Daybreak Tuesday, 10/21/25

Chance of showers first thing, then gradually clearing. Yesterday’s low is pulling away and tonight’s has yet to arrive, so for today we get last night’s remnants, then clouds, then sun, then a new set of clouds this evening, and then more rain—possibly before midnight, more likely afterward. Highs today in the low 60s, lows overnight in the mid 40s.

Gorging on fall. Well, two out of three, anyway…

About yesterday. As you’re probably aware, there was a massive Amazon Web Services outage yesterday that affected websites everywhere, including Daybreak’s. If you tried to get to Eric Francis’s story about the bomb squad response to a car in Hanover on Sunday, it’s at the burgundy link. You’ll find yesterday’s Daybreak here, including an explanation for the new sponsored block at the top of the newsletter.

“Messy spaces can spur creativity.” At least, that’s what Lydia’s thinking in DB Johnson’s Lost Woods this week as she confronts the cluttered studio on her houseboat… and searches for some blank canvas she knows is there somewhere.

In E. Corinth, hopes that a Beetlejuice icon will become a community hub. Actually, the century-old schoolhouse that served as the fictional Miss Shannon's School for Girls once was “a lively gathering space that hosted community dinners, Halloween celebrations, and local theater performances,” writes Erica Houskeeper for Daybreak. But it fell on hard times and now Kendall Gendron is trying to bring it back. “If your community has fun things that people want to do, and programming to keep people entertained, happy, and connected, I don't think there's any downside,” she tells Erica—who reports on the effort, along with photos from a recent fall market there.

Meanwhile, in Cornish, construction starts on new library and community center. As Patrick O’Grady writes in the Valley News, “The start of construction marks a significant turning point” in the four-year saga that split the town over whether to turn a former general store into a new library, or try to hang on to the nearby Stowell Library despite its lack of plumbing and challenges for people with disabilities. Now, though, the $3 million project spearheaded by Colleen O’Neill—who gave the store to the town—is under way. It will include expanded space for the library’s collections, a children’s room, a community meeting space, and a variety of outdoor spaces.

SPONSORED: Come to Spooky Science at the Montshire! This (not so scary) event is designed especially for families with children through age 12. Enjoy a night at the Montshire, in costume, with tricked-out exhibits, live Halloween-themed demos, hands-on spooky stations, and so much more! Friday, October 24th, 5:30pm - 8pm. Sponsored by the Montshire Museum of Science.

In Hanover, Jesse’s and Dunk’s to get new ownership. The sales by Tony Barnett and his Blue Sky Restaurant Group follow last year’s sale of Molly’s to its longtime manager, Jennifer Packard. Now, reports the VN’s Marion Umpleby, Barnett has sold Jesse’s to general manager Patrick Reed, a Norwich resident who began his career there two decades ago as a salad prep cook and intends to keep the restaurant “as the same as possible.” The sale of Dunk’s is still pending and it will become a different restaurant. Barnett recently became a grandfather and wants more time for family visits, he tells Umpleby. He plans to keep Snax, in Centerra, for now.

CHaD Hero sets fundraising record. Sunday’s half-marathon and 5Ks pulled in over $1 million, with more than 3,600 runners and walkers, volunteers, and sponsors participating, DH says. Last year’s haul was $825,000. WMUR’s got some photos.

“This is a really great opportunity to be like, OK, this is my expressed gratitude in a real physical way.” That’s writer, actor, producer, and grateful Dartmouth alum Mindy Kaling talking to NHPR’s Julia Furukawa about her gift of the Kaling Theater Lab to the refurbished Hopkins Center. Kaling talks to Furukawa about the gift—”I don't come from generational wealth or anything like that,” she say—and Dartmouth and her hopes for the space: “I really hope it's a place that's filled with laughter. I mean, I obviously hope serious plays and music and everything is also practiced there, but I really want to think of it as a place where comedy can come and live on campus.”

In search of cackling geese. Not the evil laughing kind, but the Canada goose’s smaller cousin. On Sunday, writer and naturalist Ted Levin was at Lake Runnymede in Windsor, sitting in the sun, on the lookout for a pair of cackling geese that had been reported there: “A high-pitched honker, barely bigger than a mallard. Really, a Canada goose in miniature.” Mostly they stay north and west, but a few migrate with Canada geese, “the hoi polloi of waterfowl.” Ted’s never seen one, so his hopes were high. Let’s just say: He saw lots of Canada geese “tipping up and feeding or bathing or resting in the sun.” He details it all on his “Another Morning in Paradise” Substack.

NH AG’s office fines House GOP leaders, Karen Liot Hill for campaign finance violations. The DOJ on Friday notified Liot Hill, the sole Democrat on the Exec Council, that it would fine her $1K after she used 2024 campaign funds for expenses like cleaning her home after campaign events—expenditures she’d thought were legit, but weren’t, reports William Skipworth in NH Bulletin. She refunded her campaign with her own money, but did not correct the campaign finance reports in time. The DOJ is also fining House Majority Leader Jason Osborne for filing campaign reports late, and the House GOP campaign committee for unaccounted-for expenditures.

