Daybreak Friday, 10/9/26

Mostly sunny, cooler. That cold front that came through brought colder air in its wake, and though we’re not due any precipitation here, the summits may see flurries down to 4,000 feet. Meanwhile, we’ll get into the high 50s or low 60s, and upper 30s overnight. Looking ahead, it’ll be a great weekend: high pressure building in, sunny skies tomorrow, cloudier on Sunday but with temps in the mid 60s.

They’re unstoppable! At least, until the frost hits. Three years ago, Kathleen Corrigan planted native Button Liatris seedlings in front of the Kilton Library in West Leb. This year, finally, they bloomed—and make for such a cool picture! And meanwhile, frost hit Meriden Wednesday morning, and Scribner Fauver’s zinnias. But he managed to catch them looking all rosy-cheeked before hard reality caught up.

Now that frost is a real concern… “There is nothing like the threat of a kill frost to really wrap up a summer CSA,” writes Edgewater Farm’s Jenny Sprague this week.  “Our field crew is busting their butts fighting with the wind, trying so hard to cover up those heat loving crops that wither and die at 32 degrees. Our main concern right now are the cherry tomatoes, Romas, and green beans…” Root vegetables, though, they’re doing great! So home chef and Kitchen Sense writer Mitchell Davis checks in with a Ukrainian recipe for borscht, making use of lots more than just beets.

The forensic audit into legal payments is just the start: Woodstock looks at accounting practices. You’ve gotta feel for the municipality, what with the legal division between village and town, but expenses that often apply to both. As Erin Scott writes in the Standard, Woodstock has now hired a forensic accountant to figure out just how much the town’s general fund paid for legal expenses in the village’s effort to demote former police chief Joe Swanson. But there’s a larger issue: how the town and village move expenses between their budgets, especially since there are no clear written guidelines on who can do it, how it gets approved, or how it’s documented.

After a café in the center of town closed, Rochester VT’s residents took it on themselves to keep things vibrant—and passers-by fed with baked goods. The Rochester Café’s closing couldn’t have been timed worse, Tim Calabro writes in The Herald: right before hundreds of visitors descended for the annual Green Mountain Suzuki Institute. So locals stepped in: They set up a pop-up on the porch of the former café—then kept it going, bringing in community groups and area bakers to take turns keeping life on the porch every weekend. It became a gathering spot for locals and visitors alike. They’re hoping for a new café, but may just do it all again next year.

SPONSORED: “A songbird of a jazz vocalist.” That’s how The New York Times described Julia Keefe, an internationally acclaimed Native American singer, actor, educator and director of the Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band. On October 14, her groundbreaking band performs at the Hop, combining big band brilliance with Indigenous stories from Native legends and new talents. Get your tickets today! Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.

VT municipal group honors Hartford’s outgoing planning director. Lori Hirshfield spent three decades helping to steer the town’s development—and WRJ’s redevelopment—and on Wednesday, the VT League of Cities and Towns gave her its Lifetime Achievement Award. During her years with the town, Hirshfield and her colleagues Matt Osborn and Jo-Ann Ells helped WRJ fill up with shops, restaurants, galleries and studios, and several theater companies; oversaw the development of Prospect Street, shepherded new housing, and secured funding for initiatives that produced hundreds of jobs in town.

In decision to search for a superintendent for two years, Mountain Views district opens window onto VT’s unsettled education landscape. With Supt. Sherry Sousa leaving next year, the Woodstock-area district is advertising for a two-year replacement. But as Molly Hughes notes in the Valley News, this flies in the face of state Ed Secy Zoie Saunders’ insistence that districts hire for only a year. Saunders argues that with statewide “transformation” and district mergers in the offing, anything longer would be irresponsible. The Mountain Views board argues it won’t be able to attract good talent with just a year’s contract. Hughes delves into the implications of that confrontation—and all the other uncertainties facing VT schools right now.

SPONSORED: One-day language refresher from Dartmouth’s Rassias Center. Join the Rassias Center on Saturday, November 7 for a one-day language refresher in French, Spanish, or Italian. Learn specific grammar or refresh a previously studied language. This brief but intense program packs a punch and is appropriate for intermediate and above speakers of French, Italian, and Spanish. Sponsored by the Rassias Center.

Feds may close national fish hatchery in Bethel. That news, reports Ben Breen for ABC22/FOX44, comes from US Sen. Peter Welch, who yesterday, along with the rest of the VT delegation and NY’s two senators, sent a letter to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Director Brian Nesvik urging him to keep it open. The hatchery on the White River, which opened in 1984, “has helped raise lake trout and Atlantic salmon, along with other aquatic species such as crayfish and mussels,” Breen says. “Lawmakers also say that the successful recovery of trout populations in Lake Champlain is in part due to the operations of the White River hatchery.”

