Daybreak Tuesday, 2/17/26

Chance of snow first thing. There could be snow showers… or not. What we do know is it’s going to be mostly cloudy out there, with temps rising into the upper 30s by mid or late afternoon. Partly cloudy skies tonight, lows in the lower 20s.

Sno cones. “When fluffy snow falls under cold and windless conditions,” writes Bill Waste from Lyme, “last summer's Queen Ann's Lace makes the perfect cups for catching what I call ‘Northern Cotton.’"

Feb-yoo-ary? Feb-roo-ary? This week in DB Johnson’s Lost Woods, Auk and Eddie contemplate the month, groundhogs, and how much longer winter’s going to last.

A guide to Hartford’s candidates. As you might remember, Hartford’s Town & School Meeting Committee crowdsourced ideas for questions for this year’s town and school candidates, and now they’ve just gone up with their voter guide. There are three candidates running for two two-year terms on the selectboard (Ashley Andreas, Tim Fariel, and Janet Sharkey Potter), the only contested contest. They and Mike Eigenbrode, who’s running for a three-year term, answer questions on everything from why they’re running to limiting taxes to boosting housing affordability. School board candidate Daniel Schapira does likewise on school costs, consolidation, and more.

Health Closet finds a home in downtown Lebanon. You may remember that for years, the effort run by Hanover Lions Club member John Bayliss and Canaan Lions Club member Harry Armstrong, has collected and then loaned out used durable medical equipment—beds, crutches, whatever—often toting it all over the Upper Valley to grateful users. As Liz Sauchelli reports in the Valley News, they’ve been leasing space from Hypertherm, but have to vacate—and now have a new, three-year lease at 2 Mascoma Street, alongside Sunrise Buffet and Pellegrino’s Italian Market. Along with the move, Sauchelli writes, the Health Closet will become its own separate Lions Club.

SPONSORED: Making the Right Side Right Again. For Liz Marshall, staying active is a part of daily life. When “one little slip on a wet surface” set off a complex recovery involving multiple surgeries, Liz faced the challenge head-on, learning when to push forward and when to slow down. Read her story of recovery and resilience in “Making the Right Side Right Again.” Sponsored by Cioffredi & Associates Physical Therapy. 

Bradford VT police seek to add officers. Ever since Bradford shifted from employing just a part-time constable a couple of decades ago, it’s had just two officers, who these days cover a combined 80 hours of service a week, reports the VN’s Alex Ebrahimi. State police provide the rest. “We’d always try and work around each other to give (the town) more coverage, not overlapping as much,” Chief Russell Robinson tells Ebrahimi. “But we just can’t do that anymore. It’s not safe for one guy to be out there by himself,” he says, citing drug investigations in particular. The department has proposed adding two more officers, which voters will take up at town meeting.

SPONSORED: VINS’ Winter Wildlife Celebration this Saturday, 10am-4pm! All kinds of wildlife call Vermont home, even in the coldest season. Discover how everthing from songbirds to reindeer adapt to life in the snow. The Vermont Reindeer Farm will offer an up-close experience with this amazing arctic species. You could even win one of our custom-made Pokémon Go birding cards for each of the species you identify at our feeders. Meet the resident VINS wildlife to discover how they meet the challenges of winter, or join a fun winter game in the HawkFly. It’s sure to be a great way to discover the wonders of winter! Sponsored by VINS.

And speaking of VINS and wildlife… Back in January, VINS staff mounted high-definition cameras 100 feet up in a white pine tree on the organization’s property, aimed at a bald eagle nest occupied (though not at the time) by a pair they’ve named Windsor and Dewey. “Since then,” the organization said yesterday, “we’ve been waiting for Windsor and Dewey to return for nesting season.” They saw the birds off and on, but on February 14 they arrived together and spent some time exploring the nest—all captured by the cameras. The equipment will eventually provide a livestream, but for the moment, there’s a taste of Saturday’s footage at the link.

New documents on ICE plans for Merrimack NH still raise questions. Just catching up on the debate over the feds’ plans to turn a warehouse into an immigrant detention facility? NHPR’s Kate Dario on Friday pulled the various strands together: Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s insistence she knew nothing about it until recently; ICE director Todd Lyons’ comment to Congress that officials had been in touch with her; a federal economic impact analysis for NH that called it “Oklahoma” and cited benefits to the state’s sales and income taxes—which NH doesn’t have. “I feel a little gaslit,” says one Merrimack resident. The facility would hold 400-600 inmates at a time.

