful post, she visits their Norwich facility, which rescues dated food from local stores, restaurants, and farms and delivers to about 90 area social service agencies. In just the past year, Willing Hands has grown significantly—doubling the pounds of food salvaged, adding staff, and expanding their truck fleet. And they love volunteers, especially now as gleaning is under way at several farms and gardens.Enthusiasms: "This tale resurrected the moon of a whole winter." That's a line from A Legacy, the semi-autobiographical first novel by Sybille Bedford, the German-born but peripatetic "world-class writer and world-class freeloader" (as an NYT critic put it earlier this year) who's become a bit of a cult favorite on both sides of the Atlantic. First published in 1956, the novel, writes Left Bank Books' Rena Mosteirin in this week's Enthusiasms, "brings to life the hot mess of bourgeois Europe just before the First World War." You can't go wrong with any of Bedford's work, she writes, but recommends starting with A Legacy.Turns out, it probably was a meteor. Or, to be precise, a bolide, which is a meteor that explodes on entry. That's what a meteorologist at the National Weather Service told the Union Leader (read the photo caption, not the article) after checking with NASA about southern NH's loud Sunday morning boom. The space agency's Geostationary Lightning Mapper, which mostly tracks, well, lightning, registered a flash Sunday morning at the time of the boom. Since there were no storms in the area, speculation centers on a bolide.Where is Covid politics the most charged in NH? The state House of Reps. Okay, yes, it can get pretty heated on the streets in front of the Statehouse, too. But now Speaker Sherman Packard is asking reps to "strongly consider" masking up after a GOP lawmaker attended a meeting maskless last week, then tested positive—leading a Democrat at the meeting who later tested positive to charge she'd been infected by her colleague. At the same time, Packard is rejecting out of hand a bid by Democrats to have case numbers in the legislature reported by the state, along with towns, schools, etc.As VT's 7-day case average nears a record again, Scott admits surprise. “I don't know, I wish I had the answer,” the governor told a press conference yesterday. Last week, administration officials had pointed to dropping numbers as a hopeful sign. Scott suggested that smaller or midsize social gatherings may be the culprit, VPR reporter Peter Hirschfeld says; officials are not seeing localized outbreaks or much transmission at restaurants or retail establishments. Case rates are highest among children under 10, state data show, a trend that started in September—"when many of those kids went back to pre-K or elementary school," Hirschfeld points out.It's here. You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, VT Fish & Wildlife announced it was on the lookout for epizootic hemorrhagic disease, a no-see-um-borne illness that affects white-tailed deer. Well, it's been confirmed in Castleton and West Haven, reports the Rutland Herald's Keith Whitcomb Jr. There's no risk to humans, but officials are still suggesting hunters avoid those areas. "Those handful of properties where most of the deer are dying, the people who hunt there are definitely going to notice fewer deer this year and maybe even next year,” says state Deer Project leader Nick Fortin.These ancient winemakers crushed a lot of grapes. A winery that was all the rage, oh, 1,500 years ago has just been discovered near Tel Aviv. NPR’s Daniel Estrin reports from the dig site where archaeologists are unearthing what was clearly an impressive operation, including five winepresses (2,400 square feet each) and four large warehouses. The winery produced a white wine storied throughout the region, and churned out around 3 million liters a year—that's 3/4 of a million gallons, astonishing even by modern standards. Gushes one archaeologist, “The proportions here are incredible.”Drumroll... You'll be pleased to know that the UK-based (of course, where else would they be?) Comedy Pet Photo Awards finalists for 2021 have been announced. Brought to you by the same guys who started the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. Winners will be announced in November. Bet you can't click on just one.
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At noon today, The Haven continues its 40th Anniversary virtual speaker series on topics related to the tough issues faced by people in poverty. Today, Dartmouth anthropology prof Elizabeth Carpenter-Song will talk about "Moving toward security following homelessness in rural New England: Lessons from the lived experiences of families."
From 3 to 6 pm today, the women behind Crossing Paths, which supports non-profits in the region, are holding a "Pop-In" collection effort for Good Beginnings, the organization that helps new mothers and their families around the Upper Valley. They'll be in the parking lot of the Wellspring Worship Center at 407 N. Main St. in West Leb—sort of across from Campion Rink—to hand out cider and doughtnuts and take in donations of baby wipes, baby shampoo, gas gift cards in $25 amounts, store gift cards, baby outfits, diapers, and other baby items. (No link.)
At 4:30 pm, Woodstock's Norman Williams Public Library is hosting acclaimed VT mystery writer Archer Mayor for an online reading and discussion of his latest Joe Gunther novel, Marked Man.
At 5 pm, Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center hosts an in-person lecture by University of Colorado political scientist Sven Steinmo, who specializes in how taxation shapes and is shaped by democracies. He'll be talking about taxes and tax evasion.
Between 2018 and 2020, nearly 50 photographers traveled around New Hampshire, taking thousands of photos and collectively creating a "portrait" of the state and its people. Now, eight exhibitions have opened around NH (the closest is at Colby-Sawyer). This evening at 7 pm, the NH Historical Society is hosting an online panel with several of the photographers, who'll be talking about their experiences documenting the state and about what they found.
If you're a tango purist, you should just skip this. But if you've got room in your ears for a band that mixes the traditional with flamenco, jazz, even electronica—and still manages to keep tango's sensual essence—then you definitely want to check out bassist Sascha Jacobsen and his Bay-Area-based Los Tangueros del Oeste.
in Oakland last month.
See you tomorrow.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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