GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Rain first thing, then sun. I probably didn't need to tell you about the rain part, did I? Some weak disturbances began moving through the region last night, but they're in a hurry so this morning's moisture ought to end pretty quickly. With dry air behind and high pressure moving in, the clouds will clear, though it'll be gusty this afternoon, with winds from the north. High getting into the mid-50s again, and with mostly clear skies tonight, we'll be down into the 20s.More morning frost... A father-son medley.
In S. Pomfret, by Josh Metcalf
And in West Woodstock, by Luke Metcalf
Chelsea Green sues Elizabeth Warren. In Washington State. The WRJ-based book publisher's federal civil lawsuit against the senator from Massachusetts stems from a September letter Warren sent to Amazon's CEO accusing the retailer of "peddling misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and treatments." She asked him to reduce the visibility of books like The Truth About COVID-19, one of Chelsea Green's bestsellers—which among other things, writes Seven Days' Chelsea Edgar, says that the pandemic might have been "pre-planned." The suit claims Warren violated the First Amendment.UV kids' vaccine clinics have opened registration. D-H will be hosting vaccination clinics for D-HH patients on Saturday (Nov. 13) at DHMC, APD, and Cheshire Medical Center. Appointments can be scheduled using a MyDH account. In addition, the hospital and the Public Health Council are hosting a public vaccine clinic for children aged 5 to 11 getting their first doses, also on Saturday, at Lebanon High School. For this one, register using the state's vaccine site (VINI) and use code LHSP1357 to zero in on the clinic. DHMC warns, by the way, that only the Chrome browser works on VINI.SPONSORED: Remember that little jam company in Windsor, VT? It employs 53 people and with six jam kettles produces over 10,000 jars of artisan jam a day. After literally plucking a few of those jars off the shelves, it just joined a very small list of artisan makers across the country to garner FIVE finalist honors across three categories at the 2022 US Good Food Awards. Finalists were chosen out of nearly 2,000 entries nationwide across 17 categories. Find out all about the awards and why so many are saying "Blake Hill Preserves, You're Totally My Jam!" Sponsored by Blake Hill Preserves."Whenever I feel the stress levels ratcheting up, I lurch towards the nearest food memoir." That's the Norwich Bookstore's Carin Pratt, and it's a pretty darn good coping mechanism, don't you think? In this week's Enthusiasms writeup, Carin points to actor Stanley Tucci's new memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food. Tucci, who has two cookbooks to his name, likes to eat as much as he likes to cook (and act), and his book is "funny, well-written, informative, and moving," Carin writes. Also, it includes recipes. As she says in her full writeup at the link: Dig in."He still seems to be a guy that’s enjoying the job. How many elected officials can you say that about?” In NH Bulletin, the full reporting team of Annmarie Timmins, Amanda Gokee, and Ethan DeWitt parse Gov. Chris Sununu's decision to run for a fourth term and forego challenging Sen. Maggie Hassan. For one thing, Judd Gregg tells them, you can get things done. For another, “if you have a child’s football game, you can get to it.” A range of commenters weigh in on Sununu's disdain for DC and fondness for retail politics, and the Bulletin trio look ahead to Republicans' and Democrats' options now that the big question is settled.The White Mountain Boys. That's the title on a Washington Monthly profile of the Free State Project and its influence in the legislature—and on the governor—by Rob Wolfe, who began covering the effort when he worked at the Valley News (he's now at the Portland Press Herald). "Over the past two decades, Free Staters have walked a long path from obscurity and ridicule to undeniable power," Wolfe writes, and though his piece is now mildly out of date, given Sununu's announcement yesterday, it's a handy rundown of some of the players and their impact on legislative politics.“These are not just a vehicle that gets from point A to point B. The mindset of students is starting to open to that idea.” That's chair of the Industry and Transportation Department at Nashua Community College, talking to Granite Geek David Brooks about the challenges of training auto mechanics in the age of electric vehicles. Onboard computers, complex battery systems, and the looming likelihood that EVs will be able to power a house—all have teachers in auto-tech programs at the high school and community college level rethinking what and how to teach the mechanics of the future.Now is "not the right time to be relaxing restrictions or prevention strategies in schools." NHPR's Rick Ganley spoke yesterday with state epidemiologists Benjamin Chan and Elizabeth Talbot. Chan notes that case incidence, test