GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
It actually hit the 60s here yesterday—and set records for the date in various places. Today? Not so much. Temps will remain in the 30s, and there's low pressure moving through and moisture coming in off Lake Ontario that could fall as snow—if it falls at all—during the day. We should also see sun at least through the morning. Down to the high 20s tonight."Those wonderful backyard birds this year will be more entertaining than ever—since we will be home to see them." Case in point: the titmouse Quechee photographer Lisa Lacasse caught at her birdfeeder the other morning. Etna's Jim Block has been hanging out in his backyard, too. So have black-capped chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, mourning doves, and one fierce-looking bluejay.Meanwhile, Ernie... or maybe Ernestine... showed up at Ted Levin's birdfeeder in Thetford a couple of months ago. S/he's a bobwhite, "a native of southern pine forests recently burned and early-successional woodlots from Cape Cod to Mexico," Levin writes. He made the bird a bed in an old wooden apple crate, figuring it would be cozy and appealing. But no, Ernie wants to roam, opting for black-oil sunflower seeds spilled by the jays. "Ernie, an incomprehensible bird that keeps his own counsel, alone in an alien world."$50,000. That's what the GoFundMe effort for Lou's waitress Becky Schneider hit yesterday, Jim Kenyon reports in the Valley News. “When you visit Lou’s and Becky is in charge of your table, you feel like you are with a good family friend,” Boloco co-founder John Pepper, who's been eating at Lou's since he was a Dartmouth undergrad, tells Kenyon. Contributions—and well wishes—have been pouring in from all over the country.SPONSORED: What's next for solar and home-battery storage tax credits? President-elect Joe Biden is ready to move on a long list of energy-related executive orders. But extending solar tax credits will require an act of Congress, making January's two Senate runoffs all-important. With a 26 percent credit for home battery storage still available in 2020 and a 22 percent credit for solar and batteries in 2021, this is a great time to get in the game! Find out more at the maroon link. Sponsored by Solaflect Energy.“Dark parking lot, teenagers driving and I’m wearing all black. Got to be careful.” So does everyone else. That was Lebanon High assistant hockey coach Brad Whitaker last night explaining his reflective vest to sportswriter Tris Wykes out in the Campion Rink parking lot. Hockey practice for NH high school teams is getting underway—with everyone wearing masks both on and off the ice, temperature checks, health-screening questions... and parents relegated to watching at home via live video stream, if one's available. Wykes catches the upbeat but "It's going to be a strange year" mood.429 miles, 26 utility poles per mile, you do the math. As it expands broadband in Orange and Windsor counties, ECFiber is mapping the utility poles to which it can attach fiber. In the past, it would have done this by hand: one person, on foot, writes VTDigger's Justin Trombly. Now, though, the broadband district has turned to a digital survey using photographs and a van mounted with a scanner. In a press release, ECFiber chair F. X. Flinn, says the effort “will serve as proof the method works, and perhaps under the Biden administration, support for a statewide effort will be available.” Bet their fellow NH lawmakers are really happy swearing-in is outside today. A couple of weeks ago, some 200 incoming Republican state reps got together at the McIntyre Ski Area in Manchester. Yesterday, state officials confirmed that "a small number" of them have tested positive for Covid, a story first reported by WMUR. Which was how—to their consternation—Democrats first found out about it. Concord's in an uproar, no one's releasing numbers, and GOP leaders are either talking it down or not talking at all.CSX to buy Pan Am Railways. The deal—for an undisclosed amount—gives the Florida-based freight rail giant some 1,200 miles of tracks in NH, VT, MA and other parts of the northeast. Pan Am, a regional railroad owned by Tim Mellon that bought the old Maine Central and then the Boston & Maine, also has some 600 miles of trackage rights, including to the Connecticut River Mainline south of WRJ into MA. All those Thanksgiving scare photos? NH highway traffic was way down. Over the five-day holiday period, reports the Monitor's David Brooks, traffic on the state's highway system fell from its already-low levels compared to last year. For the five-day period from Wednesday through Sunday, the EZ Pass system recorded a total of 1.03 million trips, a drop of 34 percent from the 1.55 million trips registered last year. It's a sign, Brooks writes, that a lot of NH residents stayed home. Big drops at New England airports, too.NH education commission wants to shift funding formulas to end tax-base disparities. In a 180-page report released yesterday, the commission found that currently, districts with higher rates of poverty, more ESL students, and more special needs students "continue to have lower standardized test scores, graduation rates, and attendance rates than average," NHPR's Sarah Gibson reports. It wants to redistribute education taxes so that communities with greater need get a higher share. The idea could face tough sledding in the new GOP-controlled legislature.
