Daybreak Wednesday, 1/21/26

Some sun, a little bit warmer, possible snow tonight. At least we’ll be getting into the low 20s today as the wind shifts to come from the south and we get a sunny morning. But there’s also a clipper system making its way east, and though it’ll probably pass to our north, there’s a chance of snow starting up late this afternoon and lasting until after midnight. Overnight lows in the low 20s.

A close look. Two unusual pics of creatures you don’t get to see every day.

Vertigo alert. Plainfield drone artist William Daugherty has a new pastime, First-Person View flying—that is, controlling his drone through goggles, and he gave it a run Monday at Langwood Farm, Blow-Me-Down-Brook, and Puckerpod Swamp in Plainfield and Cornish. It’s pretty wild. If you’re prone to these things, take his warning seriously: “The video may induce motion sickness or vertigo.”

In Haverhill, the Forgotten Stallion begins to recover. He used to be called Days of Courage and he ran in trotting races, writes Alex Ebrahimi in the Valley News. But then he wound up on an overgrown farm with three other stallions, seven mares, and a brown cow that all needed rescuing. “In a barn strangled by cobwebs, the stall gates inside were frozen shut. The years of manure the four stallions and the cow inside were standing on measured as high as 5 feet,” reports Ebrahimi. It took hours to get them out. The most emaciated was Forgotten, who was taken in by Jenifer Vickery and her Tomten Farm and Sanctuary in Haverhill. Ebrahimi tells the story.

King Arthur’s new cookbook, as tested by kids. Sweet & Salty, the baking empire’s newest volume, is written for 8- to 12-year-olds, so who better to test the recipes, writes Melissa Pasanen in Seven Days. She turned six young testers “and their in-house support staff” loose with their recipe of choice, then collected feedback. The Simplest Chocolate Cake got rave reviews for being all that—and delicious—but the empañadas were underfilled and unfulfilling (also “hard as rocks,” according to the mom)—maybe because the recipes use a scale (more precise and less messy). They fall into three levels of difficulty: easy, medium or “project.” Teach a kid to bake and …

SPONSORED: People need a hand, and you can help! Based in the Upper Valley, Hearts You Hold supports immigrants, migrants, and refugees across the US by asking them what they need. These include a Haitian immigrant in Lebanon who’s hoping for a bluetooth speaker, and immigrants across the country who need baby supplies, basic kitchen goods, boots and winter clothing, and school supplies. At the burgundy link or here, you'll find people who need your help. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.

“There is nothing that people won’t try to accommodate into ‘ordinary life.’” That’s Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing in The Memoirs of a Survivor, her 1974 novel about an unnamed disaster that’s causing society to crumble—and about an unnamed middle-aged woman “who is tasked—all of a sudden, one day—with the care of a young girl,” as Kate Oden writes in this week’s Enthusiasms. The book “is no peach cart, but if you enjoy a delicious scare once in a while, this is your next read,” Kate writes. “Lessing adores her readers, honors our intelligence and imagination, our contribution to the story, our need for lamplight in the dark.”

On the walls at DHMC, photos that highlight New Hampshire’s immigrants. As NHPR’s Lau Guzmán reports, “The photos are part of an ongoing project by [Becky] Field, who uses photography to document the everyday experiences of immigrants and refugees” in the Granite State. At the opening last week for the exhibit—which made stops in Manchester and Concord before arriving in Lebanon—Field told the crowd, “The beauty of this project is that I get to go to events, I get to meet people from different cultures, hear different languages, eat different food — which might be a little on the spicy side — and I go home and I sleep in my own bed.”

SPONSORED: Homelessness Awareness Day is January 22. Tomorrow evening, luminaries will be lit on the Upper Valley Haven’s lawn to represent people in the region who are currently without stable housing. The display is meant to make visible a crisis that is often hidden. Community members are invited to attend a brief outdoor gathering at 4:30 PM with remarks from local leaders and partners. Learn more about Homelessness Awareness Day and the in-person event at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by the Upper Valley Haven.

NH sees surprise jump in births. But they’re still outnumbered by deaths. According to preliminary figures, writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog, the state last year saw “the most in-state births reported in 14 years except for a short post-COVID spike.” In all, 12,593 babies were registered in the state in 2025; though that number could still be adjusted, it’s more than 400 higher than in 2024 and “about 800 more than the low point of 2019.” Veteran demographer Ken Johnson says it’s unclear what’s going on. Meanwhile, in preliminary numbers, the state last year saw 14,111 deaths, the second highest number on record (first place goes to 2022).

