Daybreak Friday, 10/2/26

Probably some showers. A cold front is moving through the region, bringing partly to mostly cloudy skies and a chance of rain starting up this morning, with a likelihood in the afternoon. Even so, temps will get into the low to mid 70s, though in the wake of that front tonight’s lows will bring us down to around 50. The good news: Though it’ll be cooler over the weekend, it’ll also be drier, with mostly sun both days.

A quiet, bloodless revolution. That’s what Ted Levin writes about Erin Donahue’s latest trail cam video, of a long-tailed weasel. “As DNA, life’s genomic script, yields its secrets, relationships are redrawn. Familiar species divide into twos and threes. Sometimes fives. The tree of life sends out new branches. Recently, a new species of cat was identified in Bolivia. The cat itself was not new; its place in the world had been reclassified. Recently, long-tailed weasels were placed in a new genus, Neogale, alongside the American mink. Long-tailed and short-tailed weasels may look alike, but beneath their fur, DNA tells another story.”

Maybe it’s best just to avoid trying to get from WRJ to West Leb? Remember how, back in February, a garbage truck slammed into the railroad trestle that spans Maple Street by Hartford town hall? Well, today VTrans starts repairs. According to their press release, crews will work from noon until 6 am tomorrow, then will continue during overnight hours tomorrow, Sunday, and Monday, and then wrap up Tuesday night. Maple Street will be reduced to alternating one-way traffic controlled by temporary signals, with flaggers guiding motorists through the work zone.

Vital Communities inks agreement to transfer listservs. That news came late yesterday from the nonprofit, which has been negotiating for weeks with an ad hoc group of list administrators seeking to find a way to ensure the lists’ survival. The group, led by longtime listserv advocates including Stan Williams, Niko Horster, David Avery, and F. X. Flinn, formed a nonprofit called UVLists, Inc. Yesterday, Vital Communities says, it signed an agreement to transfer its 38 town-based listservs to UVLists (it’ll keep several region-wide lists). Current list users will be able to opt out, the release says, and the two organizations will work to “make this transition as seamless as possible.”

Coming next week to the Hop: a “spectacle.” That’s how Johanna Evans, the Hop’s director of programming initiatives, describes the hybrid dance/aerial-netting work “Noli Timere” (Oct 9-10) to Marion Umpleby in Marion’s first freelance piece for Daybreak. A collaboration between large-scale visual artist Janet Echelman and choreographer Rebecca Lazier, it’ll take place in the air, in large, multi-colored, carefully engineered nets in which “every step, every shift of body weight causes the net to ripple and sway,” Marion writes—a visual metaphor for the shifting ground of our emotional lives. “It’s an instability many of us are familiar with, but that’s rarely expressed so visibly.” Lots more about how the work was put together at the link. Plus some very cool photos.

And speaking of a spectacle: a red-tail hawk gets released back into the wild. The licensed wildlife rehabilitators at VINS believe it was suffering from rodenticide toxicity, but under their care (and with doses of vitamin K), it healed. So on Wednesday, VINS’s Emily Boren took it along to afternoon pickup at the Lyme School: “I told all the parents that I had this hawk in the back of my car, ready for release, and a large crew followed me across the street to the pasture behind our house to release it back to the wild,” she writes. “It was a magical moment on an otherwise very normal Wednesday afternoon for these lucky kids and their parents.” Jay Boren’s slow-mo video at the link.

SPONSORED: Get ready for an all-strings-attached comedian at Lebanon Opera House! Let loose on Sunday, Oct. 11 at 7:30 PM for a performance with everyone’s favorite gimmick, Randy Feltface. The global comedy sensation has sold out venues across the world and now he’s bringing his material to the Upper Valley. Don’t let his purple exterior faze you — he’s a %@*&! good time. Recommended for ages 18 and older. Sponsored by Lebanon Opera House.

VT State Police close Woodstock investigation. The investigation was triggered by an allegation that public money had been misappropriated to pay the village’s legal bills as its dispute with now-retired police chief Joe Swanson dragged on. Following the complaint by two residents, Erin Scott reports in the VT Standard, some residents accused municipal manager Eric Duffy of “financial wrongdoing, malfeasance, and dishonesty in connection with the legal expenses.” But now, Scott writes, a state’s attorney has declined to prosecute and the VSP has dropped the case. Duffy has insisted the expenditures were legal. An audit is still in the works.

Man gets six months in prison, 10 years on probation for role in Hartford killing. The August, 2025 robbery-gone-wrong on Verna Court left Canaan’s David Labrecque dead and his girlfriend, Jessica Lemay, wounded; three people—Jeffrey and Michelle Mullins, and the alleged gunman, Demetrius Drew of New Haven, CT—were arrested. Yesterday, reports Alex Ebrahimi in the Valley News, Windsor Superior Judge Elizabeth Mann accepted a deal in which Jeffrey Mullins pled guilty to felony accessory to attempted assault and robbery, with his possible 6-10 years suspended to those six months in prison. Michelle Mullins already got a similar sentence; Drew goes on trial next year. Ebrahimi covers the scene in court.

