Daybreak Friday, 6/12/26

Hotter, muggier, chance of showers and thunderstorms. The numbers tell only part of the story: Today will eventually get sunny, with highs into the low or mid 90s and the “heat index,” which takes humidity into account, hitting 99 or maybe even 100 in some spots. Conditions, especially this evening, are just right for potentially strong thunderstorms: Basically, a lid of warm air is sitting over the region, suppressing thunderstorm potential, but as it weakens late today when a cold front enters the picture, there’s a mild risk of isolated severe storms. Lows tonight around 60.

An opossum never wins a beauty contest. As Ted Levin writes about Erin Donahue’s video, “Its tail is a bare gray rope, its eyes two black beads. Yet what it lacks in charm, it regains in wondrous biology. Females cradle two sets of reproductive organs; males bear bifurcated penises. The result is a tumble of life: ten or more kits arriving in 12 days—blind, naked, honeybee-small—the briefest gestation of any North American mammal. Kits squirm through their mother’s coat, seek the warm darkness of her pouch, and fasten to a nipple; those who fail to find one drift away. Survivors nurse for a hundred days, then spill from the pouch.”

And while we’re looking at video: Do deer play tag? Your guess on what’s going on in Kevin Lary’s trail cam video from Canaan is as good as anyone’s…

Heads Up: Beaver Meadow Road in Sharon will be closed for a chunk of next week. They’ll be doing culvert work on the much-traveled route between Norwich and Route 132, and a good bit of the southern section in Sharon will be shut down in both directions to vehicles and bicycles alike from 7 am to 4 pm, Monday-Thursday. Map of the affected section at the link.

VT regulators approve surgery clinic for WRJ. Strafford urological surgeon Michael Curtis (who has an office in WRJ) and Norwich gynecologist and fertility specialist Misty Blanchette Porter will be founding doctors at the clinic, reports VT Public’s Lola Duffort. With last week’s approval by the Green Mountain Care Board, the center could open next year in a former car dealership on Ballardvale Drive. It will offer orthopedic, spine, gynecological, and urologic procedures to start. “It takes months, on average, for patients in the Upper Valley to get the sort of procedures — like knee replacements and laparoscopic hysterectomies — the surgery center plans to offer,” Duffort notes.

Police search Bradford, VT—possibly for missing skull—but come up empty. On Wednesday, reports Vermont News First’s Mike Donoghue (here via the JO newsletter) state police investigators descended on S. Main Street near the bridge over the Waits River following a tip; though spokesman Adam Silverman didn’t identify the case, Donoghue reports that it involved the death a year and a half ago of 43-year-old Corey Crooker, who was shot at a home shared by James Nickles Jr. and Lisa Akey. His body was allegedly later burned, and only some remains were found. Nickles has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. Donoghue details where things stand.

Metered parking may take effect in WRJ as soon as this summer. The kiosks are in, the town has hired an enforcement officer, and planning director Lori Hirshfield is readying signs instructing motorists on how to pay by phone, reports Sofia Langlois in the Valley News. Once the switch does get flipped, it’ll $1 per hour, or 25 cents every 15 minutes, for a maximum of two hours, 9 am to 5 pm Monday-Friday. Langlois talks to downtown residents who say, as one puts it, “We still don’t want them,” and to business owners who hear parking complaints from customers because people park all day and spaces are hard to come by. The lot behind Northern Stage will remain free.

SPONSORED: You belong with Lebanon Opera House for this Swiftie celebration! Join in on Friday, June 26 at 7:30 PM for Let’s Sing Taylor: An Unofficial Live Tribute Show. Relive all your favorite Eras Tour memories as these talented musicians perform faithful covers of Taylor Swift’s catalog. Start making the friendship bracelets — we’ll see you there! Sponsored by Lebanon Opera House.

Work begins on new arts center in Woodstock’s East End. It’s in the very earliest stages so far, after investor, philanthropist, and former inn owner Max Comins closed on his purchase of the 4.6-acre tract that once housed a car dealership in May. After a year of work devoted to design, permitting, and grappling with wetlands, reports Tom Ayres in the Standard, crews have begun breaking up the asphalt in the dealership’s former parking lot. Ayres sat down with Comins and project director Charlie Rattigan (the former VINS director) to talk about construction, the environment, and plans for the 400-seat venue with studios, classrooms, and year-round programs.

