A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU, UPPER VALLEY!
Warmer air moving in. Hard to believe, but the high today's going to get up toward 70 on another sunshine-y day, though we'll see clouds arriving and departing through the middle part of the day. Winds and gusts from the northwest may be noticeable this afternoon. Down to the low 50s overnight.It's been clear the last few nights... which allowed Hartland photographer Tammy Willens to get this photo of the Milky Way from a field by the Richardson Farm there. She took it around 10:30 at night, and spent part of the day searching for the right spot—something to sit in the foreground with the stars behind. "The location I ended up finding had trees that would frame the Milky Way beautifully," she writes.Hanover's Varujan Boghosian, internationally influential artist, dies at 94. Boghosian, the son of Armenian immigrants, taught at Dartmouth for 27 years; his collages and sculptures are at the Met, the Whitney, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and elsewhere. He broke his hip last week and died of the complications, reports the VN's Alex Hanson. He was known for using other people's castoffs in his work. "In his hands," wrote the VN's Nicola Smith five years ago, "objects have both a second life and an interior life." New sandwich shop planned for Sharon. Chelsea Furlong, who grew up helping her mom and stepmom cook for the Barnard General Store, hopes to have the Four Corners Deli up and running in November inside the Midway Station general store on Route 14. Her dad, a carpenter, is spearheading renovations, but she also needs hot cases, a grill, and other equipment, and has started a GoFundMe page to help line up funding. "I started this because our town really needed local convenient food service and the owner of Midway approached me and my boyfriend," she emails. "This is why I chose to start a gofundme—so together we can make it all happen."Local author—and bookstore—start hitting the limelight. Vershire writer and editor Makenna Goodman has been drawing attention in the literary world—like, the Paris Review, Bustle, and elsewhere—for her debut novel, The Shame. Now the book's been chosen by Boston.com for its new online book club. The discussion, late in October, will be hosted by Still North's Allie Levy—whose bookstore, the website writes, "has been a boon to the literary community of New Hampshire and the region at large." You know intellectually we're in a drought, but then you see it... Here's what much-loved Grafton Pond looked like yesterday, posted to Reddit by user killerrabbit20. Franconia Notch climber dies after falling boulder severs rope. The accident happened on Sunday afternoon on Cannon Cliff, as Benjamin Kessel of Somerville, MA was approaching the rock—about the size of a refrigerator—from below. It dislodged, slid over his rope, cutting it, and knocked him 150 feet down the cliff. Searchers located his body but with dark and temperatures falling, decided to wait until Monday to recover it."Please tell me we, in this town, in this state, are better than this." NH State Rep. Marjorie Porter, who lives in Hillsborough, has had trouble over the years with people stealing her campaign signs. "Election season has always been mean," she writes. This year, things are getting worse. The other day, after tracking down a defaced sign someone told her about, she discovered another of her signs in a prominent spot covered with a swastika. "So much division, hate, and fear in our country. Even here in my hometown. Is this really what we have become?" she writes.Well, at least there's one Supreme Court appointment that will wait until after the election. Gov. Chris Sununu—whose last nominee to NH's highest court was struck down by the Executive Council—told Good Morning America yesterday, “I’m going to wait until after the election to do it. Just because that’s just a political battle that’s gonna get heated, and it creates another divisive piece in there for us.” Sununu has refused to fill the seat for over a year.One-fifth of Vermonters would support an effort to secede from the US. Okay, that's not the top-line takeaway from the new VPR/VTPBS poll, which finds high levels of support for Gov. Phil Scott (so much that in a hypothetical Senate matchup, he leads Patrick Leahy) and Democrat Molly Gray with only a small lead for lt. gov. over Republican Scott Milne. Also, mixed feelings about a vaccine. But still, while 64 percent of respondents would oppose secession "given the state of national politics," a full 22 percent would go for it.VT Senate overrides Scott veto of climate bill. The 22-8 vote, coming on the heels of last week's successful override vote in the House, means the measure now becomes law. The measure puts teeth in the state's greenhouse-gas reduction goals, allowing people to sue if they're missed. "The climate crisis is upon us," state Rep. Tim Briglin said in a statement last week. "We need to plan. We need to prepare. And, we need our government to be