Daybreak Tuesday, 10/6/26

Sunny, definitely cooler. It’ll still be gusty today, with winds from the northwest, and the air behind yesterday’s cold front won’t get out of the mid 50s, but at least we get actual clear skies today. On the other hand, we also get them tonight, which means temps will likely drop down to or below freezing in a good part of the region.

Before the long flight. Not every winged visitor has left for southern climes. This week’s Daybreak photos page starts out with a hummingbird topping up last week in New London, from Midge Eliassen, and a monarch on asters in Lebanon, from Andrew Garthwaite. (That second one is rendering oddly on the Daybreak page; if you want to see its full glory, go here.)

So if you leave the front door open and let the outdoors in, do your rooms get bigger? In Henry’s house in Lost Woods, they seem to. Which lets DB Johnson (and Auk and Eddie) play with space-time in this week’s strip.

Heads up tonight on I-89 crossing the river and at the I-91 interchange. Work continues, with crews installing new overhead sign structures. Tonight and tomorrow night (weather permitting), NHDOT says in a press release, there will be rolling roadblocks both north- and southbound between Exit 20 on the NH side and the I-91 interchange in VT. They’ll be running 9 pm to 5 am both nights. Then, on Thursday, the I-91 NB exit 10A off ramp (that’s the one to I-89 south) will be closed from 8 pm to 6 am. As usual, the detour is up to Exit 12, then back down.

This week in Ask Maggie: Advance Transit by the numbers, plus heading to Hanover without worrying about parking. Bet you didn’t know how AT’s buses get numbered! Or even how many there are. Because if you see, say, bus number 1601, does that mean AT has that many buses? Nope, writes Maggie Cassidy: the numbering system for the 31 fixed-route buses contains a little code, which she helps you decipher. But then, throwing herself into her task, she checks in on whether AT personnel have a favorite ad (hint: there’s a high awwww factor), and heads from Wilder into Hanover, where she revels in being car free. Then misses the bus home.

SPONSORED: Cedar Circle Farm & Education Center’s Pumpkin Festival is back on October 11! From wagon rides to kids’ activities and community partners, there’s plenty to do at this family-friendly celebration of fall on the farm. The Well-Kept Men and Whipple Hillbillies will perform, and we’ll enjoy bites from Fresco Catering and Vermont Maple BBQ, Griddle & Groovy, Taste of Punjab, Simmering Bone, and the Cedar Circle kitchen. Join us for this beloved community event by purchasing tickets or signing up to volunteer! Pre-registration recommended. Sponsored by Cedar Circle Farm & Education Center.

Thetford Trails Team closes on 93-acre Union Village Dam parcel. You may remember that in a Sidenote article back in April, team Secretary Krista Karlson wrote that the group had signed a purchase agreement with the owners of the privately held land, which is key to connecting trails throughout the Union Village Dam network. On the Thetford list Friday, the group announced the completion of the sale, with some 70 contributors helping to make it possible. “The piece that we bought is the key one because a bunch of the trails come together and criss-cross there,” TTT president Conrad Reining tells the Valley News’s Allison Rogers (burgundy link).

Piermont’s town administrator to step down. Sarah Tucker has held the post for four years, but, reports Alex Ebrahimi in the Valley News, “has decided to accept another opportunity” according to selectboard chair Rick Daley, and will leave Oct. 16. She’ll work part-time as the town searches for a replacement. During her tenure, Daley tells Ebrahimi, Tucker was key to modernizing Piermont’s operations. “Our little town’s policies and procedures were hopelessly out of date. We’ve done a ton of progress in kind of bringing the town operations into the modern era.”

SPONSORED: A new health center at Valley Regional Hospital? Possible. The Michael and Sheila Satzow Health Center is now open across from Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont. Made possible by a generous donation from Michael and Sheila Satzow, the new health center provides more capacity and quicker appointment times. Primary care patients will find modern exam rooms and have access to X-ray and lab services during their visit. Specialty services, including orthopaedics, midwifery and podiatry, will relocate here from the main hospital in the coming months. Right here, we have a healthy disregard for the impossible. Sponsored by Dartmouth Health.

Three NH men plead guilty in bobcat poaching case. In all, the three were charged with illegally transporting the pelts of at least 41 bobcats they’d killed in NH, where bobcat hunting is illegal, to NY, where it’s legal, and then obtaining tags that allowed them to be sold in Canada. As Nate Hegyi reports for NHPR, the US Fish & Wildlife case involving Randy Inman, Sherwood Dubrey Jr., and Sherwood Dubrey Sr. is the latest outgrowth of the landmark NH Fish & Game investigation known as "Operation Night Cat” involving several corrections officers—Inman and Dubrey Jr. among them. The three in this case are scheduled to be sentenced next year.

SPONSORED: “Donut” miss this dough-lightful 5K Cider Donut Dash at Billings Farm & Museum, this Saturday, Oct. 10! Participants can run or walk through scenic pastures and peak foliage along mowed paths and farm lanes. Live music by Breanna Elaine will add to the fun, followed by Cold Hollow cider and fresh cider donuts at the finish line. Delicious prizes will be awarded to top finishers and for the best costumes. Check in begins at 8:00AM, with the race at 9:00AM. Registration includes museum admission, and spectator tickets will be available on the day of the race. It’s sure to be a sweet start to the holiday weekend! Sponsored by Billings Farm & Museum.

