Daybreak Thursday, 1/15/26

Chance of rain to start, mostly cloudy… and then colder by the hour. The big question wherever you are is when temps will transition from above freezing, which they were all night, to below freezing. There was a lot of uncertainty in the models yesterday, but it looks like around here, that won’t happen until this afternoon, after any rain has stopped falling. When it does, though, be aware that standing water on roadways will freeze. Meanwhile, clouds will slowly part, and we might see a little sun out there. Temps will continue to fall into the low teens by daybreak tomorrow.

In the freeze. This was before everything melted, but since everything’s re-freezing, it seems timely. On Whitcomb Hill in Strafford, by Annemieke McLane.

First fire department call of the day. In Windsor yesterday morning, writes town manager Tom Marsh, Fire Chief Kevin McAllister “saw an injured barred owl on the side of Route 5 on his way to work, stopped, and brought it into the station. The patient is now at VINS!”

Time for Dear Daybreak! This week’s collection of images and anecdotes from around the Upper Valley contains just two items: James AuBuchon’s breathtaking sunrise photo looing out toward Lake Sunapee away in the distance; and Lisa Silbert’s wryly told story about a bear, a chicken coop, an electric fence, and a lesson in rural life. Plus a new slogan to live by.

Construction worker falls 20 feet from Thompson Arena ladder. The worker, who hasn’t been identified, landed at the bottom of an elevator shaft in Tuesday morning’s incident and was conscious when firefighters arrived, reports Alex Ebrahimi in the Valley News. Firefighter/paramedics stabilized him; their colleagues then used a rope system with pulleys, a cervical spine board, and a basket to bring him to ground level. He was taken to DHMC with “serious but non-life threatening injuries.” The arena work is to “modernize locker rooms and team spaces,” Ebrahimi writes. In a statement, the college’s Jana Barnello writes, “OSHA and internal safety investigations are underway. Our thoughts are with the individual.”

SPONSORED: Looking for a free, community-friendly way to support your health next month? The Four Pillars of Health: Nutrition, presented by CCBA and Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, invites you to a free, in-person session focused on decoding popular diets. Led by Dianne Kelecy, MS, RD, LD, Clinical Dietitian at APD, the session will take place Wednesday, Feb. 4, from noon to 1 pm and 6 pm to 7 pm at CCBA, the Carter Community Building Association, First Floor Meeting Room, 1 Taylor Street, Lebanon, NH. Everyone’s welcome. Registration is appreciated but not required. Hit the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital.

Coming up: a fundraiser for artist Gary Hamel, great Italian food (and West African music), and more. In Artful, Susan Apel lays out a few events to know about. As you know, Hamel lost his house in a recent fire, and tomorrow, the Enfield Shaker Museum is holding an exhibition of his work that doubles as a fundraiser. On Jan. 31, drummer and chef Steve Ferraris is doing a popup Osteria Chiara in Thetford to highlight West African musicians Mamadou Diabaté and Balla Kouyaté. Artistree’s knitting along to the film of Pride and Prejudice—and Susan nods to Still North’s sixth birthday. Details on Hamel and knitting in this afternoon’s Weekend Heads Up.

What if you could use psilocybin to treat depression without hallucinations? The psychedelic compound “has been shown in trials to provide long-term treatment for depression and anxiety,” writes Morgan Kelly for Dartmouth News, but there are those side effects. Now, a new Dartmouth study has found a neural receptor “that promotes the therapeutic benefits of psilocybin but is non-hallucinogenic,” Kelly reports; it may provide a new target for medications that are safer. “We want to understand where exactly the therapeutic effects of psilocybin come from,” says lead author and PhD candidate Sixtine Fleury. Kelly digs into the science involved.

SPONSORED: PoemTown Randolph is looking forward to its 13th year—and to new poems! It’s now soliciting original poetry; selected poems will be printed on broadsides to be posted in windows on the streets of Randolph and along the river trail during the month of April, and to be featured in the 13th print anthology, PoemTown Randolph 2026. You’ll find instructions for submissions and information regarding PoemTown Randolph's writer grants on the website at the burgundy link or here. The deadline for poetry submissions is Feb. 15. Sponsored by PoemTown Randolph.

It wasn’t just you: Verizon outage hits Upper Valley. It’s unclear how many people it affected nationally, but Downdetector, the service that tracks outages both large and small, says that over a million people registered problems yesterday. In the Upper Valley, reports the VN’s Sofia Langlois, “hundreds of confused cellphone users…flocked to the Verizon store on Route 12A after their phones suddenly lost service”; employees stood outside to let them know it was a national problem. In a statement last night, Verizon wrote: “As of 10:15 PM ET, the outage has been resolved. If customers are still having an issue, we encourage them to restart their devices to reconnect to the network. For those affected, we will provide account credits.”

Now, this is a job. “We all want to be Hugh, and we all wish we had his job,” skier Shaun King tells WCAX’s Elissa Borden at Smuggler’s Notch. That’s because every day during the season, Hugh Johnson’s job is to fill people in on snow conditions at the resort—not just by looking at the data, but by hitting the slopes. And he’s been filling skiers in for three decades now—several times a day. “The job really is about trying to make the most of people’s day,” he tells Borden. And, it being Vermont, about finding euphemisms for “icy” some years. “Well, that’s where it comes into play with all your granulars, you know, with frozen granular or loose granular….”

