Daybreak Tuesday, 9/29/26

Sun’s coming back! High pressure starts building in today, with things drying out and clouds gradually lessening as the day goes on. Temperatures will be warming, too, with today’s highs getting into the low 60s (and a few days in the 70s on their way). Lows tonight in the mid or upper 40s, in keeping with the season.

And speaking of fall… Giovanna Lepore sends in this plein air painting, also very much in keeping with the season.

We all need an ESC key! Won’t say more than that, but Lebanon’s DB Johnson is definitely on to something in this week’s edition of Lost Woods.

This week in Ask Maggie: The World Famous Salt & Pepper Shaker Museum. As you know, Maggie Cassidy’s regular new feature, answering questions about life in the Upper Valley, debuted last week. She included an invitation to ask her questions, and among the really intriguing batch she fielded (more on those in upcoming weeks) were several about the little salt & pepper shaker museum on the front lawn of KIS Thrift in Wilder. Which as it happens, she knows something about, because she created it. She asked the museum’s general contractor, Chico Eastridge (who not coincidentally is her husband), to pose those questions to her. Their highly conversational Q&A is at the link.

Dartmouth agrees to $750K settlement in data breach. It’s the result of a class action lawsuit following the August, 2025 nationwide hacking of Oracle’s E-Business Suite, which among other things revealed the personal information, including social security numbers, of some 96,000 people in Dartmouth’s systems. Plaintiffs alleged that Dartmouth had failed to protect that information. Last week, reports The Dartmouth’s Eliza Dorton, the college reached a settlement with no admission of wrongdoing, and people who were affected can file a claim by Oct. 21. Computer science prof Sami Saydjari says Dartmouth and institutions like it should be as responsible as vendors like Oracle for securing data.

Vanished silent film produced around Sunapee, Newport, discovered in Japan. It’s a twisty story. Back around the turn of the last century, a vaudevillian, Broadway actor, and early filmmaker named Billy B. Van moved to Georges Mills, NH after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. He set up a film studio—possibly the first in northern New England—and used local scenes and actors for his films. The slapstick comedy Van-ar-chy, filmed in 1919, had long been thought lost—until it turned up in a bunch of old reels found by a film student in Sendai, Japan. As The Guardian’s Maya Yang writes, he got in touch with Van expert and archivist John Tariot, who restored the film and will give it its first screening in a century Nov. 1 at the Newport Opera House. (Thanks, CH!)

SPONSORED: Celebrate fall on the farm during Harvest Celebration, October 3 & 4, from 10 am to 5 pm. Visitors can enjoy traditional barn dancing, leaf-peeping horse-drawn wagon rides, old-fashioned cider pressing, pumpkin bowling, and hands-on harvest fun. Seasonal flavors abound with apple tastings, award-winning Billings Farm cheddar, homemade ice cream, and apple cider donuts. Set against Vermont’s colorful autumn landscape, Harvest Celebration is a joyful weekend for all ages!. Sponsored by Billings Farm & Museum.

1300 syringes picked up in WRJ alone. Volunteers with the HIV/HCV Resource Center took to the streets, parks, underpasses, and other parts of WRJ last Friday—with trash grabbers and gloved hands—in the nonprofit’s first organized effort to pick up and dispose of used needles littered around town. As Alex Ebrahimi reports in the Valley News, the Leb-based nonprofit runs a needle exchange program. One volunteer he talked with defended it as vital to cutting down on disease transmission; another asked, “Giving out the syringes, aren’t we asking for the debris?” Ebrahimi describes some of the issues, as well as how to get in touch with the nonprofit if you see needles.

“Eight performers take possession of Hamlet and use it to speak about themselves and about the world in which they live.” That’s the simplest way of describing Teatro La Plaza’s production, says Peruvian director Chela De Ferrari; it opens at the Hop for a two-night run starting tomorrow. But there’s plenty that’s not simple: most of the actors have Down syndrome, and the production’s as much about the play’s interaction with their lives as it is about Shakespeare. In Seven Days, Mary Ann Lickteig interviews De Ferrari about how it came about and what De Ferrari calls the “extraordinary connections between Shakespeare’s play and their own lives.”

SPONSORED: Hunger Action Month ends Wednesday. Every gift to the Upper Valley Haven is matched dollar for dollar, up to $25,000. Food from our Community Food Market also goes out each week to more than a dozen partners across the Upper Valley, from recovery programs to smaller food shelves. Give today here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by the Upper Valley Haven.

