Daybreak Monday 10/6/25

Sunny, mid 80s. High pressure’s still in control today, though it’s going to be shifting east over the course of the day. Still, we’re due lots of sunshine and warmth—there’ll no doubt be some record highs—along with breezy winds from the south or southwest; along with low humidity, especially in these parts, conditions have fire officials on edge until rain arrives tomorrow night. Meanwhile, tonight it’s clear skies, lows in the low 50s.

So is it too late for flowers? Heck, since it’s summer again…

If you happened to see a large helicopter taking off from Leb Airport Saturday… The US Forest Service chopper that’s been staged there was called in to dump a couple thousand gallons of water on a wildfire atop Brownell Mountain in VT’s Chittenden County that burned over the weekend. As a state fire specialist tells WPTZ, the goal was to contain the fire to the acre it had burned: “The soils are so dry right now that the helicopter is not going to put the fire out. It bought us the evening to assemble the crew to run a hose up to the fire.” The fire appears to be human-caused, officials say, and it was fully contained as of last night.

Thetford store back on the market. The Thetford Center Village Store is for sale again, reports Nick Clark in Sidenote, “this time with a noticeably lower price tag and a mountain of uncertainty about its future.” As Clark writes, the store for decades was both “a literal and a social fuel stop,” with its post office, gas pumps, and stocked shelves. But it closed in 2022, the gas tanks and pumps were removed by the company that supplied them, and the post office was shuttered “indefinitely” in May. A small group of locals are trying to resuscitate the building, but they’re hampered by septic regs. Clark digs into the efforts to revive the store—and the obstacles in the way.

SPONSORED: Got big costume plans? The Montshire can help! Cardboard Costumes is a full day of building at the Montshire Museum of Science on Saturday, October 11th. We have brand-new Chompshop tabletop cardboard cutters, Makedo tools, cardboard screws, hot glue guns, and more! We also have plenty of boxes, but feel free to bring more. This event is for all ages and is $5 with regular Museum admission. Sponsored by the Montshire Museum of Science.

Thrift shopping in the Upper Valley. Marion Umpleby’s piece in the Valley News over the weekend is partly about the community of shoppers looking for deals—as one regular at the Gifford Medical Center Auxiliary Thrift Shop tells her, “I come for the fellowship”—but it’s also a helpful guide to what’s out there. A couple of stores have closed recently, but in addition to the LISTEN mega-store, there’s the Gifford shop, Uplifting Thrifting in WRJ (though owner Gail Egner isn’t sure about its future), the new secondhand boutique Rue and Ren in WRJ and the vintage store Mahshu in Woodstock, and Keep It Simple, in Wilder. Umpleby gives the backstory on each.

Now you can follow along with the Hartford police… On Friday, the department announced that it’s begun making a series of monthly reports easily available online, from overall activity and arrests, to “calls for service involving the unhoused,” to traffic tickets and warnings, to data from the digital speed signs on Sykes Mountain Ave. and Quechee Main Street (Sykes doesn’t seem to be generating data right now; in Quechee, the average speed is 35 mph in a 25 mph zone). Most of the reports (arrests are the exception) don’t include names, but do include incident labels, from harassment to accidents to noise disturbances.

And you can follow along with Bicknell’s Thrushes headed south. Or, more specifically, across the ocean to the island of Hispaniola, where they’ll over-winter. Over the summer, scientists at Norwich’s VT Center for Ecostudies fitted 19 of the birds on Mt. Mansfield with tiny backpacks and receivers. As they head south, they’ll ping towers all the way to the coastal Carolinas. So the organization’s created a contest to guess which of the 19 will be the first to head out over the ocean (or, if you want to be technical, to ping a coastal tower at night). There’s Balsam Betty (a “bruiser”), Teardrop Tommy (blessed with long wings), the youngster New Nelly… More info at the link.

Federal judge blocks NH’s public-school ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. As Jeremy Margolis writes in the Monitor (via NHPR), the law—which passed the legislature earlier this year—was “designed to root out initiatives like implicit bias training, DEI assessments, and critical race theory.” But in her ruling on Thursday, district court Judge Landya B. McCafferty wrote that its definition of DEI is “so far-reaching that it prohibits long-accepted—even legally required—teaching and administrative practices.” Her decision applies to 133 of the 180 districts in the state.

In NH, foliage is drawing big crowds—but, so far, none of last year’s “chaos.” You may remember that last fall, leaf-peeper overcrowding on the Artists Bluff Trail in Franconia Notch drew lots of unwelcome coverage for the state. This time around, reports WMUR’s Mike Moses, the state’s prepared. It added a new, 1.2-mile one-way loop at Artists Bluff, “designed to ease bottlenecks and improve safety,” and put up new roadside barriers around Franconia Notch to prevent illegal parking near trailheads. Still, reports Travel and Tour World, officials are seeing more accidents along the Kanc and at spots like Artists Bluff “linked to poor parking and blocked roads.”

VT Fish & Wildlife to hunters: Don’t use deer lures containing deer urine or other deer bodily fluids. That’s because they can carry the mutant prion that creates Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and moose. The illness so far hasn’t been detected in the state—and officials want to keep it that way, since once established, it’s proved impossible to eliminate, reports the Bennington Banner. “No single buck is worth risking the health of Vermont’s entire deer herd,” says Nick Fortin, Vermont’s deer biologist. “If someone feels they must use a lure, there are legal, synthetic alternatives that are just as effective.”

Why the closing of a Burlington nightclub has made a stir. The club is Nectar’s, and it announced this summer that seemingly never-ending construction in downtown Burlington, along with rising costs, had put such a dent in its foot traffic that it was shutting its doors. The AP’s Amanda Swinhart outlines why it’s been such a big deal: The club, named for founder Nectar Rorris, was home ground to Phish when the band was getting started—its 1992 album, “A Picture of Nectar”, is a tribute—and has been a way station for touring acts—Anais Mitchell, B.B. King, the Decembrists. Swinhart outlines the club’s history and legacy.

The Monday Jigsaw: UVM. Actually, it’s a “linen” postcard featuring the university from the 1950s, and you’ll recognize the type: retouched black-and-white photographs overlaid with “vivid, hand-tinted colors” and churned out in the ‘40s and ‘50s by a “powerhouse” Chicago printer, writes Cam Cross on his Curioustorian blog entry this week, meant to “sell a town, a building, a vacation destination — often exaggerating its charm or modernity.” In his post, Cam includes other examples around VT and NH.

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

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HEADS UP

The Claremont “mini-jazz festival” kicks off today. It brings together cornetist and Coast Jazz director Taylor Ho Bynum, drummer and composer Tomas Fujiwara, and oud master Mohamed Abozekry and his sextet for three days of performances and workshops. Things get going this evening at 6:30 with a performance by Bynum and Fujiwara, followed by a chat, improv, and community jam tomorrow, and a performance by Abozekry and his ensemble on Wednesday. At the Claremont Creative Center.

Hop Film screens Black Box Diaries with filmmaker Shiori Itō in person. Itō’s documentary “unfolds like a thriller,” the Hop writes, as it traces what happened after she decided to go public in 2017 with a rape accusation against a journalist and biographer who was close to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. 7 pm in the Loew, discussion with Itō follows.

And for today...

Just in time for the season, Emmy-nominated animator and musician Louie Zong’s latest: a pair of ghosts, a grand but empty theater, and a waltz.

See you tomorrow.

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