Daybreak Tuesday, 6/16/26

Getting sunny. It’ll be a lovely day out there once the fog clears: Full-on sun, highs in the mid 70s, gentle breezes from the west. Low 50s overnight.

Okay, all you sneezing people. Want to see the pollen out there? Jordan Long was about 1,000 feet above Lake Fairlee in a hot air balloon the other day and caught this remarkable photo of a pollen plume on the lake.

Eddie with rocks in his hand, Auk with an empty suitcase. Just another day in DB Johnson’s Lost Woods.

Did you know that WRJ’s Tip Top Building is actually seven buildings? It used to be eight, owner Matt Bucy tells Sarah Copps for her Daybreak profile of the building, but he detached that last one, left it in the parking lot with an invitation to take it—and someone did. What we now know as the Tip Top, with its inviting array of studios and shops and offices and quirky spaces, spent most of its life as a bakery: It was where Hanover cracker makers the Smiths moved after buying the Vermont Baking Company, eventually becoming the Ward Baking Company. Sarah roams the halls and meets homing pigeons, a model of a human prostate, and more…

And speaking of history… The Randolph Historical Society has made hundreds of old photos and postcards available online to anyone who wants to see them through Flickr Commons, an international program used by libraries, archives and museums. “Among the most significant collections are glassplate negatives from the Sparhawk photography studio, which operated in Randolph during the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” writes Tim Calabro in The Herald. Volunteers have been scanning the images and identifying people and locations when possible, and the archive is continuing to grow. You can find it all here.

SPONSORED: Help people who need a hand! Based in the Upper Valley, Hearts You Hold supports immigrants and refugees across the US by asking them what they need. These include immigrants and refugees around the Upper Valley who need something as simple as a laundry card; a med student from Ghana who needs basic laptops for her kids; immigrants in Vermont who need gloves, mattresses, strollers, and other basics; and people across the country who need your help getting started. Find them here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.

“It’s a family place, our funeral home.” Woodstock’s Greg Camp means that literally, about the Cabot Funeral Home: He’s the fourth generation in his family to run it; his son Jordan is the fifth. But he also means it figuratively: “What I do is I take care of people,” he tells Jennifer Sutton and Elissa Pine of Two Daughters Productions (here via VT Public). “Five percent of my job is taking care of a deceased person. Ninety-five percent of the job is helping the family that’s had that loss.” It’s a long, thoughtfully crafted episode: on Greg’s going into the business, the business itself, what drew Jordan to it, why the Camps keep a 4-wheel-drive Suburban on hand…

SPONSORED: Oak Hill Music Festival’s 5th season celebration begins this week! Opening Saturday, June 20 with Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals for piano duo, followed June 24 by Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartet No. 3, Dvořák’s Dumky Trio on June 27, and a grand finale on June 28 featuring Mendelssohn’s celebrated Octet. Join acclaimed musicians from around the country for four unforgettable concerts in Lebanon, Norwich, and Hanover. June 20–28. Tickets and more information here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by the Oak Hill Music Festival.

Rethinking delayed mowing. The idea behind what homeowners know as “No Mow May” has its roots in hayfield owners who, starting in the early 2000s, began delaying cutting during grassland bird (eastern meadowlark, bobolink) breeding season. The strategy grew out of research on the impact of haying on the birds’ breeding success. But now, writes Colby Galliher in Northern Woodlands, there’s countervailing research: “As much as they help breeding birds, infrequent cuts also allow invasives to spread and set seed,” Galliher writes. Moreover, research suggests that this, in turn, reduces insect life, and thus bird populations. It’s a complex story, lots more at the link.

SPONSORED: Hartford Area Career and Technology Center Adult Education is for you! We offer practical, hands-on learning opportunities including Cooking Classes, Dental Assisting, Welding, Licensed Nursing Assistant (LNA), Microsoft Excel, QuickBooks, Electrical 1, Home Renovation, and more—with Dog Grooming and Introduction to Law Enforcement coming soon! Stay connected and be the first to hear about upcoming classes, registration dates, and new offerings. Hit the burgundy link and click "Connect With Us" to learn more and stay in touch or call Jennifer Opalinski at (802) 295-8630  x2504. Sponsored by HACTC.

Ayotte vetoes bill to allow medical marijuana dispensaries to grow their own. The bill, which was sponsored by Loudon Republican Sen. Howard Pearl and passed the legislature with bipartisan support, would have allowed dispensaries to have a single on-site greenhouse for cultivating cannabis, reports NH Bulletin’s William Skipworth. Granite Staters need a medical marijuana card issued by a physician to shop at any of the state’s seven dispensaries (one is in Lebanon); NH is the only state in New England without legalized recreational marijuana. “I do not support expanding the cultivation of marijuana in our state,” the governor said in her veto message Friday.