First responders find body of VT man in river. They’d been dispatched Sunday morning to Westminster for a report of a missing adult male, the NH State Police reported in a press release yesterday. There, they found the body of Cory Walker, 41, of Westminster Station. Information gathered by the VT State Police “indicates that Walker frequently camped near or on the Connecticut River and occasionally slept overnight in his canoe. The canoe was found capsized and anchored to the riverbed a short distance from shore.” The death is not considered suspicious, “though the circumstances leading to the canoe’s capsizing remain under investigation.”

NH Fish & Game will charge hiker for cost of rescue. Sunday evening, the department got a call from a hiker near the summit of Little Haystack in Lincoln, along the Franconia Ridge Trail. The 23-year-old NH man “explained he was not prepared and needed help getting down. He did not have water, food, or a light. With the temperatures dropping and a storm system moving in,” conservation officers hiked up, found him around 8:15 pm, and helped him get to a trailhead at 9:50 pm. No word on how much the rescue cost—just that the man will be getting the bill.

Nice fireball! Also in the Whites, but early Saturday morning, during the peak of the Orionid meteor shower, captured by Erik Fraser. The American Meteor Society says it’s received 105 reports of fireballs around New England and Quebec that night. (At the fireball image, just X out the annoying popup if you’re not a Facebook user).

Federal court case in VT offers inside look at the “grandparent scam.” The scheme, which has defrauded people in VT and 40 other states, involved a caller claiming to be “an elderly victim’s relative, often a grandchild, who had been arrested and was in need of bail money,” writes VTDigger’s Alan J. Keays. It also involved dozens of people, many of them in Montreal, “posing in various and specific roles to carry it out, from fake bail bondsmen to phony attorneys.” Said federal Judge William K. Sessions III last week, as he ordered a jail term for one defendant, “This is one of the most extraordinarily serious fraud schemes that I’ve seen in my years on the bench.”

To be or not to be? “It was a question that I had to ask myself in the silence of the cell.” Jerry Guenthner spent almost 38 years in prison for murdering a cop. At first, he was a prison boss, controlling drugs, gambling, and loan-sharking behind bars, writes Stephen Humphries in The Christian Science Monitor. Then, he joined Shakespeare Behind Bars. For Guenthner, playing the Bard’s deeply flawed characters was transformational, allowing him to “quit wearing the mask” of a gangster and drug dealer. At long last, he was granted parole in 2024, a prison mentor with a bachelor’s degree and a passion for Shakespeare. (h/t to the JO’s Alex Nuti-de Biasi for noticing).

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

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HEADS UP
Dartmouth’s Dickey Center hosts Geeta Anand for “Reporting Without Borders: The Role of Journalism Today”. Anand, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, former reporter for both the NYT and the WSJ (and the Rutland Herald), and currently editor-in-chief of VTDigger, will explore the role of independent journalism “in an era of misinformation, political polarization, and rapid technological change.” 5 pm in Haldeman 41 and livestreamed; you’ll need to register.

Meanwhile, Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center and The Dartmouth host NYT Opinion Editor Kathleen Kingsbury. A former reporter for Time, Kingsbury moved to the Boston Globe’s editorial board in 2013, then to the Times in 2017, where she became acting editorial page editor in 2020, then opinion editor the following year. She’ll be talking about "The Power of Differing Opinions” with Dartmouth government prof Herschel Nachlis and The Dartmouth editor-in-chief Charlotte Hampton. 5 pm in Filene Auditorium, no livestream.

At the Howe Library, “The Scam Landscape: Staying Safe”. Hosted by the AARP Speakers Bureau, an AARP rep and someone from the Hanover Police Department will talk over fraud trends, prevention, resources for detecting, preventing, and dealing with fraud, and scams current in this area. 6:30 pm in the Mayer Room and online, both require registration.

James Lenfestey at Still North Books & Bar. The Minneapolis-based poet and editor will be talking about Time Remaining, his newest collection, “with a suite of odes to parts of the body—heart, belly, ankle, teeth, ears, and more—and astonishment at the powers of language: ‘the sound of “n”,’ our ancient alphabet, ‘the terror of publishing.’” At 7 pm.

And you might want to know about VINS’s online auction, which started up Friday and runs to Nov. 9—with a donor matching highest bids (totaling up to $18,000) placed by Oct. 31. Art works, tix to museums and scenic spots all over the Northeast, food and drink, restaurant gift cards… all at the link.

And the Tuesday poem.

And is it stamina
that unseasonably freaks
forth a bluet, a
Quaker lady, by
the lake? So small,
a drop of sky that
splashed and held,
four-petaled, creamy
in its throat. The woods
around were brown,
the air crisp as a
Carr’s table water
biscuit and smelt of
cider. There were frost
apples on the trees in
the field below the house.
The pond was still, then
broke into a ripple.
The hills, the leaves that
have not yet fallen
are deep and oriental
rug colors. Brown leaves
in the woods set off
gray trunks of trees.
But that bluet was
the focus of it all: last
spring, next spring, what
does it matter? Unexpected
as a tear when someone
reads a poem you wrote
for him: “It’s this line
here.” That bluet breaks
me up, tiny spring flower
late, late in dour October.

— James Schuyler, “The Bluet”. And here’s poet, novelist, and editor Ben Lerner in The Paris Review last year, writing about Schuyler and about the links between last week’s poem and this one.

See you tomorrow.

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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt      Poetry editor: Michael Lipson    Associate Editor: Jonea Gurwitt   About Rob                                                 About Michael