Out of an emergency chicken teriyaki, a biweekly “supper picker upper club” in Randolph. The teriyaki happened at last year’s New World Festival, when Ben and Amber Rapson stepped in to help with a shortage of food vendors. “It was crazy—we sold out, and people loved it,” Amber tells Isabel Dreher in The Herald. Building on that success—and later teriyaki popups—the couple decided to launch pickup dinners every other week. Unable to have children, both are deeply involved community volunteers. “It feels really good to recognize that we have all these skills and talents…that we had thought that we were going to be giving to children, and instead finding ways to give them to our community,” Amber says. Find the club here.

SPONSORED: When life hits you with a plot twist, sometimes you have to make a really big change to start over. That’s what Betsy Vereckey did when she decided to move to the Upper Valley from NYC without a car or a job (or a man for that matter), a tale recounted in her book, Moving to My Dog’s Hometown. Look no further for your next beach read. If you love dogs, are in desperate need of a laugh, or feel stuck in life, this book is for you! Sponsored by Betsy Vereckey.

In the woods this second week of June: “the harlequin of the hayfield.” That’s how Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul describes male bobolinks—a grassland bird whose numbers have been depleted by reforestation, intense agriculture, and development. “Ground-nesters,” Jack writes, “bobolinks breed between mid-May and mid-July – a process sensitive to disturbances as minor as dog walking.” Also out there: red columbine, whose nectar is deep inside the flower, limiting who can get to it (long-tongued sphinx moths and ruby-throated hummingbirds do just fine); pink lady’s slippers; and bluebead lily.

Taking views seriously on the Hanover stretch of the Appalachian Trail. On Tuesday, writes Clare Shanahan in the VN, Appalachian Trail Conservancy staff and Hanover resident Joe Danna hiked up a section of the trail to check out the views. They weren’t just looking for a hit of awe, though as one ATC employee said, “I like when there’s mountains far out, and the blues get lighter.” As Shanahan writes, the ATC is creating a views “inventory” along the entire stretch of the trail, partly for hikers and partly to assess changes over time. This summer, they’re focusing on NH, rating things like color vividness and visual harmony. The Hanover field? Nice “forms and lines.”

Hiking Close to Home: Mayor-Niles Forest, Hanover. The trail network climbs through the forest that cloaks the west slope of Moose Mountain ridge, just below the North Peak—a forest that’s relatively young, with mostly deciduous northern hardwoods. Hikers have the chance to experience old woods roads, steep climbs, rewarding view points, the White Ledges at the AT corridor boundary, and the last of this year's blooming spring flowers. Near the Iby Road trailhead, hikers may spot flags set out by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance marking the proposed route for a new trail on the Hanover Conservancy's Hewes Ravine Property. Preview it 6/20.

Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, where is Plainfield’s zoning board hoping a cell tower company will put up its proposed tower? And how does the Lebanon City Council plan to honor Jim Vanier, the late youth center coordinator? You’ll find those and more at the link. Meanwhile, here’s NHPR’s New Hampshire quiz, while Seven Days’ Vermont quiz is here.

NH Supreme Court overturns murder conviction of Harmony Montgomery’s father. Back in 2024, Adam Montgomery was convicted in the 2019 death of five-year-old Harmony—who wasn’t even reported missing until 2021 and whose body was never found. Tried on both the murder charge and on charges of earlier physical abuse, Montgomery was found guilty and sentenced to 56 years to life on the murder charge. But yesterday, reports NHPR’s Josh Rogers, the Supreme Court voided the murder conviction, ruling that the separate charges should never have been joined in a single trial. Doing so, they wrote, “jeopardized the defendant’s right to a fair trial.”

Neighbors helping neighbors—via an app. That’s basically how entrepreneur Rustam Sengupta describes Tuktu, a service he launched in Canada in 2022 and that he’s now rolling out in Vermont after moving to the state last summer. While services exist to help older or disabled Vermonters over a longer term, he tells Seven Days’ Alison Novak, “Tuktu is designed for the many needs that fall outside that model: one hour of companionship, a ride to an appointment, help with groceries, light household tasks, tech help…” With $100K in seed money from the Hartland-based Center on Rural Innovation, it pairs gig workers with people needing an hour or two of help.

Proof that “with heart (and a little flour and love), anything is possible.” Winners and finalists of the World Food Photography Awards have been announced, and they capture the breadth of the human experience around food—community, joy, labor. A woman eating along in a Soviet-era sanatorium in Tajikistan is the overall winner. Vegetables piled high on rickshaws in a slightly misty morning market in Bangladesh, a dive into the world of winemaking, a communal banquet in China… “Granny's Welcoming Gift of Love” by Kellie Carter, might be the sweetest scene imaginable—a warm and comforting smile in a worn and cozy home. 

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

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Idris Elba and Angélique Kidjo team up, in English and Fon (a tip of the hat to Kidjo’s Beninese roots), for a melodic ode to Africa.

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