Daybreak Tuesday, 10/20/26

Before we start, a huge thank you! A few weeks ago, I made one of just a few requests for contributions each year. I never know what to expect, and I’m hugely grateful to those of you who responded by signing up for monthly or annual contributions or sending along one-time support, often for the first time. Daybreak rests on a community of people who care about the Upper Valley and the two states we share. You are a model of what's possible in the local news world. Thank you. And if you didn't contribute then but want to now, hit the burgundy link or go here.

Sunny. We’re basking under high pressure this week, with a pleasantly quiet little period ahead of us the next few days. The air above is unusually dry, the weather folks say, so even a cold front poking down from the north this morning is unlikely to disrupt our blue skies. Highs today once again in the low 60s, with modest winds from the north. Down to around 30 overnight.

In a fog. It’s so good for atmospherics, isn’t it? First, Peter French’s photo of church painters in the early morning fog in Norwich: “It was a refreshingly old-school approach to getting the job done,” he writes, “just ladders, paint bucket, and brush. It was a poignant moment, framed under the gaze of Paul Revere’s bell.” And then Susan AuBuchon’s pic of the sun trying to break through the morning fog over Lake Sunapee.

You know what? Just don’t even go there: I-89/I-91 reminder. As you may have noticed, there’s milling and paving going on. Today, NHDOT crews will be paving the bridge, starting on the NH side, and the Exit 20 northbound on-ramp from 12A will be closed from 8 am to 2 pm. Tomorrow, they’ll be paving on the VT side, and the ramp from I-89N to I-91N will be closed from 8 am to 6 pm. Ditto (probably) Thursday. It’s all going to be a mess and you can count on tie-ups not just around the interchange but, thanks to the detours, at Exit 19 in NH and, tomorrow and Thursday, up at the Quechee/Woodstock exit. Where are the Jetsons when we need them?

The leaves are rustling, the wind is blowing… And, Wally notes in DB Johnson’s Lost Woods this week, raking leaves under those conditions is like herding Schrödinger’s cats. Henry, predictably, is unfazed.

Gas pump burns on Miracle Mile. Sunday afternoon, the Lebanon Fire Department reported yesterday in a press release, a vehicle hit a gas pump at the Mobil station across from the Revo Casino, knocking it off its mounting pad. When firefighters arrived, they found “an active fire involving the pump. The vehicle was clear of the fire, and the facility's automatic fire suppression system had activated. The fire was contained to the immediate area of the pump, with no extension to nearby structures or equipment.” Crews put down absorbent materials and containment booms to keep fuel and contaminated runoff from spreading. Two people in the vehicle declined treatment.

Mountain biker dies after being found unresponsive on Green Woodlands trail. John Borger, III, of Grantham, was found Sunday afternoon on one of the Green Woodlands trails in Wentworth, NH Fish & Game said yesterday in a press release. “An emergency response was immediately started with individuals on the trail beginning life-saving measures,” and first responders from Wentworth, Plymouth, and Rumney, along with Green Woodlands staff and Fish & Game officers all headed to the Thunder Chicken Trail, well in from the trail network access point at Rowntown Road, but were unable to resuscitate him. He was 55.

CHaD HERO raises over $1 million. More than 3,700 runners, walkers, volunteers, sponsors, and donors turned out for Sunday’s 21st version of the annual event, DH reports in a press release. Over the years, the HERO has raised over $12.6 million for Dartmouth Health Children’s—which is also still basking in its $30 million gift from entrepreneur Tom Golisano. Oh, and stay tuned. In the release, DHC’s chief physician, Keith Loud, says, “We, and the HERO, are entering a new era—and, starting in 2027, with a slightly revised name!”

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What did the Indigenous Peoples' Fashion Show at Dartmouth look like? Alex Driehaus’ photos illustrating Sophie Levenson’s VN story on last week’s event practically spring off the screen, while Levenson outlines the eighth annual walking of the event. As she writes, “Dartmouth has graduated around 1,500 Native and Indigenous students, according to the school’s website, and between 4% to 5% of the student body identifies as such — significantly more than any other Ivy League university.” The fashion show at the Hood has become a colorful tradition, and Levenson gives plenty of space to the outfits’ particulars.

How an LA film publicist is helping Vermonters rediscover their movie roots. Alia Quart Khan moved from CA to Randolph during the pandemic—and is still here. “It turns out that rural is really good for me,” she tells Kevin O’Connor in VTDigger. You may remember last winter’s screenings of VT-connected films at the old Randolph Playhouse. Now she’s got a more ambitious project: a reading of Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry this Friday at the Latchis Theater in Brattleboro, with Tom Bodett, Myra Flynn, and others. O’Connor recounts the film’s production in Craftsbury—and Hitchcock’s eventual flight back to the safer weather of an LA soundstage.

SPONSORED: Anarchists! Bombs! Kidnappings! No, not ripped from today's front pages. It’s 1920s hype for a movie all thought lost, which returns to the screen 100 years after it was made—and in the very same town where it was filmed. “Van-ar-chy Comes Home: Billy B. Van’s Lost Silent Comedies” at 2PM on Sunday, November 1 at the Newport Opera House features two "lost" comedies from 1919 made by pioneering Sunapee filmmaker, Billy B. Van, with live accompaniment by Bob Merrill. Tickets at the burgundy link, more info here. Sponsored by the Sunapee and Newport Historical Societies.

Japanese knotweed: “Whichever management technique you decide to use, it’s going to be a marathon, not a sprint.” That’s Emma Erler, lead horticulturist at Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, talking to NHPR’s Homegrown NH about dealing with the astoundingly hardy pest. If you’re not into herbicides, Erler recommends cutting knotweed to the ground, then covering it with heavy-duty black plastic or nonwoven landscape fabric. Every summer and fall. For years. Maybe as long as a decade. And even then, you have to keep an eye out for shoots. Glyphosate, she notes, has also been effective. Above all, though, you need “a lot of patience.”

