Daybreak Thursday, 2/19/26

Sunny, calm. High pressure’s building in today, with mostly clear skies ahead and temps getting into the upper 30s. There’s weather headed our way tomorrow, but let’s just deal with that then, though we’ll see clouds building in tonight. Lows around 20.

A full-on halo. In crystal-laden skies over the Connecticut River from Piermont, by Jen St. Laurence.

It’s time for Dear Daybreak! This week’s collection of vignettes and poetry from Upper Valley readers starts off with Madeleine LaPenta’s striking and atmospheric photo of the Ledyard Bridge between Norwich and Hanover at dusk, then moves on to Bob Totz’s wintertime sculpture “garden” (he calls it Icehenge); the return of Danny Dover with a poem; and Perry Allison’s story about the power of a good woodstove—even when it’s mostly a memory. If you’ve got a good Upper Valley anecdote or entertaining story or bit of local history, please use this form to pass it along or email me at [email protected].

The story behind Northern Stage’s new acquisition. When the theater company’s leadership first saw the old VFW hall with which it shares a parking lot, managing director Jason Smoller tells Ken Picard in Seven Days, “We walked into the building and said to each other, ‘Oh, my goodness! We don’t have to do anything!’” As Picard writes, the space includes a 3,000-square-foot dance floor and stage, “a beautifully maintained bar, and about 4,000 square feet of storage space for costumes, props and set pieces.” That makes it perfect both for classes and as “that funky, cool space where we do plays that we’ve always wanted to do,” in artistic director Carol Dunne’s words.

Hartford will require safety plan for Twin Pines project on Sykes Mountain Ave. As Clare Shanahan writes in the Valley News, the move comes “after a contentious Feb. 3 meeting at which many residents protested the application and lodged [public safety] complaints against Twin Pines’ operations at several other rental properties in Hartford.” It affects a proposed 48-unit affordable housing development for which the nonprofit housing developer is seeking a $1 million Community Development Block Grant. At Tuesday’s meeting, Twin Pines director Andrew Winter told the board, “I’m committed to working through these issues…”

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Behind in rent, loan repayments, Claremont Creative Center puts city’s development authority in financial jeopardy. At the heart of the issue, Creative Center director Melissa Richmond tells the VN’s Patrick O’Grady, is a $2.3 million HUD grant awarded her organization to help it revitalize new digs on Opera House Square that still hasn’t arrived. As a result, O’Grady reports, Richmond owes enough to the Claremont Development Authority—which owns the Opera House Square property—that the CDA may need a financial bailout from the city. In a memo, city manager Nancy Bates writes that “the CDA is in peril and I think they are in financial hot water.”

SPONSORED: Celebrate National CSA Week with Cedar Circle Farm & Education Center! Why choose a Cedar Circle CSA? Flexible options await! Use your CSA card at our farmstand, café, and market booths for plant starts, fresh produce, treats, and lattes. Enjoy prepared food CSAs like Quiche, Friday Night Dinner, and Soup, made onsite, or delight in Pick-Your-Own Bouquets and Native Perennials. Everything is certified organic and grown with love for people and planet. Sign up and pay by March 1 for early-bird perks, free coffee through our referral program, and to help our community grow and learn. Sponsored by Cedar Circle Farm & Education Center.

In NH, former USDA researcher launches “community supported” research effort. Anna Wallingford in interested in bugs and how to keep them from destroying crops while minimizing pesticides. She left her USDA job during last year’s federal turmoil and moved back to NH. Now, reports NHPR’s Mara Hoplamazian, she’s started an organization whose goal is to “democratize agricultural research by getting farmers and gardeners to participate more in the scientific process." She’s renting land, raising funds, and turning to the public to help her set priorities. “I hope there's an audience of people who wants to see the research process, warts and all,” she says.

Testing how timber “slash” can be used to stem deer destruction. “In Northeast forests,” writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog, deer “will eat all the saplings of oak, sugar maple, birch and other desirable hardwoods that grow up in areas where sunlight reaches the ground, such as after a timber harvest. That leaves behind less biodiversity and more openings for invasive plant species.” So in Henniker, the Forest Society and UNH Extension are experimenting with two ways of using slash—the debris left after lumbering—to protect the forest floor. One involves building a wall; the other, covering the ground. Trail cameras will document what happens.

School bus bursts into flames at I-89 rest stop. The bus was empty, and on a flatbed trailer, being towed from Pelham, NH, when the driver pulled off the highway to use the Williston VT rest stop late yesterday afternoon. When he returned, the front of the bus was in flames—and as WCAX’s video shows, quickly engulfed. The Williston fire department responded quickly, but the bus was a loss. The truck and flatbed had only minor damage.

