Daybreak Wednesday 10/28/20

A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!

Kind of unsettled up there... Probably it'll be mostly cloudy today, but there's a chance of snow showers first thing and rain showers through the morning. It's actually fairly dry up above us, so if anything falls it'll be more drizzle than full-on event. We may get a taste of sun later in the day, though temps will be about where they were yesterday, highs in the mid-40s. Winds from south and then the southwest. Lows tonight in the upper 30s.A fog triptych. Mist-wrapped early mornings are one of fall's gifts in these parts—soft, enveloping, other-worldly. By good fortune, three readers sent in morning-fog shots the other day, each with its own hint of that magical feeling when you get to see the world differently.

Red Kite "soft opens" in Hanover. Seems fitting for a caramel company. On her Artful blog, Susan Apel writes that the Bradford, VT-based confectioner's first retail store (until now, they've sold online and through other retailers) is getting ready to open officially in early November. The store will have its own candy-making kitchen. As Susan writes, at a time when locals "are decrying the creeping presence of national chain stores in the downtown shopping district, nothing could be better than the arrival of Red Kite, a very local enterprise." Caramels count as food for VT travel restriction purposes, right?"It took the administration all of 10 minutes over a Zoom call to wipe out the 100-year legacy of swimming and diving at Dartmouth." In a commentary in the Valley News, five members of the college's swimming and diving teams take the administration to task for cutting five sports without adequately explaining its reasoning. The numbers, they argue, don't add up. Their column also gives them a chance to air arguments publicly, in the wake of the announcement that athletic director Harry Sheehy has backed out of a scheduled Q&A with the Alumni Council on the issue.The dragonfly as "bio-sentinel." Dartmouth videographer Chris Johnson has an intriguing look at a citizen-science research project led by Celia Chen, who runs the college's Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program. It uses dragonflies to track the spread of mercury through the environment and into the food chain. The effort began as a high school research project in ME, was adopted by the Dartmouth program for VT and NH schools... and has since gone national.  "Just to be able to see people skate around and enjoying the ice, it’s a joy." That's Dick Dodds, who manages Campion Rink in Hanover, reflecting to the VN's Pete Nakos on how rinks and families are adapting to new restrictions—including the need for everyone to get Covid tests. The Hanover Hockey Association is limiting play to intra-squad games and taking in kids from Grafton and Sullivan counties who usually play at Hartford's Barwood Arena but can't because of travel restrictions. Meanwhile, VT has shut down out-of-state play for club teams.NH ranks 4th in the country for the rate of new restaurant openings. Yes, you read that right. Yelp is out with its 3rd quarter "economic average" report, and though in the midst of the pandemic "one would be hard-pressed to find new restaurants opening with elaborate fine dining interiors," they write, "pandemic-optimized eateries are opening." They compared Q2 to Q3 openings in each state, and found that small states like ND, RI, and WY—in addition to NH—are leading the pack in percentage terms. VT ranks 39th.But wanna know where the twin states come in 1-2? Fall spirit! Or maybe it's fall-obsessed. A site called Trips to Discover crunched the number of pumpkin patches per capita, Google searches for fall candles, fall decor, fall recipes, fall quotes, and fall activities, and numbers of tweets using hashtags like #fallvibes and #fallseason. NH lands first, VT second. Though on pumpkin patches per capita, VT rocks the nation. Go brag!As NH politicians' attention turns elsewhere, BLM organizers vow to stay the course. NHPR's Sarah Gibson notes that after a summer of change-oriented rhetoric, political leaders appear to have moved on. Or become outright hostile: Last month, a GOP state rep posted on Facebook that people should feel free to “burn and loot” houses with BLM signs. Movement organizers, meanwhile, are calculating how best to sustain momentum. "We want to work on...legislation that is actually going to be substantive and make a real difference in our communities,” says one. “But what we’re not going to do is stand here for performative gestures of solidarity.”NH sues Monsanto, two spinoffs, for PCB contamination. The complaint, filed in Merrimack Superior Court, says that while PCBs have been an issue for decades, "the scope of PCB contamination is much greater than previously understood." In particular, the chemicals harm 81 square miles of the Atlantic and 46 other water bodies, including Squam Lake. Monsanto, the suit says, kept selling PCB mixtures despite knowing they would lead “to contamination of human food (particularly fish), the killing of some marine species (shrimp), and the possible extinction of several species of fish-eating birds.” VT seeing broader community Covid transmission. In an update yesterday, state health commissioner Mark Levine said the hockey/broomball outbreak has infected 57 people—many of them second- and third-hand. “What we’ve been experiencing recently are different outbreaks among relatively unrelated groups and individuals, spreading from the original cases, to their contact and contacts of those contacts, crossing situations and geographic regions of the state,” he said. The state's latest models forecast 50-60 cases a day by the end of November if current, more relaxed behavior continues.UVM to recruit 250 Vermonters for Covid vaccine trial. It's one of 80 testing sites around the country for Phase Three trials of the vaccine developed at Oxford and manufactured by AstraZeneca. Trials were halted temporarily, but have resumed, and Dr. Beth Kirkpatrick, who directs UVM's Vaccine Testing Center, says the vaccine has been shown to be safe. “What we don’t know yet is whether these vaccines work and how well they work to prevent the actual coronavirus illness,” she adds.VPR's Jane Lindholm giving up Vermont Edition reins. She announced yesterday that after 14 years hosting the show, she's "ready for a new challenge," and come February will be focusing on her worldwide "podcast for curious kids," But Why?, as well as on special news projects. The station is launching a search for a new host and, says managing producer Lydia Brown, taking the opportunity to reimagine the show and refine its "strategy for engaging with and amplifying the voices of our state.”New Rand Corp study says UVM Medical Center is most expensive hospital in state. By far. The study, reports VTDigger's Katie Jickling, found that people with private insurance pay 358 percent more than Medicare pays for the same service there. That compares with Springfield Hospital, where on average patients with private insurance pay 178 percent more than Medicare pays. Researchers did not include Gifford or Mt. Ascutney hospitals. Pay attention! It probably shouldn't need saying, but that's one of seven winter driving tips from Dalton, NH's Team O'Neill Rally School instructors, rounded up by Seven Days' Ken Picard. It's not too early to start prepping, they say: make sure you have snow tires, get some new wiper blades, put together an emergency kit. Plus plenty of sage advice for actually driving in snow, including heading out to an empty parking lot and skidding a few dozen times. "Doing this early each winter will remind you how your vehicle handles in wet or icy conditions and how to compensate for it," Picard writes.The world is just so darn cool from above! The Aerial Photography Awards launched this year with an invitation to photographers to submit photos taken by drone or from helicopters, kites, balloons, or airplanes. Thousands responded, and the awards were just announced. The photos are remarkable, from Dubai's Frame wreathed in clouds to the Skyggnisvatn crater in Iceland to the rock formations of the Tatacoa desert in Colombia to an aerial view of the brutalist Founders of Bulgarian State Monument high above northeast Bulgaria. Plus lots more.

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You don't usually think of early-music and baroque musicians rocking out to Bach, but Emi Ferguson, who's the principal flautist for Boston's Handel & Haydn Society, and the early-music ensemble Ruckus do just that.

from Book II of

The

Well-Tempered Clavier,

performed a couple of years ago at Harvard.

(Thanks, JD!)

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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