GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
That front up by the border isn't budging. And neither, really, is the forecast. Today, foggy to start, then cloudy for a bit, then becoming mostly sunny, high getting toward the mid-80s, breezes from the south. Soak it in, eh? Temps down to around 60 again tonight.Tuck party lands 23 in quarantine. The VN's John Gregg reports that the college is investigating a “social gathering of Tuck students in significant violation of multiple Dartmouth and Hanover public-health requirements” on the fourth floor of a dorm for first-year Tuck students. The college has placed 23 of those students in quarantine—they'd already completed a first two-week stint; this will be their second—and is looking into disciplinary action. Gregg also reports that two undergrads have been sent home after "an incident" at a frat. Prentiss holds tiny margin in state Senate District 5 primary. Leb City Council member Sue Prentiss held a 68-vote lead over former state Rep. Beatriz Pastor as of nearly midnight last night (out of 8,180 votes cast), built on her showing in Lebanon, Charlestown, Claremont, Canaan, and Enfield. Pastor beat Prentiss handily in Hanover and Lyme. Meanwhile, incumbent Sharon Nordgren and newcomers Russell Muirhead, Mary Hakken-Phillips, and James Murphy appear to be the top four vote-getters in the Dem primary for the Grafton 12 House seat. Feltes leads Volinsky in Dem race for governor. State Senate Majority Leader Dan Feltes has 51 percent of the vote in his close-fought race with Executive Councillor Andru Volinsky to take on Gov. Chris Sununu, who sailed to the GOP nomination yesterday; 88 percent of precincts are in, according to the AP. Republicans nominated Corky Messner to take on Jeanne Shaheen for US Senate; Steve Negron will face incumbent Democrat Ann Kuster in the 2nd US House District. Results for every contest in the state at the link.So, how do you announce that you're dropping by unexpectedly in an F-15? Those loud noises you heard around Lebanon yesterday were a pair of F-15s from Massachusetts practicing approaches and landings at Leb Airport. “I think it was as much a surprise for us as it was for everybody else,” airport manager Carl Gross told the VN; the pilots contacted the tower shortly before arriving. At one point they were joined by a pair of F-35s that did a loop around the area then took off again, various FB posters report.Ever been to Cole Cemetery in Lebanon? Yeah, me neither. But Susan Apel just discovered it. "If you’re looking for an immensely peaceful, traditional country cemetery bursting with some hidden-in-plain sight history, this is it," she writes. It's down toward Meriden, and is one of Leb's oldest cemeteries, with plenty of early founding names—including David Hough, who moved to Lebanon in 1778 from Norwich, Connecticut Colony. Oh, and guess what? Poor Susan suffers from taphophilia. But she seems to be dealing okay.SPONSORED: Make music part of your online learning. The Upper Valley Music Center is launching fall lessons and classes Sept. 14 for all ages and experience levels. Programs on a wide range of instruments and styles. Pick up a new instrument! Delve into music theory! Singers who miss choral rehearsals can join Zoomberry, an artistically adventurous online chorus. Parents who want to supplement at-home learning with fun and developmentally appropriate music activities, try Music Together or Rhythm Kids Online. Sponsored by the Upper Valley Music Center. Green herons are fishing birds. Yeah, yeah, you say, so's every heron. But green herons really fish: They use whatever's handy—a twig, a feather, a crust of bread—to lure fish close enough to nab. They're one of the few tool-using North American birds, says Northern Woodlands' Elise Tillinghast. Also out there in the woods this second week in September: ripening highbush cranberries, asters, Canada mayflowers, and American dagger moth caterpillars—which, Elise writes, are cute, fuzzy...and sting like heck."It’s this completely unique spot up in the clouds, and it’s odder than we realize even though we all have those bumper stickers on our cars that tell everyone we did it." That's JW Ocker, who writes NH Mag's "Live Free and Weird" series, talking to the magazine about, well, himself. Turns out his favorite odd place in the state is the Mt. Washington Auto Road. His top bucket-list spot in the state: the Very Long Baseline Array Antenna, part of a 5000-mile long radio antenna array used to probe deep space, which sits in the middle of a forest near Peterborough. Train service to points south? Don't hold your breath. Buses are back. Planes are flying out of Burlington. Amtrak's Downeaster service to Maine has restarted. But the Vermonter and the Ethan Allen Express still are in limbo, reports Brattleboro's The Commons. Even though the trains are funded in the state's fiscal-year 2021 budget, members of the Vermont Rail Action Network believe the Scott administration