Daybreak Friday, 8/21/26

Patchy fog, then sun. For today, at least, we’re under high pressure, with temps once again reaching either side of 80 and mostly clear skies throughout the day. Things start to cloud up overnight ahead of two lows approaching the region, one from the west and the other traveling up the eastern seaboard, bringing a chance of showers both Saturday and Sunday. Lows tonight in the low or mid 50s.

Creatures of the night. “Beneath the shadows,” Ted Levin writes about Erin Donahue’s new trail cam video, “moonlight scattered on the forest floor like shattered glass, a white-footed mouse follows a urine trail of its own making, a drop-by-drop highway laid down over many rambles. Whiskers twitch. Brushing everything—stems, leaves, stones—creating a roadmap inside its skull. Eyes aglow, tiny lanterns reflect moonlight off the rear of the eyes, recycling what little the night provides. Behind its rod-packed retina, a barred owl also recycles light—an eerie red eyeshine. Two eyeshines meet, one hoisted into the gossiping leaves to sustain the other.”

Vital Communities says it won’t pull the plug on the listservs just yet. The nonprofit yesterday faced a firestorm of pushback from listserv users and the lists’ moderators, many of them asking for more time to explore alternatives instead of the two-day window Vital Communities had initially given it before it had planned to stop accepting posts tonight at 8. In a post to its website and the lists yesterday afternoon, it announced, “We hear you and are working on a revised timeline. The active town-based listservs will continue to accept posts beyond 8/21.” The specific timeline will be announced later. That and more developments in a Daybreak update at the link.

Woodstock Selectboard to explore hiring forensic accountant over legal fees. At issue, reports Mike Donoghue in the VT Standard, is “whether and how much of town tax money may have been misappropriated to the village to pay for legal fees in the effort by the municipal manager, Eric Duffy, to demote” former police chief Joe Swanson. The board voted 4-0 Tuesday to research what it would take to hire an accountant, along with the cost to taxpayers. At the start, Board Chair Susan Ford—”who has been under fire in recent weeks for a possible conflict of interest on the issue,” Donoghue writes—recused herself from both the discussion and the vote. 

Leb’s Colburn Park will host a celebration of life for Jim Vanier tomorrow. The former Carter Community Building drop-in center coordinator died in December, and as Michael Coughlin Jr. reports in the Valley News, his friends and admirers are throwing a gathering tomorrow from 10 am to 2 pm, with speakers, a bagpipe tribute, and more. “He touched a lot of lives,” Richard Tobin tells Coughlin. “(Jim) was about the youth and the families and the needy families in Lebanon and wasn’t about the almighty dollar — he understood that and donated his life to it.” Coughlin also reports that the Jim Vanier Youth Fund, created to carry on his generosity, has raised $16K so far.

SPONSORED: Looking to make your walk in the woods a bit more magical? Come to VINS for our annual Fairy Festival: Saturday, August 22, 10 AM–5 PM! Build fairy houses, hunt for hidden fairy friends, and enjoy crafts, face painting, a bubble lab, and animal programs. Enter our Fairy House Building Contest for a chance to win prizes, then catch shapeshifting sprites, turtle tea time, and stilt-walking storytellers. Costumes highly encouraged! Sponsored by VINS.

Former Tunbridge fire department bookkeeper gets 12 days in jail for embezzlement. Jacqueline Higgins’ sentencing yesterday, after she changed her plea from “not guilty” to “guilty” and took a plea deal, also includes eight years’ probation, but even so, Tunbridge Fire Chief Simon Bradford tells the VN’s Sofia Langlois, “A whopping 12 days…I personally feel that 12 days is not up to what fits the crime.” Higgins, who left her job as Williamstown’s town manager after last year’s charges were filed, is believed to have stolen nearly $200K; Bradford claims it was closer to $240K, Langlois reports.

“History has its way of forcing itself to the limelight.” That was Evan O’Brien, creative manager at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, in Sharon earlier this week. He and others from the museum were in town, near the crest of a hill in the oldest section of Pine Hill Cemetery, to place a commemorative marker beside the grave of Anthony Morse, “a Sharon resident who historians believe was among the approximately 150 to 160 men who participated in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773,” writes Tim Calabro in The Herald. Morse was just 20 when he joined the revolt then served throughout the Revolutionary War, eventually settling in Sharon.

SPONSORED: Join Eastman Golf Links now for the 2027 season and get free greens fees for the remainder of the 2026 season starting Sept. 1. Pay 50% of the current individual or family membership rate before playing; the remainder, plus any 2027 increase, is due by March 31, 2027. Membership benefits and 2026 rates can be found at https://www.eastmannh.org/golf/membership. Contact our friendly and professional staff with questions at [email protected] or 603-863-4500. Sponsored by Eastman Golf Links.

