GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Mostly cloudy, warmer, and then snow. Yesterday’s system ushered in a warmer air mass, which is going to stick around for a bit. Highs today will reach toward the freezing mark (then ratchet up again tomorrow), and we may see some sun today before a low pressure system headed our way arrives late in the day or this evening. Around here, the weather folks are now expecting it to fall as snow, though spots to the south and both west and east could see some mixed precip. Maybe a couple inches all told. Lows tonight in the mid 20s.
Bobcat 1, squirrel 0. This video isn’t from the Upper Valley—it’s from S. Burlington—but how often do you get a chance to see a bobcat rocketing up a tree after its meal? (Thanks, CR!)
Lake Morey skating trail opens. Today, in fact. At the link is the Lake Morey Resort’s announcement, with an aerial photo from yesterday. The Town of Fairlee is your go-to resource for ice conditions, which you’ll find here. Access at the town beach.
Claremont: “A broken system of financial oversight in a school district that can ill afford to mismanage its scarce funding.” That’s how the Valley News’s Alex Hanson describes what he found after digging into audits of the financially troubled school district, along with state reports and interviews with former officials. And that’s even before audits for fiscal years 2023 through 2025 have been finished, let alone a forensic audit that’s looking into whether any fraud was committed. Hanson’s article is the most in-depth piece of reporting on the schools’ crisis to date, tracing the impact of missed audits, missed over-spending, missed federal grants, and staff turnover.
GameStop closing West Leb, Claremont stores. After shuttering some 400 stores last year, the troubled retailer has announced a new round of closures. Its locations on 12A, in Claremont, and in Concord are all set to close after tomorrow, reports the Monitor’s David Brooks (here via Business NH). While GameStop has not issued a full list of closures, reports the Michigan news site MLive.com, “customers who’ve received emails have begun compiling a list of confirmed and rumored closures. Despite not being confirmed by the company, the GameStop website no longer lists the locations as active stores.” That list includes four other sites in NH, and one in Rutland.
SPONSORED: Help someone who needs a hand right now! Based in the Upper Valley, Hearts You Hold supports immigrants, migrants, and refugees across the US by asking them what they need. These include Haitian immigrants in Lebanon who need everything from a wardrobe cabinet to a futon, an Algerian asylee who needs a sofa, refugee families with little kids in Vermont who need double strollers, and more. Everywhere, there are immigrants who need boots and jackets and help with the basics, from shampoo to clothing to school supplies. At the burgundy link or here, you'll find people who need your help. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.
Downtown Lebanon to get new, solar-powered e-bike charging station. It’ll be the first and only one of its kind in the Upper Valley, the city says in its press release—the next closest is in Danbury, NH. The project’s being spearheaded by the Lebanon Energy Advisory Committee and boosted by a $3,000 donation from AARP New Hampshire. “It is making a big difference for the climate, it is a big difference for people’s budgets, and it is good for you,” the energy committee’s Sherry Boschert tells WCAX’s Adam Sullivan.
Here’s something you may not know about porcupine quills. You almost certainly do know, especially if you’ve got a dog, that they’re equipped with one-way barbs—which, as Mary Holland writes on her most recent Naturally Curious blog, make it “extremely easy for the quill to enter a body, but very difficult to extract it.” But they also have a greasy coating with antibacterial properties: good news not just for dogs and the occasional human like Holland, but also for porkies themselves, since it appears, Holland writes, that they “often end up falling on the ground and frequently being impaled by their own quills.”
New NH laws take effect on everything from a ban on “gender-affirming care” to penalties for posting “No Trespassing” signs on land that’s not your own. There’s a whole slew of laws that went into effect Jan. 1, writes NH Bulletin’s Ethan DeWitt. The state’s ban on “sanctuary cities” is now law (as is a requirement that local law enforcement follow ICE immigration detainers); drivers licenses and vanity plates will cost more; landlords can no longer require electronic payment of rent; parents or legal guardians can now request their minor children’s public library borrowing records; and you can no longer dump yard waste into a body of water (or on its ice). Plus more.
Meanwhile, coming up once the NH legislature convenes this week… As NHPR’s Mara Hoplamazian and Josh Rogers note, lawmakers “have a long list of bills ahead of them” as they return to Concord for the 2026 session. Among them: a series of GOP-sponsored bills to bring back the state’s death penalty; moves to impose caps on local spending; a bipartisan move to make it easier for homeowners and businesses to install plug-in solar panels; and a renewed push to craft landfill policy for the state.
