Daybreak Wednesday 10/29/25

Freezing fog in spots to start, becoming ‘sunny. In other words, it’ll be a lot like yesterday, though the fog may not clear out until a bit later in the morning. Once it does, we’re looking at temps rising into the low or mid 50s and mostly clear skies—until later tonight, when the system that may mess up Halloween on Friday starts arriving. But we’ll talk more about that tomorrow. Lows tonight right around the freezing mark.

A misty, wake-free morning. That’s how Herb Detrick describes the sight of two hot air balloons—one built and piloted by Jordan Long, a protege of ballooning great Brian Boloand—over Lake Fairlee the other morning, with a No Wake Zone buoy front and center. As Herb writes, “the warning was probably not needed.”

A year’s worth of good used bookstores. The core Upper Valley’s got three great spots—Left Bank Books, Cover to COVER, and LISTEN’s book shelves—but as Kate Oden writes, “some of us get the urge to explore used bookstores beyond these.” So she’s been roaming a 50-mile radius around Hanover in search of books and, while she’s at it, towns to walk around and maybe grab lunch. She’s put together a guide for Daybreak readers of a dozen stores—six in VT, six in NH (one per month for a year)—to check out, from the “gobsmacking” selection at Woodstock’s Pleasant Street Books to the signed first editions at Canaan’s School Street Books & Records to spots in Plymouth, Henniker, Waitsfield, Montpelier, and elsewhere.

In West Leb, a new Filipino grocery store. Lebanon residents Catherine and Marvin Avelino opened Palengke (“market” in Filipino) about two months ago, reports Marion Umpleby in the Valley News, partly to bring the flavors of home to other Filipinos in the Upper Valley, partly to introduce their sons to those flavors, and partly to supplement Marvin’s income from his work as a machinist at Timken Aerospace. The store stocks “a vast array of the archipelago’s staples and seasonal cuisine,” Umpleby writes, from Mama Sita’s Adobo Marinade; to snacks like Stik-O Strawberry Wafer Sticks to spring rolls and fertilized duck eggs. You’ll find it all in Glen Road Plaza.

Picking your way through the Medicare Advantage mess. “This is the most chaotic year I’ve ever been a part of,” Eric Caswell, a Northfield, VT insurance agent told a group at Hartford Town Hall last week as he explained what’s happening in NH and VT as insurers abandon the Medicare Advantage market. In the VN, Lukas Dunford goes along for the ride, for people who might be losing their Advantage plan: dates for switching to Medigap plans, a deadline for enrolling in Part D, and more. Oh, and Humana may still be offering Advantage plans—but it hasn’t renewed its contracts with DHMC, APD, or New London Hospital.

SPONSORED: This Sunday, experience one of the best-loved pieces of Renaissance music. Music @ St. Thomas and the St. Thomas Adult Choir present Requiem by Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria on Sunday, November 2 at the 10:30 a.m. service. This profoundly moving musical offering, one of the great masterworks of Renaissance polyphony, will feature guest artists from across New England. A six-part a cappella masterpiece, the Victoria Requiem invites meditation and reflection as we approach the close of the liturgical year. Sponsored by St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Hanover.

“Time slows around trees.“ Claire Kovacs’ essay on Dartmouth prof Jeff Sharlet’s new blog of students’ writing begins with a power outage in Hanover, caused by a fallen tree. Eventually, curious about the region’s trees, she heads to the woods with a local forester: “I’m as balky as the granite hills,” he tells her—explaining that he means he’s stubborn. And that he inhabits a different world: he’s a hunter, rejects the idea of climate change, isn’t from “the bubble,” as he calls cities and the Ivy League. “You’re just under this trance that’s there to keep a person thinking a certain way,” he insists. It’s a rich essay: trees alive and dead, the forester, his convictions, her reactions…

“How many times have I walked sleepily into the room? How welcoming, that sunlight.” For this week’s Enthusiasms, Peter Money pens a writeup that’s part personal essay and part meditation on time, memory, and downtown WRJ touched off by two books he’s reading: Noé Álvarez’s Accordion Eulogies, a Mexican family memoir built on music and the accordion; and Patrick Holloway’s debut novel set in Ireland, The Language of Remembering. “‘What are you still chasing?’ asks Álvarez in Accordion Eulogies and sometimes I have chased that answer and other times I leave it be. Set it down. Let the sun make silhouettes replacing the question,” Peter writes.

How to spot trustworthy local news—and know when it’s not. Since the beginning of September, the Granite State News Collaborative has been running articles by NH writers and reporters on local news: who owns local papers in New England, how AI’s being used, how to support local news outlets, how to teach media literacy. The burgundy link goes to Paul Cuno-Booth’s piece on spotting the wheat amidst the low-grade chaff. He talks to three experts, who advise making sure a news outlet has a track record, that it’s transparent about who’s writing or producing its stories, that they’re well-reported and cite multiple perspectives, and more. Here’s the series.

