Daybreak Monday, 10/26/26

Sunny, then cloudy for a bit. We start the day as we’ve been, with mostly blue skies and temps climbing from the night’s below-freezing low. But then a weak cold front comes through at some point, and while dry air close to the surface will almost certainly keep any rain from developing, we’ll see clouds build in this afternoon and evening (until high pressure tomorrow chases them away again). Highs today in the low or mid 60s, down to around 30 overnight.

Nice day? … Check! That’s how Peggy McDerment perfectly captions her photo from Hartford Village the other day. You’ll get it when you see it.

Hey, some good roadway news for a change! Leb’s Trues Brook Road gets a better bridge. The project to replace the deteriorating bridge over Bloods Brook has been in the works for two years, and last week, reports Alex Ebrahimi in the Valley News, the new, wider bridge opened to one-way traffic. As Ebrahimi writes, the former bridge along the road that links 12A in West Leb to Meriden “was only 17½-feet wide and did not have shoulders for pedestrians and cyclists. The new bridge has a total width of 32 feet.” This week, the contractor will finish removing the old bridge, install curbing, and continue paving. The new bridge should open fully early next month.

Behind the scenes at Lou’s and The Four Aces during their busy season. As Molly Hughes wrote in the VN over the weekend, the two diners have been serving hundreds of people a day over the last few months, with long lines of people waiting for a table or space at the counter. But business will drop starting next month, and as Lou’s owner Jarrett Berke tells Hughes, December-February brings “scary days.” In the meantime, diners are flocking to them—for the “regular, easy, everyday food,” as one puts it, along with the counter conversations and the whole diner feel. Hughes talks to owners, servers, and diners for her look at what it takes to keep both spots running.

New UVLists to start up this week. As Dave Celone writes on his Upper Valley VT/ NH Musings substack, announcements to the listservs currently maintained by Vital Communities went out last week that the 38 town lists will migrate over to the new, independent UVLists this week, possibly as soon as tomorrow—the day that the new nonprofit running them takes over. Celone is on the group’s executive committee, and he writes that its volunteer members are operating with a “high level of transparency, camaraderie, goodwill, and shared purpose.” Celone also includes Kurth Bemis’s list post with instructions for the migration: If you want to stay on your list(s), you’re all set.

Wage study finds most Hanover town employees paid below market average. In all, reports Sofia Langlois in the VN, the town employs 166 people, with nearly four-fifths of them on the police force, the fire department, in public works, or at the Howe Library. A consulting firm’s study over the past year found that 108 employees have been earning “below the midpoint for their roles,” Langlois writes, based on a comparison with Lebanon, Hartford, and Newport locally, plus towns like Middlebury, Nashua, Keene, and Laconia. The study recommends a new pay scale, plus an average raise of about $3,100 per employee.

A crash course in New England data centers. Here’s something you probably didn’t know: There are about 100 of them around the region, including one atop the Macy’s in downtown Boston and the largest of them all, a data center in Lowell, MA that’s nearly the size of Fenway Park. Even so, New England’s data centers are dwarfed by AI training centers out west. Late last week, WBUR’s Miriam Wasser posted an incredibly useful look at the whole issue, from the difference between run-of-the-mill data centers and the massive AI training centers that are springing up; the size and energy usage of current data centers in New England; why the region doesn’t have big ones (land, local control, high electricity rates); and what’s coming down the pike.

“This is not something you want to get your necktie caught in.” That’s Howard Romero, part of a small crew in Johnson, VT who gather once a year to run a so-called “one-lunger” apple grinder. Radio producer Erica Heilman visited Johnson recently to catch the cider prep in action: “Runty little wild apples and big, beautiful orchard apples lined up and ready for feeding into the grinder,” whose resulting little bits—the pomace—gets stacked on burlap-lined flats then squeezed. This all took place with about 60 friends and neighbors hanging around, “having a deeply uncomplicated good time,” Erica reports. It’s been going on for 32 years, one organizer tells her. “It's been really a wonderful thing. Nobody's been hurt. Nobody's been poisoned.”

The Monday Jigsaw: The mill at the Quechee covered bridge around 1930. “The bridge was built in 1885, the third on the spot since 1769,” writes Cam Cross on his Curioustorian blog. The mill itself “began in 1825 as John Downer's six-story brick building at the falls. In 1840 it became, by the National Register's account, the first mill in the country to make shoddy, cloth from shredded rags and new wool.” What’s left of it, of course, now houses Simon Pearce.

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

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HEADS UP

Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center hosts US Rep. Maggie Goodlander. The New Hampshire Democrat is running for re-election next week to represent the congressional district that includes this region. She’ll be talking with the Rockefeller Center’s director, Anna Mahoney. 5 pm in Filene Auditorium as well as livestreamed.

“Charting Vermont Traffic Stop Race Data” at the Quechee Club. Pat Autilio will talk about an April UVM study to which he contributed that found that Black and Hispanic drivers in VT are more likely to be stopped by police than white drivers, but are less likely to be found carrying contraband if their vehicles are searched—and about changes made by the state police that have made apparent racial bias less likely with the VSP than local agencies. 5 pm in the Quechee Club Main Dining Room or online (reg. necessary, [email protected]). No link.

Dartmouth’s Dickey Center with “Was Integrating China into the Rules-Based International Order a Mistake?” Ali Wyne, a senior US-China researcher with the International Crisis Group, a global nonprofit focused on preventing wars, will talk with government prof Jennifer Lind about the effort to make China a stakeholder in the world order, whether it worked, and what it means now. 5:30 pm in Haldeman 041 and online.

And for today...

We’ll start the week with the father-son duo of David and Nathan Gusakov, who perform as Last Train to Zinkov and who surely are among the few musical acts to master banjo klezmer. Here they are earlier this month at the Anonymous Coffeehouse with “Scotch Knee No. 49.”

See you tomorrow.

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