When necessity is the mother of cookie invention. For several years, South Burlington’s Chelsea Curtis was determined to deal with Crohn’s Disease through diet, but that strictly limited what she could eat. Fast forward to 2023, when Curtis enlisted a small team to help her launch Chelsea Approved, a line of baking mixes. They’re recipes that “anyone would be happy to gobble up, not ones relegated to the ‘special diet’ corner of the potluck table,” writes Seven Days’ Melissa Pasanen. The vegan and gluten-free mixes are now in 110 stores, including in VT and NH, and the company’s frozen cookies are being popped in ovens at some 30 colleges. 

Bite-sized music nostalgia nuggets. Music buff Jeff Lyons just posted his third punch list of trivia on his website Go Jeff Go. Fun facts: A bunch of band names come from other bands’ songs, including Death Cab for Cutie, Radiohead, and Cocteau Twins. Aerosmith’s only number one hit on US Billboard Hot 100 wasn’t written by Aerosmith. The guys on Arctic Monkeys, Tom Waits, and Matchbox 20 album covers aren’t in those bands. And—because she had to be there somewhere—Taylor Swift bumped Don McCLean and the Beatles for the longest song at the top of the charts. (“All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” runs 10:13; “American Pie” is 8:33 and “Hey Jude” 7:11.)

The Thursday crossword. It’s time for Laura Braunstein’s “midi” puzzle, a bit longer than Tuesday’s “mini” but easily do-able over breakfast.

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

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HEADS UP
Andrew Leland reads at Dartmouth. The accomplished writer and essayist will be at the Sanborn Library at 4:30 pm today to read from, among other things, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024. on Thursday, January 15, 2026 at 4:30 pm in Sanborn Library.

The Rumney Sessions are back at Fable Farm in Barnard with the Quincy Saul Research & Development Band. Brothers Quincy and Lukas Saul, joined by Pete Michelinie, kick off the 2026 music series with “an evening of originals and what they call intergalactic traditionals.” Doors and food at 5:30 pm, music 6-ish.

Interplay Jazz Jam at the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock. This is a special “Library After Hours” event on the mezzanine “with its great acoustics and baby grand piano.” Open to everyone to participate or just listen and enjoy, starting at 6:30 pm with an instrumental jam, and moving on to vocals at 7:30.

Still North Books & Bar hosts Daniyal Mueenuddin and This Is Where the Serpent Lives. Mueenuddin a Dartmouth and Yale Law grad, was born in LA but grew up in Pakistan; his short story collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. His new novel “paints a powerful portrait of contemporary feudal Pakistan and a farm on which the destinies of a dozen unforgettable characters are linked.” He’ll be reading from and talking about it with Dartmouth’s Alexander Chee at 7 pm.

At the Norwich Bookstore, Tory Henwood Hoen and Before I Forget, in conversation with Adam White. Hoen, a Canadian-American novelist, lives in Norwich. In her new novel, “Cricket Campbell returns to her father’s Adirondack lake house to become his caregiver. She soon discovers that as he loses his memory, he is increasingly able to predict the future”—with unpredictable results. Adam White teaches English and coaches lacrosse at Phillips Exeter Academy. 7 pm.

Hop Film screens Singin’ in the Rain. Yes, that one: Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, knockout dance numbers, instantly recognizable songs, and “I can’t stan’ ‘im.” 7 pm in the Loew Auditorium.

Scott Silven opens four days of “Wonders” at the Hop. The illusionist, mentalist, and performance artist “pushes the boundaries of his craft by creating stylish, smart and uniquely immersive performances on stage and screen that mesmerize audiences across the globe,” the Hop writes. He’ll put the new Daryl Roth Studio Theatre through its paces. 7:30 pm tonight and tomorrow (looks like they’re sold out, but call to check), 2 pm and 7:30 pm on Saturday, and 2 pm Sunday (limited tix remaining).

Ari Hest at the Flying Goose in New London. The singer-songwriter has built a loyal following, the Flying Goose writes, “through relentless college touring, then on to major label albums, and then reimagining listener engagement through fan-driven projects like ‘52’ and his Patreon-powered ‘The Treehouse Project’”—with side appearances for his songs on a raft of TV shows. 7:30 pm, call for reservations.

And anytime, this week’s highlights from JAM: “Holiday Disasters” from December’s Mudroom at the AVA Gallery; last month’s tribute to Springsteen’s Nebraska by artists Ali T, Brooks Hubbard, Krishna Guthrie, Nick Charyk, and Jim Yeager, produced and emceed by Pat Halpin; and UV Habitat for Humanity’s delivery of its first two-box modular “shell” for a family in WRJ.

And for today...

Earworm time. Playing for Change does its musicians around the world thing—only this time they’re joining The Doors’ John Densmore and Robby Krieger for a classic.

See you tomorrow.

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