A TREAT TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
Now we're talkin' some heat! At least, compared to what we've had until now. High pressure continues to build in and we'll probably cross into the 80s at some point this afternoon under mostly clear skies. Breezes from the northwest, down into the mid-50s during a mostly cloudless night. Warblers are back. And here, Bo Hopkins writes from Sunapee, "is a gem: a chestnut-sided warbler politely welcoming with his 'pleased, pleased, pleased to meet you' song. White breast, gold cap, black mask and namesake chestnut-colored flanks." Fairlee crash driver pleads not guilty; passenger still in critical condition. Jake St. Martin, of Newbury, was arraigned yesterday on charges of driving under the influence with injury resulting and leaving the scene of a crash with serious injury, after his truck crashed early Sunday morning while he was trying to escape a state trooper. Gabrielle LaMotte, 25, of Hartford, who was one of three passengers, was airlifted to DHMC and is still in critical condition, Anna Merriman reports in the Valley News. A second passenger has been treated and released. Merriman details the night's events. And we have a train date... Amtrak and the VT Agency of Transportation announced yesterday that passenger service will start up again July 19 on both the Vermonter, which runs up to St. Albans through WRJ, and the Ethan Allen Express, which runs to Rutland. The trains will run on the same schedules that were in place when they halted service last March, and at the moment, federal law requires customers and employees to wear a mask on board and in stations, regardless of vaccination status or state or local laws.SPONSORED: The easiest way to tap into clean energy! The Small Business Community Solar Alliance by Norwich Solar has no upfront costs and no operations or maintenance expenses. “Small businesses are hurting across northern New England," says CEO Jim Merriam, "and we all want to do our part to help them come back strong. Using the savings solar can provide, Norwich Solar can help small businesses reduce their energy expenses and recover faster.” Signing up is easy and free—just hit the maroon link to join. Sponsored by Norwich Solar Technologies.A portrait at the VT State House, chalk art in Lebanon: Katie Runde does them both. Or will, anyway. On her Artful blog, Susan Apel notes that Runde, who was commissioned to paint the official portrait of VT educator and legislator Alexander Twilight, will be plying her exquisite chalk-art skills at the Lebanon Opera House's Nexus festival in August. Chalk art, she told Apel, "can be like being a kid in the sandbox. Usually my work is labored over for days to months in the studio, where chalk art lasts at most the week of the chalk festival hosting it." You'll be able to watch her at work Aug. 13 (or 14, if there's rain).Thank goodness the risotto behaved, at least. Remember that mangled-English NetworksAsia post about Burlington last week? They've turned their attention to, um, us. "The Upper Valley, and the globe, shed an intense and gorgeous light just recently," they write. They're not big fans of the food: something—it's not clear what or where—"was offered cold on thin sliced up bread that resembled a wheat variation of Marvel Bread." Oh, also, pleased to report that "as a result of its pastoral setup...Dartmouth does not attract right into an institutional clench at the method of the public." You can say that again.Add a new farmers market to the collection! The new Sunapee Harbor market opens the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, Liz Sauchelli writes in the VN. It will run through Labor Day with about 15 vendors—and will waive the usual vendors' fees, relying instead on business sponsorships. "They’re taking a risk, spending their whole summer on a first-time market,” says co-organizer Deborah Pasculano. There's also a list of the other area markets: Lebanon opens tomorrow at 4 pm (not 3, as the paper says); Chelsea on Friday; Canaan on Sunday; and a bunch of others next week.NH to end $300 unemployment boost, pay stipend instead. At a press conference yesterday, Gov. Chris Sununu said the state will end the extra federal unemployment benefits on June 19. In their place, it will pay stipends of $500 for part-time work and $1,000 for full-time work to people who leave unemployment for a job they keep at least eight consecutive weeks, reports Annmarie Timmins in NH Bulletin. There are plenty of jobs, Sununu said: "We want folks to get back out there." And he added, "If folks are concerned about re-entering the workplace because of Covid, go get vaccinated."More ticks than usual this year? Well, yes and no. You might want to save reading David Brooks's Granite Geek