With affordability top of mind, VT towns slice bond requests. Last year, reports VTDigger’s Kevin O’Connor, municipalities around the state with more than 5,000 residents put $275 million in proposals for everything from new water mains to new buildings in front of voters. This year? $44 million. Many of those proposals would address water and sewer needs, including $7.8 million in Hartford for water main improvements in Wilder and around Latham Works Lane; Hartford is also seeking approval for $1.13 million in downtown WRJ sidewalk and roadway improvements. O’Connor surveys those and other upcoming votes around the state.

Want to understand power in the VT legislature? Hang out in the “small, cramped committee rooms.” That’s where committee chairs spend a lot of their time, and because they set agendas, choose which bills to take up, and decide who can speak on them, “the procedural choices they make can shape a bill long before it reaches the floor,” writes Seven Days’ Hannah Bassett. And long after—like the 2011 Senate hearings on state recognition for the Abenaki, in which “most Odanak and Wôlinak people” were kept from testifying, a decision that reverberates to this day. She delves into how chairs do their jobs, tension with leadership, and a host of other issues.

Who needs an Olympic slalom course when you’ve got a horse? While most eyes have been on Milan-Cortina, some eyes this past weekend were on Silverton, CO, which held its annual skijoring competition. Nearly 100 teams traveled there, mostly from the mountain west, but some from as far away as Maine. The Durango Herald was there, and put together a quick video of Saturday’s racing. And in case its helpful, Jim Ryan, who was the winning skier (behind Dennis Alverson and Jet Fuel Cowboy) for the open event this weekend, put up this GoPro skier’s-eye video last winter.

And speaking of horses, and the Year of the Horse, which begins today… Here’s a lovely little 47-second animation just created at an animation slam by students at the Gobelins Animation school in Paris.

The Tuesday Crossword. It’s time for Dartmouth librarian and puzzle artist Laura Braunstein’s Tuesday “mini,” a short little brain stretcher for your morning. And if you’d like to catch up on past puzzles, you can do that here.

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

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HEADS UP
yMusic at the Hop. The chamber music groups is in “the vanguard of American contemporary music,” the Hop writes, working with everyone from John Legend to Ben Folds. “Since their inception, yMusic has pursued a unique mission: to work on both sides of the classical and popular music divide, without sacrificing virtuosity, charisma or style.” Two concerts today, at 5 pm and 7:30 pm, both in the Morris Recital Hall.

“Ukraine Today” at Sunapee’s Abbott Library. Joshua Duclos, who teaches at St. Paul’s School and is a part-time outdoors guide, spent time in Ukraine as a volunteer teacher and lecturer at various universities and worked at a kitchen that prepared meals for soldiers. He’ll be giving a ground’s-eye view of the war. 5:30 pm.

At the Kimball Public Library in Randolph, cartoonist Dan Nott and “Drawing Hidden Systems”. In 2023, Nott, who teaches at the Center for Cartoon Studies, came out with a nonfiction graphic work, Hidden Systems, whose subtitle explains what it’s about: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day. This evening at 6, he’ll be at the Kimball in a Vermont Humanities presentation to talk about those systems, what went into creating the book, and how aspiring cartoonists can become the real thing.

The Tuesday poem

So often it has been displayed to us, the hourglass
with its grains of sand drifting down,
not as an object in our world
but as a sign, a symbol, our lives
drifting down grain by grain,
sifting away — I’m sure everyone must
see this emblem somewhere in the mind.
Yet not only our lives drift down. The stuff
of ego with which we began, the mass
in the upper chamber, filters away
as love accumulates below. Now
I am almost entirely love.

I have been
to the banker, the broker, those strange
people, to talk about unit trusts,
annuities, CDs, IRAs, trying
to leave you whatever I can after
I die. I’ve made my will, written
you a long letter of instructions.
I think about this continually.
What will you do? How
will you live? You can’t go back
to cocktail waitressing in the casino.
And your poetry? It will bring you
at best a pittance in our civilization,
a widow’s mite, as mine has
for forty-five years. Which is why
I leave you so little. Brokers?
Unit trusts? I’m no financier doing
the world’s great business. And the sands
in the upper glass grow few.

Can I leave
you the vale of ten thousand trilliums
where we buried our good cat Pokey
across the lane to the quarry?
Maybe the tulips I planted under
the lilac tree? Or our red-bellied
woodpeckers who have given us so
much pleasure, and the rabbits
and the deer? And kisses? And
love-makings? All our embracings?
I know millions of these will be still
unspent when the last grain of sand
falls with its whisper, its inconsequence,
on the mountain of my love below.

— “Testament” by Hayden Carruth.

See you tomorrow.

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