AND A FINE DAY TO YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
It won't be yesterday, but it'll be close. Temps will still be cooler than normal and there's a slight chance of snow tonight, but for the most part it should be pretty sunny — though some clouds in the afternoon — with the high reaching toward 50, winds from the west. Down into the 20s tonight. Remember how warm and wet Monday night was? That made it a Big Night, when salamanders and frogs by the hundreds of thousands migrated to vernal pools as far as a half mile away. Chris Johnson, a Leb-based photographer and videographer, was out with his camera and took a series of memorable frog portraits. Those are at the maroon link. He also sends along a map of Lebanon's salamander-crossing "hot spots," and, since there may be some more Big Nights coming, a tip sheet from NH's Harris Center. Okay, time for some counting of a different sort...
NH is up to 1,091 reported cases, adding 71 yesterday. Meanwhile, 329 have recovered (up 80) and 27 have died (up 4). Grafton County remains at 45, while Sullivan is now at 7 (up one). Merrimack County (which is centered around Concord, but contains New London) remains at 75.
VT saw just 4 new cases yesterday, the smallest daily increase in a month, bringing the total of known cases to 752. Of those, 31 are hospitalized (down 2), with 29 deaths (up 1). Windsor and Orange counties remain where they were: at 27 and 5, respectively.
Covid? COVID? covid? An astute reader yesterday emailed to say that the proper usage is COVID-19, not Covid-19, as I've been doing. She has grounds: Merriam-Webster and the AP Stylebook prefer all caps. It is, after all, an acronym. For "coronavirus disease 2019." None of which is capitalized (see: "radar"). The NYT prefers "Covid" and The Economist and MIT Technology Review use "covid" in the middle of a sentence. I cast my lot with the Times. To my eye, COVID-19 sucks the air out of a line. You might as well surround it with flashing red lights and an air-raid siren. No sentence deserves that.The Prouty goes virtual. "Because of COVID-19 [see?], we will NOT be bringing 4,000 people together on July 11," the organizers have announced. "Instead, we are inviting you to be part of the 2020 Virtual Prouty: bike, walk, row (if you can), golf (if possible) or do any other event you’d like from the comfort of your home or the safety of the outdoors" from June 1-July 11. But, they add, not in groups of any type other than close family members. They've also cancelled the April 30 kickoff parties. On the other hand, the event's now got a cute tagline: "Fighting cancer together, even when we're apart."Farmers markets push back. One of the more intriguing battles of the pandemic involves Vermont's decision to keep the markets closed. Yesterday, the Norwich Farmers Market emailed customers asking them to write the governor and legislators protesting the decision. "We feel strongly that we can provide local food safely," market manager Steve Hoffman wrote, noting that at least 19 other states have deemed farmers markets essential, and pointing to such steps as limiting the number of customers at any one time, selling only pre-bagged food, and cutting out all socializing activities, like music. Almost 35,000 social media messages and 23,000 calls for help. That's what King Arthur Flour logged in March, as home baking exploded around the country. And the company responded to them all. Baker Martin Philip tells Seven Days, baking "brings us together and fosters community. It's comforting, and it's also a distraction. It fosters focus and quiet." He's also got some tips: measure properly; temperature matters; use a recipe that's tried and true. "Find a source...that tests their recipes not once or twice but 25 or 50 times. Don't waste your valuable ingredients," he says.And KAF's not just helping home bakers. This week it started up a program around the country, For Goodness Bakes, to buy bread and other baked goods from struggling bakeries then donate them to food pantries and organizations that serve unemployed food service employees and homeless populations. They've rolled it out in Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, and will be adding more cities soon.If you buy milk in glass bottles, return them soon. The link takes you to a post by Strafford Organic Creamery, which is running so low on bottles they're worried they may have to dump milk. But this applies to McNamara, too. The stores that sell their milk are all open and accepting clean returns, though you may have to put the bottles in crates yourself.Strafford, Chelsea/Tunbridge, Rivendell, Oxbow school budgets in