is "not making it a priority." However, the state's Rail Advisory Council is scheduled to meet today.You can now print out a temporary license plate in VT. The DMV yesterday announced a new online system for temporary registrations and license plates for private vehicle sales. You enter the owner and vehicle information, wait for the system to verify it, then you certify the transaction, pay a $6 fee, and print out the temporary plate and registration (don't use Internet Explorer for this!). They're good for 60 days.What's it take to get people to shop local? A $30 gift card, apparently. So many people swamped Vermont's website for those giveaway cards yesterday—over 10,000 people tried to sign up within the first hour they were available—that the site couldn't process the coupon codes quickly enough. They seem to have gotten out eventually, though. The businesses chosen by the lucky 14,166 coupon recipients will get their cash infusion right away; coupon holders have until October to redeem them.Skinny Pancake redoubles efforts to strengthen local food systems. Seven Days' Sally Pollak profiles the company's efforts, including ShiftMeals and its GrowTeam farms and gardens around the state. "If a bunch of soulless, greedy corporations with crappy products can scale up and have negative impact," says co-founder Benjy Adler, "then who's stepping up to the plate to counter that using all those same skill sets to...have a positive impact?" One tidbit: Adler, a Dead fan, joked when he and his brother were setting up their original crêpe cart that they should call it the Crêpeful Dead."Verne liked to think he could take a piano beyond mere sound, into realms of color." That's how journalist Katie Hafner describes Verne Edquist, who was not a pianist, but a piano tuner. And not just any piano tuner: He was Glenn Gould's piano tuner. Edquist, who died Aug. 27, was near-blind but saw notes as colors and had almost perfect pitch, the ability "to remember the pitch of every note, to know what a C sounds like the way most people know what the color blue looked like." The backup tone on Hafner's Prius? An F sharp.Some coins, a few Legos, a bunch of cards, some mad artistic skills... and you, too, could make what can only be described as eye-popping kinetic art. And here I sit trying to get a basic card house to stand up.
And...
NH has a new dashboard to track cases at schools and colleges in the state. At the moment, it's showing 1 active case at Dartmouth, 1 at Franklin Pierce, 2 at Keene State, 3 each at New England College-Henniker and New England College-Manchester, 1 at Plymouth State, 1 at Rivier University, and 42 at UNH.
Meanwhile, NH added 21 new positive test results yesterday, bringing its official total to 7,494. There were no new deaths, which remain at 433. The state has 236 current cases in all (down 2), including 9 in Grafton County (up 2), 2 in Sullivan (down 1), and 20 in Merrimack (no change). Lebanon, Hanover, Claremont, Charlestown, and now Piermont have between 1 and 4 active cases each.
VT reported 3 new cases yesterday, bringing its total to 1,654, with 131 of those (up 3) still active. Deaths remain at 58 total, and 1 person with a confirmed case is hospitalized. Windsor County remains at 81 all told, with 6 of those coming in the past 14 days; Orange County remains at 21 total with just 1 case in the past 14 days.
News that connects you. If you like Daybreak and want to help it keep going, here's how:
At 6:30 this evening, you could join the Norwich Public Library's third art history social hour of the summer, featuring calligrapher and artist Laura Di Piazza. Her work focuses on social justice issues; you may have seen her exhibition, "Redlining Our Souls," at the library last year.
Or at 7, you could take a video tour of the VT State Capitol and of a rural town hall with Vermont State Curator David Schutz. For almost three decades, he's been overseeing the restoration of the capitol, and will be talking about the democratic symbolism of that building and of town halls.
Also at 7, Gretchen Cherington and the Norwich Bookstore's Penny McConnel will be talking about Cherington's new memoir, Poetic License. Cherington's father was Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Eberhart, and her household growing up drew a glittering constellation of poets and writers, including Anne Sexton, Alan Ginsburg, Donald Hall, and Robert Frost. But Cherington's father also, one night, molested her; her book, writes Reeve Lindbergh, "is a beautifully written, even-handed account of a woman's struggle to balance genuine family love, troubling family secrets, and a devastating personal betrayal."
You figured Glenn Gould, didn't you? Ha! Perhaps another time. Today, it's Exhibit A for why the pandemic's got to end:
To Vaughn Mason & Crew's "Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll."
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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