Daybreak Monday, 3/9/26

Sun and clouds, warm. Looks like some clouds will hang around through midday, then begin clearing out—but meanwhile, temps will be rising at least into the upper 50s and probably across the 60-degree mark. There’s a low-level jet of air passing through later today, bringing wind gusts into the 20 mph range this afternoon. Meanwhile, the real attention is on ice breakups: Right now, the Ausable, Great Chazy, Mad, and Missisquoi rivers over to the west have ice jams with some water backing up behind them (see item down below), and with warm temps today and tomorrow more rivers are expected to see them, though flooding will likely be minor (at least, until rain arrives Wednesday).

Before the snow goes… Daybreak readers watch the play of sun and shadow.

Cornish voters nix school renovation bond. The measure didn’t even get a majority of the vote, let alone the 60 percent it needed to pass, going down 208-142 at Saturday’s annual school district meeting, reports Patrick O’Grady in the Valley News. As O’Grady writes, while the school board laid out the need for $11.4 million in repairs it foresaw to a building first constructed in 1950, no one spoke against the bond—which went down anyway. Voters also defeated a proposed tuition agreement with Plainfield, though they did approve the school budget.

Dartmouth’s libraries face over $1 million in budget cuts. That’s according to emails sent by dean of libraries Susanne Mehrer to library staff starting late last year, reports The Dartmouth’s Isabela Pierry; the cuts are over two years, for FY 2027-28. The cuts come as the college “work[s] to align expenses with revenue growth,” as spokesperson Jana Barnello tells Pierry, and are designed to “minimize the impact on our scholars and academic community, foregrounding access to library collections and critical library expertise,” Mehrer writes. Among other steps, the libraries will stop recruiting for three part-time and three full-time open positions.

SPONSORED: Check out virtual language programs from Dartmouth’s Rassias Center! Virtual Semi-intensive Language Programs run Mondays and Wednesdays for six weeks over Zoom beginning April 13. They are an opportunity to start learning a new language, refresh and reinforce a previously studied language, or master a language. Currently offering French, Spanish, and Italian. Learn more here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by The Rassias Center.

Film about Zack’s Place in Woodstock gets “the film festival treatment.” Written and directed by Woodstock resident and Emmy-winning TV director Jim Sadwith, Unscripted Lives focuses on seven members of the special-needs enrichment center created by Dail and Norm Frates as they prep for roles in one of the group’s annual musicals, “Beauty and the Beazt,” writes Justin Bigos in the Standard. Sadwith has directed musicals in the past, and “Each time I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I should be filming this. It’s so dramatic. A great film is great characters, and these guys are great characters,’” he tells Bigos—who talks to a range of participants about the film.

Windsor County’s District Court building reopens in WRJ. After a year of upgrades to the building’s HVAC system, boilers, windows, roof, lighting, security area, and clerks’ office, reports the VN’s Sofia Langlois, the family and criminal court divisions have moved back in. The improvements include new protective glass between the clerks and the public. “A lot of people that come to court are, rightfully so, very upset,” Superiour Court clerk Anne Damone tells Langlois. “And sometimes, they are angry, so it’s a safety concern for our staff.” The move ends a year of shuffling trials, hearings, and people in custody at Woodstock’s much smaller courthouse.

In NH, school concerts, sports, and public events can be recorded again. You may remember that it all screeched to a halt after the state Dept. of Ed told schools in December that a parental rights law signed last summer meant that they’d have to get prior written permission from parents to record all sporting events, school concerts, plays, and audio and video recordings for academic assessments. But now, reports NHPR’s Annmarie Timmins, a new law, signed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte last week, states that schools do not need written permission from parents “to record students for those activities or athletic events open to the public.”

VTDigger’s new top editor will step down. Geeta Anand, a celebrated former NYT and WRJ reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner, plans to return to teaching at UC Berkeley’s journalism school after June 30, the nonprofit news organization announced on Friday. She’ll be replaced temporarily by veteran VT journalist Sue Allen. Anand’s move a year after she took over will come shortly after Digger CEO Sky Barsch also steps down, and though Barsch tells Seven Days’ Lucy Tompkins that Anand is “dealing with some health issues,” both departures come amid stormy dealings with the staff union over AI. “It’s been a hard year,” Barsch tells Tompkins.

Ice jams. As you read above, by yesterday afternoon warm temps had loosened the ice along several rivers in New York State and western VT. WCAX has video of a two-mile-long jam along the Au Sable River, while WPTZ last night aired video of the Mad River jam affecting Moretown and Waitsfield.

The Monday Jigsaw: A 1907 postcard of Fairlee. As Cam Cross writes on his Curioustorian blog, “A kind soul loaned her postcard collection to the Norwich Historical Society for use in our weekly jigsaw puzzles. It was a beautiful set of cards, but this one of Fairlee from 1907 grabbed my attention. I had never seen it before, but had climbed those same cliffs.” In his post, Cam writes about how postcard companies enhanced photos, and offers two photos of the same view, more than a century apart.

And while we’re on jigsaws… A reader sends this thoroughly apt Harry Bliss cartoon from back when he was collaborating with Steve Martin. (Thanks, TW!)

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

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HEADS UP
Hop Film screens Sugarcane. Winner of the award for Best Directing in a US documentary at Sundance in 2024, Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s film follows three strands connected to the discovery of unmarked graves near St. Joseph’s Mission, a Catholic-run Indian residential school near Sugarcane Reserve in Canada. With a score by Dartmouth grad Mali Obomsawin, it’s “a gut-punch of a documentary,” the Hollywood Reporter wrote. Julian Brave NoiseCat will be on hand to talk about it afterward. 7 pm in the Loew Auditorium.

And for today...

Let’s get the week off to a jaunty start with the southern Italian band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, formed 50 years ago by Rina and Daniele Durante to celebrate Apulia’s nearly forgotten pizzica culture and bring it to wider attention. In the hands of their son, fiddler/frame drummer and singer Mauro Durante, the band’s gone global, performing with the likes of Ballaké Sissoko, Ibrahim Maalouf, Piers Faccini, and others. Its new album, il mito, came out recently: “In a world that loves to dance,” wrote a reviewer, “this is dance music with depth and power that explodes out of the speakers.”

See you tomorrow.

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