limbo. Earlier this year, voters in Strafford and in the First Branch Unified School District rejected proposed school budgets. Now, the VN's Alex Hanson reports, officials hoping to get new budgets passed have to "wait either until the state lifts its 'stay home' order or until a voting method consistent with social distancing guidelines is ready." Meanwhile, Oxbow, which covers schools in Bradford and Newbury, and the cross-border Rivendell district haven't yet held votes at all.Leb Airport lands $1.06 million in federal stimulus money. It's part of a $15.2 million airport aid package announced by New Hampshire's congressional delegation yesterday. The vast bulk of the funds, $12.1 million, will go to Manchester-Boston Regional. "Are you stupid for running into battle without any protection or are you brave? What is the answer to that?” Lisa, no last name, is a nurse at a hospital in NH's southern tier. NHPR's Jason Moon talked to her and other frontline hospital workers about the questions they face every day as they go to work in conditions that, Moon says, make work "feel like Russian Roulette" — in a state where 30 percent of cases involve health workers. They're dedicated, yet wonder about a system that can't give them the supplies they need and worry about infecting themselves, family, even the grocery clerks they encounter.Sununu announces $300 weekly stipend for long-term care workers. At his press conference yesterday, the governor said the move is designed to "stem the outflow" of workers at nursing homes and other facilities that care for the elderly. “The additional stipend recognizes the crucial role these workers play,” Sununu said. "We need those workers there."Hospitals furloughing staff. Rutland Regional Medical Center has put 150 workers, about 9 percent of its staff, on unpaid leave through June 20, the Rutland Herald reports. This echoes the situation at hospitals around the country as patient volumes drop and elective surgeries are cancelled or postponed; Catholic Medical Center in Manchester has furloughed 700 employees. Vermont sues businessman for gouging medical center on face masks. Prosecutors say that Shelley Palmer, who owns Big Brother Security Programs in Williston, bought thousands of surgical masks, which could be had for 10 cents apiece, and resold them to the Central VT Medical Center for $2.50 each, making an “exploitative gain” of $80,000. Palmer tells Seven Days he foresaw the pandemic and struck deals with suppliers in China for masks at 50-60 cents apiece. “There's no reason for me to spend all night long talking to the Chinese people if I'm not going to make any money,” he says.“My concern is that this thing drags on for a year or spikes again and our businesses don’t come back.” The New York Times' David Gelles spent time in Bristol, NH, on the south end of Newfound Lake. What he found will sound familiar: closed local businesses, restaurants struggling to get by, layoffs at a big employer—and locals banding together to help one another any way they can. The dramatic headline is "This Will Kill Small-Town America," but really the big question towns face, as the quote above from town administrator Nik Coates suggests: We're holding it together for now, but what if this continues for months longer?Well, this is definitely one way to hack the Covid-19 era. Clearly this is an engineer with a little too much time on his hands. Not to mention toilet paper. But man, Rube Goldberg could hardly have done better. (Thanks, DG!)
Leb Planning Board puts off Bank Street apartment discussion. It had been due Monday evening to take up a Hanover developer’s controversial plan to tear down a downtown boarding house and replace it with a six-unit apartment building and another with 29 units and two floors of parking. But some residents who wanted to participate in the hearing had trouble accessing the livestream, while others argued that the hearing should be postponed until it could be held in person. Board members opted to decide in May whether to go ahead with online hearings or wait until restrictions on public meetings have been lifted. (VN, sub reqd)So let's say you're backcountry skiing, get knocked over by a falling slab of snow, and land upside down in a streambed, encased in snow and unable to move as the snow hardens to cement around you. That was Jenny Karns, in Jackson, WY back in January. Her arms were pinned, she couldn't move her head, and she had only a small air pocket created by the brim of her helmet. She did, however, have the hot pink tip of one ski sticking out. Outside has her story, and the unbelievable luck that got her out of there, injured but alive.