Phil Scott proposes budget that would produce 5.5 percent property tax increase. To be sure, that’s down from a potential 12 percent increase, thanks to $105 million VT’s governor wants to use to keep taxes down. In his presentation to legislators yesterday, the governor called his $9.4 billion budget, about 3 percent larger than last year’s, “disciplined,” citing the end of pandemic relief funding, the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for Medicaid and other human services programs funded by the feds. He also wants to redirect $10 million from the state’s purchase-and-use tax from the education fund to the state’s transportation fund. VTDigger’s Shaun Robinson reports.

On anniversary of border patrol agent’s shooting death, where things stand. Yesterday marked a year since David “Chris” Maland was shot and killed in a traffic stop in Coventry VT, and yesterday, the Border Patrol’s Swanton Sector posted on FB in his memory. At the burgundy link, NBC5’s Michael Cusanelli briefly recounts what happened, including the shootout in which Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt was killed and Teresa Youngblut—who’s accused of firing the shot that killed Maland—was injured, then catches us up on what’s been discovered since, the MD trial involving three other members of their group, Youngblut’s trial, and the aftermath in VT of Maland’s death.

In Greensboro, iconic VT names feel the hit from dropping Canadian tourist traffic. The town’s economy, writes Jenna Russell in the NYT (gift link), has depended for years on Canadian visitors, drawn by the Jasper Hill cheeses they could vacuum up at the Willey’s Store and the beer they could buy from Hill Farmstead. Last year, Russell reports, Willey’s saw a 33 percent drop in sales and Hill Farmstead a 25-30 percent decline. Jasper Hill’s been even harder hit, as its expanding market in Canada stopped “cold” thanks to the split with the US and tariffs hit equipment and parts. On the other hand, Russell writes, “There is evidence that some Canadians are coming back.”

From living on Social Security checks and food stamps to $1,033,000 in her bank account. Four and a half years ago, scammers made off with all of Jeanette Voss’s retirement savings, some $950,000. In the years since, reports Derek Brouwer for VT Public (he’s moved over from Seven Days), Voss had scrimped, feeling “ashamed and embarrassed; decades of planning for a comfortable retirement had gone to waste…. Her golden years largely became confined to her small house at the end of a dead-end street.” Then, Christmas Eve, she looked at her bank balance. US Secret Service agents had clawed back her money. Brouwer tells the story.

Going winter hiking? “Go ahead and embrace that inner Luddite.” That’s Stowe Mountain Rescue’s way of saying you should carry a paper map—and “download a mapping app…from the comfort of your sofa.” This advice comes after their rescue on Monday of “three lads who had launched into a hike up Mount Mansfield, unaware of the enormity of what they were taking on.” They got lost in the dark and called for rescue. The folks at SMR coached them on how to download a map—and then pointed them to Taft Lodge, where rescuers “put crampons on their frozen feet, headlamps on their heads, poured electrolytes into them and gave them extra clothes…”

You’re much more likely to die by cow than by mountain lion. We’re lucky that mountain lions don’t like to hunt humans for sport. They’ve killed 30 to 40 people in the last 150 years; cows, writes Craig Childs, who is writing a book on mountain lions, “kill that many in a year or two.” Still, he writes in the science writers’ outlet The Last Word on Nothing, attacks happen, like the one on New Years Day that killed a woman in Colorado: “For her sake and for all of mountain lions, it would be better if these cats weren’t curious about humans in any way, if we as prey were wiped from their minds, but that’s not how this works.” Childs grapples with those rare attacks.

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

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HEADS UP
An introduction to beekeeping at the Howe Library. Lebanon beekeeper Jennifer Mercer will cover both the essentials of starting a hive and what it takes to plant a bee-attracting garden. 6:30 pm in the Mayer Room as well as online.

At Dartmouth, MIT mathematician and former Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman John Urschel on “moment problems” in mathematics. Urschel is giving this year’s Reese Prosser lecture, an annual talk “intended to introduce the general public to mathematical research related to their daily lives.” He’ll be looking at how a particular kind of problem “laid the groundwork for the modern computational techniques in numerical analysis and numerical linear algebra, which touch nearly all areas of modern computation. Particular emphasis will be placed on real-life applications.” 6:30 pm, Kemeny 007.

Jason Moran and “The Music of Duke Ellington: My Heart Sings”. The Hop resident artist, who’s giving a series of talks and performances this week (including tomorrow’s concert with his jazz trio, The Bandwagon), gives two solo piano concerts tonight dedicated to his reworkings of Ellington. They’re at 7 pm and 9 pm in Morris Recital Hall, and both are sold out, but there will be standby tickets available at showtime at the box office.

And for today...

It was probably just a matter of time before the Netherlands-based dance collective CDK (you may remember them from “Somebody That I Used to Know” about a year ago) got around to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Operatic, melodramatic, over the top… it’s a match made in visual heaven. They just went up with it over the weekend.

See you tomorrow.

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