Daybreak Thursday, 5/21/26

Cooler, getting sunny. Yesterday’s front brought clouds last night and air flowing in from the northwest. The clouds will clear out over the course of the day, but this cooler air is going to stick around through Memorial Day. Highs today in the lower 60s, with lows tonight down in the low or mid 30s, chance of patchy frost.

That is one lucky driveway! “The other day,” writes JoAnn Webb from Sharon, “I was doing some yard cleanup in the perennial bed next to our driveway and was pleasantly surprised to find a bunch of morel mushrooms. I've never found any in that location before and was stunned to find so many.” If you’ve ever had morels—a little garlic, a little butter, some parsley—you’ll be envious, too. “They were delicious!” JoAnne adds.

Two new Quechee eateries bring tastes from Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. “The probability that not one, but two versions of flan and tres leches cake would appear along a mostly wooded Vermont road within weeks of each other seems low,” writes Corin Hirsch for Daybreak. But that’s exactly what happened last month, when, after nearly a year of renovations, Two Bistro and Café—run by Paula Fernandes (who also owns My Brigadeiro in Hanover) and Adrian Abate—opened, and was joined just up the road by a new Mexican food truck, El Tenatito. Corin fills us in on the menus, the food’s background, and the particulars you’ll need to find your way there.

Back to the drawing board on city-owned lots in West Leb. A Williston VT-based developer had proposed joining forces with Twin Pines to build affordable housing with possible ground-level commercial space in a building that would have spanned the three Main Street lots. But at its meeting on May 6, reports Clare Shanahan in the Valley News, the city council decided the project was “not the right fit,” as one member put it, as it tries to find a way to revitalize a downtown “that is on the way down.” The council opted instead to wait to decide how to proceed on the properties.

SPONSORED: Express Care at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital is here when you need it. Our Express Care team treats adults and children over the age of one for non-life-threatening conditions. And with evening and weekend hours, you get the right level of care when you need it. Get immediate care for coughs, colds, rashes, and sprains right at APD Express Care, and all without an appointment. Alice Peck Day Express Care. Part of the best health system in the region, Dartmouth Health. Sponsored by Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital.

“A story so magical I kept finding excuses to get back to reading each day.” The Yankee Bookshop’s Kari Meutsch is partial to debut novels, and thought nothing could ever match her feelings about Katherine Arden’s first Winternight novel nine years ago. But now Arden, writes Kari in this week’s Enthusiasms, is about to publish The Unicorn Hunters, and reading an advance copy, Kari found herself just as enthralled. Arden roots her work in history—in this case, Anne of Brittany in the late 15th century—and then tells a story “rooted in deeply researched history, with the magic so deftly woven in that you can hardly tell where reality begins and ends.”

And at the VT Supreme Court’s art gallery... As Susan Apel subtitles her new post in Artful, “The Vermont Supreme Court has an art gallery?” It does, and on the walls now are the photographs of Elliot Burg, formerly of the state AG’s office, then a prof at VT Law School, now a photographer who roams Montpelier, the Upper Valley, the US, and the world with his camera: A Mardi Gras Indian in New Orleans, a Gambian ex-soldier at home, the aftermath of the 2023 floods in Montpelier, the Tunbridge World’s Fair. “All of Burg’s portraits are powerful, encouraging contemplation; a mere hasty glance proves impossible. To view his work is to feel a connection,” Susan writes.

SPONSORED: Experience the glorious sound of the intergenerational St. Thomas Choir at their annual Choral Mass, featuring Palestrina’s Missa Dum Complerentur. Join us on Sunday, May 24 at the 10:30 a.m. service for a stirring performance with distinguished guest singers from choirs across the region. Prepare to be inspired by this radiant masterpiece of Renaissance polyphony, sung a cappella in six voices. Sponsored by St. Thomas Episcopal Church.

“They sold him poison." In the Valley News, Sofia Langlois tells the story of S. Royalton’s Vincent Arbuiso, who died of an apparent overdose last weekend, and of his father—also named Vincent Arbuiso—who’s taken it on himself to offer a reward for information leading to the conviction of whoever sold his son the drugs. The younger Vincent began his struggles with addiction when he was a teenager, and finally moved in with his grandmother in SoRo two years ago to live a sober lifestyle with his family’s help. But on Saturday, his grandmother found him dead in his room—after someone, his dad believes, sold him laced drugs. Langlois recounts what happened.

NH lawmakers send governor a bill paving the way for homeowners to get credit for renewably generated power fed to the grid from home batteries. The measure, sponsored by Epping Republican Rep. Michael Vose, directs the state energy department to “craft rules to govern how battery systems are installed in customers’ homes and interconnected to the grid,” reports NH Bulletin’s Molly Rains. The idea, says Vose, is to remove “any doubt from anyone’s mind that if they choose to do this, if they choose to make this investment, that they’ll be able to recover their investment.” Rains digs into the details of what it’ll mean.

