Daybreak Wednesday 2/10/21

A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!

Quiet and mostly sunny today, colder air headed our way. Highs today in the mid-20s, a little breezy, but definitely more sun than clouds for much of the ay. There's a cold air mass moving into the region from the west starting tonight, and we get a taste of nighttimes to come with temps dropping into the low single digits. Daybreak where you live. Well. Turns out there are a lot of you who get up pretty darn early in the morning. Photos arrived from literally across the road, from towns all over the Upper Valley, from MA and AZ and CA, even from Italy. Thank you so much to all of you who sent them—and if you've got a good one and still want to join the daybreaker throng, please do so! I'm just going to work my way through them, one or two a day as the mood strikes. Starting with:

In aftermath of Title IX crack-up, Harry Sheehy retires as Dartmouth athletic director. Word came yesterday from President Phil Hanlon, reports the Valley News's Pete Nakos. During Sheehy's decade in the post, Dartmouth athletes amassed plenty of accolades and the college consistently ranked high nationwide for athletes' academic performance. But his tenure will be marked by the controversy over his handling of eliminating varsity teams. Peter Roby, a Dartmouth grad who spent a decade as AD for Northeastern and was head basketball coach at Harvard, will take over as interim next Tuesday.Still some second-vaccine hiccups in NH—at least, in Lebanon. NHPR's Todd Bookman reports that even after the state changed course last week and began offering appointments for second vaccine shots at the time of the first, some recipients report leaving without an appointment in hand. “We said to them that we’d been told that we’d get a card. They said, ‘Oh that’s news to us,’” said one person leaving the Leb vaccination site. People in Exeter reported the same issue. State officials, Bookman reports, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Fire destroys 1890s farmhouse in W. Fairlee, sends couple and infant into the cold. It broke out around 10:15 Monday night, and fire crews from W. Fairlee, Fairlee, Orford, Vershire, Thetford, Bradford, North Haverhill, Strafford, Norwich, and Lyme battled it in 5-degree temps until they got it under control around 3 a.m. yesterday, reports the VN's Anna Merriman. Jennifer Avery, who owns the house with her husband, Colin Stemper, and their 10-month-old daughter, tells Merriman the community has turned out with supplies and support. She and her siblings own the Lake Morey Resort.SPONSORED: Parents/Guardians of high school sophomores: The Hartford Area Career and Technology Center is accepting new student applications for the 2021-22 school year starting March 5. Many juniors and seniors across the Upper Valley spend half-days engaged in learning at HACTC, focused on a program-specific curriculum in their area of interest. Hit the maroon link for more information about HACTC programs and upcoming virtual "town hall" meetings. The online application deadline is March 19. Sponsored by the HACTC."There is nothing else better in the world than to be alone with someone when it’s snowing except maybe skiing with someone you are in love with while it’s snowing." In Junction mag, Courtney Cook goes both wide and deep on the substance that's all around us right now: snow in her own life; snow in literature from Pooh to The Hobbit to James Joyce and Robert Frost; snow as both danger and spark. "Snow makes us feel alive," she writes, "precisely because it inspires us and can kill us."A rare look from the other side. Yesterday's item about "Every One (#MMIWQT Bead Project)," the giant beaded art installation staring out at passersby from the Hood, noted that because the museum is closed, it's the only view most people can get. But as it turns out, Rachel Florman, a senior at Dartmouth, got to go inside yesterday as part of a "tiny tour" program for students. "I have definitely been missing museums," she writes. "I can report that the Hood is in great shape, if a bit empty!" She sends a pic of the bead project from the inside.As Wilder, Bellows Falls, and Vernon dams go through federal relicensing, owner wants to change categories. They're licensed as impoundment dams, David Brooks writes on his Granite Geek blog; Great River Hydro wants to make them so-called run-of-river dams, which let water flow without holding it back. Seems straightforward, Brooks says, until you factor in the needs of the electric grid. "How can you be certain you can crank out enough electrons on demand during, say, a long heat wave that is part of a drought which cuts river