It makes sense to build housing close to jobs. But what if there’s not much infrastructure (like water and sewer) to keep it reasonable? Recently, the local housing nonprofit Homes for Norwich worked with urban planning firm Civic Atlas to create an interactive map that makes it possible to look at both the number of jobs within an easy commute of any town in VT and where water and sewer infrastructure exists. For vast swaths of the state, including the Upper Valley, the two do not match up. Here, Homes for Norwich’s Jeff Lubell explains what you’re looking at, why it matters, and its implications for policy.

So… how do wooly bears survive the winter? It’s actually pretty amazing. Though they do seek shelter in leaf litter or other spots, writes Mary Holland in Naturally Curious, the little caterpillars also create glycerol, “a kind of antifreeze, which lowers the freezing point of their body fluid and allows them to survive temperatures as low as -90°F.” As a result, she adds, they can freeze almost solid: Their hearts stop and ice crystals form in the spaces between cells, “but the high concentration of glycerol keeps the interior of their cells liquid.” Once spring arrives, they thaw out.

SPONSORED: Check out the fine craftmanship of local artists in this fall’s Vermont Open Studio weekend. Oct. 3-4, six artists and two galleries in our corner of Vermont will be open from 10 to 5 to greet art lovers and talk about their work. Shannon Wallis Designs, Lisa Johnson Arts, A Lucky Girl Studio, and Ria Blaas are all in Norwich. Kris Manning is in Barnard. Sarah Maxell Crosby and Long River Gallery are in White River Junction. Collective is in Woodstock. You’ll find a full VT map here. Sponsored by the above artists.

Uncovering New Hampshire, one town at a time. The number’s impressive enough—Paul and Heatha Normandin, of Northwood, have already visited 150 of the state’s 234 towns and cities—but as Jason Schreiber reports in the Union Leader, what’s even more notable are the finds they didn’t know existed. Like the Ice House Museum in New London, which features the late Bill Kidder’s collection of vintage cars, toys, and other Americana. Or the John Hay Estate at the Fells in Newbury: “You don’t think it’s going to be anything, and you drive down this little dirt road to the shack where you buy your ticket, and then just this world opens up,” says Paul.

Canadian tourism to region sees uptick. But it’s still not close to previous levels. In all, reports the Monitor’s Charlotte Matherly (here via NHPR), there were some 297,000 arrivals from Canada through entry ports in NH, VT, and ME, according to US Customs data. “That’s a 6 percent increase over last August, but still down 23 percent from the same month in 2024,” Matherly reports. July saw similar numbers. One Exeter campground owner tells Matherly that strained relations between the US and Canada remain the chief reason cited by Canadians who’ve decided not to visit; Canadians typically make up a quarter of her campground users.

Wait, is that a…??? Odds are, yes, if it’s at the Iowa State Fair’s Ugliest Cake Contest.

The Tuesday Crossword. As always, today’s little brain tickler is thanks to Dartmouth librarian Laura Braunstein.

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
At the Thetford Arthouse Cinema, White. Part of director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “three colors” trilogy, the film stars Zbigniew Zamachowski as a Polish immigrant hairdresser living in Paris who devises an elaborate revenge scheme after his wife, Julie Delpy, sues him for divorce then frames him for arson. 7 pm in the Martha Rich Theater at Thetford Academy.

Marina Richie and Feathered Forest at the Norwich Bookstore. The Oregon-based nature writer’s new book “entwines the lives of birds with a hidden vertical world of wild trees” in her home state and elsewhere in Cascadia. 7 pm.

“Clash of Casseroles” at the Main Street Museum’s Revenge of Movie Night. Though viewers are invited to bring a casserole to share, for film purposes, “casserole” has a different meaning: “homemade, questionable in quality and gloopy in their earnestness,” writes Marion Umpleby in the VN. 7:30 pm.

And for today...

I am set in the past
Its purity eclipses all wonders of the common dream

I let the tide take me back—
The back of my mind, that is, so
Please listen while I idly stand, swept away
To the place I've been for years

My favorite word is creation
I could be a masterpiece—
Or a natural born disaster
Until
There's nothing to describe anymore

I am the vague and makeshift
Emphasis on reliability
There's too much to fix
Not enough time

Goodnight—
For sleep is hard to find now
With all those killers and whatnot
I've learned to just stay awake
And think about what I've done

— “Melatonin Dreams” by Avery Haushalter, a Portland, ME high school sophomore featured earlier this year on Maine Public’s Poems From Here, with musical accompaniment. Her first poetry collection is due out next summer. (Thanks, LSW!)

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!