GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Warm, windy, showers likely. Highs today will be in the mid or upper 40s, and though winds from the south will be mostly light, things could get gusty this afternoon as a front arrives. Chance of rain starts up mid or late afternoon. Mostly cloudy all day, lows into the low 30s overnight.
Deer. “The word estrus, a frenzied passion, is from the Latin oestrus for gadfly, from the Greek oistros for mad impulse,” writes Ted Levin about the pair caught on Erin Donahue’s trail cam. “When a doe is ready to breed, she's in estrus and receptive to the advances of a buck, who is in rut (ready to breed). In autumn, sensitivity to declining daylight levels triggers both. Does approaching estrus, wandering beyond their home ranges, increase the chance of meeting a receptive male. (Aren't all males receptive?) Full estrus lasts 24 to 36 hours, but advertises up to 43 days before and up to 36 days after mating. In the presence of an estrus doe, a buck becomes uninhibited. Follows her everywhere. What you see in this video is practice and tolerance.”
Horse. This one doesn’t move, though. It’s the Colby-Sawyer mascot, Charger, lit up against the pre-dawn sky and caught by Susan Ellison as she came out of the college’s gym Wednesday morning.
Did you check out Dear Daybreak yesterday? If not, you missed Robin Osborne’s remarkable photo of an iced-over E. Thetford field, Virginia Barlow’s little readiness lesson for grocery-store parking lots when you’re hungry, Dave Celone’s poetic reflection on a windstorm’s aftermath, and Jon Kaplan on a memorable pre-holiday screening in Randolph last month of White Christmas. If you’ve got something to share, please send it in.
Woodstock’s municipal manager wants to fire police chief. Now that Joe Swanson has had his chief’s title restored, even if he’s still sidelined, Municipal Manager Eric Duffy has informed him that rather than seeking to demote him, he’s going to try to get him dismissed altogether. In the VT Standard, Mike Donoghue reports that Duffy—who’s re-committed to staying in town after dallying with positions elsewhere—wrote Swanson on Monday, “You have contended that you cannot be demoted from the position of Police Chief under any circumstances, which can only mean that you must be fired in order to be removed from the position of Chief.” Lots more at the link.
Strafford selectboard looking at two key departures. The first, reports John Freitag in The Herald, is the board’s chair, Toni Pippy, who’s been chair (with a one-year hiatus) since 2017. She announced Jan. 4 that she’s moving to Ohio and will resign her seat on the selectboard effective March 2, which is Town Meeting Day. Meanwhile, Freitag reports in a separate article, the board’s vice chair, Jeff Solsaa, has announced that he won’t seek re-election. Among other things, Freitag writes, Solsaa spearheaded recovery efforts after 2023 flooding, led the town in its switch from the Orange County Sheriff to the Windsor County Sheriff, and more.
SPONSORED: Youth of the Upper Valley, get ready to sing! At St. Thomas, January 15 begins our next 7-week session of CHOIR! – a dynamic singing and music program open to children ages 8-18. Learn the art of choral singing in one of the world’s most well-known musical traditions, culminating in a beautiful March Evensong performance. And the music doesn’t stop there: Be sure to register for our inaugural summer CHOIR! CAMP!, July 27-31. Sponsored by St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
Two looks at the Hopkins Center season ahead. The renewed and refurbished performing arts center is now going full-throttle after its reopening in the fall.
In the Valley News, Marion Umpleby writes that after “a relatively tame” fall, the winter season “promises a diverse group of artists who will put the improved arts center to the test.” Next week, for instance, there’s illusionist Scott Silven: “I’m not sure we have any other space in the building or maybe even in the Upper Valley that can present an illusionist in a way that feels a little bit like cabaret and a little bit like a magic show,” Hop director Mary Lou Aleskie says of the Roth Studio, where he’ll perform. There’s an entire recital series planned for the Morris Recital Hall, starting tomorrow with the Horszowski Trio, Mark Morris in the Moore Theater at the end of the month, and lots more.
Meanwhile, Justin Bigos in the Standard looks ahead to the 11-film series “Music and the Movies”, curated by Johanna Evans, director of programming initiatives. It starts up tomorrow with Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and ends Feb. 20 with The Testament of Ann Lee, the unlikely musical starring Amanda Seyfried as the founder of the Shakers. Along the way, there’s also A Hard Day’s Night, Singin’ in the Rain, and Buster Keat,on’s The General with live accompaniment by Donald Sosin, the Telluride Film Festival’s accompanist. More looks ahead at the link.