accountable.”Legislators in VT also gave final approval to their retail cannabis bill. The measure strikes some compromises with Scott: It allows police to administer saliva tests with a warrant, requires towns to vote to allow marijuana businesses to locate there, and dedicates some tax revenues to substance abuse and drug prevention programs. Scott yesterday said he would “reflect on all the areas of disagreement” before deciding whether to sign it.VT loosens restrictions on schools. The change, which takes effect this weekend, will allow schools to open up common areas like gyms and cafeterias, and let sports teams start competing as early as this Saturday. “In spite of the few cases we have seen in schools, the conditions remain very positive,” education secretary Dan French said yesterday. “The cases we have seen in schools were the result of the virus essentially being brought to school. To date, we have not seen transmission of the virus in schools.”The heaviest pumpkin ever weighed in VT was grown by a Granite Stater. 2,304 pounds, grown by Steve Geddes of Boscawen, NH, who just took first in the VT Giant Pumpkin Growers' weigh-off. True, it's just a mite compared to his 2018 North American record-setter, which came in at 2,528 pounds, but still, a state record is a state record. If you've ever wondered how that poundage gets determined, the link takes you to a video of the prize-winning moment. What I've always wondered: How do you compost one of those things?
Some more numbers...
NH reported 38 new positive test results yesterday, bringing its official total to 7,990. There were no new deaths, which remain at 438. The state has 293 current cases in all (up 5), including 8 in Grafton County (up 2), 5 in Sullivan (up 1), and 23 in Merrimack (down 1). There are between 1 and 4 active cases each in Lyme, Hanover, Lebanon, Plainfield, Enfield, Springfield, Claremont, Charlestown, New London, and Newbury.
VT reported 2 new cases yesterday, bringing its official total to 1,721, with 106 of those (up 2) still active. Deaths remain at 58 total, and 1 person with a confirmed case is hospitalized. One of those new cases is in Windsor County, which now stands at 84 over the course of the pandemic, with 3 of those coming in the past 14 days; Orange County remains at 24 cumulative cases, with 3 of those in the past 14 days.
News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
Tix for Northern Stage’s It’s Fine, I’m Fine go on sale today. When it opens in October, it will be one of the first chances anywhere in the country to see live theater—but given the tight restrictions on how many people can actually attend, if you're thinking of going you probably want to act sooner rather than later.
If you're in the mood to put civics on a higher plane, at 4 pm today Dartmouth's Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement is hosting Joyce Banda, the former president of the Republic of Malawi (and Africa's second female head of state); Pastor Barry Randolph, a one-time businessman who has led the Church of the Messiah and its economic development efforts in Detroit’s Islandview neighborhood for the last 17 years; and Dartmouth prof Marcelo Gleiser—all on the questions: "How will we create ways to exist and coexist as humans on Planet Earth? How will we ensure a future for the next generation and craft a more equitable and unified society?"
This was scheduled a while ago, but it couldn't be more timely: At 5 pm today, former longtime NYT Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, who's now a senior research scholar at Yale Law School, delivers a Constitution Day lecture hosted by the Rockefeller Center entitled, “Aren't We All in This Together? How the Supreme Court Is Helping to Pull Us Apart.” She'll be hosted by and in conversation with government prof Herschel Nachlis.
And in an equally timely bit of scheduling, at 6 pm Dartmouth historian Matthew Delmont will be doing a presentation for NH Humanities on the founding of Black Lives Matter and how it grew out of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Finally, what does democracy need from its citizens? That's basically the question NYU political scientist Melissa Schwartzberg will be asking at 7 pm in her Vermont Humanities online presentation, "The Informed Citizen, from Athens to Today." She'll be looking at how assumptions regarding citizens’ knowledge and their capacity for good judgment have changed over time, and what that means for the media and for civic education.
One of the great things about covers is that you get to hear familiar songs in ways that, done right, uncover something you never heard in the original. Here are Rodrigo y Gabriela
"Trust the process," says the sheet of paper hanging from their coffee table. Yep.
See you tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Banner by Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to hit the blue "Subscribe" button below. And thanks! And hey, if you're that friend? So nice to see you! You can subscribe at:
Thank you!