post until after breakfast, but he reports an interesting observation from biologist Kaitlyn Morse, who created BeBop Labs in Plymouth to gather tick data. It's not so much that there are more ticks than usual, she says, it's that there's been an explosion of dog ticks in particular, which began appearing earlier than usual. Just as NH "has become a land with poison ivy and opossums," Brooks writes, "we’re now a land with ticks wherever the snow is melting if the air temperature is above 40 degrees."Masks no longer required for NH high school athletic tournaments. The New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association, the group that oversees high school sports in the state, has reversed a March mandate requiring masks. But it's not "a cut-and-dried scenario," writes the VN's Greg Fennell. The decision applies only to state tournaments, so town and school district guidelines apply for regular-season games. “I think it’s super-complicated,” Hanover High athletic director Megan Sobel tells Fennell. “It just adds another layer of confusion in some ways."NH's performing arts venues hope audiences return. In the Monitor, Brooks writes up a press conference held yesterday by a coalition of venue directors. The long and short: Pay attention to the safety protocols each venue posts before you go. Among the locals who participated: LOH's Joe Clifford, who says that for the moment he's focused on the August Nexus festival outdoors, and Opera North's Maria Laskaris, who writes that they're requiring all staff, artists, musicians, crew, and volunteers to have been fully vaccinated, and are requesting masks in the Blow-Me-Down Farm tent. "Bottom line," she writes, "we want everyone to feel safe returning to live performance venues."As Farmers to Families food box program ends, VT Foodbank launches Full Plates VT. The federal pandemic food program will close up shop by the end of this month, and in its place, the Foodbank has teamed up with the Abbey Group—the VT-based distributor that organized the first round of Farmers to Families last year—to run distributions around the state of fresh and shelf-stable foods. Unlike its predecessor, this program will be targeted to individuals and families that self-certify they make three times the federal poverty level or less. Registration opens Monday.VT sees lowest Covid numbers in six months, opens vaccines to all, regardless of residency. At a press conference yesterday, state officials said that new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have all dropped dramatically, and credited Vermonters' willingness to get vaccinated for the improving numbers. About 74 percent of Vermonters 12 and older have gotten at least one vaccine dose, writes Erin Petenko in VTDigger, which means that 65 of all Vermonters, including children not yet eligible to receive the vaccine, have done so.As other states clamp down, VT moves to make voting easier. Legislators yesterday gave final approval to a measure making mail-in ballots a permanent feature of general elections, just as they were last year, and would let voters fix their ballot if they make a mistake. The bill now goes to Gov. Phil Scott, who is likely to sign it. “I think that getting more people out to vote, making it as easy as possible for them to do so, to exercise this right was something that was beneficial to Vermont,” he said yesterday, the AP reports.
Electric aviation startup lands $368 million funding round, plans manufacturing facility at Burlington Airport. The money, reports Derek Brouwer in a follow-on to last week's Seven Days profile of Beta Technologies, includes investments from Fidelity and from Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, and will bankroll a 270,000-square-foot manufacturing plant near its headquarters at the airport. Unlike its competitors, which are focused on air taxis, Beta is finding customers among companies that deliver cargo.Shadowology. No, no, this is really cool. Vincent Bal, a Belgian filmmaker who also calls himself a "shadowologist," thought he should have a scientific-sounding name for what he does: plop an object on a white sheet of paper, play around with its positions, shift the angle of the light...and then when inspiration strikes, use the shadow as the basis for a whimsical sketch. He explains what he's up to in this four-minute film, and it's a treat to watch not only a creative mind (and hand) at work, but to think about everyday objects in an entirely new light. Or, well, absence of light.
And for numbers...
Dartmouth remains at 2 student cases, with 1 (down 1) among faculty/staff. No one is in quarantine because of travel or exposure, while 2 students and 3 faculty/staff are in isolation awaiting results or because they tested positive.
