Daybreak Wednesday, 12/10/25

Snow and (aargh!) probably some rain. Well, on the one hand, it’s not going to be bitter cold. On the other, a quick-moving clipper is bringing us snow starting later this morning—only there’s a decent chance that, thanks to those warming temps, some of that moisture will fall as rain this evening. Still, we’re looking at an inch or two in the valleys, and a bit more to the north, east, and west of us. Highs today a smidge above freezing, lows tonight around 20. Watch out for possibly slippery roads.

Watching (and hearing) the ice form. “I don’t catch this every year,” writes Ginny Reed from the shore of Lake Morey, “but when I do, it’s really special.” Sound up on her short video.

“If you ever sent your kid to the small, brick Carter Community Building, known simply as the CCB, in downtown Lebanon, then you knew Jim Vanier.” Vanier was woven into the fabric of Lebanon, part of its heart and soul—a renowned basketball player as a kid and for almost four decades CCB’s youth center coordinator, nurturing multiple generations of kids who’d been left in his care. “Vanier never raised his voice, never raised his hands. Instead, he raised generations of Lebanon kids to become civic-minded Lebanon adults,” writes former Valley News sportswriter Don Mahler in an appreciation. Vanier died Saturday of an apparent heart attack. Tributes are showing up on his obit page.

Hanover joins Lebanon in stepping back from immigration-related ordinance. Faced with new state laws requiring local police departments to work with federal immigration authorities or suffer monetary penalties, Lebanon last month repealed its “welcoming” ordinance barring police from cooperating with the feds. Now, reports Amanda Gokee in the Globe (sorry, paywall), Hanover’s selectboard has changed course, too, agreeing Monday night to changes to the town’s Fair and Impartial Policing Ordinance, removing provisions prohibiting cooperation with the feds or notifying ICE based solely on a person’s immigration status—but keeping other sections.

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A slim, engaging, wryly funny novel that “manages to take a spectacular core sample of our present moment.” The Norwich Bookstore’s Sam Kaas has long admired novelist Jess Walter—not so much for Beautiful Ruins, which shot him to fame, but for his ability to capture “what it’s like to live in convoluted, contradictory, and sometimes absurd contemporary America.” In this week’s Enthusiasms, Sam writes that Walter’s done it again with So Far Gone, in which former journalist, current crank, and avowed hermit Rhys Kinnick one day finds his grandkids at his front door deep in the woods and his daughter missing. Reluctantly, he sets out to find her…

An illustrated history of the Hood Museum. Which, in an engaging “story map” created for its 40th anniversary, goes way back. It starts in 1772, with a letter from the Rev. David McClure to the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock in which he makes the first recorded mention of a Dartmouth museum (to which he intended to give “a few curious Elephant Bones” found along the Ohio River). There are lots of milestones between then and Nov. 17 of this year (when the Hood learned it’s been reaccredited), from the 1793 fire that took out Dartmouth Hall, where it was located, to the 1934 Orozco murals to acquisitions of Cypriot, Native, and lots of contemporary art.

SPONSORED: Why do so many Upper Valley high school juniors and seniors spend half of their school day engaged in learning at the HACTC? Visit the Hartford Area Career and Technology Center's Open House on Tuesday, December 16th, from 6-7pm, to find out! Learn more about the HACTC’s 13 programs, meet instructors and current students, and enjoy refreshments prepared by Culinary Arts students. The new student application for the '26-'27 school year will be available starting Friday, December 12th at the burgundy link or here. Completed applications are due by Friday, January 16, 2026. Sponsored by the HACTC.

Thanks to Shaker Bridge, “a chance to watch the fine miracle of two people amazed to discover each other.” They’re the parents of two-time Tony-winning playwright Ken Ludwig, and in the current production of Dear Jack, Dear Louise at the Briggs, they’re played by Tommy Crawford and Allie Seibold, separated on stage because, in real life, Jack and Louise were several thousand miles apart during WWII and could only correspond by letter. Seibold “balances exuberance with flashes of self-doubt,” writes Alex Brown in Seven Days; Crawford’s character “grows steadily, like a plant blooming under Louise’s light,” and together, they “achieve exquisite timing in this duet, with Crawford the steady rhythm section and Seibold the wildly riffing soloist.”

Emissions-testing company sues NH over inspections repeal. The suit by Kentucky-based Gordon-Darby, which has overseen the state’s safety inspection program for two decades, contends that the state is violating the Clean Air Act by shutting down its emissions program before the feds have formally approved it. The company is asking a federal court to block the inspection repeal, reports NHPR’s Todd Bookman. The company says inspections were down 24 percent in October and 33 percent in November, suggesting motorists are already skipping inspections “with the expectation they won’t be ticketed starting Feb. 1,” Bookman notes.