Oops. At a press conference yesterday, VT human services secretary Mike Smith said officials are looking into how 249 Covid-19 tests performed at the Barre Auditorium could have gone undelivered to the lab for 50 hours over the weekend, making them unusable. The state then compounded the mishap, reports VTDigger's Erin Petenko, by mass emailing the people affected—but neglected to conceal their email addresses from one another.VT legislature will meet remotely at least through January. The House Rules Committee voted to do so last week, and yesterday, Senate leaders said they'd follow suit, reports Seven Days' Paul Heintz. Legislators also decided yesterday to scale back opening ceremonies: the House will convene Jan. 6 at the Barre Auditorium for swearing in, though members can also join in remotely. The same day, senators will cycle through the Statehouse to be sworn in and elect officers. The traditional swearing-in of statewide office-holders and the guv's inaugural address will be done mostly remotely the following day."The Vermont DMV is secretly America's DMV." In Jalopnik, Mercedes Streeter details how she went about getting VT plates for the old school bus her partner gave her. Even though she lives in Illinois. Stymied by her home state's bureaucracy, she used the trick that vintage car and motorcycle owners around the country apparently have relied on for years: You don't have to live in Vermont to register your vehicle there, and the DMV will mail your plates."We all about lost our minds when we heard the gunshot." Yeah, you can understand why. During deer season, Dave Mance III and his brother drove their dad, hobbled by thigh surgery, to their deer camp. While everyone else headed into the woods the next morning, Dave's dad set up his walker on the porch... which is where he was when a buck showed up about 75 yards away. "Buck down," read his text to his fellow hunters. Mance's "dispatch" is on the Vermont Almanac site. Volume 1 of the Almanac itself—a collection of stories, profiles, history, tips, facts, weather reports...—has just been published.For at least some period last summer, there was a wild eastern wolf in Maine. This is big, because though a few thousand eastern wolves—smaller relatives of the wolf—live in Ontario and Quebec, they haven't been seen in Maine since two were killed there in the 1990s. But, Maine Public Radio reported last month, DNA extracted from wolf scat collected below the border last summer was determined by U.S. and Canadian scientists to be 85 percent wolf. (Hat tip to David Brooks's Granite Geek blog for pointing it out.)In the Thames Estuary, about 40 miles east of London, is a WWII shipwreck containing 14,000 unexploded bombs. That's just one of this year's "52 things I learned," the annual compendium by consultant and former journalist Tom Whitwell. Think of it as a gigantic dollop of Daybreak. The first telehealth visit was in 1879, three years after the telephone was invented: It wasn't croup, the doctor decided. Ten percent of Nepal's GDP comes from people climbing Mount Everest. Epidemiologists at Emory believe raising the mimimim wage by $1 would have prevented 27,550 suicides since 1990. Warning: He also links to previous 52 Things lists.
So...
Dartmouth has 1 active student case and 9 (up 2) among faculty and staff. There are 7 students and 3 faculty/staff in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 2 students and 13 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 772 new cases yesterday; its official total is now 21,776. There were also 2 new deaths, which now stand at 528, while 160 people are hospitalized (no change). The current active caseload stands at 5,022 (down 123). Grafton County is at 101 active cases (down 8), Sullivan has 48 (down 11), and Merrimack has 526 (up 64). In town-by-town numbers, Hanover has 15 active cases (down 1), including at least six cases at Hanover Terrace. Newport has dropped to 14 (down 6), Claremont is at 12 (down 1), Lebanon is at 6 (up at least 2), and Charlestown (down 3), Sunapee (down 1), Newbury (down 1), and Grantham (no change) are all at 5. Haverhill, Warren, Orford, Wentworth, Canaan, Enfield, Plainfield, Grafton, New London, and Springfield all have 1-4.
VT added 63 cases yesterday, bringing its official total to 4,239, with 1,603 of those active (up 23). There were 3 new deaths, which now stand at 72, and 28 people with confirmed cases (up 7) are hospitalized. Windsor County gained 4 cases (54 over the past 14 days) to stand at 209 for the pandemic. Orange County gained 3 cases (with 87 over the past 14 days) and is now at 214 cumulatively.
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This morning at 9, Ty Gagne—climber, writer, and CEO of the NH Public Risk Management Exchange—will be on NHPR's The Exchange talking about his new book, The Last Traverse. It's about two friends who worked for Concord Coach who, in February, 2008, set out to do the Franconia Ridge hike: up Falling Waters, across Little Haystack, Lincoln, and Lafayette, then back down via Greenleaf. It didn't go well. Gagne will talk about the hike itself, the remarkable search-and-rescue efforts, the work of docs at Littleton Regional and DHMC to keep alive one of the hikers... and how we make high-stakes decisions and manage risk in uncertain situations.
It's First Wednesday, and there's a pile of Zoomed lectures sponsored by VT Humanities tonight, all at 7 pm. For starters, the Norwich Public Library and Norwich Historical Society are sponsoring actor David Mills' portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., from Birmingham jail to his iconic speeches at the height of the Civil Rights movement. There's also historian Damian Costello on Nicholas Black Elk (Black Elk Speaks) and his philosophy, Middlebury prof Kathryn Morse on the Farm Security Administration's role in helping rural America through the Depression, Dartmouth prof Nancy Crumbine on EB White, Middlebury's Kemi Fuentes-George on race and environmental matters... and lots more. Here's the listing for all of them—you'll need to register ahead of time.
Growing up, English sisters Emily, Jessica, and Camilla (known as Milly) Staveley-Taylor figured they'd try to create a sketch-comedy troupe together. Instead, they turned into the indie folk trio The Staves. Back in 2012, in the middle of a US tour, they found themselves on a Manhattan rooftop on a biting December night,
Guess cross-border Covid restrictions don't apply if you're a wolf. 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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