Vermont is losing its kids, and it’s a big issue. Young people, writes Seven Days’ Alison Novak, are vanishing “at an alarming rate. Over the past two decades, public schools have lost more than a quarter of their K-12 students, going from around 98,000 students in fiscal year 2005 to 73,000 in 2025, according to state education data.” It’s due to low birth rates and to a relative lack of in-migrants (affordable housing plays a role there), and it’s having real consequences: “The demographic drop-off in public schools has led to a steep rise in the per-pupil cost of educating Vermont’s children and, in turn, to higher property taxes.” Novak lays out the policy dilemma.

And yeah, you probably know that Mikaela Shiffrin took gold yesterday and Ben Ogden snagged another cross-country silver. Shiffrin, the 30-year-old Ford Sayre alum and 30-year-old Burke Mountain Academy graduate, completed her comeback from her 2024 World Cup crash at Killington by winning the women’s slalom a full 1.5 seconds ahead of the next competitor—an eternity at elite alpine levels. Ogden and Alaska’s Gus Schumacher finished a mere 1.37 seconds behind (you guessed it) the Norwegians in the team relay sprint. VTDigger’s Kevin O’Connor reports.

Did this European robin cross the Atlantic on a wing and a prayer? They live in western Eurasia and parts of North Africa, but for the first time, a European robin has found its way to Montreal. It’s not clear how—or when—he arrived, writes Danielle Beurteaux in the Guardian. “Did it island hop from Iceland to Greenland to here?” one birdwatcher wonders. “That’s a lot of hopping.” More likely, say experts, a storm carried the bird across the ocean, or he stowed away on a ship. Whatever, he’s a major draw for Canadian and US birdwatchers, who are flocking to get a glimpse of the charmer.

The Thursday Crossword. Today, it’s puzzle constructor Laura Braunstein’s “midi”—slightly longer and harder than her Tuesday minis, but perfect with breakfast. And if you’d like to catch up on past puzzles, you can do that here.

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

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HEADS UP
Writer Michael Lesy at Dartmouth. The former professor of literary journalism at Hampshire and author of such nonfiction books as Bearing Witness: A Photographic Chronicle of American Life and Looking Backward: A Photographic Portrait of the World at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century will give a reading and talk at 4:30 pm in Dartmouth Hall 105.

Rick Redington + Tuff Luv at Fable Farm’s Rumney Sessions in Barnard. The VT-based four-piece ensemble features “a hellbent, Hendrix-inspired edge and a swirl of psychedelic, Dead-like grooves.” Doors and food at 5:30, music around 6.

StoryJam at JAM in WRJ. The theme this time around is “Chemistry”—open to whatever interpretation the storytellers want to give it. As the organizers write, “An informal and inclusive storytelling circle where you are invited to share an unrehearsed 5-minute true story from your own life. No competition, no judgment, no lecturing… Just share a story about something that happened to you and listen to other people’s stories.” 6 pm.

And just around the corner, The Karaoke Bandstand is back at the Filling Station. Sing any song you want with the house band, no cover. Sign-ups start at 6 pm, and as organizer Jakob Breitbach writes, “How late we play depends on y’all.” Advance sign-ups and song requests here.

And just up the street, the Upper Valley Food Co-op’s Downtown Documentary Club screens Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory. The 2014 film is about “the complex relationship of music with cognition, and its potential value in supporting individuals living with Alzheimer’s Disease and different forms of dementia.” There’ll be a discussion afterward led by an Alzheimer’s expert. 6 pm.

At the Norwich Bookstore, Steven Ronson and The Blitz Secret in conversation with Sarah Stewart Taylor. Ronson’s noir thriller, set in London and occupied France during WWII, focuses on a farmer-turned-detective in the midst of the chaos of the Blitz. Ronson will talk it over with Taylor, author of the Sweeney St. George and Maggie D’arcy series of mysteries. 7 pm.

Hop Film screens No Other Choice. Park Chan-wook’s dark comedy thriller features Lee Byung Hun as a laid-off middle-aged husband and father who “begins to take merciless measures toward solidifying his standing with a potential new employer.” 7 pm in the Loew Auditorium.

And anytime, JAM’s got highlights of the week for you: a look back at WRIF 2023 when current festival director Jordyn Fitch spoke with film director Vera Drew about The People’s Joker; Deborah Lee Luskin (Reviving Artemis) and Ellen Rockmore (The Given-up Girl) at the Norwich Bookstore recently, discussing their books, “both of which follow stories that begin in mid-century USA and end in 21st century Vermont”; and a filmed celebration of the current Elden Murray Photographic Exhibition & Competition at the Howe, during its 50th year.

And for today...

Why music is a branch of magic. Back in October at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, the famed British conductor Suzie Collier led a one-night-only “Audience Orchestra” composed of musicians from all over the country who’d auditioned for the event. In the middle of it, her son, Jacob, took over to direct both orchestra and audience in an entirely unrehearsed and mostly improvised piece—though Collier knew generally where he was headed—which, bit by spellbinding bit, came together like this…

See you tomorrow.

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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt      Poetry editor: Michael Lipson    Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt