Daybreak Wednesday 11/25/20

WELL HERE WE ARE, UPPER VALLEY!

Heads up: No Daybreak tomorrow or Friday. Time for the basics: pie and family. You, too, could use a break, I imagine.Yuck. Though nothing overly dramatic (in theory, anyway). An approaching warm front will bring a chance of patchy snow and freezing drizzle this morning, a break in the afternoon, then a likelihood of rain and snow overnight, with a shift to all rain by daybreak tomorrow. No real accumulation expected. Otherwise, cloudy, starting out in the 20s this morning then hanging in the mid-30s until temps rise tomorrow. That early morning light does wonders for a bird's charisma. Quechee's Lisa Lacasse caught this nuthatch on a golden morning the other day.Thetford suspends town rec director. Town officials yesterday suspended Nathan Maxwell with pay "while they investigate whether he posted a threatening comment against a woman on the popular social media site TikTok," reports the Valley News's Anna Merriman. Interim town manager Tom Yennerell told her last night that the town received over 30 emails from residents drawing attention to the post and to a video by Maxwell. "I would never, and did never make this type of statement," Maxwell wrote in a post on the Treasure Island FB page that was later removed by the town.Fairlee gets on-demand testing site this week, WRJ and Springfield next. They're part of a push by Vermont to expand Covid testing throughout the state, and will make free tests available seven days a week, both daytime and evenings. The state plans to roll out online registration soon, says human services Secretary Mike Smith. Leb okays 18 new apartments for downtown. The project, by developer Jeremy Katz, would renovate the old NAPA auto parts store by Mechanic, Mascoma, and Foundry streets (just down the street from where the city's constructing a roundabout by Phnom Penh Sandwich Station). Katz's plans, approved unanimously by the planning board Monday night, call for 17 studio apartments and one two-bedroom unit inside the 1900-era building, reports the VN's Tim Camerato.SPONSORED: Help Willing Hands respond to rising hunger. To meet the surge in food needs and ensure that healthy food is accessible to everyone, Willing Hands has expanded its infrastructure and added 20 new partner organizations this year. These investments are possible because of the hundreds of Upper Valley residents who've donated to the capital campaign. The need around us is growing, and there is still time to donate at the maroon link or at willinghands.org/give. Sponsored by Willing Hands.Hiking close to home: Bald Top Mountain. If you're looking for a quiet, peaceful hike to start your day—or just to take a break from the Thanksgiving hurly-burly—the Upper Valley Trails Alliance checks in with a fine under-the-radar option. Using the Cross Rivendell Trail where it heads east off Blood Brook Road in W. Fairlee, this trail leads to the summit of Bald Top Mountain and boasts beautiful 360-degree views of the Upper Valley. The trail has winding switchbacks up to the summit with viewpoints along the way. "Like a dead tree left standing for cavity nesters, a carcass in the woods is a critical resource." Hanging suet out the other day for, well, whatever shows up to feed on it, writer and naturalist Ted Levin got to thinking about how nature (and hunters, and cars) also have a way of providing for all sorts of animals—"red and gray fox, coyote, fisher, opossum, raccoon, bear, weasels, shrews of many species, even red squirrel"—through otherwise lean times. "With deer season winding down, carcasses accrue in woods and meadows. Before you haul one away, consider who depends on the protein and fat..."Of course, some animals have their own way of setting food by. Mary Holland notes that while many birds are leaving, Northern Shrikes are arriving from the tundra to their winter nesting grounds. Unlike other songbirds, they're predatory, and during the winter they like small mammals (voles, mice) and other birds. But they often kill more than they need right away, so they store the rest. It's breakfast-time, but it's also fascinating.Anti-mask GOP legislators call for Sununu's impeachment. They're hoping to launch an inquiry once the legislature gets underway in January, arguing that the steps the Republican governor has taken to rein in the pandemic—especially last week's statewide mask mandate—exceed his authority. “I would say that the mask mandate was the final straw,” Rep. Michael Sylvia of Belmont tells the Monitor's Ethan DeWitt. “That is another very clear violation of our rights that we are guaranteed under our Constitution.”VT students who attend multi-household Thanksgivings will need to quarantine. State officials yesterday announced that schools' daily health check can now include a question about gatherings over the holiday; students who say they attended one with more than their immediate household will be sent home to quarantine for 14 days, or seven with a negative test, VTDigger's Lola Duffort reports. And Orange Southwest schools are going fully remote, as district contract tracers find many families resistant to quarantining or isolation even after positive tests.Jump in online shopping shows up in VT tax revenues. Between March and September, the state took in $27 million in internet sales taxes, more than doubling its revenues during the same period last year. The shift has softened the pandemic-era blow to the state's coffers and to retailers able to pursue online sales. But “I just really would caution anybody who would use that as a point for, ‘We’re actually not doing that bad,’ because Main Street is having a pretty hard time with it,” the state Chamber of Commerce's Charles Martin tells VTDigger's Xander Landen."There is always change, and the sky is a safe place to explore that." Mark Breen, the Fairbanks Museum meteorologist, is also a stargazer, and he offers Seven Days' Molly Zapp a set of tips for winter's-night skywatching. Start with the naked eye and keep a reference guide handy (he recommends H.A. Rey's The Stars or the Star Walk app). Binoculars are good, too. And be aware of Dec. 21, the winter solstice, when Saturn and Jupiter will be closer to one another than they've been since 1623."There was a knock on the door, and this guy said, 'Hi, I'm Jarvis.'" As in Jarvis Rockwell, Norman's son. He was dropping by Rockwell's Retreat, the inn in Arlington, VT that now occupies the house the elder Rockwell lived in for a decade in the 1940s. As part of Seven Days' "Staycation" series, Melissa Pasanen talks to the inn's new owners, Kevin and Sue Harter, who took over last November. They've been renovating the bedrooms and the studios Rockwell used... and fielding visits from the locals who served as Rockwell's models during his years there. Who says the feds have no sense of humor? I don't know where to start: the news or the CDC's beard parade. The story: the NYT's Shauna Farnell reports that male ski patrollers all over the country are being asked to shave their beards so they can wear N95 respirators properly. That's here. What's at the maroon link is what may be the best thing ever to come out of the pandemic: a CDC graphic detailing what kinds of beards are okay for workers who have to wear tight-fitting respirators. It's an outright facial-hairstyling caboodle. Hulihee? French Fork? Neither, sadly, is NIOSH-approved. (Thanks, CW!)Hey, a beaver's gotta do what a beaver's gotta do. Nancy Coyne is a wildlife rehabilitator in upstate NY who, back in May, adopted a three-week old beaver found abandoned by the side of the road. She named him Beave. Raising a beaver is not for the faint of heart: Coyne's had to teach Beave how to do everything from swim to dive to eat. But one instinct that's front and center: dam- and lodge-building. With everything from kitchen stools to toilet plungers to Kleenex boxes. Oh, also: Beave's got half a million social-media followers.

Last numbers for a bit. 

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If the night brings me sadness/The day comes full of joy... 

Let's go out lyrically, with the wonderful Brazilian singer, composer, and guitarist Márcio Faraco and fellow singer and guitarist (and poet) Chico Buarque,

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Have a fine, make-the-most-of-it Thanksgiving and a reinvigorating few days. See you Monday.

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

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