flow?" he asks. “This year has been one of wonderful adventure. And it’s all an experiment.” That's Marisa Gurses, a teacher at the Mountain Shadows School in Dublin, NH, talking to the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript's Tim Goodwin about what it's been like holding class outside throughout the winter. Several schools have turned to fire pits, tents, and wooden platforms; in Jaffrey, students sit on grain bags that double as sleds. "Every day feels like you’re packing for a ski trip," Goodwin writes, but teachers report that as students explore the woods and their surroundings, they're more focused and engaged.NH expanding vaccination hours, locations. In a press conference yesterday, Gov. Chris Sununu announced Gov. that seven of the state’s 19 vaccination clinics will now be open seven days a week, and that a partnership with Walgreens pharmacies will add about 3,400 vaccinations a week at 34 locations. In addition, the state expects to see between 5 and 10 percent more doses next week than it got this week, reports the AP's Holly Ramer.Rutland drops Raiders name, will now be Ravens. The 6-4 vote by the school board to switch the schools' mascot comes after many months of controversy over the old mascot's offensive Native American imagery. The vote also comes a week after students in the city's schools voted in favor of adopting the Ravens label, though some school board members fretted that a raven could also be offensive to some groups, WCAX reports. Meanwhile, a group of voters is pushing for a school board slate that would overturn the decision.Most towns will stick to early-March town meeting schedule in VT but vote by ballot. At least 175 of the state's 246 municipalities have opted for mail-in ballots this year, according to a VTDigger survey; they're adhering to a state recommendation that they forego in-person meetings this year. Others, including Barnard, Brookfield, Hartland, Sharon, and Tunbridge, intend to postpone until May. And at least one, Stratton, will go ahead with a "floor meeting" on March 2—but allow residents to vote from the parking lot. VT's US Attorney submits resignation following request from Biden administration. The move by Christina Nolan, the first woman to serve as the state's top federal prosecutor, came after US attorneys appointed by President Trump were asked yesterday to step down. Nolan was backed by both Democrat Patrick Leahy and Republican Phil Scott. VTDigger's Alan J. Keays recaps her time in office and looks at speculation on possible replacements.VT interscholastic games start Friday; school officials fret. When the move was announced, one state official said there'd been no indication of Covid transmission among teammates. On Monday, reports VTDigger's Lola Duffort, the Scott administration admitted there have, indeed, been instances. Still, with mitigation measures in place they believe competition can proceed safely. School officials, Duffort writes, aren't sure, especially with pressure to expand in-person schooling. “If we have to start quarantining students and having them miss academics, we will NOT continue,” Windsor Southeast's supt tells her."It’s like a mix of taking care of a two-year-old toddler and a 92-year-old grandmother." Guido Frackers is president of a company called TravTours, whose entire reason for being is to help orchestras get from here to there. The logistics and personalities, as you can imagine, are daunting. In an interview with Jeffrey Arlo-Brown in VAN, an online classical music mag, Frackers says that given environmental concerns, it might make sense for orchestras to do less international touring. And quotes Pierre Boulez: "Guido, jet lag is a weakness of ze mind.""Do you know that in Cat, there are 50 different ways of saying, 'I'm better than you...'" The lockdown life wears on, and what's a dog to do? Learn a new language? Take up baking? Learn to play piano? Or go out in the freezing sleet and rain and wander around in the mud? Olive and Mabel have some thoughts.

And some numbers...

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Piers Faccini is far better known on the other side of the Atlantic than he is here. The singer-songwriter (and poet and painter) was born in London of English and Italian parents, moved to France when he was five, and has comfortably gone back and forth since he co-founded his first band in London in the '90s. His music ranges broadly, from the Middle East to West Africa to Europe and Appalachia, but he's no mean folk singer, either, as his lovely and wistful ballad 

 a cut from his forthcoming album, attests.

See you tomorrow.

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