Daybreak Wednesday, 2/18/26

Mostly cloudy. There’s snow due to the south of us, and it may reach the southern portions of the twin states in time for the evening commute, but up here: clouds and maybe a little sun, with temps getting into the mid 30s. Slight chance of snow showers tonight, lows mid teens.

And it isn’t even mud season yet. No captions needed for Jane Masters’ photo outside Dartmouth’s Alumni Gym.

VT State Police identify man who died in Corinth. In an update on the Saturday incident in which police found a man dead at a Corinth home following a domestic altercation call, yesterday afternoon the VSP identified the deceased as Jeremy Kawalec, 25. “The medical examiner determined the cause of Kawalec's death was ‘gunshot wound to head,’ and the manner of death is listed as pending,” the VSP writes. “Further investigation by detectives into this incident has determined that the death is not suspicious.” No other information was released.

Dartmouth cuts ribbon on new housing for employees. When it’s finished, Sugarwood Circle, off Oak Ridge Road across from Sachem Village in W. Leb, will include 21 one- and two-story single-family homes and duplexes; right now, Clare Shanahan reports in the Valley News, eight of the homes are finished, two are under construction, and the college plans for the remainder to be ready by the end of the summer. All are rentals, and even at $4,400 a month for the two-story homes, there’s a waiting list. The complex, says college VP Josh Keniston, is aimed at families and “people that are settling in here for the long term.”

Pressed by rising costs, Pomfret and W. Windsor consider local-option taxes. Rising health insurance premiums, infrastructure costs, and other expenses are taking a bite out of small-town budgets. In Pomfret, selectboard chair Benjamin Brickner tells the VN’s Liz Sauchelli, “The Selectboard has managed these pressures through careful budgeting, reserve funding, and capital planning. But we reached a point where relying solely on property taxes is no longer sustainable.” As a result, voters in both towns will consider local taxes—with 25 percent going to the state and the rest staying in town—on rooms, meals, alcoholic beverage, and sales. If the measures pass, they’ll join Hartford and Woodstock in imposing them.

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 refugee in Lebanon who’s hoping for a bed frame, 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.

A writer of “crunchy books” takes on a complicated mother-son relationship. The Quechee/Wilder Libraries’ Michaela Lavelle doesn’t mean “crunchy” in the alternative-lifestyle sense in this weeks Enthusiasms; she means books that delve deep into feelings and relationships. And on that front, Bryan Washington’s Palaver more than delivers, she writes. It takes place in Japan, where the mother has gone to visit the son (they’re never identified using any other words) after the two have been estranged for a decade. “This is a full book. No wasted lines, no wasted space,” Michaela writes, and filled with “elements that kept me locked in to this novel.”

“The life of a predator is not easy.” Mostly, the barred owl that naturalist Ted Levin has been watching on Hurricane Hill in WRJ dives for prey and comes up empty. But on Monday morning, George (“which, in reality, could be any barred owl of any sex”) spied a red squirrel, which had been making its way under the snow. “The squirrel surfaced once, mid-meadow—a periscoping rusty head. The owl crouched, unfluffing his feathers. Streamlined and hungry. Then the squirrel submerged and continued along the tunnel.” The owl launched and “struck the snow, feet first, wings stretched in front of his head as though delivering a benediction.” The squirrel? Not as lucky.

SPONSORED: Give Local Food to support farmers AND neighbors during CSA Week! When you donate a CSA share from a local farm via Willing Hands’ Give Local Food program, you directly support our local farms and reduce hunger in our community. Sign up with your favorite farm to get fresh local produce for your family, and donate a CSA share to Willing Hands to ensure that everyone can eat well! Make a difference throughout the community this CSA Week! Give a share through our website or your CSA farm. Sponsored by Willing Hands.

Thin ice warning after snowmobile goes through on Lake Sunapee. It happened near the the shoreline in Newbury, reports WMUR’s Mike Moses; first responders rescued both the riders and the snowmobile. "The warm weather started to erode a little bit on the ice shoreline," says Casey Brennan, president of the local snowmobie club—especially near ice-melting “bubblers,” which keep docks ice-free. Says Sunapee Fire Lt. Tim White, "If you're out in the middle of the lake, you don't have to worry about it so much, but if you're walking along the shoreline, those bubblers definitely can make the ice thinner in those areas and cause something to happen.”

Federal judge ends deportation proceedings against WRJ’s Mohsen Mahdawi. Mahdawi, who studies at Columbia, was one of several high-profile VT detainments last year, after he was held at an immigration appointment in Colchester while applying for U.S. citizenship. Yesterday, the VT ACLU announced that immigration judge Nina Froes ruled last week that the government’s evidence—a memo attributed to Secy of State Marco Rubio—“lacked proper authentication” under judicial rules, reports VTDigger’s Shaun Robinson. “No witness was produced to explain what this document is,” Froes wrote. The government hasn’t yet said whether it will appeal.

Open enrollment and NH schools: Where things stand. School districts and GOP legislators are kind of in a race right now: Districts are asking voters to approve limits on how many of their students can go to school in other districts, and how many (and under what circumstances) students from elsewhere can attend their schools. Legislators are moving fast to bar districts from imposing those limits. It’s all got many voters confused, so NHPR’s Annmarie Timmins breaks it all down: What each side believes, what might be at stake, and the many wrinkles that still have to be ironed out. Grantham Supt. Christine Downing wants a year’s pause for deeper study.

