GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Cold front coming through. And it'll bring a decent chance of showers this morning and maybe a thunderstorm. Though really, I'll believe it when I see it. In its wake, temperatures start to settle down toward what June should feel like—high this afternoon just in the mid-80s. Plus, the sun will be out eventually. Winds today from the south. Lows hitting the high 50s overnight."The peepers were deafening, and I swear the number of eyes staring back at me doubled each time I turned on my headlamp." Courtney Cania's a photographer who lives in West Leb, and for the last few weeks she's been visiting Dewey's Pond in Quechee at dawn (and once in the evening) to photograph birds, the pond itself, the evening sky... She's seen grackles and waxwings and hooded mergansers, a convention of Canada geese in the early-morning mist, and an entire goose family (I make out 11 goslings in one shot)...Things that go <creak> in the night... Meanwhile, in the wee hours the other night in Grantham, this guy's doorbell camera caught a visiting bear casing the porch and oh-so-gracefully breaking into his obviously lame storage box... (Thanks, WD!)
Ah, yes... Numbers.
NH added 15 new positive test results yesterday, bringing its official total to 5,571. There are 4,316 (77%) recovered cases and 343 deaths (up 4), yielding a total current caseload of 912. There were 943 tests reported. Grafton County remains at 76 cumulative cases, while Sullivan remains at 24. Merrimack County gained 6, and stands at 398 all told. Claremont, Lebanon, Plainfield, Charlestown, and Newbury each have between 1 and 4 active cases.
VT reported a single new case yesterday (in Addison County), bringing the official total to 1,164. And one more person has recovered, bringing that total to 927. Two people are currently hospitalized (up 2), while deaths remain at 56. Windsor and Orange counties are still at 55 and 9 cases over the course of the pandemic. The state added 721 tests yesterday; it's now done 59,328 altogether.
Leb okays $50 million apartment complex for Dartmouth grad students. The 638-bedroom project is on Mt. Support Road, about a mile south of DHMC, on 53 acres owned by the college. The VN's Tim Camerato reports that the city's planning board voted 4-1 Monday night in favor of allowing it to go ahead, and developers expect to break ground on it this summer.Half a million visitors? Really? It's Seven Days' turn to write about King Arthur Flour and how the pandemic "shone a national spotlight on a beloved Vermont company and how it does business." Those 500,000 visitors to its Norwich store and bakery put it on a par with Ben & Jerry's, Melissa Pasanen reports. She covers the company's history—including former co-owner Brinna Sands heading to the PO in the pre-catalog days with bags of flour to send off to former locals who missed it—as well as the pandemic. "As soon as a truckload of flour came in, it was sold that next day," says marketing VP Bill Tine. "People were actually baking."Thetford officials put police chief on leave, keep mum on why. At Monday's selectboard meeting, reports the VN's Jim Kenyon, town manager Guy Scaife announced that he's placing Michael Evans on paid administrative leave, but would give no reason. Kenyon later spoke to Evans, who's been chief in Thetford for five years and says he's being punished for "insubordination." Kenyon speculates it's related to a disagreement between the chief and Scaife over whether Thetford needs two full-time police officers. Selectboard members say they aren't free to explain.Well, at least someone's thinking about posterity. Look around Cornish for evidence of JD Salinger's sojourn there, and you'll find... well, pretty much nothing, which of course is as he would have wanted it. In a rye field just outside Sudargas, Lithuania, however, locals Friday dedicated a sculpture honoring the author of Catcher in the Rye, whose ancestors were from there. "When the novel became popular, our country was occupied. The young people didn’t have a chance to feel the spirit which surrounded the protagonist Holden Caufield in America,” says a press release. (Thanks, DM!)SPONSORED: Three unusual pieces of real estate.
A cornerstone building in the heart of old West Lebanon: the thoughtfully rehabilitated 1909 brick library, with a host of residential or commercial possibilities.
A dramatic, custom-built home on 40 acres atop the highest spot in Quechee, with 50-mile views and total privacy.