SPONSORED: Need a laugh? Bluebird Improv, a well-oiled ensemble of comedy's celebrated stars, will take the stage at the Hop on October 7. Catch Joe Canale (Mindy Project), Brian Stack (Conan), Brad Morris (AP Bio) and Stephnie Weir (Veep, Modern Family) bringing spontaneous, unhinged and hilarious mayhem. Tickets and more information at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by the Hop.

“It’s just like, ‘Come on, guys, we’re doing our job; you do yours.’” That’s a Dartmouth senior explaining to The Dartmouth’s Haley Rodriguez and Jared Gonzalez Arce why so many students are exercised about Provost Santiago Schnell’s use of AI for a Washington Post commentary and other pieces. And it’s not just students: The pair report that a petition among faculty calling on the Board of Trustees to remove Schnell from his provost position had 220 signatures as of Wednesday night. They talk to faculty and students about the debate roiling campus—both about Schnell and about how AI should and should not be used and why.

Would you call Babes in Bethel a dive bar? Strictly speaking, writes Dan Bolles in Seven Days, it’s not. Its bathrooms are too “spacious and clean.” Still, it’s got “dive bar DNA.” “From one night to the next, Babes… might be a dance club, a music venue, a karaoke bar or a place to test your skills against the best cribbage players in Windsor County. It was the hub for the fifth annual Bethel Pride Festival in June. It’s where workers from the Nolato plastics factory and Bethel Mills lumberyard belly up after their shifts.” And that breadth of clientele, Bolles says, is exactly what draws people to it. He profiles Babes as part of a larger Seven Days guide to dive bars all over VT.

At Northern Stage, “a biting, comedic portrait” of five teenage girls reckoning with power, feminism, sex, and The Crucible. In John Proctor is the Villain, writes Marion Umpleby in the VN, playwright Kimberly Belflower “shows great reverence for her female characters’ intelligence and precocious spirits” as they reckon with whether John Proctor was actually a hero and the #MeToo movement that lies in both the back- and foreground. Northern Stage’s production, Marion writes, highlights director Sarah Elizabeth Wansley’s “sharp directing and the actors’ shimmering performances.” More on the play, the production, and the issues it raises at the link.

Hiking Close to Home: Parcel 5 in Norwich. A clockwise direction is recommended, especially for bikers and skiers, says the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. Heading left from the kiosk, this moderately difficult trail includes gentle and steep climbs throughout. The trail loops around a vernal pool just past the height of land and climbs gradually to a second height of land before descending through a narrow valley via a series of turns. The last mile of trail climbs yet again to a lesser height, though a shortcut is available back to the parking lot from a posted trail map. One last downhill corner is fairly steep with a sharp right turn as it levels out.  

Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, where was that long-lost 1919 silent film shot in Sunapee and Newport discovered earlier this year? And which local general store just announced it’s had to close? You’ll find those and more at the link. Meanwhile, here’s NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz, while Seven Days’ Vermont quiz is here.

Empire State Building, penny drop, dead person on sidewalk? Totally untrue. NOVA’s “What the Physics?!” has a new video showing why that old myth about a penny falling through air from a tall building is “not the same as falling through nothing.” Sure, an object falls faster as it moves, but drag pushes back and slows it down—increasingly—to the point where it can’t accelerate any more. That’s “the weird physics of terminal velocity.” Shape makes a difference, as with a falling cell phone or a parachuting person. A penny launched from the top of an iconic NYC building? Probably won’t kill anyone, but still, just don’t. 

Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.

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HEADS UP

If you’re looking for ways to spend your weekend, you know what to do: Daybreak’s Weekend Heads Up! And one thing you won’t find in there because the date just plain snuck up on me: It’s First Friday in WRJ, with TWIST at JAM, a drop-in Zine Factory at the Center for Cartoon Studies, an opening reception for Haley Hayden at Kishka Gallery, receptions at Long River Gallery and Twin Rivers Printmaking, piano night and Upper Valley Welcome Wagon (w/Route 5 Jive) at the Main Street Museum, and more going on all around town.

And for today...

Here’s the North Mississippi Allstars (tonight at Lebanon Opera House) with “Stay All Night” and featuring guests Robert Kimbrough, Joey Williams of the Blind Boys of Alabama, and Rayfield “Ray Ray” Holloman “on sacred steel.”

See you Monday for CoffeeBreak. Have a fine weekend out there!

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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt      Poetry editor: Michael Lipson    Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt

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