Daybreak Tuesday, 5/12/26

Mostly sunny. With high pressure settled in over the region, we’ve got a fine day ahead, with plenty of blue sky and temps getting into the high 50s after a brisk start to the morning. What we can’t see is the slab of low pressure that’ll be moving this direction overnight, bringing showers the rest of the work week. Winds today from the northwest, lows tonight in the low or mid 30s.

Bye bye, winter. Well, yeah, despite the occasional frost, it’s still full-on spring.

Oh, those trickster artists. In DB Johnson’s Lost Woods this week, Auk and Eddie are still “marooned” on their desert-island-rowboat up in a field above the Lost Woods pond—until Lydia comes by with a purely selfless offer of help.

VT State Police confirm identity in Norwich suspicious death. In a terse press release yesterday afternoon, the VSP wrote, “As the investigation continues, the Vermont State Police is able to identify the deceased woman as Noel A. Neely, 82, a resident of the home on Douglas Hill Road where the incident occurred. This case remains open and active. The state police is working is in close communication with the Windsor County State’s Attorney’s Office regarding the details and circumstances of the case.” As Eric Francis reported yesterday, Neely’s body was discovered Saturday morning in the home she owned with her husband, orthodontist Donald Neely.

On social media, worries that Blake Hill Preserves has closed. Bosh, says its founder. “I’m happy to confirm that it’s not the case — we are very much in operation here,” the Windsor jam-and-preserves company’s co-owner and master sweet-stuff maker Vicky Allard told the Standard’s Tom Ayres recently. Ayres reports that Blake Hill did lose a large, private-label customer that had gone through “major restructuring” earlier this year, which caused a “significant reduction” in their business with Blake Hill, Allard says. Blake Hill furloughed all its employees in March and shut down its on-site retail jam shop, but it’s now brought about 10 people back for jam-making.

Redemption in Bradford, Vermont. The question for VT Public’s Brave Little State from Thetford’s Kevin Donohue might seem a little pedestrian: “Who redeems bottles and cans in Vermont? Why are there so few places to do so?” But as BLS’s Burgess Brown says, really what Donohue wanted was to introduce the world to Teera Paye, who goes by “Sweet T” and who runs Valley Redemption in Bradford with blindingly fast sorting chops, an uncanny ability to keep running totals in her head, food, hugs, and jokes for customers, and an unquenchable spirit. “I mean, yes, it's a little messy, and this smell does get a little raunchy during the summer. But…slap a couple hammocks in between the beams and you’re freaking hanging out!” Meet her at the link.

SPONSORED: Hear the hits that made Queen’s lead singer Freddie Mercury famous! Touring with a world-class band of award-winning musicians, Terry Barber (lead vocalist) has created this performance to celebrate one of rock’s most inimitable performers of all time—not just his songs, but his stories and actual words. Barber, a noted singer and former member of the Grammy-winning group Chanticleer, has performed on many of the world’s most storied stages, and brings “We Are the Champions,” “The Show Must Go On,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and more to the LOH stage this Saturday, May 16. Sponsored by Terry Barber.

At the heart of Shaker Bridge Theatre’s The Waverly Gallery, a “spectacular” performance. That’s Marina Re as Gladys Green, the gallery owner and matriarch with a dementia “that begins with a whisper, and, by the end of the play, builds to a deafening roar,” writes Susan Apel in Artful. It’s an emotionally complex portrayal, with a strong cast of family members around her who are “beautifully imperfect,” Susan writes: They get frustrated, lose their tempers, give in to despair—and never stop loving Gladys. “This performance is now in my brain’s file (may it have a long and robust life) of unforgettable experiences,” Susan reports.

“It’s really exciting to be at Northern Stage right now.” Talene Monahon, who graduated from Dartmouth in 2013 and last acted at Northern Stage when it was in the Briggs Opera House, returns tomorrow night not just as a playwright, but as an actor (for the first week) in Wonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret, an adaptation of a 1714 farce of the same name. In The Dartmouth, she talks to Eloisa Bloom about how the play came about, being a playwright, Northern Stage itself, her relationship with Northern Stage’s Carol Dunne—who commissioned Wonder! and who “taught me how to be a theater professional”—and her Pulitzer-finalist play, Meet the Cartozians.

SPONSORED: How is Artificial Intelligence Transforming America? Six experts. Six Wednesdays. One of the most important conversations of our time. This July and August, the Osher at Dartmouth Summer Lecture Series brings nationally recognized voices on AI to Lebanon and to screens worldwide. This year's experts will provide clarity, context, and confidence to novices and experts alike on the benefits and challenges of AI. Join us Wednesdays, July 8–August 12 at Lebanon Opera House or YouTube Livestream. Register per session or save with the full series. Sponsored by Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Dartmouth.

Your chance to be in the presence of a flower that smells like a rotting animal carcass. If you’ve been in the Upper Valley for at least a few years, you know that the Dartmouth greenhouse is (in)famous for its corpse flowers, the tropical plant species that grows “a tall, yellow stalk called a spadix that is surrounded by a ruffled, deep purple spathe” all designed to attract insects with their smell. Well, Morphy, the best-known of them, is blooming, which doesn’t happen often. At the burgundy link, the Morphy livestream. More about the plants here, and greenhouse hours here.

