GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
A dry start to the day, then some rain and snow (or all snow, if you're up high enough). We'll be mostly cloudy all day, but at some point toward evening a frontal system arrives, bringing rain then snow to the valleys and snow to higher elevations. Temps today look like they'll top out around 40, and drop only into the low 30s overnight. Snow totals will be highly elevation-dependent: an inch or two low down, 5-8 inches in the mountains.Speaking of warm spells followed by cold... As NHPR notes, this week's rain and unusually warm temps may have weakened ice on lakes and ponds (not even to mention streams and rivers), so state officials "are encouraging people to use extra caution before they head out" on any frozen bodies of water. The state's recommended guideline: six inches of ice for foot travel, eight to 10 inches for vehicles. But as NH Fish & Game says, "Remember—thick ice does not always mean safe ice! Ice can be thick, but not strong, because of varying weather conditions." Here are their tips.All in good fun. You know how house cats sometimes wrestle each other? Turns out bobcats do, too—they're a little far away in Susan Wasp's video from Lyme, but not so far that you can't see it's play time.A chemical engineer, a physician, an international development specialist and a physical therapist walk into a restaurant... Actually, they own the restaurant. In Artful, Susan Apel checks in with a bit of the backstory and a review of Little Havana, the Cuban spot in Hanover just opened by Maylena Chaviano, her mom, her brother, and family friend Yuniesky Miyar. The food itself, Susan writes, is "straightforward, not fussy, described by the owners as the authentic home cooking of their childhoods." And the setting? "Casual, welcoming, good for a date night or gathering of friends."Canaan Meeting House gets $74K for renovations. The grant from NH's Land and Community Heritage Investment Program will go to new windows and floorboards, improving drainage around the 1793 building, and working on the belfry. “Replacing the posts in the belfry is the biggest effort,” preservation committee chair John Bergeron tells the VN's Liz Sauchelli. Contractors “have to get a crane here to pull the belfry off, put it down on the ground and work on the upper structure.” Meanwhile, downtown Claremont's Trinity Episcopal Church got a $10K grant, the only other Upper Valley spot on this year's list.SPONSORED: Give the gift of connection and help strengthen communities. For 40 years, Advance Transit (AT) has been keeping the Upper Valley connected by providing fare-free public transit service. AT is a nonprofit committed to expanding mobility and operating sustainably. It provides over half a million rides every year, ensuring that people have access to jobs, healthcare, and other essential services. This season, please consider supporting Advance Transit. A gift of any size will help keep buses running and communities moving. Hit the burgundy link or here to give! Sponsored by Advance Transit."An ethereal Appalachian Gothic that keeps you guessing." That's what the Yankee Bookshop's Kari Meutsch discovered when the cover of a book on the store's shelves caught her eye. As she writes in this week's Enthusiasms, The Bog Wife, by Kay Chronister, tells the story of a family that lives by a cranberry bog in the West Virginia back woods and that, for generations, has had a deal with the bog: "The oldest son of every generation marries a woman who is gifted to them by the bog itself," Kari writes, "and the family as a whole works together to protect the bog." Only things are starting to fall apart...The flavor of mid-1960s Vermont. Literally. If you've read Hartland mystery writer Sarah Stewart Taylor's Agony Hill, you know she gave her fictional VT town of Bethany its sense of place and era partly through food. And you may remember her Daybreak piece about the vintage cookbooks she consulted. Now, in Seven Days, Suzanne Podhaizer pulls it all together: book, cookbooks, and the home Taylor shares with husband Matt Dunne—where, she writes, they "grow copious amounts of kale and Swiss chard..., raise sheep and chickens, keep bees, experiment with apple grafting, and grow blueberries."SPONSORED: The Upper Valley Trails Calendar is back! From Daybreak to your desk, the Upper Valley Trails Alliance and local photographer Jay Davis (whose photos have appeared in Daybreak) are back with the 2025 Trails Calendar featuring beautiful photos of our beloved trails. All proceeds from calendar sales will benefit UVTA and help keep our trails maintained. The calendars are ready for immediate mailing or pick-up, so place your order today at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by the UVTA.Barnard's Domaine La Garagista gets a winter-time tasting room. Which is, actually, not in Barnard, but in West Addison, VT. "The roads in Barnard last winter were really bad," co-owner Deirdre Heekin tells Seven Days' Jordan Barry, "and there's a flat, paved road here." "Here" is a former two-car garage attached to the house that Heekin and Caleb Barber got when they bought their W. Addison vineyard in 2021—now transformed into the Little Forêt tasting room, which is actually larger than the Forêt pop-up tasting room they run at their home farm in Barnard, Barry notes.Well, that didn't last long. The NH State House's Satanic Temple display, that is. WMUR's Ross Ketschke reports that witnesses last night "saw a person smash the statue and break the flagpole over their leg." Both the formerly revived statue and its predecessor were of "the pagan deity Baphomet and the Satanic Temple's seven fundamental tenets. In one hand, the figure held an apple to honor Isaac Newton and celebrate science." Later last night, Ketschke says, "a small group pieced much of the display back together."NH has 33 state-owned dams in poor condition. With each, "if that dam was to fail, there would be probable loss of life." And Corey Clark should know: He's chief engineer of the state's Dam Bureau. The problem, he told a legislative committee