Daybreak Wednesday 10/27/21

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed yesterday. If you haven't already gotten an individual acknowledgement, you will. But I just want to say, Daybreak would be nothing without you and everyone else who preceded (and follows) you. I'm so grateful.  Maybe some leftover rain. But the various coastal systems that ganged up to bring us yesterday have had their fill and high pressure's edging in from the west, so while there's a chance of rain first thing, we'll also see gradual clearing during the day. Gusty winds out of the north all day, highs in the low 50s, upper 30s tonight.It's stick season. "It’s usually a tough month here in Vermont and New Hampshire to make good photos," writes Quechee photographer Lisa Lacasse. "The temperatures drop, the leaves drop, the wind picks up, the frost arrives, the snow hasn’t arrived so you can’t go out and play in it…and the trees are mostly 'sticks.'" So she's made it a goal to capture the beauty in it, as in this photo from near Killington.If you walk around downtown Lebanon... You should know that the city is closing two much-used stretches at and near the mall. The entrance from West Park St. to the mall will be closed today through Friday as 60 feet of sidewalk along the curb get removed and replaced. And at the end of Court Street—that's the extension of W. Park alongside Three Tomatoes and into the parking lot—the stairs down to the lower parking lot will also be closed for concrete work.SPONSORED: Do you have experience working in nonprofit development services? And familiarity with Raiser's Edge? The Geisel School of Medicine Gift Recording team is staffed by four individuals and we are looking to add a fifth as we manage gift recording for the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth Hitchcock Health, and member hospitals. You can apply using Dartmouth College's jobsite by following the maroon link—or if you have questions, email the manager of Gift Recording, [email protected]. Sponsored by the Geisel School of Medicine."A creator that gives us passion and music and lust: that’s my kind of deity, should I ever need one.” Marc Hamer is a Welsh gardener, "raised among hard men who teach him by their hatred that he does not wish to hate," writes Howe librarian Jared Jenisch in this week's Enthusiasms. In Hamer's new book, Seed to Dust: Life, Nature, and a Country Garden, he "writes in language that makes the earth resonant as a struck bell," Jared says. "It is that rare book that is hard to write about because one just wants to reproduce it, quote by luminous quote, upon the page." Full writeup at the link.VA will open some of its beds to non-vets from VT for inpatient mental health treatment. The move, VT human services secretary Mike Smith said yesterday, is a “short-term solution to relieve some of the stress in our mental health system, particularly how it impacts hospital emergency departments." Katherine Tang, a VA spokesperson, tells the Valley News's Nora Doyle-Burr that the hospital's top priority will remain taking care of veterans, and that, “Our mental health staff will review and triage each case referred to us."“My favorite parts are riding on a nice road, downhill, with no cars.” It’s what Mary Anderson of Bethel says feels like “I’m sailing on my bike” in her quest to ride through all 251 of VT’s towns by November. Happy Vermont’s Erica Housekeeper caught up with the 64-year-old Anderson more than halfway through her journey, which she says is a challenge different from hiking the Long Trail, say, or the AT, both of which she’s also done. That includes finding a way each day to recharge the battery on her electric bike. Follow Anderson’s blog to see if she’s been through your town, or will be soon.Crow mobs, a few bats out and about, insects hanging out... It's the fourth week of October, and there's still plenty to find out there in the woods (and in the sky, and on barn sidings). Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast leads off with an unusually late zebra clubtail dragonfly, notices American crows harrying owls and hawks, points to a late-season bat ("With frost setting in and mosquitoes disappearing," she writes, "we don’t expect to see many (or any) more bats this autumn"), and swings by a brick top mushroom, insects that feast on blackberry leaves, and a female ichneumon wasp.