VT DMV looks at making vehicle inspections easier to pass. Vermont hasn’t yet gone the way of NH and ended mandatory yearly inspections, and a bill to make inspections every two years didn’t get out of the legislature—”I was hearing from constituents that they could no longer afford the high cost of an every-year vehicle safety inspection,” state Sen. Becca White tells VT Public’s Peter Hirschfeld. But another bill, which legislators expect Gov. Phil Scott will sign, calls on the DMV to speed up changes to the inspection manual to emphasize actual safety risks. This would be especially helpful with cosmetic rust, Hirschfeld notes. More at the link.

Vermont has a vacant prison in Windsor. So why is it sending prisoners out of state? Southeast State Correctional Facility, where inmates used to grow food in the vegetable gardens, was shut down in 2017 after the state found it too expensive to run. And, reports VT Public’s Liam Elder-Connors for Brave Little State’s latest episode, on VT’s prison expat population, Windsor residents don’t want a rebuilt prison in their midst. So the state deals with its overflow population by sending men to Mississippi and elsewhere. Elder-Connors talks to cons and ex-cons, who describe what they like and don’t. And here, he describes his visit to Vermonters incarcerated in Tutwiler, MS.

Women’s World Cup will be back at Killington in November. Last year, the big names in Alpine racing headed to Colorado for Thanksgiving weekend instead, while Killington upgraded the Superstar trail, where the races had been held the eight years before. But now, that work’s all done. “We invested heavily in the mountain experience this year, including the new Superstar Six and continued snowmaking upgrades across the resort,” said CEO and president Mike Solimano in yesterday’s statement. “Those investments support both the longest season in the East and the return of one of the most energetic stops on the Audi FIS Ski World Cup tour this November.”

Two friends took their ATVs down a path in northern MN. Good thing. In early June, Adam Sandbeck and Mike Gravalin checked out a trail they had ignored for eight years, writes Maya Yang in The Guardian. The day they decided to try it out, deep in the woods, they found a van stuck in the mud, and lying next to it—almost fully submerged in a mud puddle—the driver, Kathryn Woessner. “We thought it was just a body, and then she whispered, ‘Help me,’ and it scared the crap out of me,” said Sandbeck. Days before, Woessner had slipped and fallen into the mud, where she lay trapped. The pair freed her and called 911; paramedics got her to the hospital. 

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

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

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HEADS UP
At Sunapee’s Abbott Library, “Artificial Intelligence Today.” Computer scientist Cathie LeBlanc, whose graduate work focused on developing AI tools for molecular biology applications, will talk about the history of AI, the different types of AI and how they work, and the pros and cons of AI use in different contexts. 5:30 pm.

Historical trivia at Still North Books & Bar. The regular monthly mashup with the Howe Library tests your knowledge of “fascinating facts in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. From rebellious tea parties to legendary battles and bold Founding Fathers and Mothers! There will be six rounds of eight questions each. Compete in teams of 1-4 people.” You’ll need to register to compete.

At the Thetford Arthouse Cinema, The Worst Person in the World. Joaquim Trier’s 2021 film, writes TAC’s Art Kahn, “moves us quickly through the story of a young woman seeking her better identity as she navigates a couple of love affairs that are at times steamy, at times dreamy, sometimes comic, at all times pretty damn sexy — and so intelligently written and choreographed that we don’t mind feeling just a touch voyeuristic.” 7 pm in the Martha Rich Theater at Thetford Academy.

A concert tribute to classical trumpet master John Wallace. The first concert of the 2026 International Trumpet Seminar at Chosen Vale, which brings the trumpet world every year to the Enfield Shaker Museum, features some of the great contributions to the repertoire by Wallace, a Scottish-born virtuoso who, among other things, accompanied Kiri Te Kanawa at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di. Tonight’s program includes works by Haydn, Ned Rorem, Wallace himself, and others. 8 pm in the Mary Keane Chapel.

The Tuesday poem.

From the age of six, I had a passion for copying the form of things and since the age of fifty I have published many drawings, yet of all I drew by my seventieth year there is nothing worth taking into account. At seventy-three years I partly understood the structure of animals, birds, insects and fishes, and the life of grasses and plants. And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvelous and divine. When I am one hundred and ten, each dot, each line will possess a life of its own.

— From Hokusai’s postscript to his 1830s-’40s series of collected woodblock prints, 100 Views of Mt. Fuji. A follow-on from last week’s poem by the famed painter and printmaker.

See you tomorrow.

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