positivity, hospitalizations, and deaths all continue to rise—and that the state is just starting to vaccinate children. The state's ability to relax restrictions, he says, will be tied not just to vaccine availability, but to "children actually getting vaccinated." Adds Talbot, "As much as we are fatigued from all of this, we need to stay strong in these strategies we know work."Over the past 10 days, VT's seven-day average of new cases has risen from 200 to over 300 per day. In other words, the state is seeing a record spike, reports VTDigger's Erin Petenko. At a press conference yesterday, finance commissioner Mike Pieciak said Halloween activities were partly to blame—but also said that cases "are not expected" to fall over the next few weeks. Cases are rising among both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, but unvaccinated people—especially children—remain three times more likely to get sick. School-by-school data at the link.Gulp. According to the 2021 Vermont Climate Assessment, which was published yesterday, within 25 years both the common loon and the hermit thrush—the state's most iconic birds—are "likely to disappear" from the state, reports Derek Brouwer in Seven Days. On average, the study found, the state is 2 degrees F warmer than in 1900 and may warm another 5-9 degrees before century's end. Average annual rainfall is up 21 percent since 1900, as well. Warmer winters, more flooding, a white-tailed deer boom, ticks and mosquitoes, struggling sugar maples, rising cyanobacteria levels... Sheesh.“I always try to think of what makes cranberries tick.” Bob Lesnikoski of Fletcher, VT thinks it has to do with the tart berry’s brief time in the spotlight each year—these few weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. Nevertheless, as Seven Days’ Margaret Grayson writes after visiting his farm, Lesnikowski has been growing cranberries for 25 years. And as the only commercial operation in the state, it’s mostly just “Cranberry Bob” picking and packaging his annual harvest. But, he says, he does depend on the health of VT’s large dairy farms, which create demand for the equipment he also needs to stay afloat.These European wildlife photography winners could be paintings. You get the sense they can’t be real, or that they’re hyper-real, these vividly lit and sharply drawn German Society of Nature Photography’s 2021 winners. The bison herd moving across a burnt-toned landscape feel like oil on canvas. A stand of wood nymph mushrooms might exist in a dream state. Angel Fitor's overall winner of medusa jellyfish lit eerily from below (it took him six years to get it right) in Spain's large coastal lagoon, Mar Menor...
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Today at noon, the Haven hosts John Sayles, CEO of the Vermont Foodbank, as it continues its monthly online speaker series on issues of direct concern to those fighting hunger, homelessness, and poverty. Sayles will be talking about "Food Security is an Equity Issue: Feeding Neighbors with a Racial and Economic Justice Lens."
At 6:30 pm, the Howe hosts Plymouth State English prof (and interim provost) Ann McClellan for an online talk on "Life Downstairs: British Servant Culture in Fact, Fiction, and Film." McClellan will look at the literary and film history of stories about servants and their relationships both up- and downstairs, and at why American audiences, writers, filmmakers, and television executives are so enthralled by them.
This evening at 7, the Norwich Bookstore hosts an online conversation between novelists Michael Freed-Thall and Ellen Meeropol. Freed-Thall, a former teacher and principal in South Hero who now lives in Fletcher, VT, has just published his first novel, Horodno Burning—a love story modeled on his own family that begins in Russia's Pale of Settlement set against a background of rising anti-Jewish fervor and violence under Tsar Alexander III.
Also at 7, VPR and VT PBS present a preview screening and panel discussion on Storm Lake, a new documentary about two years in the life of the Pulitzer-winning Storm Lake Times as it navigates the financial and political gales buffeting small, rural newspapers (Storm Lake is in Iowa). The screening will be followed by a discussion of journalism in VT hosted by VPR's Mark Davis with Seven Days publisher Paula Routly, Addison Independent publisher Angelo Lynn, and Bennington Banner editor Susan Allen.
Odds are decent you've never heard of Mari Kalkun, but if you happened to live in Estonia... well, it would be a different thing. She's actually been a steady presence on the world music circuit, with songs rooted in the shifting moods of the northern forest, as well as the occasional dip into politics—including "Hädaabikõne peaministrile" ("Emergency Call to the Prime Minister"), a plea to help rescue the national folk archives.
—that lush-sounding instrument is an Estonian kannel, part of a family of Baltic zithers.
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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