WELL GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
One more warm day. But, alas, not much sun. There's a low pressure system passing to our north, pulling a cold front along behind it. If we see rain it probably won't be much, but there's a chance of it from about noon on through tonight. Foggy then partly cloudy to start, clouding up as the day goes on, getting up to about 70 this afternoon before dropping into the 40s tonight.An island in a sea of land. Or, actually, fog and land. Monday morning, Jerry Bergen sent his drone up over the Jericho section of Hartford. You may remember what it was like that morning: fog hugging the ground, with sunlight wherever there was elevation. This is an extraordinary photo of a nearby farmstead, and then fog reaching all the way to Ascutney, far in the distance. And at the other end of day... If you were out late yesterday afternoon, you know that the sunset was remarkable. Bonnie MacAdam sends in what it looked like on one corner of Lake Fairlee.To the extent it can, VT pulls up the drawbridge. At a press conference yesterday, Gov. Phil Scott announced that the state will now require anyone entering or returning to Vermont to quarantine for 14 days, or for seven days with a negative Covid test. This includes leaving the state for a day trip. Emergency and essential travel (work, school, health care, food) are still okay, but Scott noted a lot of new case growth is related to travel. “The bottom line is, if you don’t need to travel right now, don’t," he said.Post Mills land to go back on the market. The town had bought the 8-acre parcel near Lake Fairlee and the airport for workforce housing, and then, after local opposition scotched that idea, considered using it for a solar array. But now, reports the Valley News's Liz Sauchelli, the Selectboard has voted to give up on the idea of development of any sort and to put the land back on the market and restore a covenant limiting development. What happens now, Sauchelli notes, "will essentially depend on who buys it."SPONSORED: Still haven't created your Will? Find out how easy and inexpensive it is to do. Everything in Order, based in the Upper Valley, will walk you through how to create a Will during a free webinar on Thursday, November 19th at noon. The webinar will demystify and clarify the process of creating one so you can craft your own with ease and confidence! The webinar lasts 30 minutes and space is limited. Please register by hitting the maroon link. Sponsored by Everything in Order.If you happen to have any spare acorns, Ben Kilham could use them. Apples, too. It's been a tough food year, so sows have been traveling in search of meals—and getting struck by cars, the VN's Jim Kenyon reports. Their cubs are ending up with Kilham and his family in Lyme—29 of them at the moment—and acorns are full of the carbs and fat bears need for the winter. They "crack them with their teeth and then put them on the back of a paw, where they separate the meat from the shell,” Kilham says. If you've got some, there's a wooden bin by his driveway on Grafton Turnpike Road."Franklin should see the [turkeys] under my feeders. Pompous. Arrogant. Oblivious..." They're three toms, Ted Levin writes, "admiring each other, vainglorious boasting of unhinged gamebirds, the very self-absorption archers prey on." It's fair to say he's not an admirer, as Ben Franklin was. Thanks to the conquistadors, the turkey reached Europe in 1519. Henry VIII was the first English king to dine on one. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first to eat it—in sandwich form—on the moon. See a trend here? NH is seeing spikes in school enrollment as families from elsewhere move in during the pandemic. They're noticeable, writes Adam Urquhart for the Granite State News Collaborative, especially in Waterville Valley, Conway, and the Mt. Washington Valley—similar to what's happening in VT ski towns. The Lakes Region doesn't seem to be recording the same influx. "School officials in Laconia, Moultonborough and Alton said they have not seen a significant increase in enrollment," Uquhart reports.WDEV axes Dave Gram's talk show. The veteran VT newsman's last morning talk show was last Friday, after the central VT radio station replaced him this week with former VPR producer Ric Cengeri. Gram, who spent three decades covering the state for the AP, tells Seven Days' Derek Brouwer that station officials had criticized him for being "too critical" of President Trump and told him he "needed to be quicker about asking questions and getting into and out of breaks." Cengeri will bring "a more moderate tone to the show," says general manager Steve Cormier. VT to begin regular testing of employees in K-12 schools. The surveillance testing program, reports VTDigger's Lola Duffort, takes advantage of the fact that teachers and staff "represent a large group of individuals in an organized setting, evenly distributed throughout the state, and are the ideal population to provide a statewide picture of the virus’ spread in Vermont." It will begin statewide next week with all public schools and a select group of private schools, then be offered to a quarter of VT schools each week. There are no plans yet to expand to students.If you were outdoors the other night and got really lucky... you may have seen a fireball that was mostly visible from CT and NY, but drew reports from VT, NH, and as far away as WV. The preliminary trajectory, the American Meteor Society says, shows the fireball traveled from east to west "and ended its visible flight somewhere south of Poughkeepsie, NY." Several people caught it on video, at the link. (Thanks, JF!)How did we not know about gliders? Not the kind out at Post Mills Airport, but the living, breathing kind that live in eucalyptus forests in Australia. The little marsupials can glide up to 100 meters, and they've just come to the world's attention because Australian researchers have now identified two new species, in addition to the greater glider they'd long known about. You'd think, looking at the pic, that they somehow use their ears... but no, like flying squirrels they have folds of skin that reach from their wrists to their ankles.
The numbers keep coming...
