A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
Storm? What storm? Today, the weather folks say, will be "a gem," with high pressure building in (though don't get used to it) and plenty of sunshine out there. This doesn't mean it'll get warm, though: highs today in the lower 20s in the valleys, teens elsewhere, with decent winds from the northwest. Down into the single digits tonight.And here's daybreak in...
Strafford, VT, where, writes Chuck Sherman, "we are accustomed to spectacular sunsets, but this sunrise took our breath away. We watched the light paint the trees from top to bottom."
And North Conway, NH, where Sara Holtby was out for an early-morning ski with a straight-on view of the day's early light on Mt. Washington.
Dartmouth to close two libraries. The Kresge Physical Sciences Library and the Paddock Music Library, which is located in the Hopkins Center, will shut their doors at the end of the academic year, the college announced yesterday. Their staff and "high-use" collection items will be shifted to Baker-Berry, reports The Dartmouth's Abigail Mihaly, while the rest of their collections will move off-campus. The move, Mihaly writes, comes after budget cuts and steep declines in lending at the two libraries. A history of ECFiber in one place. These days it's a national model for bringing high-speed internet to rural areas, but it's taken a lot of improvisation to get it there since its founding in 2008. George Sadowsky, an internationally known computer scientist in Woodstock, lays out the history for the somewhat geeky audience on CircleID, a web mag about the internet. The challenges of topography, shifting capital markets, building infrastructure where none existed, competition from big players, politics.... It's all here. Written for an audience that's never heard of Vermont, technical at points, and fascinating.[LAUGHTER] "No." [LAUGHTER CONTINUES] "I'm sorry I'm laughing, I'm not laughing at you, exactly." That's Bradford novelist and Dartmouth prof Alexander Chee talking to VPR's Mitch Wertlieb. You'll remember that Chee won a big grant earlier this month, and Wertlieb called him up to talk about whether writing has gotten easier (hence the laughter), what he's been thinking about (how gestures give insight into a character's frame of mind, Chee says) and literary life in the pandemic. "I miss reading quietly in a group, say in a library," says Chee. "That is its own kind of social act, you know."SPONSORED: Why hand your nest egg over to Wall Street? Instead, reap returns by putting it to work helping the Upper Valley recover and become more resilient. Learn how in "Local Investing 101: Rebooting Our Community Economy," a four-session workshop with community economics guru Michael Shuman, author of the 2020 book Put Your Money Where Your Life Is. Learn a specific, comprehensive local investment strategy that can save your local businesses. Hosted by Vital Communities and TLC Monadnock. Information and registration at the maroon link. Sponsored by Vital Communities.
With NH House due to convene next week in Bedford sports complex, six legislators sue for remote access. So far, Speaker Sherman Packard has resisted a remote option for lawmakers, insisting that the Bedford facility has plenty of room, writes the AP's Holly Ramer. The plaintiffs, all Democrats, include a 74-year-old awaiting a kidney transplant, an 81-year-old living in a senior living complex that forbids attending large gatherings, and Democratic leader Renny Cushing, who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. They contend the lack of remote access violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.Want a sense of why Lou's, Boloco, and others are building their own delivery app? It was on view in Concord yesterday, where restaurants around NH were testifying on behalf of a bill that would require Grubhub, Uber Eats, Doordash and other apps to enter into a contract with a restaurant before they list it. Restaurants have struggled with apps that list their menus wrong or, even worse, take orders without notifying the restaurant and then refuse to refund the money, writes the Monitor's Ethan DeWitt. And even with a contract, they charge all sorts of fees, driving up prices but cutting into restaurants' margins.Could we see Texas-style rolling blackouts in New England? That's the question NHPR's Annie Ropeik poses to Dan Dolan, who runs the New England Power Generators Association. The answer's not a simple yes or no. The energy markets here are structured differently, Dolan says, and in particular, the way the region sets aside power for unexpected demand gives it a robustness in the face of extreme weather. They talk over energy reliability, the growing place of renewables, and how the electric grid is handling change.Death of St. J man awaiting trial fuels state police investigation. Johnnie Simpson Jr. was found on Railroad Street Friday afternoon, unresponsive, and died at Northeastern VT Regional Hospital; his death was ruled suspicious over the weekend. As VTDigger's Justin Trombly writes, Simpson was arrested after a three-hour standoff in 2019, after he'd allegedly stabbed his girlfriend and barricaded himself in a home with a preteen. In its latest press release, the VSP says only that "investigators are examining all possibilities connected to this case" and ask anyone with information to call the St. J barracks.7,000 calls in 15 minutes. That's how many VT's health department received yesterday in the first quarter-hour after the lines opened for people 70 and older to register for vaccines. By 11 am, 11,000 people had registered; by noon, report VTDigger's Erin Petenko and Katie Jickling, Kinney Drugs, which was doing its own scheduling, was slotting people in for five weeks out. Meanwhile, some Vermonters were reporting glitches in online signup; the health department said it was working on them.