GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Daybreak is brought to you this week with help from YWCA Vermont. Although South Hero may seem like a hike, girls+ from the Upper Valley have been spending joyful summers at Camp Hochelaga for 100+ years. Check us out if you’re seeking an inclusive, screen-free, nature-based experience for kiddos in your life!
Mostly sunny, but even colder than it’s been. First off, that much ballyhooed nor’easter will be giving us a miss, except maybe for coastal NH. Oh well. Meanwhile, though, colder air has been filtering into the region, so we start the morning around zero and probably won’t get out of the single digits today—with wind chills around -20. Things actually start to turn around later in the day, but not that we’ll notice: Lows tonight will be -5 to -10.
Creatures of the air. But only two of them with wings…
Last week, John Skelly writes, “I received a call: ‘Eagles on East Thetford Rd. in Lyme!’ Road kill the previous night of a deer was causing traffic jams as people driving by witnessed three bald eagles (2 adults, 1 third-year bird) feeding on the carcass. Along with an assortment of crows and ravens waiting their turn. Within 50 feet of the road! During the next several nights the carcass was moved down slope (by coyotes?) until the bones slowly disappeared completely.”
As she was digging out her car the other day after the snow, writes Peg Ackerson, also from Lyme, “I noticed this silent supervisor: a nearby beautiful barred owl, totally unperturbed by all my shoveling.”
And on a bluebird morning across the river in N. Thetford Tuesday, Randall White looked in the sky out the window, and… Well, let’s just say it was -4 on the thermometer at ground level.
Lift malfunctions at Dartmouth Skiway: 59 skiers evacuated. It happened at about 3:15 yesterday afternoon, and as you can see from WCAX’s video, Upper Valley first responders sprang quickly into action. Dartmouth Ski Patrol, Lyme Fire and EMS, the Hanover and Thetford fire departments, police from Lyme and Orford, and technical rescue team members from Lyme, Hanover, and Thetford all “quickly and efficiently began removing occupants from the chairs,” Lyme Fire Chief Aaron Rich reported in a listserv post last night. All lift-goers “were removed in 90 minutes then checked for any potential cold weather injuries by EMS and brought to the main lodge to meet family and rewarm. One patient ultimately was transported to DHMC for treatment.”
More on Woodstock’s The Prince & the Pauper. The historic Elm Street building in which the restaurant’s made its home had been owned by the Bourdon family since 1942, writes Justin Bigos in the Standard. Until Jan. 13, that is, when the Bourdons sold it to Zöe Zillian, owner of the Woodstock cocktail bar Au Comptoir. Zillian’s been mum so far about her plans. Prince & the Pauper’s Liz Schwenk, who bought the nearly 52-year-old institution in 2019, has to be out April 1. She talks over its legacy with Bigos—its staff, its customers, its signature dishes. And she’s thinking about the restaurant’s future. “We’re in the transition together,” she says of her staff, “we’re a team together.”
Oh, no! Not Gas Station Chinese, too!!! Formally, of course, the Chinese restaurant tucked inside the Jolley gas station at the corner of Bridge and N. Main streets in West Leb is called Oriental Wok Express. But legions of fans and admirers know it only as “gas station Chinese.” And now, reports Marion Umpleby in the Valley News, it, too, will have to close after its building was sold out from under it. That’s because NY-based Stewart’s Shops bought the Jolley chain and have told Oriental Wok co-owners Steve Ross and Chang Lin they need to be out by the end of March. “I’m not too happy about it,” says Ross, though he adds that he does want to retire.
SPONSORED: Frost Lights at Dartmouth: Open to all! Community members, come experience Frost Lights on the Dartmouth campus from Feb. 6th-8th! Join us in College Park on top of Observatory Hill for an enchanting winter wonderland you won't forget, thanks to a remarkable immersive and interactive light and sound installation inspired by this year's Winter Carnival theme, The Blizzard of Oz: Wicked Cold. This special outdoor experience is free and family friendly. Sponsored by Dartmouth.
Community nonprofit buys Thetford Village Store property with eye toward reviving it, adding café. In a press release yesterday, the Thetford Center Community Trust announced it’s bought the store, which has sat vacant for the past four years. They plan “to raise funds to rebuild the store, keeping a similar design and expanding it so it also has room for a café and commercial kitchen.” The group then hopes to rent the new building to a store and café operator (and possibly get the USPS to reopen there). That’s a similar model to efforts that kept S. Strafford’s Coburns’ Store in business and revitalized what is now Brownsville Butcher and Pantry. One key: TCCT will pay to expand Thetford Town Hall’s septic capacity. Lots more at the link.