Atop Mt. Washington, “if you just love weather, you’ve got to experience it when you can.” That’s one reason weather and climate researchers from places far away from NH hope to spend some time at the weather observatory at the summit. As one Alabaman tells NHPR’s Rick Ganley, who visited for a chat, “Things get crazy up here.” But there’s another reason, too: Weather watchers up there have been keeping hourly records for nearly a century, in the same location, using the same instruments, which means the data doesn’t have to be adjusted because of new technology. “We can compare apples to apples very well from the past to now,” says one.

NH SNAP enrollment, town by town. With benefits from the federal food assistance program slated to stop on Saturday due to the government shutdown, WMUR pulled together an interactive map of the percentage of each town or city’s population enrolled in the program and, on the adjacent tab, the number of residents, as of Fiscal Year 2024. In the Upper Valley, Claremont (15.9 percent, 2,087 residents), Newport (11.8 percent, 760 residents), and Grafton (8.7 percent, 123 residents) will be hardest hit. Lebanon stands at 4.4 percent, but that’s 672 residents. In terms of sheer numbers, Manchester, Nashua, and Concord lead the state.

All those bins around the Upper Valley collecting used clothing? They’re “part of a real industry.” Many of them—at the Hanover Co-op, Dan & Whit’s, LaValley’s, the Hartford and Canaan transfer stations, and elsewhere—were put there by Apparel Impact, a Hooksett, NH company that collects used clothing in six states, then sorts and ships it to shops in this country and to buyers overseas; what’s not wearable gets shredded and turned into stuff like insulation. On his Granite Geek blog, David Brooks profiles the company: Last year, it handled 17.5 million pounds of clothing, and is on track to hit about 21 million pounds this year.

VT school employees will see 7 percent rise in health insurance costs—and that’s good news. Because as VT Public’s Lola Duffort reports, it marks the first time in a couple of years that health insurance premiums for Vermont teachers won’t be rising by double digits. The trust that manages benefits for some 33K school employees, the Vermont Education Health Initiative, says that action by the Green Mountain Care Board to cut UVM Health Center’s budget and the legislature’s cap on how much hospitals can charge for drugs together are expected to save an estimated $24 million next year.

From on high: The 2025 Drone Photo Awards. The patterns and the perspective are dazzling. Dennis Schmelz won top prize for “The Lone Horseman,” a charcoal rider on a ghostly white horse in Cappadocia, almost invisible against the snow. In the Sport category, Shimon Perlstein tails runners in the Dead Sea Marathon as they slip along a spit of salt. And Pawel Zygmunt’s geothermal pool in Hveravellir, Iceland, which might be an eye, an implosion, an earthy peacock feather. Don’t miss the runners-up, including, in the Abstract category, Marek Biegalski’s gorgeous “I See You,” taken as dawn broke over Utah’s Badlands. 

Summiting Mt. Everest with skis on his back…and strapping them on for the descent. The American skier Jim Morrison did that two weeks ago, heading up the rarely climbed North Face. He didn’t do it alone, though: an 11-member team fixed the route for him, and a National Geographic film crew led by Free Solo Oscar winner Jimmy Chin went along. NatGeo’s got a film in the works, and on Monday, they put up the first glimpse of Morrison on his way up, then down the Hornbein Couloir (snowboarder Marco Siffredi tried it in 2002; his body was never found). “Vertiginous” doesn’t even begin to describe it. “It’s unrelenting,” Morrison told ABC on Monday.

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

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HEADS UP

Dartmouth’s Dickey Center hosts “Lessons from a Democracy Defender”. Nicholas Opiyo, a human rights attorney and democracy and justice advocate from Uganda, was arrested in 2020 for representing Bobi Wine, the top opposition candidate to Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni; the charges were eventually dropped, but as the Dickey Center writes, “he continues to be a target of the Ugandan regime, and to bravely speak up for justice in Uganda and around the world.” He’ll be talking about “fighting for democracy and human rights in the face of oppression.” 4:30 pm, Haldeman 41 and livestreamed.

“The Institute for Folding” at the Briggs Opera House in WRJ. For the last month and a half, the Vermont Dance Alliance has been presenting choreographer, dancer, and Hop staffer Michael Bodel’s piece around the state. This is its last stop, and its the only performance in the Upper Valley. As they write, it’s “an interdisciplinary dance work in layers, literally. Through movement, language, live sound, and 30 sheets of cardboard, the work unpeels our human relationship to knowledge—our drive for scientific understanding, the ebb and flow of our ignorance, and our current disregard for what has been discovered.” 7:30 pm.

And for today...

Mumford & Sons have a history of working with others, including the Irish singer-songwriter Hozier, both live and in the studio. They’ve been at it again, with Marcus Mumford and Hozier trading verses here in the just-released “Rubber Band Man”.

See you tomorrow.

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