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Staying Sane
This clearly isn't for everyone, but starting today, Big Fatty’s in WRJ is launching a "bowl cut" contest. From now until April 30, send in a pic of your new coif (or the one you inflicted on your loved one), prizes awarded May 5. "I want to see the Best and Most Creative Bowl Cut. Maybe cut a Pattern in your hair, Color your hair - HAVE FUN WITH THIS!!!" owner Brandon Fox writes on FB. Oh, and yes: He's getting a bowl cut, too.
At 11 am today, Royalton Radio is re-broadcasting Jim Rooney's tribute to John Prine. Rooney, of course, is the perfect person to do this: veteran folksinger and producer, he produced several of Prine's albums, including German Afternoons, John Prine Live, and In Spite of Ourselves. If you live within 10 miles of Royalton you can catch it on the radio; otherwise, just stream at the link.
Dartmouth prof and Thetford resident Annelise Orleck will be giving an audio-only version of her talk, "We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now" on the Vermont Humanities Council's FB page. Orleck, a labor historian, will look at globalization and its costs for low-wage workers. Starts at 7.
Just a heads up so you have time to read the play: Friday will be the third installment in Northern Stage's "Play Date," in which participants get to discuss and watch parts of plays you may or may not know. This one's Sweat, by Lynn Nottage, her 2017 Pulitzer-winning drama about race and blue-collar economic turmoil, set in Reading, PA. The session will be led by Jess Chayes, Northern Stage's BOLD associate artistic director.
And if you're just looking to sink some time into something you didn't know much about, you could check out Native Land, a Canadian site that maps the territories, languages, and treaties of indigenous peoples across North America, parts of South America and Greenland, and Australia. We, of course, live on Abenaki land, which was all part of the Wabanaki Confederacy joining the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki, and Penobscot. It's not just fun to play around with, but the sheer variety and richness of peoples is eye-opening.
Helping Out
Upper Valley Strong has gone up with a helpful food resources page, including links to food pantries and delivery services by town throughout the region.
The Vermont Historical Society is building an archive documenting how the pandemic has affected life in the state. It's looking for photographs, stories, poems, and videos about what life looks like both out in the community and in people's homes.
And the NH Fisher Cats in Manchester have just announced a new effort to help Granite United Way. Send them $24, and you'll get four undated vouchers for tickets to a future game and they'll give $12 of it to the United Way's Covid-19 Relief Fund; 12 bucks will get you two tix and $6 of it sent to the fund.
Reading Deeper
Yesterday's link to that AEI paper on re-opening brought a pointer to this Morgan Stanley paper from BB, who finds it less "squishy." Its authors expect that governors will hold off on loosening activity until after cumulative mortality peaks, which lags the new cases peak by about three weeks; states will need to have "appropriate public health infrastructure and testing capacity," which they expect in June; and blood testing for immunity will need to be "pervasive." All told, they expect two peaks -- one for coastal cities later this month, and a second in May for inland states.
Meanwhile, in real life, California just issued the guidelines it will follow to determine the pace of re-opening. It's got six basic questions, including whether it can test everyone who's symptomatic and trace their contacts, protect those at risk for more severe Covid-19, handle surges, and develop treatment therapies. It also wants to be certain it's tracking the right data to be able to re-institute stay-home orders and other measures quickly if needed.
Turns out, governors actually practice for emergencies. That and more in this Civics 101 podcast from NHPR, talking to Governing magazine writer Alan Greenblatt (full disclosure: he's a former colleague) about governors' emergency powers, a hot topic that's only going to get hotter over the next few weeks.
And the NYT's Jim Dwyer has a fascinating column on how docs on the front lines are throwing out old playbooks and improvising as they try to treat patients — in some cases returning to long-unused approaches. He focuses in particular on the discovery that some patients whose vitals would suggest immediate ventilator use seem to do better with oxygen and "proning" — having them roll onto their sides or stomachs. “I’m confident that we will have a lot of answers in months,” says one emergency doc. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t help us right now. You have to start somewhere.”
Let's go out today with the wonderful Brazilian singer, composer, and guitarist Márcio Faraco,
, where he lives.
I live now with the presentThat fate gave me like a ray of sunshineIt was so clear, so evidentThat I was walking in the dark without a beacon
See you tomorrow.
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