GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Daybreak is brought to you this week with help from The Sharon Academy.
Discover what makes The Sharon Academy a community where every student belongs and finds educational experiences that feel meaningful, engaging, and hands-on. On Jan. 20, you can learn what a student journey at TSA looks like from the people who guide it every day. Register for the virtual info session here.
Cloudier as the day goes on, warmer. We’re still looking at above-normal temps today and tomorrow, with highs today in the upper 30s. Meanwhile, there’s low pressure coming through tonight, bringing with it a chance of snow showers, with rain possibly mixing in overnight. Lows right around or above the freezing mark.
Things that look fantastic in snow. But that’s about all they have in common.
From Robin Weisburger in Orford, a visiting bobcat.
And from Scribner Fauver in Meriden, a still-laden apple tree.
Advance Transit hires new executive director. The nonprofit local transit agency announced yesterday that, after a national search, it’s hired almost local. Teri Palmer, who’s currently NH’s statewide mobility manager (through the private firm RLS & Associates), will take over Jan. 19. She replaces Adams Carroll, who took over in 2022 and announced late last summer that he’d be stepping down. Palmer got her start in transportation issues in the US Army as a Heavy Wheel Vehicle mechanic, then eventually moved on to rural transit with Sullivan County Transportation, where she spearheaded the creation of a bus link between Claremont and Lebanon.
Randolph’s Seasoned Skillet: “I really want it to be a spot that regulars and people who actually live in town come to.” That’s chef and cookbook author Nora Rice, talking to the Valley News’s Marion Umpleby about the Main Street spot she’s moving toward opening next month. As you probably remember, Rice and her sister Jenna (who’s working on the restaurant’s marketing and will eventually organize live music there) wrote The Vermont Farm to Table Cookbook, whose recipes will inform some of the Seasoned Skillet’s menu. Umpleby talks to Nora Rice about her plans and to a member of a local investment club that’s providing financing.
SPONSORED: Torchlight Snowshoe at Billings Farm, January 16 & February 13, 4:30 - 6:30PM. Enjoy a scenic snowshoe trek along illuminated torchlit trails at the farm! Gather around the outdoor fire for some après-snowshoe fun and warm up with complimentary hot cocoa and s'mores. Fun for all ages. Tickets are $12 for adults, $7 for children and free for ages 2 and under. Billings Farm members enjoy a discounted rate of $5 for adults and free admission for children. Sponsored by Billings Farm & Museum.
Budget time. Two stories from the VN…
At a Newport hearing last week, reports Patrick O’Grady, the school board presented a proposed $24.8 million budget, a 12 percent boost from last year—which would raise taxes on a $250K property more than $1,000. “This is never going to pass,” Ken Merrow, chairman of the Budget Advisory Committee, responded. “Don’t even put it out there.” The chief drivers are health insurance, new special ed teachers, and salaries, SAU 43 Business Administrator Kate O’Connor said. The board would need to cut about $900K to get the budget to where a tax increase would equal the default budget of $23.8 million.
Meanwhile, in Norwich, the selectboard tomorrow night will consider a $7.38 million municipal operating budget, a 2.12 percent increase over last year’s, reports Clare Shanahan. The increase is driven in part by a rising health insurance costs and a 3.6 percent cost of living boost for employees. In addition, the police department would get an 8 percent boost, in part to buy electronic road signs and tasers for its four officers. Public works would see a 5 percent cut.
SPONSORED: Join the Celebration of Song with Upper Valley Music Center’s Children’s Chorus! Come hear the chorus share their hard work from the fall semester in this informal concert on Sunday, Jan. 18. Director Allison Pollard leads this ensemble that brings together children from around the Upper Valley. Families with elementary-aged children who might be interested in joining the chorus are especially encouraged to attend! Registration for the Spring 2026 semester is open now, with rehearsals beginning Jan. 27 and 29. Learn more and register at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Upper Valley Music Center.
Search teams in Walpole find body in river believed to be missing man. The search for 24-year-old Phineas Tillman of Grafton, VT, began Sunday evening after police received a report that he’d left home “and the caller was concerned for his welfare,” according to an initial VT State Police report. Late yesterday morning, reports the Brattleboro Reformer, a dive team from NH Fish & Game “used sonar equipment to locate and recover a body from a deep pool of water under the Vilas Bridge,” which links N. Walpole and Bellows Falls. Tillman’s family confirmed it was him in a social media post. “There are no indications the death is suspicious,” the VSP says.
