GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Daybreak is brought to you this week with help from Crossroads Academy. Is your child bored at school? Discover the joy of learning at Crossroads! Families of children in grades K–8 are invited to our January 29 Open House. Explore classrooms, meet inspiring teachers, and see curiosity, confidence, and strong foundations come alive. Sign up here.
Chance of light snow, mostly cloudy. Snow’s tapering off from northwest to southeast today, and if there is any, it’ll be done by around noon. Highs today in the upper 20s under partly to mostly cloudy skies; things turn colder overnight, with gusty winds due through around midnight and lows at best in the low teens.
Icebow. It was, as Harriet Dumas writes from Hartland, a “fabulous winter morning sky” on Friday, with a near perfect icebow arching over the horizon.
Backcountry skiers rescued from Mt. Moosilauke in “blizzard like” conditions. Not long after dark on Saturday, NH Fish & Game got notice of two skiers stranded in deep snow on the mountain’s summit, with no warm gear or light. Along with volunteers from Pemi Valley Search and Rescue, they used snowmobiles to get four miles up the Old Carriage Road, then hiked another mile and a half to a drainage on the north side of the mountain, fighting through deep snow and thick trees before they found the skiers around 11 pm. “Due to the deep snow and rugged terrain, it took over an hour to get the skiers back up and onto the trail,” Fish & Game writes, but everyone made it down. Pemi Search and Rescue has a gallery of photos. It’s serious winter up there!
After nearly a year of turmoil, Bradford VT has a new fire chief. You probably remember this: Last April, after the selectboard took on oversight of the department, longtime chief Ryan Terrill resigned, followed by a majority of firefighters. Now, reports Sofia Langlois in the Valley News, Nate Brooks has been named by the selectboard to a three-year term as chief following a vote by the department’s current members to back him. Though Terrill says “he does not have confidence in Brooks’ leadership,” Langlois writes, Brooks points out that the department voted unanimously in his favor.
At Billings, a “carefully curated ode” to Vermont. “Our Working Lands: Photography by Caleb Kenna” opened Jan. 10, a blend of the accomplished photographer’s near-abstract aerial landscape shots and portraits of people who work that land. Kenna got his start as a newspaper photographer, writes Justin Bigos in the VT Standard: “As a photographer,” Kenna tells him, “I would often be asked to look for ‘wild art’, which is that standalone photo that tells a story….That’s sort of ingrained into the way I work.” He goes on, “We do have such incredible, beautiful landscapes that we need to protect them. And there are so many fascinating people working the land.”
Food and drink upstairs, dogs downstairs: Enfield’s Bark & Bevy opens. The new indoor dog park—with a bar and restaurant where dog owners can socialize—opened its doors last week, writes the VN’s Sofia Langlois. Owners Anne Chapin and Marshall Banks drew the model from a dog bar in North Carolina, adding a restaurant to make it more family friendly. Though there’s been social media concern about health and safety there, Langlois writes that the state “requires a strict separation between the floor where dogs are allowed and the floor where food and drinks are available,” and staff attending to dogs are not allowed upstairs to avoid cross-contamination.
School finances. Big votes coming up…
The first set is in the Woodstock-area Mountain Views Supervisory Union, where three bond votes are set for town meeting in March. Back on Jan. 8, writes Emma Stanton in the Standard, the district finalized two smaller bonds to deal with immediate infrastructure needs—a $300,000 wastewater removal system and a $250,000 boiler replacement bond—and a $111.9 million bond for a new middle/high school, of which district taxpayers would be on the hook for $83.9 million. That’s about $15 million less than the new-school bond that failed in 2024. Stanton talks to school and district officials about the new vote and the current state of school buildings.
Meanwhile, writes the VN’s Clare Shanahan, voters in Hartford are looking at a $58.7 million school budget, a 6.5 percent boost over the current year; it would produce a $533.60 tax increase on a $400K home. The budget “contains no major increases in staffing or programs over the current year,” Shanahan writes; instead, it reflects 8.3 percent more for salaries, a 7.4 percent jump in health insurance costs, 3.1 percent more for contracted services, and testing for PCBs and lead contamination—required but not paid for by the state.
Thinking about planting fruit trees in the spring? It’s not too early for the catalogs, say Emma Erler and Jessica Hunt for NHPR’s Homegrown New Hampshire—but as Erler says, you kinda want to be choosy: “I want to grow things that are going to have a high rate of success in New Hampshire.” That means, for instance, getting a tree from a grower in a northern climate, which will be hardier than one of the same variety grown in the South. It also means paying attention to rootstocks, planting at least two of each type of fruit tree for pollination, and looking at varieties that are pest- and frost-resistant. Erler’s got recommendations for apples, peaches, and plums…
XC star Jessie Diggins: “Sometimes, having a really, really bad day is what you need to continue to have good days.” That was the US Olympic standout talking to young Bill Koch League skiers last summer about the 50-km skate race at last year’s world championships in Norway, which she went into as a medal favorite and realized, three minutes in, that she didn’t have a chance. Even so, writes Kevin O’Connor in a VTDigger profile, she “pushed forward for the next two hours and 40 minutes,” coming in 22nd. “When you win a race, you don’t really learn a whole lot,” she says, “but when you lose, you get a chance to reexamine: Is this still fun?” She decided it is, and will end her career next month at the Olympics and the World Cup in Lake Placid in March.
The Monday Jigsaw: Lloyd’s American Railroad Map. The Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross continues his dive into four young Hartford men and their emigration to Kansas in 1854—and how it could be that Joseph Savage got to Boston after his brother and cousins, even though he left before them. “Does anyone know the [train] routes available between White River Junction and Boston in 1854?” he asks in this week’s Curioustorian post.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
THERE'S SOME GREAT DAYBREAK SWAG! Like Daybreak tote bags, sweatshirts, head-warming beanies, t-shirts, long-sleeved tees, the Daybreak jigsaw, those perfect hand-fitting coffee/tea mugs, and as always, "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Check it all out at the link!
HEADS UP
It’s Martin Luther King Day, and there are observances today in Springfield, VT at the town library (from 3:30 to 5 pm) and farther afield in New Hampshire (including Concord and Peterborough). Dartmouth’s observances include a multifaith celebration this Thursday and a “fireside chat” next Wednesday, Jan. 28, with Dr. Bernice A. King, MLK’s daughter.
And for today...
Continuing with Chad Finer’s series of Upper Valley concerts over the years, here’s guitarist Spencer Lewis with “Lida, Angel of Mercy” at Seven Stars Arts.
See you tomorrow.
Looking for all of the hikes, Enthusiasms, daybreak photos, or music that Daybreak has published over the years? Go here!
And always, if you’re not a subscriber yet:
Want to catch up on Daybreak itself (or find that item you trashed by mistake the other day)? You can find everything on Daybreak’s homepage.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to visit daybreak.news to sign up.
Thank you!
