Daybreak Friday, 5/8/26

Clouds arriving this afternoon, still on the cool side. We start the day with plenty of sunshine and temps in the low or mid 30s, eventually reaching the low or mid 50s. But a quick-moving little disturbance is passing through this afternoon, and it’ll bring clouds and a chance of showers until late afternoon. Skies clear again afterward. Once again, patchy frost after midnight with lows generally in the low 30s. There’s a warm front coming through tomorrow that may bring showers in the afternoon and a one-day shot of warmer temps on Sunday.

Trail cam stars. Recent footage from…

Did you catch Dear Daybreak yesterday? If not, you missed a stunning early-morning photo of Mt. Ascutney by Neal Bastas; Robin Dellabough’s experience typing up on-the-spot poems on Indie Bookstore Day in WRJ recently, Mark Boutwell’s evocative poetic portrait of early evening from a front porch, and Perry Allison’s reflection on just how hard the loss of a dog can hit. And Dear Daybreak needs submissions! If you’ve got something to share, please send it in!

Peace Field Farm restaurant clears last big permitting hurdle, but opening date “clouded in uncertainty.” In the VT Standard, Tom Ayres writes, “The nearly five-year-long regulatory and legal battle over a proposed restaurant at Peace Field Farm on Pomfret Road in Woodstock has come to an end with a whimper rather than a bang.” Back on April 23, he reports, a state environmental court judge dismissed the final appeal of opponents to the farm-to-fork restaurant on the farm. Farmer/restaurateur Matt Lombard responded “no comment” when Ayres asked about the status of a fire department permit, liquor license, and staffing plans for the eatery.

In Norwich, town manager and selectboard don’t see eye to eye on goals. At heart, reports the Valley News’s Sofia Langlois, the differences revolve around the degree of autonomy town manager Brennan Duffy is seeking and the board’s stated desire for “greater transparency;…improved availability while working remotely; a regular presence in the office; and more engagement with residents.” Brennan works remotely two days a week. Brennan has responded with his own goals, including letting the manager “do the job in the way he best sees fit without attempting to control day-to-day functions.” Langlois delves into how that discussion has been playing out.

Court rejects small-claims suit against Royalton over Fox Stand Bridge. The bridge off Route 14, you’ll remember, has been closed since 2024, when a state inspection found it was unsafe. It’s not due to be replaced, reports Jo Levasseur in The Herald, until 2028. Town residents have grown increasingly frustrated by the lack of a temporary solution, which has hurt businesses and boosted detour traffic on back roads. In February, Tyler LaGrange filed a small claims case against the town seeking compensation for time and wear & tear on his vehicles; last week, a judge ruled the town is not responsible for “remote” damages, such as inconvenience.

SPONSORED: Learn Spanish, French, or Italian fast! The Rassias Center for World Languages and Cultures at Dartmouth specializes in immersive language experiences using dramatic techniques, rhythmic drills, and energetic reinforcement strategies to make learning an engaging experience. This speeds language learning, increases language retention, and has participants speaking and understanding quickly. Our Accelerated Language Programs (ALPs) run July 7 through July 12 on the Dartmouth campus. Learn more here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by the Rassias Center.

In Woodstock, a curious visitor from a faraway Woodstock. Caralampo Focas runs a café in Woodstock, England; a few years back he got a call from someone in Ontario wondering how to get to his shop and that transatlantic conversation led Focas to start wondering what the other Woodstocks around the world looked like. “People have always migrated, that’s how each and every Woodstock came to be,” he tells the Standard’s Emma Stanton. He’s hit Woodstocks in Ontario, New Brunswick, and New South Wales in Australia; still to come: NY, PA, and IL. And yep, he’s checking out coffee shops wherever he goes. Say hi if you see him this weekend!

West Leb residents face recurring sewage backups into their homes. In particular, reports Sofia Langlois in the VN, they’re people who live on Mack Avenue; every few months as the Lebanon Public Works Department uses high-pressure hoses to blow out sewer lines to improve water flow, sewage gets pushed into their sinks and shower drains. “Every time I see a big truck on the street, I know that the City of Lebanon is going to bring sewage into my home,” one resident told the city council at a meeting on Wednesday. Some residents want the council to rescind an $80K diversion from a Mack Ave. project to the Mechanic Street sidewalk project.

SPONSORED: Visit Crossroad Farm to pick out that perfect hanging basket for Mother's Day. Whether you're looking for a Mother's Day gift, craving a local salad, or ready to pick up plants for your garden, Crossroad Farm has you covered! They have a beautiful array of hanging baskets and herb pots, along with annual flowers, veggies and herb starts that are ready to be planted. Their Norwich farm stand is stocked with local meat, cheese, eggs, fresh baked goods, and more. Open every day from 9am-6pm in Post Mills and Norwich. Sponsored by Crossroad Farm.

A glimpse behind the scenes of the new Samson Occom documentary. The film, directed by Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel and Signe Taylor, and a co-production of the Mohegan Tribe and Dartmouth, tells the mostly forgotten story of the Mohegan scholar and minister whose fundraising for a school for Native youth helped establish the college. It will be screened tonight at 7 in the Loew Auditorium. “We wanted folks to get a feel of Occom’s way of telling stories. And we wanted to have Native people in conversation about Samson Occom, because you never get to see that,” Zobel tells the college’s Office of Communications. At the link, the story of Forgotten Founder.