A new Lyme land offering: 69.5 acres with road and utilities in place. Fine home on contiguous acreage also available. Sponsored by [email protected]
Rebecca Holcombe lands EMILY's List nod. The Norwich Democrat and former state education secretary, who's running for VT governor, had already been getting help from the national political action committee that funds women who favor abortion rights. Now the support is formal, and could boost her effort in her primary against Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman and Bennington lawyer Patrick Winburn for the chance to take on incumbent Phil Scott. That's a lot of red up there in the top right-hand corner. The Monitor's David Brooks has a USGS map from yesterday on his Granite Geek blog showing daily streamflow conditions around the US. Red means a water level lower than 10 percent of "recordings for that moment over the past eight decades or so." Upstate NY, VT, NH, parts of MA... we seem, ironically, to be the reddest part of the country.NH tops list of states with highest percentage of traffic deaths from speeding; VT not far behind. An analysis from a company called CoPilot, which makes software to help car-buyers, finds that 52 percent of NH traffic fatalities from 2014 to 2018 involved speeding; VT ranks sixth on the list, with 40 percent. Of the 30 counties across the US with the highest share of speeding-related deaths, NH has four: Rockingham (second only to Washington Co, RI); Merrimack; Strafford; and Hillsborough. NH ready to ease restaurant rules. The state's reopening task force voted Monday to allow restaurants throughout the state—including in the southern tier counties that had been restricted—to run at 100 percent of capacity as long as they can keep tables six feet from one another. And if they can't, task force members have requested that restaurants be allowed to create some kind of physical barrier between tables. “The economics of social distancing doesn’t make sense for our industry,” says the head of the state lodging and restaurant association.Pandemic shifts how, where people die—at least, in NH. NHPR's Todd Bookman notes that over the last few months, stats from the state public records division show that more people are dying at home, and that Covid-19 has caused some ten times the number of deaths as the seasonal flu. Interestingly, deaths by suicide were lower from January-May than in previous years, but traffic deaths were up despite lower overall levels of traffic. Homicides are far lower than in previous years, but drug overdoses are modestly higher.As VT "food box" program renewed, advocates say there's a better way. The Farmers to Families program, which has drawn long lines of Vermonters to National Guard distribution points, has been extended. But VPR's John Dillon and Erica Heilman report that advocates say the program was designed for farmers and food distributors, not recipients. Instead, the existing food stamp program is more sustainable and lower stress. “We’re really encouraging people to sign up for that,” says John Sayles of the VT Foodbank. “That way you can access food without having to make plans on somebody else’s schedule to show up in your car and have boxes of food put in the trunk."Yeah, sure, "Whale Dance" in Randolph... but have you checked out the world's tallest filing cabinet? As part of a series of "StayTripper: Rediscovering Vermont" series, Seven Days has seven quirky roadside attractions in the state. The filing cabinets are in Burlington, a satirical, 40-foot-tall sculpture. There's also the gorilla hoisting a VW Bug by Route 7 in Leicester, Sarah Rutherford's painted silos in Jeffersonville, the Birdhouse Forest in South Hero, Ted Pelkey's famous raised middle finger to town officials in Westford...Okay, just one more statue thing, I promise: John Stark's missing his sword. The bronze sword held by the statue of Genl. John Stark, who led American forces in their defeat of British troops in the 1777 Battle of Bennington, disappeared last week. Here's what's intriguing: While it could have been an accident caused by someone climbing on it, or a straight-out theft, the state's historic preservation officer says the state wants to be sure the Stark statue "is not perceived negatively" before it spends money trying to restore it. Tired of the heat? Dive into this! Maybe a day and several degrees late, but it still seems just right: Surfer Dan, a strikingly filmed, seven-minute video some of you may have seen at last year's Banff Mountain Film festival, about Dan Schetter, who likes to surf Lake Superior (and other way northern big lakes) in winter. Yes, that's ice he's walking out on and diving through. "It's not like some ocean clean perfect wave you stand up and come out of," he says. "There's ice chunks falling on my head." (Thanks, AR!)
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Today at 12:30, the Hood is hosting Dr. Manish K. Mishra, who directs professional outreach and education at the Dartmouth Institute, and anthropology prof Siena Craig, talking about love, loss, rights of passage, and how different cultures come to terms with the loss of a loved one. They'll be taking off from George Tooker's 1966 painting, Farewell. Moderated by Hood curator Katherine Hart, signup at the link.
Stunningly, this is not virtual: This evening at 6:30 it's singer-songwriter Jesse Terry taking the stage at Lyman Point Park as part of Hartford's summer concert series. The CT-based folk musician's got five albums to his credit. Word of warning: The park's marked out in 12-foot-diameter pods, and once they're taken, they'll stop letting in spectators.
At 7, Vermont Humanities is hosting JAG Talks with poet Major Jackson, choreographer Felicia Swoope, and writer Desmond Peeples, moderated by Jarvis Green. They'll be talking about "being Black culture bearers in Vermont during this time of protest and pandemic" and how they're using art and creativity to imagine a way forward. It'll be streamed on VT Humanities' Facebook page.
Also at 7, the Norwich Bookstore is hosting local mystery writer Sarah Stewart Taylor, launching her new novel The Mountains Wild online. She'll be talking about and reading from her book, as well as talking to Maine-based mystery writer Julia Spencer-Fleming. The event's online (email [email protected] for the link), but Taylor will also stop by the store later to autograph books customers have ordered.
Finally, Seven Days is launching what amounts to an online job fair, at which recruiters looking for employees will be talking about their workplaces, and people interested in them can ask questions—or just listen. This afternoon it's health care jobs (mostly around Burlington), including Wake Robin, UVM, and the VT National Guard's medical support battalion.
Reading Deeper
"I’ve been on the scene at more than 200 of these deaths — trying to revive people, consoling their families — but you can’t even be bothered to stay six feet apart and wear a mask, because why? You’re a tough guy? It makes you look weak? You’d rather ignore the whole thing and pretend you’re invincible?" That's Anthony Almojera, a New York City EMT, addressing the non-mask-wearing public. Almojera delivers an epically vivid New Yorker's rant to the Washington Post on the toll the pandemic's been taking among his colleagues (night terrors, panic attacks, drinking, suicide); the injustice of their low pay ("There are EMTs on my team who’ve been pulling double shifts in a pandemic and performing life support for 16 hours, and then they go home and they have to drive Uber to pay their rent. I’m more than 15 years on the job, and I still work two side gigs. One of my guys does part-time at a grocery store. Heroes, right? The anger is blinding"); and politics. "Mistakes were made at the very top in terms of how we prepared for this virus, and we paid down here at the bottom," he says.
Let's go contemplative today: Jon Batiste on "The Late Show" four years ago,
"Blackbird." Yeah, that one: Singing in the dead of night.
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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