GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
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Mostly sunny, warm. By now, of course, upper 40s—which is what we’re due to reach around mid afternoon—feels downright sultry. Whatever moisture in the air was left over after last night’s snow has pretty much frizzled, and this morning’s clouds will, too, leaving us an afternoon under near-full sun. There’ll be some clouds overnight, but even so, we’ll be getting into the low 20s.
Why it pays to get up early. And hike to the fire tower atop Gile Mountain in Norwich, which Michael and Mimi Simpson did yesterday morning as the moon was partly eclipsed.
Another reason it pays to get up early: VINS’s eagle cams. There are two of them trained on the nest overlooking Dewey’s Pond, and they just went live for the public this morning. The pair they’ve named Windsor and Dewey have been settling in, mating, and in other ways getting ready for nesting season. And if they’re not there when you happen to check in (or even if they are), you can scroll down for a pile of recent clips.
Town Meeting results start coming in. Most of the voting, of course, was on the Vermont side of the river this week, though Hanover voters also went to the polls to vote on school district matters.
In Woodstock, voters overwhelmingly backed a $35 million bond issue to renovate and upgrade the town’s wastewater treatment facility—including with new biological treatment process tanks and an ultraviolet disinfection system. The vote was 808-209, reports the VT Standard.
Voters in the Mountain Views school district, which includes Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading, and Woodstock, also went to the polls, most notably on a $112 million bond for a new middle and high school. Results on that school bond vote and two other bond votes won’t be available until later today: the towns’ votes by law must be “commingled,” so town clerks this morning are bringing ballot results to district clerk Rayna Bishop, where they’ll all be counted together. Results will be posted here today once the count is complete.
In Hartford’s three-way contest for two two-year selectboard seats, incumbents Ashley Andreas and Tim Fariel prevailed over a challenge by Janet Sharkey Potter. The town’s proposed bonds for water main and sidewalk/street improvements drew strong majorities. You’ll find those unofficial results here. Voters also passed the school budget, 763-542.
In Norwich, voters returned Rob Gere to the selectboard, choosing him over fellow former-member Pam Smith in an all-write-in campaign. Brendan Classon won an uncontested three-year seat. Full unofficial town results at the link.
Hanover school district voters, meanwhile, re-elected Tara Velozo to the school board, choosing her over challenger Christopher Rivet for a three-year seat. And voters in the Dresden district easily backed both the school budget and a parent-sponsored ballot measure to approve a new JV hockey team. You’ll find all the results in the pop-up here.
In Corinth, Carl Demrow defeated Brian Kirkpatrick for selectboard, 234-207, while voters also defeated proposed new subdivision regulations that would have clarified both existing language and provisions aimed at protecting the landscape—including criteria that would essentially have imposed a limit on the length of driveways. That vote was 291-149 against.
In Newbury, reports Sofia Langlois in the Valley News, townspeople in floor voting agreed to accept 127 acres of land located on Tucker Mountain as a gift from the nonprofit Friends of Tucker Mountain, and to release a town-owned parcel known as the Ski Tow Property.
Voters in W. Windsor, reports the VN’s Liz Sauchelli, said yes in a voice vote to new 1 percent local-option rooms, meals, and alcohol taxes, but in paper balloting, no to a new sales tax, 93-57.
And in Royalton, voters by a show of hands imposed a five-year moratorium on the construction of AI and crypto data centers, reports Marion Umpleby in the VN.
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A book that’s part foraging manual, part botanical guide and recipe book, part memoir and healing journey. Gabrielle Cerberville covers a lot of ground in Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life, writes the Howe Library’s Jared Jenisch in this week’s Enthusiasms. Though it’s structured around plant varieties and the seasons, with instructions for gathering, methods of preserving, and recipes, it’s also filled with “acute” attention to the natural world, the thrill of the forager’s hunt, “a rich cast of characters”—including an elder of Panama’s Guna people—who people Cerberville’s world, and her own reflections on why foraging means so much.
Bakery and café coming to the Powerhouse Mall. “We’ve been waiting for coffee in the mall for a very long time,” Powerhouse manager Heather Jennings tells the VN’s Marion Umpleby. And as Umpleby reports, the wait’s almost over: Later this spring, Ligia and Ed Banks, who ran Splendid Bakes out of a storefront next to Woodstock’s Norman Williams Public Library until December, will open in the space once occupied by Country Kids Clothing. Ligia Banks “grew up watching her mother and grandmother cook everything from scratch,” Umpleby writes, and began baking as an adult when her kids were young, building her business by word of mouth.