On the air with two VT-trained Olympic medalists. Yesterday, Mac Forehand—a Stratton Mountain School grad—took silver in the men’s freeski big air event. As it happens, he’s a guest on the new sports show hosted by VT Public’s Mitch Wertlieb; the other is men’s sprint silver medalist Ben Ogden. Forehand made the podium with a trick known as a “nose butter triple cork 2160,” and though he was speaking with Wertlieb beforehand, he was prescient: “The ‘wow factor’ is definitely part of the equation when it comes to getting a good score,” he says. Meanwhile, Ogden breaks down his race: “I was focused on staying in front of the people behind me,” he says.

The “splendor, curiosities and trials of the natural world” in 24 winning photos. The category winners in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year were chosen last October, out of more than 60,000 entries. Now, you can help decide the People’s Choice Award. In Smithsonian, Carlyn Kranking runs down the options, including, from Spain, Josef Stefan’s photo of a lynx playing “toss the rodent”; two bear cubs play-fighting in Canada’s Jasper National Park, by Will Nichols; and a tangle of comfort as a mother brown-throated sloth shelters her baby from a Costa Rican rain, by Dvir Barkay. Voting is open until March 18. 

Little Freeze Library. They’ve got a sense of humor there in Petoskey, MI.

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

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HEADS UP
At Dartmouth, film critic A.S. Hamrah and poet John Wall Barger on “Escape from End Times Cinema”. The title is a play on Hamrah’s weekly newsletter, Last Week in End Times Cinema, a discontented look at the movie business. He and Barger, who teaches at the college, will consider “the general disaster of current commercial  cinema in the age of streaming  platforms,  theater closures, the crazed push for AI, and the dead-end reliance on IP franchising.” 4:30 pm in Dartmouth Hall 105.

At the Howe Library, Emily Walton and Homesick: Race and Exclusion in Rural New England. Walton, a Dartmouth sociologist, will lead a group discussion of her book, focused on the Upper Valley, which looks at the region’s changing demographics and how people of color have struggled to find in it “a place in which one can feel safe, wanted, and accepted.” 5:30 pm in the Mayer Room and online.

Upper Valley Music Center and the Kilton Library present Andrew VanNorstrand and Alex Sturbaum. It’s the first time the two trad/roots musicians will perform together, with a combined repertoire that “includes songs and tunes from both sides of the Atlantic.  Celtic and Country, the maritimes and the prairies, sailors and cowboys, ceilidhs and honky tonks.” No charge, 6:30 pm at the Kilton.

The 90-Pound Rucksack Challenge at the Dartmouth Skiway. It’s an annual ski mountaineering event that commemorates the 10th Mountain Division, its ascent of Riva Ridge in Italy, and its contributions to American skiing. It will take place today at 7 pm local time all across the country, including at the Skiway, Killington, Bromley, and Sugarbush—as well as participants’ own routes. “Participants can carry their regular kit, a percentage of their body weight—or no weight at all,” the instructions say.

Yannick Murphy in conversation with Flynn Berry at Still North Books & Bar. Murphy’s latest novel, Things That Are Funny on a Submarine But Not Really, follows David Sterling—nicknamed “Dead Man”—from his time as a submariner based on Guam through his first year of college during the pandemic. An essayist, short story writer, and repeat novelist, Murphy will be talking with fellow novelist Berry at 7 pm.

Elisapie at the Hop. The Inuk singer grew up in the Inuit community of Salluit, the second northernmost in Québec, an eight-hour flight from Montreal and unreachable by road. During the pandemic, living in Montreal, she began listening to songs she’d loved as a kid—by Blondie, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, and others—and translating them. The result was last year’s album, Inuktitut, and this tour, in which she repurposes songs she once called “our friends during hard times.” 7:30 pm in Spaulding.

And at any time, there’s the Canaan Town Forest StoryWalk. Maintained by he town library and the conservation commission, it’s newly up with local author Kate Messner’s picture book Over and Under the Snow, about how animals spend the winter. Page by page along a 3/4-mile trail, where you can stop at each station “to read the story aloud (or silently if you forgot to bring children!) At the end of the trail is Canaan’s nature hut, which is supplied with writing and drawing materials,” the library says.

And for today...

"We feel, as Inuit, we are this tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little thing, and our Big Boss is around us," Elisapie once told an interviewer. “It's a very real, alive thing that is your boss. It's the nature. It's the wind. It's the mountains. It's the water. It's the animals." Before she started getting attention for the covers she’ll be performing tonight at the Hop, she released a 2019 solo album, The Ballad of the Runaway Girl, which included a different type of cover, of “Quanniuguma”, originally done by the folk duo of Etulu and Susan Aningmiuq. “They were just amazing harmony duo," she says. "They just had the most pure, beautiful voices ever. They made this song, 'Quanniuguma,' which means 'if I was snow' or 'if I was a snowflake.' It's talking about wanting to be free like a snowflake that falls lightly and transforms… that moves and travels without heartache, without heaviness."

See you tomorrow.

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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt      Poetry editor: Michael Lipson    Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt

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