Daybreak Wednesday, 1/14/26

Cloudy, warm, probably rain overnight… and then the cold arrives. Today will be the warmest day of the week, with highs into the low or mid 40s on the back of air moving in from the southwest. But a complicated little bit of low pressure arrives tonight, with a cold front draped off one side and a warm front off the other. That warm front will bring precipitation in the form mostly of rain at first, but since tomorrow’s highest temp will be whatever it is a second after midnight, it may end as snow sometime tomorrow morning. Keep an eye on the roads if you’re out early tomorrow.

Snow falls. Though not quite as you imagine it. Here’s Pat Autilio’s video from Quechee of a snow cornice letting go all at once. Wait for it…

Grafton County sheriff sues predecessor, county, and her own department. Jill Myers’ civil suit alleges discriminatory, harassing, and retaliatory behavior by former sheriff Jeff Stiegler, reports John Lippman in the Valley News. The civil suit “largely repeats similar allegations Myers previously made in a complaint against Stiegler she filed with the state’s Human Rights Commission in 2023,” Lippman writes. The commission found probable cause for the retaliation claim, but not the other issues; both Myers and Stiegler have asked the commission to reconsider. Myers’ lawsuit says she’s taken the case over to the courts “to preserve the statute of limitations.”

“We all make mistakes, and that doesn’t mean you can’t change.” That’s Kitty O’Hara, a Woodstock resident who’s been a volunteer at the Hartford Community Restorative Justice Center since 2012, and she pretty much sums up the center’s approach to working with people who’ve gotten out of prison. It offers everything from classes to support groups of volunteers “devoted to helping clients work through personal issues and plan for the future,” Sofia Langlois writes in the VN. She also talks to Isaiah Taylor, who was incarcerated for seven years and now works at LISTEN, and to Johnathan Gordon, who spent 11 years in prison, about their experiences.

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A novel that’s “not just for comic lovers.” Still North Books’ H Rooker first began Michael Chabon’s The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay a decade ago, sitting on a curb in NYC. “Every once in a while a car backfire or the scent of wet pavement will throw me back to that curb, and I'll wish I could go back to reading this book for the first time,” H writes in this week’s Enthusiasms. It’s about cousins Sam Clay and Joe Kavalier, who in the 1940s create “one of the biggest comic book heroes right at the beginning of the boom.” But it’s about much more than that: “The boys feel painfully human, their successes are joyful, their heartbreaks palpable, and it is easy to fall in love with them.”

“I want the piano to have a lot of power. I want it to have a soul.” That’s true of every piano Hop pianist-in-residence Sally Pinkas plays, but it’s especially true of the piano for the Hop’s new Morris Recital Hall—which she and Horszowski Trio pianist Rieko Aizawa chose before the space even existed, “knowing that this one instrument must serve countless performers, styles and sensibilities,” as Asmaa Abdallah writes about how they came to their choice. It took a lot of time in Steinway's selection room before they landed on a nine-foot Steinway Model D concert grand. Abdallah details their thoughts—and Pinkas shows it off in the video at the top.

About that hunting article. On Monday, Daybreak linked to Yasmin Tayag’s Atlantic article arguing that if more states followed VT’s lead and let hunters to sell meat from the deer they kill, free-range venison could be a thing. Bradford VT’s Nicole Moore read that piece and writes in to say that the reason very few (if any) Vermont hunters take advantage of that law is that hunting is tough: “If you are blessed with the opportunity to finally harvest one or more deer, it's far more meaningful to a hunter to share the bounty with their immediate and extended family and friends/neighbors,” she writes. Plus, Vermont’s expensive: They need meat for their own freezers. More at the link.

Strolling atop the snow. You don’t usually see a Spotted Salamander out in winter. As VT Fish & Wildlife notes alongside a video of one seen by a skier in Warren last week, reptiles and amphibians ordinarily spend the winter doing pretty much nothing, as they lower their metabolism and activity level in order to survive. “So what was this salamander doing out and about? It’s hard to say for certain, but our herpetologist suggests it may have been disturbed in its burrow, or possibly tempted out of its winter abode by last week’s warmer temperatures.”

NH’s annual car inspections are coming to an end, but the state’s car-safety mandates aren’t. “Cars still need to be ‘functional and working properly’” after Feb. 1, State Police Lt. Christopher Storm tells NHPR’s Todd Bookman. “You need to make sure that you have non-bald tires. You need to make sure you have wipers. You need to have a working horn. You need to have working brakes. All of those things are still in our statute.” To be sure, Storm adds, a lot will depend for now on police officers’ judgment—though the state Dept. of Safety is working with lawmakers “to craft a set of specific standards that police will be able to enforce in the field,” Bookman reports.

