GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Daybreak is brought to you this week with help from YWCA Vermont. Although South Hero may seem like a hike, girls+ from the Upper Valley have been spending joyful summers at Camp Hochelaga for 100+ years. Check us out if you’re seeking an inclusive, screen-free, nature-based experience for kiddos in your life!
Sunny, but increasing clouds. We’re back into the mid or upper teens today and will see sun for a decent part of the day, but low pressure is making its way this direction, and it will bring clouds building in this afternoon, a slight chance of snow tonight, and some deeper cold for tomorrow and Friday nights. Low tonight within reach of 0.
Getting out into the woods. Two videos today. Both came in before the storm, but just add a foot of snow and you’ll get the idea.
“It was a fine time to walk in the woods after a very light and fluffy inch of snowfall in Tunbridge,” writes Michael Sacca. “The sunlight and a light breeze nudged the snow from the branches, tumbling gracefully. Sometimes right down my neck...”
“When it gets this cold, I love to go up to one of my favorite spots in Fairlee and check out the waterfalls coming down from Bald Top Mountain,” writes Robin Osborne.
Ryan Palmer, Windsor County’s sheriff, arrested for sexual misconduct. In all, the VT State Police say in a press release issued late yesterday, they’ve cited him for two counts each of lewd and lascivious conduct, solicitation of prostitution, aggravated stalking with a weapon, obstruction of justice, inciting a felony, and accessory before the fact. The investigation was initially touched off last summer by anonymous allegations of financial impropriety, which Palmer denied at the time. That led to more tips, including “information about alleged sexual misconduct” by Palmer. The VSP says they identified several victims, “who provided statements and evidence that supported the sexual misconduct allegations.” Palmer is due to be arraigned today.
Woodstock’s Prince & the Pauper to shut down. Owner Liz Schwenk passed the news on to followers via FB late Sunday night: “The building our restaurant occupies has recently been sold,” she wrote. “Our lease at 24 Elm Street expires this spring and will not be renewed. We wanted to share this news with honesty, respect, and gratitude. While the building has been sold, we want to make sure the community knows that The Prince & The Pauper, as a business, remains under the same ownership. For now, our doors remain open. Our last date of service has not yet been decided.” There’s plenty of speculation around town about the building’s sale. (Thanks, LS! (But not that LS.))
$5,500 for an anti-drug speaker at Hartford High. $39K for a recovery coach in the Springfield VT PD… How towns are using opioid settlement money. At VT Public, Liam Elder-Connors and Sabine Poux have done yeoman’s work with data on how towns are spending some of the more than $41 million the state’s received from drug manufacturers since 2022. What they found is what you’d hope: “much of the money locally has gone towards opioid treatment and recovery efforts.” Hartford’s is part of a $223K stash that’s otherwise unspent; Norwich is sitting on nearly $33K of unspent money. Sharon’s spent most of its $8800 on local groups. More at the link.
SPONSORED: Surround yourself with the music of Faith, Hope and Love, at Cantabile’s winter concert. This concert features the Messe Brève by Léo Delibes, sacred music from American Shaker, Jewish, and Shape Note traditions, contemporary music set to poetry by Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson, and much more. Join us on Jan. 31, 3pm, at the Norwich Congregational Church and on Feb. 1, also at 3pm, at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon. Admission is free. Donations accepted at the door. Sponsored by Cantabile.
If you ever wanted to know what it’s like to grow up one way and turn out another, this might be a book for you. In this week’s Enthusiasms, Peter Money looks from every which way at the idea of home—and how, in Suad Aldarra’s I Don’t Want to Talk About Home, the Syrian-Irish writer writes about “birth, about being parented by people who adhere to very different points of view, about relocation, cultural quandaries, inter-faith relations, a postponed wedding, civil war, having to flee, being at the mercy of strangers, trusting instincts, telling about it.” “I had trouble setting Aldarra’s book aside,” Peter adds, “and so I didn’t, page after page.”
Amtrak’s southbound Vermonter derails in MA. There were no injuries, no doubt in large part because the train was only going 7 mph when it hit a frozen switch at around 2:30 pm yesterday. “When the engine hit that switch or cross point, it was built up with ice and snow. The engine actually slid off the switch,” Northfield MA fire chief Floyd “Skip” Dunnell III told the Greenfield Recorder’s Anthony Cammalleri. Crews kept the power on and the train warm until buses arrived to ferry passengers to Springfield, MA.
40 years. 73 seconds after takeoff on Jan. 28, 1986, the Challenger shuttle exploded with seven crew members aboard—including, of course, Concord High social studies teacher Christa McAuliffe. In the years since, reports WMUR’s KC Downey, some 40 schools have been named for her, NH got the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium (now the expanded McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center), and four of the lessons McAuliffe had planned to teach from space—on effervescence; chromatography; liquids; and Newton's laws—got their chance in 2018 when they were filmed by astronauts Joe Acaba and Ricky Arnold. Downey offers a roundup of the past four decades.
Ayotte nominates new NH Supreme Court justice, new PUC chair, replaces state’s child advocate. In all, the governor tapped four people for new posts yesterday: Superior Court Judge Daniel Will for the Supreme Court; state energy department deputy commissioner Christopher Ellms Jr. to chair the Public Utilities Commission; former prosecutor Diana Fenton to replace child advocate Cassandra Sanchez, who was told Monday night she’d be losing her job; and Lucy Lange, president and general manager of Manchester Media Group, as Business and Economic Affairs commissioner.
Will, who was the state’s first solicitor general, argued the state’s side in the key Con-Val school funding case before he became a judge; the Supreme Court will likely hear a similar case this year or next. NH Bulletin’s Ethan DeWitt reports that at least one conservative GOP executive councilor intends to vote no based on Will’s work on two other cases as solicitor general, including defending Gov. Chris Sununu’s Covid emergency executive order. Should the Exec Council okay him, Will would fill the vacancy left by Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi after she retires next month.