In WRJ, “odd bits and bobs” merge into an image. Mary Tapogna is a mosaic artist, and in Seven Days, Alice Dodge offers a glimpse of her show at Kishka Gallery. “A pink unicorn head is oddly akin to a portrait of Richard Simmons,” she writes. “An image of MCA from the Beastie Boys with the Dalai Lama is less out of place than one might imagine.” The show runs through Aug. 29, and Dodge writes, “Viewers shouldn’t miss this glimpse into the workings of Tapogna’s brain, though the gallery currently has limited hours: Gallerists Ben Finer and Bevan Dunbar welcomed twins the same day the exhibition opened. Congratulations to them.” Saturdays noon-6 pm and by appt.

Hiking Close to Home: Greensboro Ridge Natural Area, Hanover. The Hanover Conservancy’s 112-acre property offers breathtaking landscape as it climbs up the ridge and connects with the Appalachian Trail near Velvet Rocks, says the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. Wearing proper footwear is recommended to avoid slipping, as hikers will enjoy varied terrain shortly into the hike, including soft grass paths, wooded trails, and some more-challenging footwork as the trail heads over bedrock outcroppings. Parking on Velvet Rocks Dr., off Greensboro Road. 

Daybreak’s Upper Valley News Quiz. Were you paying attention this week? Because we’ve got questions! Like, what makes its debut in White River Junction next week? And which two services has Dartmouth Health announced it intends to shut down? 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 House censures member. Voting 185 to 93, the chamber opted on Wednesday to censure GOP Rep. James Spillane, who represents Auburn, Candia and Deerfield, for making what the Legislative Ethics Committee last month called “offensive and demeaning” posts on X toward two other members. Spillane had argued at a June hearing that he’d made the posts as a private citizen and it was protected speech. On the floor Wednesday, reports the Monitor’s Emilia Wisniewski (via NHPR), GOP Rep. Bob Lynn replied, “We also have a First Amendment right to say loudly and clearly that his actions violate our ethics rules and that we condemn him for his behavior.”

Unemployment rate in NH continues to decline, while hiring picks up slightly. The rate sat at 2.8 percent in July, according to the state, a notch below June’s 2.9 percent figure. That’s well below the national rate of 4.1 percent, notes NHPR’s Jackie Harris, and coupled with some 2,620 more people than last year who are employed, is a promising sign; if there’d been no gain in employment numbers, it would have indicated discouraged workers were no longer looking for jobs. While healthcare is adding jobs, several other sectors, including construction, are struggling to find workers. “I could hire way more people today,” one builder says. “I have such a problem.”

VT to ease up on car inspection rules. The changes are slated for Sept. 1, reports VT Public’s Peter Hirschfeld, after a legislative committee yesterday approved changes prepared by the DMV over the summer. Among other things, mechanics can now pass tires that have “weather cracks” and brake rotors that have some rust on them—though not if that rust has progressed to pitting. In all, the new regs make over a dozen changes. “Ultimately I believe the main goal is just affordability for Vermonters — how to make the inspection process more affordable and overall just owning a motor vehicle in this state more affordable,” Ben Shelp, the DMV’s chief inspector, tells Hirschfeld.

Vermonters on the health insurance exchange will see some of the lowest rate increases in the country next year. That’s after the Green Mountain Care Board significantly cut the rates BCBS and MVP had proposed for the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace, reports VT Public’s Lola Duffort. Still, she notes, it’s scant comfort: The modest 1-percent-to-6-percent increases “will come on top of prices that are currently the highest in the nation.” The state’s health care advocate, Duffort writes, notes that a “‘small increase’ on a ‘very high rate’ won’t do enough to relieve the affordability pressure Vermonters are feeling.”

A “profound breach of trust”: Officers of mountain-bike trail organizations built an illegal trail on state land. Two of the very people who were supposed to be working with the state to develop legal bike trails were responsible for “the Shangri-la of Vermont mountain bike trails, a hidden, highly technical two-loop course spanning 8,000 feet,” writes Kevin McCallum in Seven Days. The state spent years investigating before working out a massive $35K settlement. Some say rogue trails like that one, in Nebraska Valley, are “a threat to Vermont’s wildlands.” Trail hounds, though, claim it’s easier to fly under the radar than go the legit route, because “the state’s default position is to identify all the reasons not to approve something.”

If the cap fits … Cap aside, a polar bear cub named Momota is no dunce. The eight-month-old, who lives at the GAO aquarium in Oga City, Japan, has decided that traffic cones make dandy hats, though the cones themselves haven’t quite mastered the art of staying put. A video of the fashion show has gone viral (as has another of his mom’s exasperated reaction), but it’s not the cub’s only trick, as you can see from the aquarium’s blog. 

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

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HEADS UP

There’s plenty going on this weekend, from the Cornish Fair, which starts up today, to Fledge Fest in Tunbridge to art openings to lots of live music. Check it all out in the Weekend Heads Up.

And for today...

Oh heck, let’s take a break from the new and go with the tried and true. Sort of. Here’s guitarist Josh Turner with actor and singer-songwriter Brendan Jacob Smith (Art Garfunkel in the national tour of The Simon & Garfunkel Story) and fellow actor and musician Jonah Bobo (Paul Simon in some performances with Smith), jauntily covering not Simon & Garfunkel, but Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Marrakesh Express”—and diving right into those harmonies. Stick around for the bloopers.

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