“It’s like a haiku, living where we are. All the seasons and the quiet, the peace of mind…And then you have these ticks.” And as the little suckers’ numbers grow and cases of Lyme and other illnesses skyrocket—Vermonters are changing what they do outdoors, writes Sasha Goldstein in Seven Days. “Some have stopped composting, sealed cracks in their walls and pulled down bird feeders to avoid attracting the rodents and deer that ticks cling to. Other people have even abandoned outdoor hobbies they love,” Goldstein writes. He fills us in on the habits ticks are ruining. Oh, and bad news in warming winters: temps need to be below about -23 to kill them.

“You can’t possibly squeeze in everything before the weather turns cold again.” But you sure can try. Seven Days’ Dan Bolles has a roundup of Vermont’s summer events, from sports (women’s soccer) to musicals (“Do we really need to tell you, readers of an artsy newspaper in Vermont, why you should see a concert of the music from The Sound of Music in a scenic mountain meadow at the von Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe?”). Also Middlebury’s Foodaroo and Burlington’s VT Brewers Festival. Theater in Dorset and fairs, well, everywhere. “For the true-blue agricultural fair experience, look no further than the Tunbridge World’s Fair.”

Don’t look down at the 19-second mark! Tuesday, Polish skier and mountaineer Bartek Ziemski became the second person to summit and then ski down Everest without supplementary oxygen or help from Sherpas. He was, however, followed by cinematographer Manish Maharjan and a drone, which among other things captured just how risky it is to ski through the Khumbu Icefall, filled with deep crevasses and unstable formations of glacial ice. And the most amazing thing? This was right after Ziemski did the same thing on Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest peak.

Crossword people: It’s your lucky day! Not only does Laura Braunstein have her usual Thursday midi for you (it’s at the burgundy link), but as a bonus today, she adds “Where’s the Library?”, the full-size (that is, NYT standard 15x15) puzzle that organizers of last week’s Howe Library/Still North tournament shared with attendees as a bonus. You’ll find that one right here.

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

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HEADS UP
Reinhard Krumm and Peter Orner talk Isaac Babel. Krumm was Moscow correspondent for Der Spiegel and is an expert on both Russian history and its post-Soviet arc; Orner, an essayist, novelist, and short story writer who teaches at Dartmouth, is an admirer of Babel’s fiction. Krumm will give a talk on Babel’s life and work, in particular his collection Red Cavalry, followed by a conversation with Orner. 12:30 pm at the Literary Arts Bridge.

Upper Valley Veterans and Supporters line the way outside the WRJ VA main gate. As they’ve been writing on the listservs, “In the spirit of this coming Memorial Day, we are honoring those Americans who have died in military service to our country over many generations. We will also be honoring all who currently serve as well as seventeen million living Veterans.” 3 to 5 pm. No link.

The Dartmouth Dialogues host FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff. Lukianoff runs the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech group that made its name as a critic of “political correctness” on campuses and of university administrations that protect it, but more recently also sided with Harvard and other institutions as they tried to fend off attacks on academic freedom by the Trump administration. He’ll be talking with Middle Eastern Studies prof Jonathan Smolin. 4:30 pm in the Hanover Inn’s Hayward Room.

Dartmouth’s Ethics Institute hosts Brandon Terry. The Harvard political philosopher and scholar of the Civil Rights movement last fall published Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement, his effort to see the movement clearly and as a generations-long story of “intertwined victories and defeats.” “I’m trying to remind people of the genuine human flourishing that’s at stake in making people’s lives even a little bit better,” he once told an interviewer. 5 pm in Rocky 003.

The Friends of the Quechee/Wilder Libraries host Ben Pease and Vermont Poet Laureate Bianca Stone “for an hour of poetry in community.” In addition to their own poetry, the pair are the moving force behind the renovation of the Ruth Stone House in Goshen, VT, and now its use as a center for poetry. At the Wilder Club & Library, 5 pm. No link.

Story Jam at the Literary Arts Bridge. As they write, "All members of the Upper Valley community are invited to join the circle and share an unrehearsed 5-minute true story from their own life. No competition, no judgment, no lecturing, no ranting… Just share a story about something that happened to you and listen to other people’s stories." This month’s theme: Starting Over. 6 pm. Here’s the LAB on Google Maps.

The Enfield Public Library and the Enfield Shaker Museum host an excerpt from Ken Burns’ The American Revolution, followed by a discussion. The segment, “The Spirit of Service,” explores service as a core American value, from the nation’s founding through the present day. Afterward, facilitators will aim to get people talking about “What moments from our past define who we are and point to a shared future?”, “What are the key historical moments in your town’s or community’s history?” and more. 6 pm in the library auditorium in Whitney Hall.

Hop Film screens Casablanca. Bogart, Bergman, that gin joint, the Marseillaise, Dooley Wilson and “As Time Goes By”… 7 pm in the Loew. You’ve seen it, but on a big screen?

And anytime, JAM’s highlights for the week: Last year’s talk with Dena Rueb Romero and Richard Neugass, who discussed two families touched by the Holocaust and the role of family historians in keeping their record alive; the films of last weekend’s 48-hour film slam; and last month’s “Walk As One” collaboration between students from Hanover and Lebanon high schools.

And for today...

The Bay Area Eastern European music ensemble Kitka, with a Georgian lullaby.

See you tomorrow.

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

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