“Treat vegetation as a resource, use it as much as you can. Don’t automatically throw it away or burn it." In yesterday's VN (posted too late to include in yesterday's Daybreak), Claire Potter details advice from local experts on keeping leaves out of landfills—they enrich the soil in the woods or can bulk up your compost or mulch your garden. Invasives can be dried long enough that the seeds die and the rest can go back into the soil. "It can work. It’s efficient. It is not efficient to put stuff in bags and drive them to transfer stations,” says Royalton's Mike BaldCornish's Blow-Me-Down Farm lands on preservation group's "Seven to Save" list. Each year, the NH Preservation Alliance lists "vulnerable historic resources" that are also, in one way or another, emblematic of life in NH over the course of its history and that need significant investment to be saved. Its new list, announced yesterday, pairs the farm, part of which Opera North is renovating, with another Cornish Colony mainstay, writer Percy MacKaye's home. Also on the list: NH's historic theaters (think the Leb and Claremont opera houses), the Weirs drive-in, and the bandstand in Milford.VT, ME, NH rank 1-2-3 among safest states in which to live. That's according to the personal finance site WalletHub, which has made a sideline of crunching numbers and coming up with clickbait rankings (NH also shows up as #8 on its 2021 list of states with "the biggest bullying problems"). It looked at 55 measures, from assaults to fatalities per road miles traveled to such "financial safety" metrics as unemployment rates and the uninsured population to come up with its rankings. The rest of New England is also in the top 10."People are at a breaking point. Some people are telling us they’re not sure they’re going to make it next week..." That's Vicki Senni, who runs a child care center in Montpelier, talking to WCAX's Cat Viglienzoni about the crisis facing centers like hers. Teachers are out every day, often over Covid concerns, and hiring staff has been near impossible. (The pay averages $15 an hour, about the same, WCAX says, that a hotel housekeeper makes.) Of 20 centers in Washington County, 16 have had to reduce hours or days. Covid relief money, Senni says, will help but "is not a long-term solution."VT issues winter sport "guidance" for schools and leagues: Unvaccinated athletes can play, masks recommended for most sports. Though the guidelines are not binding, the state is asking student-athletes to get vaccinated. Vaccinated students would not need to quarantine after exposure, while exposed unvaccinated students would need to be tested and could attend practices, but not games. Unvaccinated athletes and any student in a sport where masks "cannot be consistently worn" (wrestling, gymnastics, cheer and dance) should get tested weekly, the guidance says.People who know F COBOL tend to be in their seventies. And this is a problem, Seven Days' Anne Wallace Allen writes, because that's the language used to program the VT Dept of Labor's 50-year-old mainframe. And as you no doubt remember, that's a problem because it had to handle an absolute deluge of unemployment claims during the heart of the pandemic. And couldn't. Now the state's ramping up an effort to replace the system, which could take a decade. Allen details what went wrong and what lies ahead. As for the mainframe? "Use it as a boat anchor," says the state's lead IT guy.VT snags nine of top 20 ski resorts in East, according to Ski mag; NH lands two. The ranking comes from the magazine's annual survey of readers—and no, they say, resorts "cannot buy their way" onto the list. Coming in tops in the East: Smugglers Notch, followed by Killington in 3rd, Mad River Glen in 5th, Jay in 6th, NH's Cannon Mountain in 8th, Sugarbush, Okemo, Stratton, and NH's Loon in 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th. If you like heading farther north, Mt. Tremblant's in 4th...Sometimes, you just need to answer the dang phone! This comes from a little far afield, but it's still good advice. Last week, a rescue team in Colorado was called out to find a lost hiker. They tried multiple times to reach her by cellphone, but she ignored the calls because she didn't recognize the number—and wound up spending the night on the mountain before finding her way to her car. "If you’re overdue according to your itinerary, and you start getting repeated calls from an unknown number, please answer the phone," the county search and rescue squad posted on its Facebook page.The best panoramas you’ve seen this year. There should be a word for that futile feeling of overlooking some spectacular horizon, knowing that your phone’s camera can’t come close to capturing its beauty. Fortunately, some people pack the right gear for those occasions, and their work is on full display in the 2021 EPSON International Pano Awards, honoring the year’s best in panoramic photography. From sublime views of mountains and desertscapes to the kaleidoscopic intricacies of modern architecture and more, these images might even beat seeing it with your own eyes.

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Joy Oladokun was 10 when she first saw a video of Tracy Chapman performing. She was the daughter of Nigerian immigrant parents growing up in an Arizona farming town, she told

Rolling Stone

earlier this year, and "Every time I’ve seen a guitar, it has been in the hands of a white person. [When] I got to see Tracy and her guitar in a stadium of people—just listening to her thoughts, her feelings, how she saw the world—it changed my life, very literally.” Now she lives in Nashville, has three albums under her belt, and the other night opened for Jason Isbell at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium.

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

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