Daybreak Friday, 4/24/26

Sunny, a tad cooler. A weak cold front came through yesterday, so while temps got into the upper 50s, today they’re due to remain a few degrees below that. On the other hand, winds (from the north) won’t be nearly as strong. Clear skies tonight, lows back to around or below freezing.

Aaaaaannnnddd… the pounce! It’s not often that you get to watch a red fox stalking prey from beginning to end, but in Quechee the other day, Steve Pert was fortunate enough to catch the whole thing. It’s a remarkable video. Though you kinda feel for the fox at the end.

Did you catch Dear Daybreak yesterday? If not, you missed Jim Alberghini’s lovely photo of a misty Connecticut River at the start of the day, Dave Celone’s poem about mud season’s grasping qualities, and Lyn Ujlaky’s mini-essay about coming to terms with a flock of wild turkeys that’s made itself at home nearby.

It’s been three years since Hanover voters approved a rental housing inspector. The position remains unfilled. “The issue isn’t that we don’t have applicants,” Town Manager Rob Houseman tells the Valley News’s Sofia Langlois. But, he explains, most of the 15 people who’ve applied don’t meet the requirements. The town’s offered the job to two of them; neither took it. The planning, zoning, and codes department’s Ryan Borkowski does respond regularly to complaints, but Houseman wants to make sure the inspector’s got the skills needed. “We only get one chance to launch this properly, and we want to do it right,” he tells Langlois.

We’ve got two or three years until “major mortality” for ash trees. That’s VT’s invasive species coordinator, Noah Hoffman, talking to John Freitag in The Herald. Since the emerald ash borer causes trees to become brittle, it’s not safe to cut them from the ground, so Hoffman says towns and landowners with ash trees should “take stock now and decide in advance how you want to proceed, depending on your own individual situation,” Freitag writes. He offers up a wealth of resources, from the state’s pages on the subject to the names of the state foresters for each town to workshops held by the Vermont Woodlands Association. First step: Take inventory.

Route 5 in Fairlee closed at least until mid-May. It’s gotta be getting old for Police Chief Wayne Briggs, whose first task each morning is resetting the barriers that are supposed to keep drivers off the roadway that’s been closed since boulders came down on it in March—but don’t, as drivers move them. "I get it's an inconvenience, but they're not only putting their lives in danger, they're putting in danger the first responders that are going to have to come in here," he tells VN photographer James Patterson. Patterson’s photos accompany Liz Sauchelli’s piece on ledge stabilization work for which VTrans is soliciting bids, with hopes it can be done before Memorial Day.

SPONSORED: Celebrate Independent Bookstore Day all around the Upper Valley! Join the party this Saturday, April 25 with the independent booksellers of the Upper Valley as we celebrate our favorite day of the year with the return of the Upper Valley Indie Bookstore Crawl, exclusive editions and swag, giveaways, a hunt for the ever-elusive Libro.fm Golden Ticket, and lots more. Learn more at the burgundy link or here! Sponsored by the Norwich Bookstore.

Between sticky buns, lots of talk about words. Often, when he wanders into King Arthur, Demo Sofronas spies Cindy Faughnan hard at work on her laptop. He knew her from around town, so asked what she was working on and discovered that she’s a disciplined writer. For Demo’s About Norwich blog, she told him about her day, which starts with checking in with writing friends about their goals for the day, then seven minutes on Zoom with a friend to write a poem (one was just published in Highlights’ High Five, another just came out in an anthology for adults), then she moves on to the KA café to write and to work with other local writers on the craft itself.

“I think it’s always good to be reminded about our humanity, about being kind and forgiving.” Director Richard Waterhouse’s reminder is just one of the things you’ll find in We The People’s production of The Spitfire Grill, which opens next week at the Eclipse Grange Theater on Thetford Hill. It’s the stage adaptation of the 1996 film of the same name, in which Percy Talbott, fresh from prison, finds work in a small-town eatery whose owner wants to offload it. As Marion Umpleby writes in the VN, Talbott suggests an approach that refreshes “Gilead’s tired atmosphere, and its residents’ surly attitude toward their new neighbor”—and shows what outsiders can bring.

SPONSORED: Experience a Legend: organist Maurice Clerc at CCDC. The Ives Series is proud to present Maurice Clerc, Organist Emeritus of Dijon Cathedral, for an evening of French masterworks. A direct musical descendant of Pierre Cochereau, Clerc brings over 40 years of international acclaim, the rhythmic brilliance of Tournemire, the atmospheric colors of Langlais' "Song of Peace," and as a finale, a spectacular reconstructed Cochereau improvisation from Notre-Dame de Paris. Recital Tuesday, April 28 at 7:00 pm, Masterclass Wednesday, April 29 at 4 pm, all free at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College. Sponsored by CCDC.

A “blunt” superintendent will take the reins in Claremont. Timothy Broadrick, who’s led the Alton, Barnstead and Prospect Mountain districts for the past seven years (they share a supt) had planned to retire next year, reports NHPR’s Annmarie Timmins, but in a February letter to the Claremont School Board said the district’s “situation intrigues me.” It’s a controversial hire: He’ll be paid $182,500 his first year and $187,500 his second, once he takes over July 1, and several board members, including its chair, considered that too expensive. “We understood that we have to pay more to get someone to actually come here and fix what’s going on,” says the vice-chair.