After sledding disaster, Bradford VT supports four-year-old and her family. Rylie Martin was tubing down a hill in January, writes Sofia Langlois in the VN, when it veered sideways and hit a tree. She wound up spending weeks at CHaD “in intensive care with around-the-clock monitoring. Rylie suffered a skull fracture, blood clotting in multiple places, a torn artery, a brain bleed and a broken right arm in the accident.” She’s now home recovering, but it’s a long road. “She’s not quite out of the woods yet, but she’s definitely making really strong strides,” says her mother, VallaRee Doucette. A GoFundMe set up by a friend has pulled in over $8,000. Langlois tells Rylie’s story.
Elijah Allman—Cher and Greg Allman’s son—arrested at St. Paul’s School in Concord. As the school’s rector wrote to parents, “While this event was serious, it would not have garnered media attention if it were not for Mr. Allman’s celebrity status.” Though it’s odd enough that it might have. Allman, 49, first poked a student and then pushed a faculty member with his cane at the school’s dining hall, reports the Monitor’s Sruthi Gopalakrishnan—he told the school he was a prospective parent. That was Friday night. Then, on Sunday morning, he allegedly broke into a house in nearby Windham. He’s facing charges that include burglary, assault, and criminal trespass.
Oops. VT Agency of Education finds errors in school report card. The “report card,” issued Feb. 19, misidentified “certain schools as having persistent achievement gaps on standardized state tests,” reports Alison Novak in Seven Days. And though Education Secy Zoie Saunders noted that the unspecified coding error “does not alter overall statewide findings or performance results at the school or [district] level,” the agency is launching a review of every school designated as needing “targeted support and improvement” or “additional targeted support and improvement” for the past eight years. It issued a new version of the report on Friday.
BCBS of VT says it’s “on a path to financial recovery.” That was CFO Ruth Greene in a press call on Monday, and the news “will come as a relief to policymakers and regulators, who have reacted to BlueCross BlueShield’s rapidly deteriorating finances with growing alarm,” reports VT Public’s Lola Duffort. Greene said that its own cost-cutting and state intervention—the Green Mountain Care Board last year cut hospital budgets, and the legislature capped certain drug prices—have allowed it to double its reserves and, for the first time in years, report an operating gain.
A beam of light underwater and golden spray in the air. In the 2026 World Nature Photography Awards, Jono Allen, from Australia, was chosen as Photographer of the Year for his image of a “spectacular and curious moon white whale calf” in Tonga, swimming beside its darker mother, a hopeful sign for a previously endangered species that’s now recovering. Spraying water in a thousand brilliant droplets, Vaidehi Chandrasekar’s gold-winning (and golden) giraffe in Botswana fairly shimmers. And in Scotland, Duncan Wood caught a glorious image of an elder birch in autumn, “like a woodland peacock.” There’s a lot more and, honestly, they’re all fantastic.
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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The Etna Library hosts “What’s the History of Your House?” Author and historian Erin Moulton will focus on the records of a Masonic Lodge as a way into using historical resources such as newspapers, deeds, city directories, and more to unveil the history underfoot. 6 pm in Trumbull Hall.
Hop Film screens Valentina. Tattijani Ribeiro’s 2025 debut focuses on a young woman (played by The Studio’s Keyla Monterroso Mejia) and her cross-border life between El Paso and Juaréz, “Most of the people, places, and events in this film are real,” Ribeiro—a reporter who’s spent serious time in El Paso—announces at the beginning. “Valentina is not.” But the events all could be: petty bureaucracy, errands, debt, the impositions of family members, and always, the small tensions of cross-border life. 6:30 pm in the Loew, and Ribeiro will be on hand to talk about it afterward.
Suds and Science with Dartmouth’s Raquel Fleskes. The VT Center for Ecostudies’ monthly gathering returns with the anthropology prof talking about her research, which uses ancient DNA—along with archaeological, bone-related, archival, and oral history sources.”to understand histories of historic period archaeological populations in North America.” 7 pm at the Norwich Inn.
Ittay Flescher and The Holy and the Broken at the Roth Center in Hanover. Flescher is education director at Seeds of Peace Jerusalem, which focuses on Israeli and Palestinian youth, as well as the Jerusalem correspondent for Australia’s Jewish Independent. Based on years of facilitating dialogue, his book is subtitled, A Cry for Israeli-Palestinian Peace from a Land that Must Be Shared. He’ll be talking about it all with Dartmouth writing prof Judith Hertog.
And for today...
The Birmingham, AL-based Southern soul band St. Paul and the Broken Bones in Memphis’s Southern Grooves studio, with frontman Paul Janeway, who grew up in rural Alabama training to be a preacher, bringing the glitter to “Sushi and Coca-Cola”.
See you tomorrow.
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Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Poetry editor: Michael Lipson Associate Editors: Jonea Gurwitt, Sam Gurwitt