US Supreme Court declines to hear NH man’s challenge to MA gun laws. As the Globe’s Steven Porter writes (sorry, paywall), NH and other GOP-led states “had urged the court to weigh in, claiming the Massachusetts license-to-carry law has imposed ‘flagrantly’ unconstitutional demands on armed visitors who legally possess firearms in their home states.” The case grew out of several incidents in which NH residents licensed to carry a firearm in NH were charged in MA for carrying one without a Massachusetts license. “We are disappointed that the United States Supreme Court did not take up this important case,” said NH AG John Formella yesterday.
Lakes Region development runs into obstacle: Liberty Utilities can’t hook new customers up to natural gas lines. The problem, writes NH Bulletin’s Molly Rains, is that the line that supplies towns like Tilton, Franklin, and Laconia was originally built in the 1960s, and though the company began widening it a couple of decades ago, it never finished; about 10 miles of the original line remain, and it “could take years, and millions of dollars” to upgrade it, Rains writes. But as state consumer advocate Don Kreis tells Rains, “Liberty is a cash-strapped company.” The result: Towns are approving new housing, but developers can’t get gas hookups. Rains explores the alternatives.
The AT runs from Georgia to Maine, but it started in Vermont. In an audio piece just re-upped by Brave Little State, Davis Dunavin, at WSHU’s “Off the Path,” tells of how the view from one particular mountain peak inspired the trail’s creation. In the summer of 1900, Benton MacKaye, a “restless thinker, philosopher, and agitator,” set out to climb some of the tallest mountains in Vermont. Dazzled by the view from Stratton, he imagined a trail linking ridgecrests and summits, a way to connect people to nature—and to one another. MacKaye saw the AT as a type of therapy for people struggling with mental health. “They need acres,” he wrote,”not medicine.”
If you give a water sommelier a bottle of Il Sano… She’ll compliment the bottle design and compare the taste to licking a rusty handrail. And if water from a spring tastes or smells “crazy,” she’ll tell you to “drink the water on the spot.” Otherwise, it will oxidize because of the iron. Amalia Ulman got her water sommelier credentials in 2023 at the Doemens Academy near Munich, and writes in The Paris Review about her recent journey to the Water Sommelier Union’s annual meeting in the Czech Republic. There, she tasted some well-balanced waters and others that sound, well, dreadful. She also caught up on water sommelier gossip. At the union’s archnemesis, the Fine Water Society, the celebrity sommeliers (I hope you’re sitting down) don’t even rinse their glasses between samples!
The Tuesday crossword. It’s time for Dartmouth librarian Laura Braunstein’s new “mini” puzzle for the week, a quick little word teaser that’ll test, among other things, your NH knowledge.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
At DHMC, photographer Becky Field and “Different Roots, Common Dreams: New Hampshire’s Cultural Diversity”. Field’s exhibit of photographs of the Granite State’s immigrant and refugee community—which she’s been focused on since 2012—opened last week. This afternoon’s the opening reception, at which Field will talk about her work and her subjects, with Upper Valley organizations on hand to talk about resources for immigrants and refugees living in the region. 4:30 pm in the Williamson Gallery, 4th floor of the Williamson Building.
Dartmouth’s Dickey Center hosts former US Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski for “Modern Diplomacy on NATO's Eastern Flank: Poland 2022-2025”. As the Dickey folks write, “Modern diplomacy swiftly meshed Poland and America together during a time of tremendous uncertainty, securing NATO's vital Eastern Flank.” Brzezinski will talk about how that happened, “offering an insider's view on high-stakes global strategy.” 4:30 pm, in person in Haldeman 41 and livestreamed.
At the Norwich Bookstore, Deborah Lee Luskin and Ellen Rockmore read from and talk about Reviving Artemis and The Given-Up Girl. In Reviving Artemis, Luskin, a gardener and writer, recounts her late-in-life shift from living a relatively conventional life as an educator to embracing life in the woods, both as a hunter and as a lover of nature. In her novel, Rockmore, who teaches writing at Dartmouth, focuses on a protagonist who, 20 years earlier, had been forced to give up a daughter and now is determined to find her—”if the given-up girl even wants to be found.” 7 pm.
The Tuesday poem.
i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me
— “i am running into a new year” by Lucille Clifton. Here’s “Lucille Clifton 101” on the Poetry Foundation’s site.
See you tomorrow.
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