Daybreak Wednesday 10/7/20

A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!

Weather coming. There's low pressure moving eastward across southern Quebec, and a cold front following along below it. The result will be decidedly less pleasant than the last few days (though: rain)—a cool (60s), blustery day with a chance of rain all morning turning likely in the afternoon (and a slight chance of thunder), decent winds from the south with gusts reaching close to or above 40 mph this afternoon and evening. Winds continue into the night, temps down to the low 40s.Hanover's Market Table to close. Susan Apel reports on her Artful blog that owner Nicky Barraclough has announced the restaurant is giving up its lease and closing Oct. 25. As Susan writes, it was "facing a challenge shared by all Upper Valley restaurants as fall blends into late fall and ultimately into winter: what shall we all do when dining—or even just raising a glass—outdoors is no longer possible?" The closing will be a blow not just to Upper Valley diners, but to the many local farms and providers Market Table worked with."I was very disappointed that you ran a link to [that] Facebook post without covering the whole story of what transpired. That post is so far from the reality." Jeffrey Kahn, who chairs the Woodstock Village board of trustees, checked in yesterday with more on the Woodstock Inn's maskless wedding and its aftermath. "[The Inn] made an error," he says. "It happened once, they’ve acknowledged it, they promise it won’t happen again, and that’s what the public should know." Full interview, plus Jane Lindholm's tweet-stream on what state officials said about the issue at yesterday's press conference.We've had a visitor. "There has been a lot of excitement among birders and photographers the last couple of days," writes Marc Beerman. A Western Kingbird has settled in for a bit by Campbell Flats in Norwich—as its name suggests, it's about half a continent outside its usual range here, hence all the hoo-hah. They're aggressive birds, the Cornell Lab writes, "and will scold and chase intruders (including Red-tailed Hawks and American Kestrels)." Here's Marc's photo from yesterday. Seems right at home.People are spending more time outside and they seem to be finding more injured birds. That, at least, is one explanation for why VINS had its busiest summer yet, taking in 573 "patients" June-August. Just over half were nestlings or fledglings. Emily Johnson sends along a video of this summer's guests, including some hungry little merlins, a red-tailed hawk trying out its wings, some even hungrier robin fledglings, hairy woodpeckers making a break for it, a northern flicker, a pileated woodpecker, and more.Antiviral's use on Trump and other sick Covid patients has a DHMC tie. It was one of the first 20 sites to join tests of remdesivir, made by California-based Gilead Sciences, conducting two phase 3 trials of the drug. Overall, its work and other studies have shown that the drug can reduce the length and severity of the illness, especially when administered early, says Dr. Richard Zuckerman, a D-H infectious disease specialist. (VN)Poll-watching may get fraught on Election Day. Here's what NH law actually allows. With questions and suspicions about the voting process at a fever pitch, the Monitor's Ethan DeWitt notes that in NH, observing the voting process is legal, within limits. Voters can watch "as long as they keep a distance, stay out of the areas specified for voting, and don’t do or wear anything that could be considered campaigning." He goes into details: what's "the rail," the different kinds of observers, what constitutes a legal challenge to a vote. It's all oddly fascinating. NH's state university system expects $70 million deficit. NHPR's Rick Ganley spoke yesterday to Chancellor Todd Leach about the system's financial struggles during the pandemic. It's tried to cut administrative costs, including procurement, and put in place an early retirement plan, for which 300 people so far have signed up. That "will go a long ways to helping us get to right-sizing the workforce," Leach says. The four individual institutions in the system are also looking at academic program cuts. Don't Blame Bambi. That's the title of a US Forest Service study looking into whether white-tailed deer are actually to blame for declines in Eastern oak and pine forests due to their appetite for tree seedlings. The answer, David Brooks reports on his Granite Geek blog (the study itself came out in April) is no. In fact, they found, forests overall are becoming more densely packed with trees, and suggest fire suppression and other land management practices may be responsible for the changes."They have a lot of questions, but they are by-and-large feeling good." Julia Doucet is an outreach nurse with the Open Door Clinic in Middlebury, and has been in touch with the 27 Champlain Orchards migrant workers who've tested positive for Covid. The clinic's been working with the state and Porter Hospital to try to figure out care. "As you can imagine," Doucet told VPR's Jane Lindholm yesterday, "they're a fairly vulnerable population."Meanwhile, there's a Middlebury student tracking another outbreak: the one in the White House. Benjy Renton, a senior at the college, is one of three people behind what is probably the most comprehensive tracking effort in the country on the White House cluster and its spread. His colleagues on the project are an infectious disease specialist at Emory and the Covid Tracking Project's data visualization guru. Renton's carved out a sterling name for himself during the pandemic by tracking and consolidating other information, like college testing plans. Seven Days' Colin Flanders has a profile.Vermont is tightening its travel restrictions. With cases rising around the northeast, the number of counties with greater than 400 active cases per million has grown, meaning that travelers to the state from those counties and Vermonters returning home from there face travel restrictions. The number of people in the region allowed to come to the state with no restrictions has dropped to its lowest number since Vermont established the map. Updated map at the link. There's a lot of red and yellow out there.VT labor department still struggling with unemployment checks. Remember the problems people had filing for and receiving unemployment back at the height of the pandemic? The troubles aren't over, reports VTDigger's Anne Wallace Allen. There's confusion about who's eligible for extended benefits, some people are reporting that they're being billed for earlier overpayments, and others report that checks they've received are bouncing.Hey, it's Independent Country Store Month in Vermont! Yeah, slipped past me, too, but that's because the proclamation was just issued a few weeks ago. The Burlington Free Press has a guide to five "classic Vermont stores": in Jericho (estabd 1807), Putney (1796), Shelburne (1859),  Willey's Store in Greensboro, and the Vermont Country Store in Weston. I know. There's one missing. But if you've been to both, you know that Willey's is just the Dan & Whit's of the Northeast Kingdom.Well, you've got your puppies and kittens, of course. But also naked mole-rats, a Congolese gorilla, and a bunch of Alaskan brown bears. They're all animals with dedicated live-cams, rounded up by the NYT. "A new study has found that watching footage of cute animals can reduce your anxiety, blood pressure and heart rate," the paper says. So have at it. The Madman's Library. Edward Brooke-Hitching has a taste for books "that are down the back alleys of history.” So he wondered: What would the ultimate odd-book library include "if you had a time machine and unlimited budget?” It would have Fate of the Blenden Hall, written by a shipwrecked sea captain using penguin blood. The diary of a Norwegian resistance fighter pricked with a pin into squares of toilet paper and left in a ventilation shaft. A once-popular "catalogue of every 17th-century sin conceivable." And of course the 7.5-ton compendium of Brazil's tax laws finished in 2014 by an exasperated lawyer.

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