In our very own woods, a worldwide phenomenon: insect egg slime mold. It shows up on decaying logs on every continent except (for obvious reasons) Antarctica, writes Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul in “This Week in the Woods” for this second week of October. Even more eye-catching: green stain fungus, which stains the wood it grows on and whose “blue-green pigment endures even more than 500 years after Italian Renaissance artisans used the wood in intricate intarsia designs.” Also out there right now: witch hazel, large milkweed bugs, and bedstraw hawk moths (which are related to the delightfully named hummingbird clear wings and snowberry clear wings.

Hiking Close to Home: Hurricane Forest Wildlife Refuge Trails, Hartford, VT. This is 142 acres of protected forest with trails built and maintained by volunteers, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance says. You can still catch a colorful fall hike through the forest, with areas where enormous old-grown trees still stand, including white pine and oak. The forest is named for a hurricane that struck the area in the 1700s, but hikers will also find the remaining trunks of old-growth trees that were toppled in the hurricane on September 21, 1938. Parking is at a pulloff on Wright Reservoir Road, just off Rt. 5.

Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, how many times has NH drained Goose Pond over the last four years? And where did a local trails group just close on a 93-acre purchase? You’ll find those and more at the link. Meanwhile, here’s NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz, while Seven Days’ Vermont quiz is here.

1,116 pounds. That’s the size of the bluefin tuna that charter captain Jamie Savage and customer Brandon McGirl caught off Rye, NH earlier this week. It was 114 inches long (that’s 9 ½ feet) and, NHPR’s Todd Bookman reports, would easily have set a New Hampshire record but for one thing: They caught it 10 miles offshore, too far from the coast to qualify for official recognition. The catch, Savage tells Bookman, came after a long day and night of fruitless effort: “The fish probably ran for about a mile the first 20 minutes of the fight…It was dark out. We couldn't really see.” Savage recounts what happened.

NH has a relatively low poverty rate. But it ranks relatively high for the percentage of poverty caused by high rents. In a new study, reports NHPR’s Jackie Harris, the Pew Charitable Trusts identify the state as among the top ten in the country where “solving the housing shortage would significantly reduce poverty.” In all, the study finds, 16 percent of overall poverty in the Granite State—and 22 percent of child poverty—stems from high housing costs: According to NH Housing, renters need to earn $80,440 a year to afford the statewide median rent of $2,011 per month. The issue is especially acute for people 58 and older, living on fixed incomes.

One look at Vermont’s state of mind. You may have seen stories over the past 10 days or so reporting on the results of a new poll by VT Public of 817 Vermonters on a range of issues. They’ve now made the entire poll available, and though it’s just one snapshot, it’s a really interesting one. In addition to a look at various November election matchups, as well as at beliefs about education, it highlights a pretty dour mindset about the state right now: a majority would urge 18-year-olds to leave the state, a plurality believe they can rely on “just a few” people living nearby when the chips are down, and there’s an even split among people on whether it’s a good place to age.

Florida evangelist closes on former Green Mountain College campus. That’s the campus that’s been in the headlines off and on over the years, ever since WhistlePig whiskey entrepreneur Raj Bhakta bought it, didn’t do much with it, and ultimately decided to give it away to a Christian organization. Instead, evangelist Tommie Zito has now bought it (well, he’s put $1 million down and signed a promissory note for $5 million more), reports VTDigger’s Greta Solsaa. Zito’s had financial trouble before, but he’s enthusiastic about using his purchase to spearhead an “incredible supernatural acceleration into the Third Great Awakening.”

Uncovering life that is “more surprising, more intelligent, and more precious than we ever realized.” Twenty-five years after BBC Earth first brought the ocean world to us, Blue Planet III astounds us again—and that’s just the trailer. This “first look” is a visual masterpiece, with brilliant music by Hans Zimmer and JADE, and the inimitable voice of now 100-year-old Sir David Attenborough. From frozen poles to tropical islands, we’re treated to the sounds, shapes, colors, and drama of life in the ocean. If you can spare five minutes, this is a good way to spend them. 

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

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HEADS UP

Want to figure out what to do this weekend? There’s so much going on, from music to dance to film to two different 5Ks to fall festivals… You know what to do: Daybreak’s Weekend Heads Up.

And for today...

Among the things going on is the Ukrainian band Kommuna Lux, this afternoon at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College in a fundraiser for Common Man for Ukraine. Its members, all originally from the melting pot Black Sea port of Odessa, blend Balkan swing with klezmer and traditional Ukrainian folk. Here’s “Ochi”

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