“I’m glad somebody decided that they wanted to do this. But they should fix it.” That's Willing Hands' Gabe Zoerheide talking about the federal Farmers to Families program with VTDigger's Amanda Gokee. At the behest of VT's congressional delegation, the latest out-of-state lead contractor for the pandemic-era food box program in Vermont is coming in for scrutiny for "failing to meet the needs of hungry Vermonters." The food boxes, says VT Foodbank director John Sayles, “are getting here," but "they’re not being distributed as broadly and equitably as they could be.”"The herbs and spices of the cocktail world." This is how Kobey Shwayder describes vermouth. Shwayder, who got into cooking, baking, and brewing after abandoning the hunt for a linguistics professorship, launched Vermont Vermouth into the market a year ago. "It's been an interesting year," he tells Seven Days' Jordan Barry; unable to sell direct to bars and restaurants, he spent the summer at farmers markets, talking up the ways of vermouth. And his ingredients: herbs from East Calais, apples from Newfane, grapes from NY. Along with a profile, Barry delivers an intriguing vermouth primer.Hopped a lot of barbed wire fences as a kid? Maybe you, too, could cross entire countries in a straight line. Or, at least, try. Tom Davies grew up in England's West Midlands, and he and his step-brother liked to set out across the fields, "clamber over fences, hedges and rivers, evading farmers and inevitably making some sort of strange and intriguing discovery." These days, Davies uses GPS with the goal of crossing, say, Wales or Norway or, soon, Scotland in a straight line, with no more than 25 meters deviation. He talks to Atlas Obscura's Oliver-James Campbell about the trials and tribulations.Or you could just go straight around the world via the magic of the internet. Back at the start of the pandemic, Daybreak linked to Radio Garden, which makes it dead easy to zero in on radio stations around the globe. Someone just reminded me of it, and since most of you weren't readers back then, what the heck: It's like the ultimate rabbit-hole. Don't let the ad when you first click on some stations fool you—unless you want to believe that Geico is selling motorcycle insurance on Ouagadougou radio.
And the numbers...
Dartmouth reports 1 active case among students (down 5 from last week) and 3 among faculty and staff (down 1). There are 4 students and 3 faculty/staff in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 1 student and 14 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 258 new cases yesterday for a cumulative total of 71,215. There was 1 new death, bringing the total to 1,136. Meanwhile, 119 people are hospitalized (down 6). The current active caseload stands at 2,857 (down 96). The state reports 129 active cases in Grafton County (down 2), 61 in Sullivan (up 1), and 208 in Merrimack (down 9). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Claremont has 31 active cases (up 2), Newport has 13 (up 1), Lebanon has 11 (up 1), Charlestown has 8 (no change), and Rumney has 6 (no change). Haverhill, Warren, Wentworth, Dorchester, Hanover, Canaan, Enfield, Plainfield, Cornish, Springfield, New London, Goshen, and Newbury have 1-4 each. Unity is off the list.
VT reported 53 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 13,917. There was 1 new death, which now number 191 all told. Meanwhile, 37 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 3). Windsor County gained 3 new cases and now stands at 991 for the pandemic, with 102 over the past 14 days. Orange County had no additional cases and remains at 476 cumulatively, with 31 cases over the past 14 days.
News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
At 5 pm today, Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine continues its three-part public series of webinars on Covid-19 vaccines with the second of three panels. Moderated by former Dartmouth board chair and health policy expert Susan Dentzer, today's presentation on "Translating Discoveries Faster: Lessons Learned from COVID-19" will feature vaccine development strategy expert Kendall Hoyt, Geisel's director of new ventures Jake Reder, antibody drug development entrepreneur Tillman Gerngross, and grad student Daniel Wrapp, who has done groundbreaking research on antibodies and how they respond to coronaviruses. Free, but you'll need to register.
This evening at 7, four public libraries—Norwich, Hartford, Quechee, and the Howe—are presenting John Collins, known as "The Paper Airplane Guy." In 2012, the plane he designed and folded set a world record (226' 10") for longest indoor distance. He'll be talking lift, drag, and all the other forces that affect flight—and showing how to fold planes that fly far. You can register through any of the four libraries, or email [email protected] for a link.
This evening at 8, the Hop reprises last year's collaboration between the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra and the Coast Jazz Orchestra, which joined forces on a new oratorio by composer Taylor Ho Bynum and librettist Matthea Harvey built from Shakespeare's The Tempest. The Temp joins jazz and classical music to create a story about a downtrodden office worker and an overbearing boss. Tonight they'll rebroadcast the performance and bring in members of both ensembles for a live chat about the work.
Finally, Northern Stage has launched a podcast of "Portraits of the Pandemic," the effort by 34 young actors and education director Eric Love to write, reflect, and give a voice to their experiences of life in these parts in these times. Each week, Love sent them creative writing prompts, to which they responded, and then gathered online to talk over their experiences. Love then crafted their writing into a theater piece that's now running as a podcast with a new episode premiering each Thursday (though the whole thing will be available through June). Free, but with a suggested donation of $25.
Let's go far away. It's hard to describe The Hu—Mongolian folk metal rock?—but whatever, they're huge back home and in the West. The band formed in 2016, its four key members coming out of the Mongolian State Music and Dance Conservatory in Ulaanbaatar after studying classical, jazz, rock, traditional Mongolian music, throat singing (which they'd been doing all their lives) and listening to a lot of Metallica and System of a Down. To start the morning right,
On the other hand, if your day calls for overrunning a small kingdom or two, go ahead and rev up with their global breakout hit,
See you tomorrow.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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