GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
First, apologies for the lateness of yesterday’s email. A tech glitch at my newsletter platform delayed it. If ever you don’t see Daybreak in your inbox when you're expecting it, check the website (it’s easy to remember: daybreak.news).
Second: No Daybreak Monday. No need to check the website this coming Monday morning.
And finally: Daybreak turns 7 today. Wild, right? This would not have happened without all of you who pass it along to friends and family, send in photos and tips and feedback and Dear Daybreak items, put your hard-earned income into helping it stay afloat, sponsor it to help get the word out about what you’re up to, create puzzles to keep us entertained, and above all do the heavy lifting of reporting, writing, and editing the news stories and blog items that keep Vermont and New Hampshire informed. I'm fiercely grateful to every one of you. Thank you.
Now then…
Sunny, warmer. There’s a clipper passing through well to our north, with an associated warm front, and it’s all going to pull in warmer air from the south today and tomorrow. We'll see temps getting into the high 30s today (and mid or high 40s tomorrow) before cold returns for a few days. Partly cloudy tonight, lows in the low 20s.
Speaking of the skies… Let's hope it's not too cloudy tonight, because shortly after sunset is our best chance to see Saturn, Neptune, Venus, and Mercury lined up low on the horizon (Jupiter and Uranus will be out there, too, but not visible to the unaided eye). USA Today's Janet Loehrke explains, with graphics.
Trees and snow and nighttime. A never-ending treat for the eyes.
In Hanover the other evening, Annemieke McLane glanced up and saw this “snow blossom.” “It reminded me of Japanese blossoms in paintings,” she writes.
And night skiing at Storrs Hill last weekend, Marie McCormick got this view.
Randolph’s Chef’s Market to close. The “eatery and organic produce-and-provisions shop,” as Maryellen Apelquist puts it in The Herald, has been a food-scene mainstay in the town for nearly two decades. But at the end of March, owners Tammy and Scott Aronson will close its doors: “We’re ready to take a break and find ourselves again,” Tammy says. They’ll be holding a sale for items on the shelves over the next few weeks—and then looking for a buyer for everything inside, from stoves to dishwashers to sandwich units and slicers. “One person could step in [and have a] business where you just unlock the door,” says Scott.
Hanover Tuk Tuk moving to S. Main Street. Dislodged from its longtime Old Nugget Alley digs by the coming demolition of the back half of the building that also houses the Dirt Cowboy, the Thai restaurant owned by Pannipa Pace and her husband, Ken, will move into the building that includes 44 S. Main Street, which also houses Starbucks. Tuk Tuk’s former neighbor, Walt & Ernie’s barbershop, moved to 42 S. Main in January, just behind the Ledyard Bank. "We were next to each other before, and we’ll be next to each other again. Who would have guessed,” Walt & Ernie’s owner Carol Eastman tells the Valley News’s Marion Umpleby. The Paces plan to open the new spot in April.
SPONSORED: Lebanon Opera House is bringing classical Celtic charm to the Upper Valley! Join us on Thursday, March 12 at 7:30 PM for an evening with Ireland’s most successful musical crossover group, The Celtic Tenors. From haunting ballads and breathtaking arias to mainstream favorites, this globe-trotting group has a little something for everyone — with a dash of Irish mischief, of course. Celebrate St. Patrick's Day a bit early by enjoying the Tenors’ beautiful stories and songs! Sponsored by Lebanon Opera House.
A closer look at the White River Indie Festival. As Jordan Adams writes in Seven Days, "This year, WRIF is expanding its programming, training its lens well beyond cinema while retaining its community focus.” The eight-day festival starts up Sunday, and Adams gives a helpful look at some of its highlights, including Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (filmed in VT); a table read of Valley Transit, JAM's first-ever feature film (production starts this summer); the JAM pitchfest; Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You; a conversation with a professional intimacy coordinator; and more.