And speaking of pests: Why a banner acorn year heralds more Lyme disease. That calculation comes from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Bard College, writes Mary Holland on Naturally Curious. Basically, researchers looking at deer populations found no relationship between the number of deer and the density of deer-tick nymphs. However, there’s a strong correlation between numbers of white-footed mice, which carry the Lyme disease bacterium, and tick nymphs, which feed on them and pick up the bacterium. White-footed mice feed on red oak acorns; the more acorns, the more mice, the more ticks, the more Lyme…

SPONSORED: Go behind the headlines with one of the most trusted voices in American journalism. This Thursday, October 22, 7 PM at Lebanon Opera House. Join Vermont Public for an evening with Amna Nawaz, co-anchor of PBS News Hour, for an intimate, wide-ranging conversation. Get tickets here. Sponsored by Vermont Public.

The raggedy remains… It’s getting late, but there’s still plenty to see out there in the woods, writes Northern Woodlands’ Jack Saul. For one thing, there are lots of warblers passing through right now. And if you look carefully, you’ll see leaves carrying fungal spores—both up in the canopy and after they’ve hitched a ride to the forest floor. Where, eventually, they show up as mushrooms like shaggy mane—which, Jack writes, “are edible and asparagus-like in their taste as long as their gills remain white, and they do some eating themselves: they catch and consume nematodes, or round worms.” Meanwhile, you’ll also see the last woodland flowers, like goldenrod and asters.

At Killington, plans for $280 million in new spending. Never mind the proposed multi-billion-dollar ski village, which at the moment seems to be stuck. The resort’s owners are just talking about what they intend to put in, reports VT Public’s Nina Keck: At a public meeting last week, President and CEO Mike Solimano told townspeople that the new ownership group will spend $80 million in the first three years on lifts, facilities, grooming equipment, snowmaking upgrades, and a new lodge. Another $200 million over the next decade is intended for infrastructure and, especially, snowmaking. “We used to be able to operate 100 guns simultaneously. Now we’re running 300 guns at once,” he said, while cutting diesel consumption.

You want flies with that? Not the little annoying kind. The hardball kind. “The biggest restaurant in New England, no matter what anybody tells you,” Fenway Park feeds some 37,000 fans every game. Hot dogs, sure, but also lobster (“It’s Boston!”), chowder, and gnocchi with pesto. Season ticket holders, who dine there repeatedly, want innovative meals every time. More than 300 chefs and cooks cram into a space that’s a fraction the size of newer stadiums’ (Fenway opened in 1912) and, because it’s so tight, move food fast. The storage logistics are a feat, as are baking 300,000 cookies a year—from scratch—and growing up to 7,000 pounds of organic produce on the ballpark’s roof. Food & Wine lovingly covers the video details.

The Tuesday Crossword. Laura Braunstein’s short “mini” for the week.

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

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HEADS UP
At the Dartmouth libraries, a panel on “Arts and Archival Research.” Kronos Quartet founding violinist David Harrington joins up with the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center librarian Andrea Decker and the Rauner Library’s Jay Satterfield for a discussion about how musicians and other artists can use the vast resources available in library archives to create new work, and how archival research and the creative process intersect. 4:30 pm in the East Reading Room.

Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center hosts “Elections and the Supreme Court.” Sarah Isgur, editor of SCOTUS Blog and author of Last Branch Standing, and ABC News' Senior Washington Reporter (and Dartmouth alum) Devin Dwyer talk over Isgur’s new guide to the Court and recent decisions that may affect the midterms and the 2028 elections. 5 pm in Rocky 003 as well as livestreamed.

At the Howe Library, “The Capital Crime of Witchcraft: What the Primary Sources Tell Us.” Historian Margo Burns, a descendant of one of the women hanged in Salem, MA in 1692, focuses on the Salem witchcraft trials and examines a variety of other cases against women in NH, MA, and CT. 6:30 pm in the Mayer Room and online (will be followed at 7:45 pm by the annual meeting of the Hanover Historical Society).

Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble at the Hop. It’s a peek at Rumbo a México ("Heading to Mexico"), the program the ensemble will take on tour this December. Selections by Carlos Chávez, Juan Pablo Contreras and Omar Arellano Osorio, plus world premieres of three new works by Mexican composers. Conducted by Brian Messier with guest conductor Thomas Duffy, who directs the Yale University Bands. 7:30 pm in Spaulding.

Bruce Cockburn and Livingston Taylor at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth. It’s a drive, but hey. 7:30 pm and amazingly there are still a few seats left.

The Tuesday Poem.

Say “death” and the whole room freezes–
even the couches stop moving,
even the lamps.
Like a squirrel suddenly aware it is being looked at.

Say the word continuously,
and things begin to go forward.
Your life takes on
the jerky texture of an old film strip.

Continue saying it, hold it moment after moment inside the mouth,
it becomes another syllable.
A shopping mall swirls around the corpse of a beetle.

Death is voracious, it swallows all the living.
Life is voracious, it swallows all the dead.
neither is ever satisfied, neither is ever filled,
each swallows and swallows the world.

The grip of life is as strong as the grip of death.

(but the vanished, the vanished beloved, o where?)

— “Poem With Two Endings” by Jane Hirshfield. And here’s The Guardian’s Carol Rumens on this poem and others by Hirshfield, whose popularity, she writes, “is no doubt founded on the desire for poems that investigate large ideas in plain language.”

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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