In VT, Phil Scott nominates two federal prosecutors to state supreme court. The state’s Republican governor yesterday tapped Christina Nolan, who was the state’s US Attorney during the first Trump administration, from 2017-2021, and Michael Drescher, a longtime federal prosecutor who served as the acting U.S. Attorney last year, until the time limit on his appointment ran out. As VTDigger’s Alan J. Keays reports, if confirmed by the state Senate, the two will replace retired justices William Cohen and Karen Carroll.
Facing fierce local pushback, future for VT school district consolidation, funding makeover looks uncertain. The argument from Scott and some state lawmakers is simple: VT needs to move to a school funding formula driven by the state, and in order to do that, it needs larger school districts and their economies of scale. But as VT Public’s Peter Hirschfeld reports, mandatory district mergers are getting panned statewide—so much so that the chair of the House ed committee tells him returning lawmakers “now have to confront the possibility that Act 73 no longer has the political support needed to move forward as originally envisioned.” Lots more at the link.
Where does that opposition come from? In the education-focused Hechinger Report, Chris Berdik visits schools in Peacham and Worcester to anchor a broader look at rural district consolidation efforts nationally. He parses the roots of the problem—VT’s per-student spending is second only to NY’s nationwide—and sketches the history of VT’s merger efforts and their results, which appear to be a wash. He also notes that skyrocketing health insurance premiums now account for 15 percent of district spending—and are beyond districts’ control. And talks to parents about why they continue to fight for their small schools.
As Nordic skiing grows in US, New England plays outsized role. To be sure, so does Minnesotan Jessie Diggins, whose world-leading run—and glitter and enthusiasm for the sport—have “had a very powerful influence on [young] skiers,” says Heidi Lange, who directs the Lyme-based New England Nordic Ski Assocation. But in an in-depth conversation with NBC5’s Jack Thurston, Lange also credits three decades-worth of local ski clubs aimed at both kids and adults: from eight clubs region-wide in 1995 to over 60 now. The last two Olympic cycles, half the US team had some connection to New England, and 30 percent had grown up in the region’s youth and junior programs.
One other US cross-country skier in the spotlight at next month’s Olympics will be Vermonter Ben Ogden (who was just the subject of a glitzy profile in the NYT’s The Athletic)—and who, as VTDigger’s Kevin O’Connor writes, came up through that club system in Landgrove coached by his dad, John Ogden, a Middlebury racer and friend of xc pioneer Bill Koch, whose name adorns the youth skiing league. O’Connor profiles both Ogden and, intriguingly, his great-grandfather, Sam, who moved to Landgrove from NJ just under a century ago and transformed both the town and VT’s tourism industry.
You, yes you, could be a contender! Does the ticking over of the new year have you pondering ways to challenge yourself? Over at Guinness World Records, Eleanora Pilastro has a list of titles that no one yet holds. Among her “Seven Records You Should Set in 2026”: the fastest time in the 400-meter sack race. Or, if you’re musically inclined—and maybe if you’re not—you could shoot for the longest stretch playing air guitar. Bafflingly, the record is yours to claim for the most potatoes peeled in a minute and the most items caught by a cat in a minute. What have you got to lose?
The Tuesday Crossword. Dartmouth librarian Laura Braunstein’s latest is a quick little mini version. If you’re just joining us, you can find her earlier crosswords here.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
At the Montshire, the Hanover Garden Club hosts Hannah Lewis and “Mini-Forest Revolution”. As they write, “What holds hundreds of species, sequesters more than 300 pounds of CO2/year, is several degrees cooler than its surroundings, soaks up lots of rainwater, and is co-created by children and their elders in spaces no bigger than a tennis court? A ‘mini-forest’ planted using the Miyawaki Method…” Lewis, a writer based in Minnesota, will talk about what goes into planting them and why they’re taking hold all over the world. She’ll be on Zoom in the museum’s community room at 1 pm if you want to show up in person, as well as online.
The Tuesday poem.
Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.
— A few days late, but still worth running: Ogden Nash’s “Good Riddance, But Now What?”
See you tomorrow.
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