You watching this Ben Rice guy? The 2022 Dartmouth grad, who played college ball before being chosen by the Yankees in the 12th round of the draft, has been lighting up the postseason—hitting two runs against Boston in the first game of the wild card series, then two against the Rays last night in the divisional series (the first Yankee ever with two multi-homer outings in the first four games of a postseason). In the NYT’s Athletic, his former Dartmouth teammate and current Banana Ball player Clark Gilmore traces Rice’s success to his consistency, forged during his days at Dartmouth—from the dining hall to the library to the playing field (gift link).

Cheeky little elephants, a sexy mantis, and a zonkling—the Comedy Wildlife Awards finalists. Some very talented photographers have again managed to capture moments of great good humor in the animal world. In The Guardian, Matt Fidler has highlights (and the back story), like Lee Frost’s damselfly. “Instead of posing politely, it disappeared behind the leaf, popped its head through a readymade window, and as I pressed the shutter ... gave me a cheerful wave.” Don’t miss the genuine angry bird, Jan Wittmer’s goldcrest, whose stare is piercing, or Heather Smith’s eastern grey baby kangaroo, with an expression every parent will recognize. The full gallery is here.

The Tuesday Crossword. Laura Braunstein’s up-to-the-minute (if you’re a local) little mini puzzle.

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

Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:

THERE'S SOME GREAT DAYBREAK SWAG! Like Daybreak tote bags, sweatshirts, head-warming beanies, t-shirts, long-sleeved tees, the Daybreak jigsaw, those perfect hand-fitting coffee/tea mugs, and as always, "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Check it all out at the link!

HEADS UP
The Hanover Garden Club hosts “Putting the Garden to Bed with Linda Hansen.” Hansen is a UNH Extension master gardener, and will talk about finishing off annuals and vegetable beds, prepping perennial beds to reduce pests and disease, overwintering non-hardy plants, readying ornamental shrubs and evergreens, and tending to tools and supplies. 1 pm at the Montshire and online.

Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center hosts Tim Miller, Lis Smith, and Sam Stein for “Strategy and Spin: The 2026 Midterms.” Miller hosts The Bulwark podcast and is a well-known and pointed political commentator; Smith (Dartmouth '05) is a Democratic strategist and author of Any Given Tuesday; Stein (Dartmouth '04), is managing editor of The Bulwark. Russ Muirhead moderates. 5 pm in Filene Auditorium and livestreamed.

Dartmouth’s Dickey Center hosts “AI, Cybersecurity, and National Defense.” Emily Harding, currently at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is a past staff director of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a former CIA analyst. She’ll be talking about how new technologies “are rapidly changing the landscape of U.S. national security, transforming how threats are detected, decisions are made, and conflicts are fought” with government prof Daryl Press. 5 pm in Haldeman 41 and livestreamed.

At the Thetford Arthouse Cinema, The Rules of the Game. This week wraps TAC’s 2026 season, with two films by the great French director Jean Renoir. Tonight, his 1939 classic (banned at the start of the war), “takes satirical pleasure in the hypocrisy of the French upper crust who’ve gathered at a country estate for the weekend. Romantic and other intrigues pollinate across the upstairs/downstairs boundary as mayhem breaks out…” 7 pm in the Martha Rich Theater at Thetford Academy.

Dartmouth’s Music Department hosts “Music from North India: An Evening of Hindustani Classical Music.” It kicks off its Music Now! concert series with ragas featuring acclaimed bansuri flute maestro Rupak Kulkarni and tabla virtuoso Amit Kavthekar, both of whom bring long musical lineages to the stage. 7:30 pm in the Hop’s Faulkner Recital Hall.

The Tuesday poem.

I started out in the Virginia mountains
with my grandma’s pansy bed
and my Aunt Maud’s dandelion wine.
We lived on greens and back-fat and biscuits.
My Aunt Maud scrubbed right through the linoleum.
My daddy was a Northerner who played drums
and chewed tobacco and gambled.
He married my mama on the rebound.
Who would want an ignorant hill girl with red hair?
They took a Pullman up to Indianapolis
and someone stole my daddy’s wallet.
My whole life has been stained with pokeberries.
No man seemed right for me. I was awkward
until I found a good wood-burning stove.
There is no use asking what it means.
With my first piece of ready cash I bought my own
place in Vermont; kerosene lamps, dirt road.
I’m sticking here like a porcupine up a tree.
Like the one our neighbor shot. Its bones and skin
hung there for three years in the orchard.
No amount of knowledge can shake my grandma out of me;
or my Aunt Maud; or my mama, who didn’t just bite an apple
with her big white teeth. She split it in two.

— “Pokeberries” by Ruth Stone.

See you tomorrow.

Looking for all of the hikes, Enthusiasms, daybreak photos, or music that Daybreak has published over the years? Go here!

And always, if you’re not a subscriber yet:

Want to catch up on Daybreak itself (or find that item you trashed by mistake the other day)? You can find everything on Daybreak’s homepage.

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

And if you think one or more of your friends would like Daybreak, too, please forward this newsletter and tell them to visit daybreak.news to sign up.

Thank you!