Literature? Diplomacy? “Literature is deeper and more lasting in the sense of its touch, the way it touches people.” That's former Egyptian diplomat Ezzedine Fishere, who now teaches Middle Eastern politics at Dartmouth and whose novel based on his experiences during Egypt's political uprising, Nightfall in Cairo, comes out in English Sunday. In the VN, Marion Umpleby talks to Fishere and to retired Dartmouth English prof Ivy Schweitzer, who also has a new book based on her life experiences, Dividing Rivers: Poems, a memoir in verse. “Always,” Umpleby writes, “she’s striving to bring the unconscious to the fore.”
SPONSORED: Treehouse Children's School is hiring! Treehouse Children's School in Norwich is hiring early childhood teachers for our toddler program. We are home to five early childhood classrooms that serve children ages six weeks to five years old. Inspired by the world-renowned schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, our teachers work in collaborative teams to provide the highest quality early childhood education and care. Click on the burgundy link or here to learn more. Interested? Please send a cover letter and resume to Rachel Ensign, [email protected]. Sponsored by Treehouse Children’s School.
Thetford’s Christopher Wren dies at 89. Wren had a storied journalism career, covering the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War for Look magazine before moving to the New York Times (gift link is to his obit there), where he spent decades as an “adventurous, hard-working, relentlessly cheerful and uncomplaining" foreign correspondent, in the words of a former editor. He wrote books, two songs for Johnny Cash, and, after retiring, a chronicle of walking to the Upper Valley from NYC. “The longer I live here,” writes Wren’s Thetford neighbor, Susanna French, in an email, “the more I realize how many amazing people also live here, quietly, under the radar, until those lives blaze across the sky in the stories they leave behind in the obituaries.”
Philanthropist pledges $1.5 million challenge grant for Woodstock school. The vote's coming up on the Mountain Views district’s bid for a $112 million bond to construct a new middle and high school. As Tom Ayres reports in the Standard, the bond will only go ahead if certain conditions are met—but if they are, and the district can raise $1.5 million in private donations to match former Kedron Valley Inn owner Max Comins's grant pledge, taxpayers would be on the hook for some $15 million less than the $99 million they'd been asked to pay under a failed 2024 bond proposal. Comins is also behind a proposed performing arts center at Woodstock’s east end.
Enfield debating police drone. On Monday, the town’s selectboard will hold a public hearing on whether to accept a $15K donation from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation to the Enfield PD for a drone and training for officers. As Liz Sauchelli reports in the Valley News, selectboard members have raised concerns about its potential use for surveillance—”I think the two words that come to mind when I think of a police drone in my town is … ‘creepy’ and ‘invasive,’” says one—but Chief Roy Holland says that its helpfulness would lie primarily in finding missing people, which is how both Hartford and Lebanon mostly use theirs.
Suspect in theft of Girl Scout cookie money identified. Yesterday morning, the Lebanon Police Department sent out an alert seeking the public’s help identifying a “male suspect who stole a cashbox containing approximately $1,000 from a Girl Scout cookie sales table” by the entrance to Walmart in W. Leb. That’s at the burgundy link. Then, yesterday afternoon, the LPD announced that “as a result of information received from the community along with subsequent investigative efforts,” they'd identified a suspect—who lives out of state and hadn't been arrested at the time of the announcement. The department is seeking a warrant.
Equal-opportunity feeders. In this week’s “This Week in the Woods,” Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul leads off with a near-fluorescent photo of a cedar waxwing. The birds, he writes, “sally for aerial insects in summertime and sip sugar maple sap from the ends of broken twigs in winter and spring, but they feed year round on berries.” Also out there right now: snakewort and two scaleworts. “Perhaps the first plants to make the transition to life on land, liverworts are a group of small, non-flowering plants that lack true roots, stems, leaves, and vascular tissue,” Jack writes. Even so, they're vital to forest ecosystems, reducing erosion and helping maintain humidity.