NH reported 139 new cases yesterday for a cumulative total of 97,904. There were 6 new deaths, raising the total to 1,339, while 48 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (up 2). The current active caseload stands at 1,118 (down 51). The state reports 77 active cases in Grafton County (up 3), 43 in Sullivan (down 4), and 104 in Merrimack (up 6). In town-by-town numbers, the state says Claremont has 21 active cases (no change), Lebanon has 15 (down 1), Newport has 9 (down 1), Enfield has 8 (no change), Rumney has 7 (up at least 3), and Haverhill has 5 (no change). Piermont, Warren, Orford, Lyme, Hanover, Canaan, Grafton, Plainfield, Springfield, Sunapee, Newbury, New London, and Unity have 1-4 each. Croydon is off the list.
VT reported 34 new cases yesterday, bringing it to a total case count of 23,945. There were 2 new deaths, which now number 254, while 9 people with confirmed cases are hospitalized (down 2). Windsor County gained 4 new cases and stands at 1,444 for the pandemic, with 74 over the past 14 days, while Orange County added 3 cases for 808 cumulatively, with 51 cases in the past 14 days.
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At noon today, the Boston Public Library's Leventhal Map & Education Center hosts Dartmouth geography prof Luis Alvarez León for an online talk on how maps and geographic data underpin the digital economy. Alvarez León specializes in geospatial data, the media, and how they intersect through technology, and has studied everything from how Netflix tailors recommendations based on users' locations to the collection of data from self-driving cars.
At 3:30 this afternoon, Grantham Rec hosts Troy Wunderle, the longtime co-artistic director of Circus Smirkus, former Ringling clown, and impresario of Wunderle's Big Top Adventures. "A one-man circus show that thrills with the rich and time-treasured delights of expert juggling, wacky globe walking, astounding ladder balancing, sensational plate spinning, teetering rola bolas, daring unicycle antics, mischievous magic and comic buffoonery," reads the ballyhoo. It will be live and in person at Grantham Recreation Park.
At 5 pm, NYT international correspondent Alissa Rubin—who spent years covering the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan (where her reporting netted her a 2016 Pulitzer) and Syria—will give this year's Bernard D. Nossiter ’47 Lecture, presented by Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center and hosted by journalism prof and longtime magazine writer Alexis Jetter. Rubin will be talking about "Fact-Based Journalism in an Age of Suspicion," the loss of a commonly held understanding of current events, and whether journalists can "preserve the credibility they have and gain back ground."
Also at 5, the Hopkins Center hosts the first in its series of "Big Move" workshops, which pairs "inventive dance artists" with researchers in various disciplines at the college. For this inaugural workshop, choreographer and Disability Arts thinker and leader Alice Sheppard teams up with the Thayer School's Eugene Korsunskiy, who focuses on design thinking and hands-on learning.
Ash trees throughout the region are threatened by the emerald ash borer, and an interesting panel at 7 pm, hosted by VT Urban & Community Forest, takes a look at black ash trees from a wide-ranging set of perspectives. Moderated by VT Land Trust ecologies Allaire Diamond, panelists from VT, ME, and NY include forest scientists and members of the Abenaki and Mohawk nations will talk about the tree's ecological and cultural significance, current research, and efforts to inventory stands and save seeds.
At 7:30 pm, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center hosts an online talk by Curtiss Reed, Jr., who eight years ago founded the Vermont African-American Heritage Trail. He'll be talking about its history and future, as well as the history it illuminates—the trail started with 16 museums, historical societies, and other sites, and has since grown to include 30.
Back in 1987, not long after U2 released "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," the band traveled to Calvary Baptist Church in Harlem to rehearse a version with New Voices of Freedom—a choir that founder Dennis Bell called a "rockspel" group (gospel chords and harmonies, but focused on rock, not religion). Island Records had reached out to Bell even before the song came out on Joshua Tree to ask him to create a gospel-inflected version; Island rejected it, but U2 heard it and asked New Voices to join them on it for their Madison Square Garden concerts. Their road manager wanted a quiet and out-of-the-way place to rehearse where they wouldn't create a scene—hence the Harlem jaunt. Here's what happened, from the rockumentary Rattle and Hum.See you tomorrow.
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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