Spring beauty. Actually, writes Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul in “This Week in the Woods” for this first week of May, the region has two species’ of the ephemeral: Carolina spring beauty and Virginia spring beauty, both with five symmetrical white petals lined with delicate pink pinstripes. They’re important early sources of food for the appropriately named spring miner bee. They also serve as a hangout for males in wait for females, which are looking for pollen to provide for their larvae. Also out there: hermit thrushes—which, intriguingly, sometimes rub ants on their plumage; the ants’ formic acid, Jack writes, may help birds defend against external parasites.

SPONSORED: Kenneth Lonergan's THE WAVERLY GALLERY at Shaker Bridge Theatre. Gladys, the elderly matriarch of the Green family, has run an art gallery in a small Greenwich Village hotel for many years. The management wants to replace her less-than-thriving gallery with a coffee shop. Always irascible but now increasingly erratic, Gladys is a cause of concern to her daughter, her son-in-law, and her grandson, from whose point of view this poignant memory play is told. A wacky and heartrending look at the effect of senility on a family. May 7 to 24. Tickets at the burgundy link. Sponsored by Shaker Bridge Theatre.

Want to check out the two Frank Lloyd Wright homes in Manchester, NH? The renowned architect designed five homes in New England, writes Amanda Gokee in the Globe (paywall), and only two are open to the public to tour. They’re both owned by the Currier Museum in Manchester, and though they’ve been holding tours for six years to Wright fans from around the globe, “locally, surprisingly few people know about the houses,” Gokee reports. The Currier wants to change that. In her piece, Gokee describes the history of the Zimmerman and Kalil houses, both designed late in Wright’s life. If you’re interested, you can sign up here.

Hiking Close to Home: Lipfert Forest, Claremont and Cornish, NH. This 15-mile network of privately owned and managed trails allows for public access on more than 1,000 acres of forest, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance says. The trails are located on land that formerly constituted the King Elm, Balloch, Haubrich and Dahms Farms. The 1940s King Elm Farm Sugar House has been restored and is open to visitors. Remains of the Balloch Farm Sugar House and a chimney associated with a Haubrich Farm cottage can also be seen from the trails. You’ll find trail and access info at the link.

It’s still mud season out there. Here’s why that matters. “The mess is biological productivity in action,” writes Bridget Shirvell in North Star Monthly. And she explains exactly what’s going on: as trails thaw from the top down, “what looks like a wet patch on the surface may be soft and unstable 6 or 8 inches down, long after it appears to have dried out… The compaction from foot traffic flattens the surface, collapses soil pores, squeezing out air and reducing the soil's capacity to drain even after the frost has receded. A trail that gets heavy use during peak mud season can take years to recover its original structure.” There’s lots more, and she’s got plenty of hiking tips.

Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, what’s gone into that former FedEx facility on North Labombard Rd. in Lebanon? And seriously, when is that closed stretch of Route 5 in Fairlee going to reopen? 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.

VT House passes partial repeal of Act 181. The move, as Carly Berlin writes for VT Public/VTDigger, comes after intense rural opposition to two key portions of the land-use act and is “a reversal…that would have been difficult to imagine earlier this spring.” The House struck those portions—a rule on private roads and another focused on environmentally sensitive areas—replacing the latter with a new public engagement process. And with roughly a dozen Democrats joining GOP lawmakers, it also approved an amendment sponsored by GOP Rep. Greg Burtt to make “accessory on-farm businesses” easier for farmers to pursue. The bill now moves to the Senate.

Phil Scott vetoes bill seeking to reduce road salt levels in rivers and streams. It took the VT legislature four years to design the measure, which passed last month and which the governor vetoed on Wednesday, reports VT Public’s Peter Hirschfeld. It would have created a program, modeled on one in New Hampshire, to certify municipal and commercial applicators on how to use less road salt while boosting their protection from lawsuits for accidents related to pavement conditions. But Scott—and the state municipal league—contended those protections weren’t strong enough.

An elephant calf hiding out, an Alpine hare high above treeline, a black-headed gull coming in for a landing… The winners of the German Society for Nature Photography awards, which drew entries from all over the globe, went up recently. The Atlantic (gift link) has a taste (don’t miss the lava dragon halfway down), and you can find the full portfolio here.

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

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HEADS UP

In addition to yesterday afternoon’s listings, don’t forget Once Upon a Mattress at Hanover High, put on by the HHS Footlighters. Tonight and tomorrow at 7 pm, Sunday at 3 pm. For the rest, you know where to go: The Weekend Heads Up is right here.

And for today...

“Farewell”, Luke Lee’s capstone animation project as a student at the California Institute of the Arts. Two shepherd brothers, a guitar, the lure of fame and fortune, and many, many sheep…

And a quick correction on yesterday’s Mills Brothers piece: “Caravan” was written by Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol, not by Louis Armstrong (thanks, DM!)

See you Monday for CoffeeBreak.

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