Hiking Close to Home: Lower Shaker Wildlife Management Area, Enfield. Looking for a winter adventure on Shaker Mountain? UVTA says Lower Shaker offers 8.2 miles of interconnected wood roads and trails perfect for snowshoeing and hiking. Managed by NH Fish & Game for wildlife habitat, the trails provide excellent opportunities for wildlife watching and enjoying the winter landscape. The area is close to the Enfield Shaker Museum if you want to combine outdoor and cultural activities. Note: The parking area is not plowed in winter, so come prepared.
Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, which longtime Thetford business is about to change hands? And what's that new, locally made documentary about the Tuckerbox called? Meanwhile, you’ll find NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz here, and Seven Days’ Vermont quiz here.
Newly unsealed court records say Nashua country club shooter wanted to target “elites." The police affidavit, which had been under seal since last September, when Hunter Nadeau killed a patron at the country club restaurant and wounded two others, wanted to “punish the wealthy because they were not helping the poor,” reports NHPR’s Todd Bookman. Nadeau “was originally charged with second-degree murder in the case, but a Hillsborough County grand jury filed heightened first-degree murder charges, which carry life sentences without the possibility of parole in New Hampshire,” Bookman writes. Nadeau remains in prison.
The media and AI. Continuing with intriguing articles from Seven Days’ media issue, here are two more, both of which touch on the impact of AI on journalism in Vermont.
The first comes from contributing writer and UVM Community News Service editor and teacher Carolyn Shapiro, who digs into Compass Vermont. It’s a one-person news service run by Tom Davis, who is Northfield's economic development director and still manages to publish two or three stories a day. “Compass does not disclose any use of AI, saying only that it relies on ‘modern research and analysis tools’ to produce stories with an emphasis on facts and fairness,” Shapiro writes, but the evidence she amasses makes clear AI is involved. She explores whether it matters, including with Compass readers.
And the second, by Seven Days writer Kevin McCallum, takes a hard look at the VTDigger staff union and its tense negotiations with the nonprofit’s leadership over a new contract—in which “disagreements fester over the future use of artificial intelligence.” Erin Petenko, Digger’s data reporter and cochair of the union, tells McCallum staff see the potential use of AI “as an existential threat to Digger’s mission and one that could jeopardize their jobs.” Though Digger prohibits the use of AI tools without an editor’s permission, the union wants protection against layoffs caused by AI. The union's tactics in the fight appear to have contributed to CEO Sky Barsch’s decision to step down.
Rebel fighters, bandits, poachers, Russian mercenaries, dengue fever and the Ebola virus. Great! To Chris Brown, those were just inconveniences on the way to the center of Africa. In the WSJ (gift link), Jacob Bunge profiles the English entrepreneur who has a goal of traveling to the world’s “poles of inaccessibility,” points on each continent that are the furthest from the sea (or in one case, land). He’s needed armed soldiers, helicopters, icebreakers, and patience—he waited out stormy weather for a month in the Antarctic. Usually, the destination is meh, Brown says. “You’re making this long, arduous journey, and when you get there, kind of by definition, there’s nothing.”
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak. Just use the same link tomorrow, Sunday, and Monday for new words from publications around the region.
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HEADS UP
There’s a bunch going on this weekend, from the Anonymous Coffeehouse to US Rep. Ro Khanna at Dartmouth to Lissa Schneckenburger at the Chandler to the kick-off for the White River Indie Festival. You’ll find it all here.
And in preparation for Town Meeting, JAM’s got links to Hartford’s Budget & Candidates Night this past Monday, Hartland's school board annual meeting back on the 17th, and where you’ll need to go to watch the livestreams of Norwich's information session this coming Monday and Hartland’s town meeting next Tuesday.
And for today...
The Vermont Mandolin Trio will be at Artistree tomorrow night. For a taste, here they are about a year ago at Middlebury, with “Chinquapin Hunting”.
See you next Tuesday!
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