Ellms worked for years for former Gov. Chris Sununu before taking on his role at the state DOE. He’ll replace former chair Daniel Goldner, whom Ayotte announced last fall she wouldn’t be reappointing. As NH Bulletin’s Molly Rains writes, since the DOE was created in 2021, “some confusion and disagreements have endured” over its turf vs. the PUC’s.
And finally, Sanchez, whose position is charged with riding herd on the state’s child welfare, juvenile justice, and youth care systems, tells the Bulletin’s William Skipworth that she is “‘pretty confident’ that her public opposition to a number of Republican LGBTQ+ bills ‘was likely a big cause’” she was told Monday night that she’s being replaced, Skipworth writes. Fenton currently serves as legal counsel for the state Department of Education.
New Census estimates: Vermont fastest-declining state in the country. In percentage terms, anyway: In 2024-25, the Census Bureau says, it’s estimated to have lost 1,858 people for a drop of 0.29 percent of its population—one of only five states in the country that lost population (CA lost the most in absolute terms, shedding 9,000 residents). New Hampshire grew by 6,824, or 0.48 percent. Overall, the US grew at one of the slowest rates in its history, driven by plummeting immigration—half of what it had been the year before. The Hill’s Addy Bink rounds up the state numbers.
VTDigger’s CEO to step down. Sky Barsch, who’s led the nonprofit statewide news organization since 2023, announced the move publicly in a Digger story yesterday. She’ll stay through June. During her time their, the piece notes, Barsch “helped articulate a vision of VTDigger that is larger than any one person: a news organization built to serve Vermonters for generations.” In Seven Days (burgundy link), Kevin McCallum reports that when she took over, the organization had just lost over $1 million; that had shrunk to $100K by last year. Barsch is also hoping to craft a new contract with editorial employees before she leaves. She gave no reason for the move.
In Northfield VT, a new seed source. Though actually, Charlie Watt’s tomato, watermelon, squash, lettuce, and other seeds have some lineage: some came from his mentor in Bozeman, MT, where he studied ag and education; others from Hartland’s Sylvia Davatz, the “Vermont seed-saving legend,” as Jordan Barry puts it in Seven Days; and still others from farms in Barnet and elsewhere. Watt launched Homecoming Seeds at midnight ten days ago: “There isn’t that market hustle, that weekly hustle of harvest, wash, pack, go to market,” he tells Barry. “It’s a little bit more chill, and you can just focus on growing happy, healthy plants.”
PSSSTTT. There’s a secret club and you’re not in it. Don’t feel bad, though. As Jennifer Williams writes in the WSJ (gift link), even the head of R&D for WD-40 is excluded from the tiny group of people who’ve seen the formula for “the world’s most famous lubricant.” Handwritten in a notebook, it’s locked in a bank vault in San Diego (along with 39 earlier unsuccessful attempts) and getting a glimpse is nigh-on impossible: The CEO waited 30 years (“Do not smoke,” it says). But the company does share more than 2,000 approved uses—unsticking Lego blocks and piano keys, freeing a boa constrictor from an engine compartment, removing gunk from ostrich eggs...
Hey, if SF can have them… Mountain lions are native to the wildlands of the Bay Area, but they definitely don’t frequent its city streets—much less cross them in traffic. But there one was on Sunday night, caught on video. The state brought in a wildlife biologist to handle the situation, and the big cat was tracked down yesterday morning.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak. If you’re new to Daybreak, this is much like the Wordle, only it’s no random five-letter word. It’s a random five-letter word that happened to be in Daybreak yesterday.
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HEADS UP
Writer Charlene Wang at the Top of the Hop. In her debut novel, I’ll Follow You, Wang looks hard at the twists and turns of female friendship, starting in Mississippi but moving quickly to a fictional college that bears more than a passing resemblance to both Dartmouth and UVA Law School, both of which she went to. She’ll be talking about the book, her inspiration, and writing in general with Dartmouth prof and novelist Alexander Chee. 5 pm, no tickets needed.
Marek Bennett and “Comics in World History and Cultures” at the Etna Library. The Henniker-based cartoonist will give a New Hampshire Humanities talk that features “a whirlwind survey of comics from around the world and throughout history, with special attention to what these vibrant narratives tell (and show) us about the people and periods that created them.” From ancient Rome and the Maya to modern Japan and the US in the early 20th century. 6 pm in Trumbull Hall.
Bernice A. King at Dartmouth: “The Urgency of Now: A Time for Truth and Action - Celebrating the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.” MLK’s youngest daughter will sit down for a fireside chat with Princeton prof and writer Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor at 7 pm in the Hanover Inn ballroom. Registration’s closed, but you can watch the event via livestream by heading to the link above.
At the Quechee Club, Dan Billin and “Mobocracy vs. Abolitionism in VT and NH”. Billin, a historian and onetime Valley News reporter, will give an illustrated lecture on mob violence against abolitionists in the two states during the decades before the Civil War. Among other things, he’ll take up the case of Noyes Academy in Canaan, where students were welcome regardless of race or gender—until they were driven away by a mob. Both in-person and via Zoom.
Night Kitchen at the Flying Goose Pub in New London. As their publicity runs, “For the past 30+ years, Night Kitchen has kept loyal fans and newcomers dancing with their unique blend of rock, folk, twang, and soul.” 7:30 pm both tonight and tomorrow.
And for today...
French singer Christophe Maé. Just try not to walk into your day humming this jaunty homage to his mom (and the moon).
See you tomorrow.
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