VT faces road, bridge-funding shortfall. In some ways, VT Public’s Peter Hirschfeld reports, this isn’t new: “Most state transportation funds rely most heavily on a revenue source — the gas and diesel tax — that hasn’t come close to keeping pace with the rising cost of construction,” he notes, and the GOP chair of the Senate Transportation Committee argues the state for years has failed to think through the impact of rising fuel efficiency and falling revenues. But the issue’s especially acute right now, with revenues about $33 million short of what the state needs to pull in all the federal dollars it could—putting some $150 million in road and bridge projects at risk.

For several days last month, an IT failure made it impossible for VT to track children in its care. The breakdown, reports Seven Days’ Hannah Bassett, “resulted in a multi-day outage of DCF’s central data system.” As a result, caseworkers “lacked access to information showing which children were in state care and where they were living,” as well as whether adults applying to work with kids had histories of child abuse. As Bassett writes, the Dept. of Children and Families “relies on some of the oldest child welfare data systems in the nation,” which have faced repeated problems. “The systems may be functioning, but that doesn’t mean they’re usable,” says one advocate.

Need to brush up on VT school district funding? No one actually knows what it’s going to look like as the legislature dives back into consolidation and the “foundation formula” mandated by last year’s Act 73, which would have the state set how much money each district gets. But in the meantime, votes on school budgets are coming up and the system’s still essentially what it was last year in all its confusing glory. Though there has been a change to how the common level of appraisal is set. And if that has you going, “Wait! What’s the common level of appraisal again?” then VTDigger’s new piece, “How Vermont pays for schools — and how it might change” is for you.

Safety message or soap opera? Either way, it’s a runway hit.  At long last, an airline has come up with a safety video more interesting than the loose thread on your shirt. Philippine Airlines weaves every required point into its 6+ minute safety video that doubles as a soap opera about star-crossed lovers Luisa and Anton and the forces conspiring to keep them apart. Clear aisles, cell phones, oxygen masks, and emergency exits… plus heavy-breathing drama in the salon and on the wedding day. And life vests? Nothing better for two rivals puffing up their chests as they vie over their true love.

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

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HEADS UP
“A Little Lunch Music” at Upper Valley Music Center with Bruce Sklar, Tim Gilmore, and Ben Kogan. Sklar, a pianist, is a Vermont jazz staple—and a new member of the UVMC faculty. He’s joined by two veteran Upper Valley musicians: Kogan on bass and Gilmore on drums. At noon.

A tour of the Hood Museum’s Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Making Colors in Europe, 1400–1800. Exhibition curator Elizabeth Rice Mattison will talk about the early modern period “through the lens of its distinctive colors” and about the pigments, dyes, and glazes that were “critical to the value of a work of art.” 12:30 pm.

Dartmouth’s Neukom Institute hosts Harvard’s Latanya Sweeney for “How Technology Will Dictate Our Civic Future”. Sweeney’s the former chief technology officer at the FTC and a pioneer in data privacy and algorithmic fairness. She’ll talk about how, as technology has progressed, “every demographic value and every law has come up for grabs and will likely be redefined by what technology does or does not enable”—and about potential paths out through technology designed in the public interest. 5 pm in Filene Auditorium and livestreamed.

At the Howe Library in Hanover, “Antarctic Ocean Research: Why Antarctica is Losing Ice”. Part of the library’s series of “College Town Conversations,” this one features Thayer School engineering prof Yoshihiro Nakayama talking about Antarctic ice and the Southern Ocean; “why the ocean plays a central role in determining the fate of Antarctic ice”; potential future changes; and what polar expeditions aboard icebreakers have revealed. 6:30 pm in the Mayer Room or online.

Vermont Humanities virtual lecture: “Thomas Jefferson: A Leader”. John Ragosta, who was acting director of center for Jefferson studies at Monticello and directs the Summer Jefferson Symposium at the University of Virginia, will talk about Jefferson in light of what’s now known about his life, and ask, “What does a wealthy, white, slave-owning aristocrat have to teach us about the nature of American leadership, especially political leadership?” 7 pm online, you’ll need to register.

Sawtooth Kitchen brings back Valley Improv. For, as they write, “another night of hilarious off-the-cuff comedy.” 8 pm.

And for today...

Well, yeah: Bruno Mars has a new song out:

See you tomorrow.

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