earlier this year, is that it's going to be expensive to make sure they don't fail: $300 million for the state's high-hazard dams, another $114 million for other state-owned dams. Moreover, reports NH Bulletin's Claire Sullivan, each year new development puts more people downstream of dams, boosting the risks. Lawmakers are considering new fees as a funding source.Homelessness grows in NH. That's what the state's Coalition to End Homelessness found in a new report that compares two single January nights' counts of homeless people around the state in 2022 and 2023. In all, the report finds the numbers grew 52 percent year over year: the biggest percentage increase in the country. The coalition's director tells the Globe's Amanda Gokee that this may in part be due to the end of pandemic aid and skyrocketing costs for rent and child care. Meanwhile, Gokee notes, a federal database that tracks yearlong numbers found a 12.9 percent NH increase from 2022 to 2023.Sununu pulls former Sunapee librarian's nomination to run NH state library over her opposition to library-material censorship. Pressure to do so, reports NHPR's Annmarie Timmins, came from GOP members of the Exec Council and religious groups, who argued that Mindy Atwood in the past has favored challenging book bans—a position aligned with state and national library associations but, GOP Exec Councilor David Wheeler tells Timmins, one that denies "parents to have any type of choice over what their kids can see.” The state librarian has no authority over materials in school and public libraries.As he leaves, outgoing NH state librarian says it's time to move some state library holdings out of the state library. Not out from under the library's control, mind you, but to an off-site facility. That's because, Michael York tells NHPR's Julia Furukawa, it's nigh on impossible to control the climate inside the state library building. York stepped down earlier this month after 25 years in the job. “Our role as a state library," he says, "is to collect materials that will tell the story of New Hampshire"—everything from family histories and town reports to a golf-ball-sized ring given to Franklin Pierce by the state of California.“Look in every closet, look in every drawer, search from the basement to the attic.” And maybe, as Vermont historian and serious "Vermontiana" collector Kevin Graffagnino once did, pull on an odd set of handles on a set of bookshelves, which is how he discovered the papers of a former VT congressman. Now, writes Mark Bushnell in VTDigger, Graffagnino has a new book out that, fittingly, "details what he considers the 154 most important pieces of 18th and 19th century Vermontiana to collect." Many are books, but Graffagnino's holy grail is a map: the first labeled "State of Vermont".Each month, VT state dairy inspectors will check 425 farms to sample raw milk for avian flu. No dairy herds in the state have tested positive for the virus, and state ag officials want to keep it that way. So rather than follow new federal guidelines that call for taking test samples at regional processing facilities—and then scrambling to figure out which farm the milk came from—they've decided to take the hard route, reports Emma Cotton in VTDigger: farm-by-farm testing. It'll be one of just three states to do so. No word yet from NH ag officials on their testing plans.Porta-Rinx inventor: "I would much rather employ 200 people and pay them solid money... But I don't know how to borrow money." Radio producer Erica Heilman has picked up her ongoing series for VT Public about class in VT in a conversation with Damian Renzello, who created both a portable ice rink kit and the Bambini—a cute-sized Zamboni. He lays out the differences between blue-collar and white-collar—what each knows and doesn't know—and why, even though he and she are Vermonters of the same age, "You were born an apple and I was born a banana. We’ll never be the same."Above Putney Mountain, a banner year for broad-winged hawk counts. Usually, the group of loyal raptor-watchers from Putney Mountain Hawkwatch count about 7,000 raptors in all, writes Kate Kampner for UVM's Community News Service. This year, from late August to mid-November, they counted 19,428, most of them broad-winged hawks—the group's “best year ever,” says one longtime volunteer, who says the jump is due to "the big weather patterns we don’t quite fully understand." In addition, says the VT Center for Ecostudies' Kent McFarland, broad-wings appear to be increasing in the region.Stuck squirrel. That's the title of the overall winner of this year's Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards—Italian photographer Milko Marchetti actually took it at the precise moment a squirrel was letting go of a tree with its hind legs to enter its hole. But sure enough, that's one stuck-looking squirrel. There's lots more, including a remarkable shot of a fish that appears to be chasing an eagle. And an endearing red fox rolling in the grass.
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Fleece vests, sweatshirts, head-warming beanies... Strong Rabbit has updated the Daybreak page to keep up with the changing weather. Plus, of course, the usual: t-shirts, long-sleeved tees, the Daybreak jigsaw, those perfect hand-fitting coffee/tea mugs, and as always, "We Make Our Own Fun" t-shirts and tote bags for proud Upper Valleyites. Check it all out at the link!
"Boy under lime tree" is a beautiful piece of work by Danish violinist Harald Haugaard and pianist Christoffer Møller off their new album
Ensomhaden Synger (Loneliness Sings)
, with singer Helene Blum. It's calm and introspective and settling—and for a group that explores Danish folk roots, there's a surprisingly Irish lilt to Haugaard's violin.
And see you tomorrow.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
The Enthusiasms Archives. A list of book recommendations by Daybreak's rotating crew of local booksellers, writers, and librarians who think you should read. this. book. now!
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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