Dartmouth now reports 2 student cases and 4 among faculty and staff.In all, 7 students and 3 faculty/staff are in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 5 students and 14 faculty/staff are in isolation as they await results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 222 positive test results yesterday, bringing its total to 12,919. There were no new deaths, which remain at 489; 64 people are hospitalized (up 8). The state's current caseload is at 2,197 (up 140). Grafton County has 101 active cases (down 1), Sullivan has 61 (up 6), and Merrimack added 10 to stand at 237. Newport now has 33 active cases (up 1); Lebanon has 7 (down 4), as do Claremont (up 1) and New London (up 2). Hanover remains at 5 cases, and Charlestown and Sunapee now also have 5. There are 1-4 cases each in Haverhill, Piermont, Orford, Warren, Lyme, Canaan, Grantham, Unity, Goshen, and Newbury.
VT reported 46 new cases yesterday, bringing its official total to 2,462, with 467 of those still active (up 42). Deaths remain at 59, and 12 people with confirmed cases (up 4) are hospitalized. Windsor County gained 4 cases and stands at 141 for the pandemic, with 21 of those in the past 14 days. Orange County also gained 4 new cases to stand at 56 cumulatively, 23 of them reported in the past 14 days.
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It's Veterans Day, and the VN has a list of events around the Upper Valley, including a 22-mile march to raise awareness of suicide among veterans, starting at 8:30 this morning in WRJ.
Also, if you're a vet or active-duty, the VA's got a blog post on national chains offering discounts, free meals, and other items today. (Thanks, TP!)
At 5:15 pm, the Dickey and Rockefeller centers at Dartmouth are hosting a panel discussion on "Diversity and Inclusion in the Military." It's moderated by Dartmouth political scientist Jason Lyall, who studies the effects and effectiveness of political violence in civil and conventional wars, in conversation with Brad Carney, who served in the 82nd Airborne and went on to become an Army Ranger before becoming a philosophy major at Dartmouth, and Karla Rosas, a former USAF Security Forces member and government major who graduated from Dartmouth earlier this year.
At 5:30, you can get a glimpse of the importance of corn in Indigenous life and culture through "Corn Stories," a panel conversation and Q&A hosted by Dartmouth. It features Ryann Cornelius, a sophomore from the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico; Amanda Gokee, who is part Ojibwe, in the college's MALS program, and a reporter with VTDigger; and Arthur Hanchett, who works in procurement at the college and is an Abenaki traditional knowledge keeper who knows traditional corn varieties and growing methods, which he teaches as a guest instructor at the college.
At 6 pm, NH Humanities is presenting a discussion of the history of the reparations movement and its impact by Woullard Lett, who heads up the Unitarian Universalist Association for New England and co-chairs the NAACP's education committee in Manchester.
At 7 pm, Still North Books & Bar is hosting poets Franny Choi and Cameron Awkward-Rich as part of its "Still Queer" reading series. They'll be in conversation with writers Alexander Chee and Dustin Schell about Choi's latest collection, Soft Science, and Awkward-Rich's second, Dispatch.
Finally, there's an unusual chance this year to snag a screen-side seat for Pages in the Pub. Ordinarily, the gathering downstairs at the Norwich Inn—at which an enthusiastic panel of presenters gives brief descriptions of their current favorite books just in time to buy them for the holidays or for yourself—sells out well in advance. This time around it will be online, tomorrow evening, but the Norwich Bookstore and the Norwich Public Library need to know in advance whether they'll have to arrange for greater Zoom capacity, so if you'd like to sign up, today's a good day to do it. Presenters this year are Book Jam Blog co-writer Lisa Christie, bookstore co-owner Penny McConnel, library director Lucinda Walker, Dickey Center associate director Tom Candon, and Vermont Center for Ecostudies director Chris Rimmer. Tix are $20 and they benefit the library.
Reading Deeper
You knew this was going to be an issue. While the high effectiveness rate of Pfizer's new vaccine has understandably created huge excitement and a giddy stock market, its logistics are daunting. It's administered in two doses 28 days apart, has to be stored at temps around minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit, will be delivered in dry ice-packed boxes holding 1,000 to 5,000 doses, and once opened, the packages can keep the vaccine for five days but can’t be opened more than twice a day. And it turns out, according to a ProPublica investigation, most states haven't figured out how to handle all that. The problem will be especially acute in rural states or regions. "Needing to use 1,000 doses within a few days may be fine for large hospital systems or mass vaccination centers," the authors write. "But it could rule out sending the vaccine to providers who don’t treat that many people, even doctors’ offices in cities. It’s especially challenging in smaller towns, rural areas and Native communities on reservations that are likely to struggle to administer that many doses quickly or to maintain them at ultracold temperatures." The 47 individual state plans the authors were able to obtain are not reassuring.
I'm With Her brings together three ace Americana virtuosi: violinist Sara Watkins, banjo player and mandolinist Sarah Jarosz, and guitarist Aoife O’Donovan. They each have thriving solo careers in the bluegrass/folk/world-music universe, but when they join together it's a wonder, as one commenter puts it, that with "so much talent and perfect pitch" in one space the studio doesn't spontaneously combust. Here's their version of
(Thanks, TD!)
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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