In Randolph, an old movie theater gets a new lease on life. The Historic Playhouse Theater first opened its doors as the New Strand Theater in 1919, writes The Herald’s Tim Calabro, “a 400-seat auditorium with state-of-the-art projection, collapsible seating, and a design that funneled fresh air through fans and ceiling vents”—a crucial selling point in the wake of that year’s devastating flu pandemic. Now, a board led by Bennett Law plans to refurbish and expand what is now one of the country’s oldest movie theaters—adding a second screen, among other things—“while restoring the period charm of the original 1919 structure.” Calabro talks to Law about the plans.
SPONSORED: “Musical democracy in its most enlightened form.” That’s how the Chicago Tribune described the Grammy Award-winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, renowned for performing without a conductor. On February 4 at the Hop, they partner up with piano virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin to reimagine classics by Liszt, Beethoven and Schubert. Get tickets today! Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
VT AG’s office clears officers in fatal Springfield shooting. The Aug. 21, 2025 incident that left 36-year-old James Crary of Newport, NH dead began when Windsor County Sheriff Deputy Bryan Jalava and Springfield Police Officer Vincent Franchi, along with others, arrived on Valley Street to arrest a suspect in a robbery and kidnapping. Crary was at the wheel of a car that began accelerating down a driveway toward the two officers, AG Charity Clark’s office wrote in a press release yesterday: With “no escape route,” both officers fired at Crary, believing “they were in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily harm.” Full details at the link.
Red crossbills on red spruce. “While a medieval European legend held that the bird twisted its bill trying to extract the nails holding Christ to the cross (and turned red from his blood),” writes Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul in this week’s “This Week in the Woods”, “the heavy mandibles with crossed tips evolved naturally to extract conifer seeds.” Which they can do extremely effectively: “A single crossbill can remove all seeds from a cone in minutes, starting at the tip (the part with the most seeds) and spiraling around toward the base.” And yes, in case you were wondering: a crossbill can be left- or right-billed.
Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions. Like, what landmark step did the Norwich Farmers Market take this week? And why has Windsor County Sheriff Ryan Palmer been in the news? Meanwhile, you’ll find NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz here, and Seven Days’ Vermont quiz here.
During last weekend’s storm, New England’s electric grid turned to oil. Partly, reports Maine Public’s Peter McGuire, Arctic temps and rising costs for natural gas are responsible. But it was also because Québec hydropower bound for MA via a new transmission line suddenly went offline. "Temperatures in Quebec are the coldest on the planet right now because of a polar vortex," a HydroQuebec spokesman explains, and the province needed the power for itself. As Politico’s E&E News writes, the incident has “reopen[ed] arguments about shortcomings in the region’s electricity supply that have roiled New England for a decade.”
Cabin fever? Treat your wanderlust to some scenes from abroad. On PetaPixel, Matt Growcoot has a rundown of the winners of the 2025 Travel Photographer of the Year awards. You might visit Amora, Spain, where Athanasios Maloukos caught an eerie midnight procession of penitents. Or Tanzania, via Dana Allen’s closeup of an elephant in a dust shower. Paul Sansome shows us “such beautiful light filtering through the fog onto the calm sea” in North Iceland. And in Sri Lanka, Mark Julian Edwards snapped a young boy gazing from the window of a worn-down bus, “with quiet energy, as if he couldn’t wait to see what lay ahead on the road.”
Ever tried tail-walking? Well, no, we humans can’t. But it turns out that dolphins can. “They often do repetitive leaps for fun or communication within the dolphin herd,” says Nancy Black, a marine biologist and owner of Monterey Bay Whale Watch. But this? “I can’t express to you how uncommonly rare this behaviour is,” a whale watch guide tells spectators on the boat. Feel free to turn the sound off, though.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
Missed yesterday afternoon’s email filled with things to do this weekend? You’ll find it here.
And for today...
Cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Christopher O’Riley will be at Still North Books & Bar tomorrow as they welcome their new Bach Dialogues recording into the world. Here they are performing JS Bach’s Trio Sonata No. 5 in C major.
Have a fine (and warm) weekend! See you Monday for CoffeeBreak.
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