Daybreak Wednesday 9/30/20

GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!

Ah, wetness! Last night's welcome rain continues. At least through mid-day, and then showery through the afternoon as the cold front that brought it wanders off to the east. Very little movement in temps today, from low 60s this morning to mid-60s this afternoon. Behind the front, though, things get cooler: Down into the high 40s or low 50s overnight. Vital Communities names new executive director. Sarah Jackson grew up in Laconia and Merrimack, NH, now lives in Randolph Center, VT, and in between spent a career working for international nonprofits in Oman, Egypt, Kenya, China, and elsewhere. For the last three years she's worked with Montpelier's Institute for Sustainable Communities on programs advancing climate solutions in China and the Indian subcontinent. She starts at the WRJ-based nonprofit Oct. 26, replacing Tom Roberts, who stepped down in July. There's another WRJ transition, too: VT closes welcome center. Or, rather, won't be reopening it. The mostly state-funded center at the train station (Hartford and Amtrak kicked in, too) closed in March, when Amtrak service stopped. Now Vermont officials have made it permanent, pointing out that it's the second least-visited among the 17 visitor centers the state owns or funds, accounting for just 0.6 percent of the 3.2 million visitors the state centers average each year. (VN)Ed Brown loses bid to leave prison. U.S. District Judge George Singal ruled yesterday that the Plainfield tax protester can be re-sentenced after one charge against him was vacated last year. In January, a judge ruled that his wife, Elaine Brown—who is seeking a divorce—could be released after serving 12 years of her 35-year sentence. Singal, however, noted that Elaine Brown and two other defendants “learned that what they had done was wrong; they learned that what they had done was a mistake. I don’t see that in Mr. Brown.”The next breakout app? A team of Dartmouth students and alums have launched Who's Down, an app to help solve the "what can I do with my time" problem. It lets Dartmouth users search for campus events organized by distance from one’s location, start time, or geography. Hosts can post formal, informal, and last-minute get-togethers, with a Covid-era feature: an RSVP system that hides events once the attendance limit has been reached. The app was created with support from the DALI (Digital Applied Learning and Innovation) Lab and its creators plan to move on to other campuses eventually.Norwich looks into sidewalk extension. If you've been following the town listserv (and plenty of non-Norwichites do) you know that townspeople have been debating whether it's worth spending money on extending a sidewalk along Beaver Meadow Road, a popular walking and running route, beyond the center of town—before it's even been formally proposed. Now, reports the VN's Tim Camerato, a town-wide survey on the question is coming to an end (today's the last day) and engineers are completing a report (due in November) on what the project will require. "She loved the children as if they were her own and they adored and respected her." Heather Billingham, of Canaan, was the school bus driver who died of an apparent heart attack last week while driving her route between Hanover and Lyme. The VN has an obit."This was the year...I met dogs and learned their names." That's from Kat Mayerovitch's short ode to walking during the pandemic, one of seven essays on "What Has Changed" put together by Junction mag. Susan Apel on cooking, Kathryn Whalen on wandering the region and discovering the "small, often overlooked details of this place I call home," Erin Bennett on a sudden longing for a good turkey sandwich at lunchtime... "Living where we do affords us the benefit of beautiful food," she writes. There's plenty more.The drama of the drought. Last week you saw that panorama of the put-in at Grafton Pond (NH). Over the weekend, Wilmot NH's Marc Beerman stopped by the pond and got closer to what's actually going on. It's breathtaking, and not in a good way. Unclear what impact this rain will have, but it sure can't hurt. Use the right or left arrows to see more.Which is better, finding wooly bears or stomping puffballs? The cool thing is, you don't have to choose: This week in the woods, you can do both. There are plenty of the black-and-rust-colored caterpillars—the larvae of the Isabella tiger moth—right now, reports Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast, and lots of puffballs (multiple species), which she writes are "essentially small spore bombs" for fungi. Also: milkweed pods, blackpoll warblers, red-breasted nuthatches, and so many yellowing ferns.“Maybe it was time to leave the herd and meet his own fate.” For 20 days, Granite Staters in central NH were transfixed by the search for Leo, a 24-year-old "gentleman" of a horse who, startled, trotted away from his owner in Bear Brook State Park and disappeared. Dozens of people—riders, snowmobilers, hikers and bikers—helped the owners search for nearly three weeks. On Saturday, a couple found Leo; exhausted, the horse died with one of them cradling his head. The Monitor's Ray Duckler has the whole story.The Whites are getting a reputation. On Saturday, the third person in less than a week died in the mountains, after apparently slipping from the top of Arethusa Falls. That was after two Massachusetts men died in rock-climbing accidents. The national media are noticing, as this NBC News story suggests, though they haven't quite got the hang of reporting about the region. "The deaths come during what officials say is an unusually busy season at White Mountains," the story says.Will this rain replenish wells? No, says Abby Fopiano, NH's well water program manager. She spoke to NHPR's Rick Ganley and says that stuff on the surface—vegetation, small creeks—will benefit, but "what actually makes it down into our sand and gravel, and then into bedrock, is going to be pretty low." Wells are running dry around the state and well-diggers face more demand than they know what to do with. Some alternatives: an auxiliary tank (filled by a water-hauler); sharing water resources; and above all, conservation.And while we're asking questions: Are the leaves turning earlier than usual this year? "It’s hard to measure widespread leaf color change," writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog. But looking at the colors out there right now and comparing them to 10 years of data from a now-defunct effort called FoliageNetwork.com, he believes that colors are changing earlier than in six of the last 10 years, but at roughly the same time as the other four.Nonprofits urge VT to abandon OneCare. The call comes from five groups: two that advocate for single-payer, the racial justice organization Justice for All, the League of Women Voters of VT, and the VT Workers’ Center. The company at the center of Vermont's health-care reform efforts was created to improve health care and cut spending, but its administrative costs are taking too much out of the system, argues longtime reform advocate Deb Richter. "They have not improved quality. They have not lowered cost.”

Let's replace "messaging" with actual debate. What with the Burlington protests and street messages proclaiming "BLM is racist" appearing in southern Vermont towns, things are getting heated out there. Meg Mott, who taught political theory at Marlboro College (and now at Emerson), argues that for towns caught in these arguments, one way to approach standoffs "is to bring in our intellectual muscles" and actually examine the assertions that are being used in place of real debate. Regardless of the outcome, she writes, "the practice of deliberation will be good for everyone."Well, this is one way to see the foliage: while piloting a helicopter towing 10 spinning saws that trim tree branches from railroad rights of way. Alan Stack, who works for a company called Rotor Blade, based in SC, has been flying the Vernon-St. Albans corridor at a pace of a third-to-a-half-mile per hour, cutting back tree limbs to improve safety for trains. And Stack's become a fan of fall colors. "You get bright yellows, bright oranges—when you're trimming the trees it's like somebody's puking a rainbow behind you." Umm...

News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:

When the ripe fruit fallsits sweetness distills and trickles awayinto the veins of the earth.When fulfilled people diethe essential oil of their experience enters the veins of living space, and adds a glisten to the atom, to the body of immortal chaos.-- From "When the Ripe Fruit Falls," by DH Lawrence. (Thanks, ML!)

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!