Vocab for the day: “the pulmonic puff.” That’s the humming that male turkeys do during mating season, and it’s going on this week out in the woods, writes Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul for this third week of April—along with “dramatic, attention-getting gobbles, postures, and color changes.” He gives a thorough accounting of turkeys’ behavior these days. Also out there: bloodroot, one of the first spring ephemerals, has flowered; it can self-pollinate if no insects do the job. And one of the earliest moths, the scribbler, is also out and about, and will be through June.

Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, where did bald eagles get their first foothold in the region before their spread throughout the CT River Valley? And how much is Lebanon paying per foot of new sidewalk along a stretch of Mechanic Street? You’ll find those and more at the link. Meanwhile, you’ll find NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz here, and Seven Days’ Vermont quiz here.

NH House defeats GOP-priority open enrollment bill. The much-debated measure to allow any student in public school to transfer to any other public school district had been cruising along in the legislature, despite strong opposition from some school districts around the state. But when it came to the floor yesterday, it went down, 168-184, with 21 Republicans voting against it. Critics cited the potential costs to both sending and receiving districts, as well as the disruption to districts’ ability to plan and potential legal disputes over special ed placements. Still, this isn’t the legisature’s final say, reports WMUR’s Adam Sexton: a different bill may become a vehicle for a fresh try.

Are you a student in NH who needs to register to vote? Or the parent of one? The Secy of State’s office has just come out with two handy PDF guides, now that student IDs are no longer valid for either registration or going to the polls. The guides cover which photo IDs you can use, what constitutes a “domicile” in the state for voting purposes and how to prove it, how and when you can vote absentee, and more. The burgundy link takes you to the registration guide; the student voting guide is here.

About those bear-proof canisters… You may remember how, after May 1, the US Forest Service is requiring overnight hikers in the Pemigewasset Wilderness to carry them for food, toiletries, and anything else that might attract a bear. In NH Bulletin, Molly Rains reports that the Pemi is being used as a testing ground for a reg that may expand across the White Mountains as encounters between black bears and humans increase, bears become more habituated, and humans become less tolerant of them. Bears are plentiful right now, Rains writes, “in part because the White Mountains region is home to the largest stretch of unfragmented bear habitat in New Hampshire.”

Circus Smirkus’s big top tour faces uncertain future. “For the first time in 40 years—not counting two pandemic-affected years—the only tented, traveling youth circus in the country has canceled its Big Top Tour,” notes Mary Ann Lickteig in her deeply reported feature in Seven Days on the immensely popular circus. After a dive into the troupe’s history, she moves on to its current troubles. Even before a rigging failure sent 18-year-old aerialist Johnathan Kamieneski plunging 14-18 feet to the ring last summer, where he sustained multiple fractures, the show faced financial challenges. Lickteig gives the first public accounting of that accident and its aftermath and recounts parent unrest over management decisions, the firing of director Troy Wunderle, and more.

Just as the season’s ending for downhillers, it’s ramping up for another group of thrill-seekers. We’re talking, of course, about whitewater kayakers, who are definitely out of the office when it’s time for high water. A couple of weeks ago, Tiller Johnson went up with this 3-minute POV video of his trip down Vermont’s Gihon River, a nearly 20-mile tributary that flows through Eden and Johnson into the Lamoille. With its class IV and class V rapids, it’s a popular destination. Note that the people you’re watching have years of experience; rapids like this aren’t for newbies.

Invited to dinner in Egypt, Croatia, Tonga? Better read this first. The Cultural Atlas has you covered on “cross-cultural attitudes, practices, norms, behaviours and communication” around the world. In Tonga, “it is common for departing guests to offer a complimentary speech.” In Egypt, leave a bit of food on your plate after dinner as a compliment to the host for providing so well. In France, don't; it's generally frowned upon to leave food on a plate. In Croatia, bring the host an odd number of flowers; an even number of flowers is for the deceased. In Egypt, don't bring flowers at all—they're for weddings, the ill, or those in mourning.

Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak. And if you want to keep it going tomorrow and Sunday, just hit the same link and you’ll find new words from the region’s news.

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HEADS UP

It’s a busy weekend out there, what with Indie Bookstore Day and VINS’s Owl Festival and Billings’ Baby Farm Animal Day and the Anonymous Coffeehouse and a joint walk for mental health organized by Hanover and Lebanon high school students and Upper Valley Baroque and a Sunday filled with classical music. Read about it all, and more, in Daybreak’s Weekend Heads Up.

And for today...

One other weekend event to know about: Jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater and pianist Bill Charlap will be performing Saturday at the Hop, in Spaulding Auditorium. They’re master musicians and entertainers, with an easy rapport and a long habit of musical conversation, on full display here in “I’m Beginning to See the Light”.

See you Monday for CoffeeBreak.

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