NH restarts emergency assistance for dry wells, puzzles over how to make drinking water more resilient. The money for low-income Granite Staters who need new wells after their shallow ones ran dry during the drought comes from a trust fund just restarted by its advisory commission. But as Molly Rains writes in NH Bulletin, the state faces longer-term questions, given great variability in how quickly different aquifers recharge when there’s rain or snow and decline when there’s a drought. All of that makes it tough to predict the availability of groundwater. The experts Rains talks to are looking at changes to standard wells to make them more resilient.

Pull up a seat… Just a note that the Satanic Temple’s NH and VT congregation has once again put up a holiday display on Concord’s City Plaza in front of the State House. You’ll remember that last year, its statue of part-goat, part-human deity Baphomet got vandalized repeatedly. This time around, reports the Concord Monitor’s Charlotte Matherly, it’s a pentagram encircled by a wreath of lilacs (the NH state flower), in honor of the Dec. 25 Satanic holiday of Sol Invictus, or “unconquered sun.”

A holiday cookie recipe comes full circle. In Seven Days, food writer Melissa Pasanen tells of her fruitless search for a new old-fashioned holiday cookie recipe. None of her readers’ submissions was quite right. Then came a message on Instagram from a stranger: “Delmonico Potatoes recipe of Polly Pasanen?” The sender had come across a handmade cookbook from the late 1960s featuring recipes from UVM medical students’ wives. In a wild twist, several were by Polly Pasanen, Melissa’s own mother-in-law. One of Polly’s entries: hermit bars, just the treat Melissa had been longing to bake. If you are, too, you’ll find the recipe at the end.

The 2025 International Landscape Photographer (and photographs) of the Year. Petapixel’s Matt Growcoot presents the winners: Top photographer J. Fritz Rumpf (US) has images from Brazil, California, and Norway that could be mistaken for classical landscape and abstract paintings. Poland’s Karol Nienartowicz offers up moody, planetary images. And don’t miss ‘Porcelain Shrooms’ by Albert Dros, with a mist-shrouded forest and limpid pool, and, for the Lone Tree Award, Switzerland’s Benjamin Barakat for a Seuss-like Queen Bottle Tree in Yemen. The competition website has a flipbook of the top 101 entries, so go full screen and bathe in the landscapes.

Keep your tips up! You’ve seen the sign when you’re ready to get off the chairlift up top. This is why. Snowboarder Jovvany Villalobos, who’s clearly got excellent reflexes, caught it (and the ski) aboard a lift in Utah.

Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak. If you're new to Daybreak, this is a puzzle along the lines of the NYT's Wordle—using a word that actually appeared here yesterday. 

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HEADS UP
It is a truth universally acknowledged ... Those will be the first words read out this morning at 9 am in the Mayer Room of the Howe Library as today’s Marathon Pride and Prejudice Reading gets under way in honor of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday. The reading runs from 9 am to 12:45 pm at the Howe, continues from 1-4:45 pm at the Literary Arts Bridge (7 Lebanon Street in Hanover), and then moves to Still North Books & Bar from 5-9 pm. Readers’ slots are all filled (though you never know, vacancies could pop up last minute), but you don’t need to sign up just to go listen.

Upper Valley Ringers and “The Holiday Handbells” at the Center at Eastman. Familiar carols and other seasonal music on handbells (and other instruments). 7 pm in the Draper Room.

Scottish Country dancing at Fairlee Town Hall. From 7-9 pm, dances taught. Fairlee Town Hall is at 75 Town Common Road. For more information, contact Gary Apfel at [email protected]

Valley Improv at Sawtooth Kitchen. VI’s Ben Guaraldi writes, “We'll have our largest cast ever doing a longer-than-normal show, turning suggestions from any holiday the audience celebrates into a night of spontaneous comedy, festive characters, and merry mayhem.” Someone’s got to suggest National Talk Like a Pirate Day or International Sloth Day, right? 8 pm.

And for today...

Senegalese bassist and vocalist Alune Wade started out learning classical music from his dad, who ran a symphony orchestra in Dakar. He got into playing bass as a young teen, started recording at 15 with a friend, then got swept into wider circles after he auditioned (successfully) for Senegalese great Ismaël Lô. “Boogie and juju” is off his latest album, New African Orleans, which tells you exactly the musical mashup he’s aiming for. Such a good way to get moving on a cold morning!

See you tomorrow.

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