Seeing an “exponential increase” in flu cases, DHMC boosts masking recommendation for staff. The overall picture in the region is mixed, reports Clare Shanahan in the VN, with hospitals seeing dramatic jumps in cases compared to last year—786 influenza-like cases in December 2024 across the DH system, versus 1,420 in December 2025—but schools reporting no particular surge in cases. At least, not yet. Meanwhile, at DH, “We are definitely seeing higher numbers of patients with influenza when compared to this time last year,” says hospital epidemiologist Gabriela Andujar Vazquez—leading the hospital to “highly recommend” masks for patient-facing staff.
Out there in the woods this week: cattails. Or, really, more in the ponds. Whichever, as Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul writes in “This Week in the Woods” for the second week of January, cattails have several cool features. For one thing, their “felt-like texture suits catching snowflakes for photographs, just like the velvet used by the original snowflake photographer Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley.” For another, cattails are prodigious germinators—and would overwhelm lots of habitats if it weren’t for muskrats, which eat their rhizomes and use their leaves to build lodges. Also out there: American-aster, whose seeds feed lots of birds (and muskrats), and tree lungwort lichen.
Skating Close to Home: the Lake Morey Ice Skating Trail, Fairlee. The Upper Valley Trails Alliance says it’s time to get your skates out! The Lake Morey trail opened earlier this week. When ice conditions permit, the 4.3-mile trail crosses the entire lake from north to south, offering panoramic views and the chance to spot the occasional bald eagle. Lake Morey Resort offers skate rentals, and you can check ice conditions on the town’s page before heading out. It's the longest groomed skating trail on the continent, and an unforgettable experience, especially when the ice is just right.
Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions. Like, where’s Tunbridge’s Upper Pass Beer moving? And quick, don’t peek: What’s the name of the office park where one of the buildings burned down Wednesday morning? Meanwhile, you’ll find both NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz and Seven Days’ Vermont quiz at this link.
GOP-led NH House nixes bill to impose caps on school district spending. The reason that’s a headline is that the measure was a priority this year for Republican legislators. But in a dramatic twist yesterday, 22 Republicans joined Democrats on the House floor to pass an amendment limiting the cap only to school district administrative expenses—a move original bill backers labeled a “poison pill.” As Ethan DeWitt reports in NH Bulletin, “That change, which passed, 182-173, proved to be a dealbreaker for the Republican supporters of the original bill.” As a result, the full bill failed almost unanimously. DeWitt details the debate and the larger issues on legislators’ minds.
When a climber falls in the Whites, this guy’s ready to go. Actually, you sort of get the feeling that NHPR’s Rick Ganley should have talked to Michael Wejchert’s wife, who’s also a volunteer with the N. Conway-based Mountain Rescue Service and an emergency room nurse. But Wejchert, a writer and climber, gives a good sense of what he and his wife and colleagues do: rescue people above tree line in winter. “So, the nasty rescues on Mount Washington…and technical terrain, vertical cliffside ice and rock climbers who get into trouble.” They talk planning, GPS, why “I think a lot of us on the team know that it could be us,” and one particularly hairy nighttime rescue.
“Switchback princesses” vs. “heinously vertical routes”: the East-West hiking divide. As Backpacker mag says, “Easterners and Westerners love to debate whose trails are better. But how did such different hiking styles come to be?” Joe Gibson traces the Northeast’s steep roots to the mid-1800s search for relief from the cities: “Guests…clamored for short, meditative walks from their cozy resorts. Lodge owners, limited by private property lines and short on manpower, cut primitive, direct trails to nearby peaks and scenic overlooks.” Out west, “vast distances and a need to carry heavy supplies” meant pack animals—and trails for them. More at the link.
Sure, you can ski the slopes and the backcountry with the best of them. But can you ski the really big waves? Wave skiing isn’t for the faint-hearted, not least because it’s really hard to swim in heavy ski boots should you wipe out. But then there’s Chuck Patterson, who’s both a big mountain skier and a big wave surfer and, increasingly, a big wave skier. At the link, Canon Castro’s short documentary about Patterson’s stint with some of the world’s biggest waves, at Nazaré, in Portugal. “I think I’m gonna call it,” he said, once he got to safety in one piece.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak. Just use the same link tomorrow and Sunday for new words from publications around the region.
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HEADS UP
There’s plenty going on this weekend as Upper Valley cultural life revs back up, from three different contra dances to comedians Melissa Villaseñor and Juston McKinney at the Hop and the Lebanon Opera House, respectively, jazz master Ray Vega at Northern Stage, films, veteran Yankee mag editor Mel Allen at the Abbott Library in Sunapee, and lots more. You’ll find it all here.
And for today...
Aoife O'Donovan, Sara Watkins, and Sarah Jarosz…
See you Monday for CoffeeBreak.
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