Egg transfer. On her Naturally Curious blog, Mary Holland runs a remarkable photo. “There is an assumption by many that it would be too difficult for a bird to clasp an egg in its beak without injuring it, much less fly with it to a new location and deposit the egg in a new nesting site,” she writes. “While it is a rare occurrence, it does happen.” And one of her readers caught it on camera: a female pileated woodpecker in flight, egg clamped carefully it her beak. “Egg relocation usually happens as a result of a nest tree being damaged in a storm or predation (snakes, raccoons, fishers and birds are likely predators),” Mary writes.

SPONSORED: Local non-profit Finding Our Stride is seeking an energetic and organized individual to join their small team as Program Director and Head Coach. This hybrid, part-time (60%) role oversees free after-school running programs at 30+ schools across Vermont and New Hampshire. Responsibilities include training and supporting coaches, managing program logistics, developing resources, and expanding opportunities for youth to thrive socially, emotionally, and physically. Learn more and apply at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Finding Our Stride.

Passengers from NH, NY connected to cruise ship hantavirus outbreak. Neither the two Granite Staters nor the three from NY are in their home states, report WCAX’s Adam Sullivan and Tia Trudgeon, and it’s unclear when they’ll return. VT’s health department says the CDC “has not confirmed whether any Vermonters were on board.” Says DH chief clinical officer Ed Merrens, “I don’t think there have to be any specific changes in our day-to-day life, but I think it is great that we are all informed. We lived through a period of time that changed everything in the fabric of our life and understanding of health care delivery and if anything, I think we are more prepared.”

Vehicle inspection company takes another crack at a New Hampshire lawsuit. Gordon-Darby is the Kentucky-based company that used to run vehicle emissions testing in the Granite State until the legislature ended mandated inspections and a federal appeals court ruled that the company’s first lawsuit had failed to meet the standard for proving NH was violating the Clean Air Act. Now, reports NHPR’s Todd Bookman, Gordon-Darby has announced it’s withdrawing that first suit and instead will file a new complaint, still focused on the Clean Air Act. As Bookman notes, the new suit will have no impact for now: The state has stopped enforcing emissions testing.

Beating a path to Glover, VT to look at chairs. If you’ve ever been to the Museum of Everyday Life, you know that Clare Dolan—an ICU nurse who works in St. J and who runs the museum in her spare time—takes an expansive view of what museums can be. As she tells Javi Huta of UVM’s Community News Service, “The spider makes the dew drop museum on her web every morning.” Last year, the Museum of Everyday Life was devoted to stains. It’s done knots, lists, safety pins, mirrors… and who could forget the 2015-16 installment on dust? Next month, reports Huta, who profiles the museum and Doland, the new exhibit “Deeply Seated” opens.

Hope distilled. What’s better than sitting in a chair, a plate with a cheese sandwich on your lap, with a dog eyeing you expectantly? Two dogs. Olive and Mabel. “How would you pay for this cheese sandwich?” Andrew Cotter asks Mabel. “Hmm? We’ve had a lot of eat-and-runs recently.”

The Tuesday Crossword. With puzzle impresario Laura Braunstein’s regular mini.

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

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HEADS UP
Dartmouth hosts “From Paris to Brooklyn: Molière in the Park”. A staged reading of scenes from Molière’s plays by actors of Molière in the Park, a theater company based in Brooklyn, “founded to provide free theater for all and to serve as a catalyst for empathy and a conduit for political and social discourse.” Followed by a discussion with founding artistic director Lucie Tiberghien and the actors. 4:30 pm in Wilder 104.

Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center hosts Laurie Santos for “The Pursuit of Happiness: Ourselves and Our Communities”. Santos, who teaches psychology at Yale and hosts The Happiness Lab podcast, will talk about “current understanding of happiness, especially among young adults and on college campuses, and will draw on [her] expertise on the science of happiness and the ways in which our minds lie to us about what makes us happy.” 5 pm in Filene Auditorium and livestreamed.

Organ recital with Henry Danaher. Danaher, the college organist and organist at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College, will give a spring recital on the 3,937-pipe organ in Rollins Chapel. No tix required, stay afterward for a Q&A. 5 pm.

Dartmouth’s Dickey Center hosts “Crisis to Care: Responsible Technology Solutions for Health Worker Mental Health”. A panel discussion on how Dartmouth researchers and international colleagues are trying to “equip future healthcare workers and current professionals worldwide with tools to manage escalating mental health challenge: burnout, stress, and trauma exacerbated by global health crises.” 5 pm in Haldeman 41 and livestreamed.

At the Norwich Bookstore, poets Diana Whitney, Meg Reynolds, and Eve Alexandra read from their latest collections. Whitney’s poems in Girl Trouble “spill secrets, make trouble, reckon with stories of desire and harm, and explore the agency and oppression of women and girls”—and you can read more about its roots and her time at Dartmouth in Marion Umpleby’s VN profile. Reynolds’s Condition explores early motherhood during the pandemic. And Alexandra’s None of Us in White considers themes like childhood and a father’s presence and loss. 7 pm.

The Tuesday poem.

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying....
We want for the waitress to call us honey
when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, 
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

— From “Small Kindnesses” by Danusha Laméris.

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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