Daybreak Wednesday, 4/22/26

Chance of snow, rain showers this morning. But really, we’re mostly just looking at a cloudy day. Any precipitation is thanks to a disturbance that dropped by from Canada last night. Temps will be about where they were yesterday: rising into the mid40s during the day, then settling back into the mid 30s overnight.

On the road and along the tracks. Two very different sides of the Upper Valley.

Meat packing plant in Springfield VT sold; 53 employees being laid off. In the long run, the Springfield Regional Development Corp.’s Bob Flint tells WCAX’s Adam Sullivan, the change in ownership for Vermont Packinghouse may be good news: the new owners are led by Louis Helbling, a food industry veteran who most recently was COO of Prime Source Foods in Londonderry, and plan to upgrade the 50,000-square-foot facility—which is being sold to them separately—and to expand its cold storage capacity. Meanwhile, Sullivan reports, the employees were notified of their layoffs yesterday afternoon: “It is not known if any of them will be rehired by the new owner.”

$900 per foot of sidewalk. That, reports Sofia Langlois in the Valley News, is how much the city of Lebanon will be paying for the 750 feet of sidewalk that will soon be built along Mechanic Street from the American Legion to Slayton Hill Road: total cost, $675,000. That work’s due to begin next month, the first phase of a project aimed at improving pedestrian safety along the busy road. Eventually, the city hopes to install sidewalk the full 1.3 miles from the Rivermill bus stop to Poverty Lane (yep, past the I-89 ramps), but funding for the next two phases remains a challenge—especially since costs are exponentially higher than when they wer first scoped out 13 years ago.

SPONSORED: The cutest event of the year is happening at Billings Farm this Saturday and Sunday! It’s the Baby Farm Animal Celebration on April 25 and 26 from 10am- 5pm. Come meet adorable lambs, chicks, calves, piglets, and bunnies. Young guests will enjoy sensory play during Farm Friends Play Club and visitors of all ages can hop on a horse-drawn wagon through the pastures. There will be delicious food truck fare, plus snacks and Vermont-made ice cream from the Farmhouse Scoop Shop. Sponsored by Billings Farm & Museum.

You’d be amazed what you have to avoid if you wind up with Alpha-Gal Syndrome after a tick bite. Lyme’s James Mason and his wife, Dayle, have first-hand experience after she was bitten years ago by a Lone Star tick (before anyone knew they were in northern New England). In the mountaineering journal Appalachia, Jim Mason—safety officer for the Upper Valley Wilderness Response Team—lays out the challenges: the allergen’s not only in red meat and dairy products, but some medications and even carrageenan, the thickener extracted from seaweed. In the piece, Mason describes the allergy and its effects, Dayle’s experience, how to avoid tick bites, what to do if you get one, dealing with the aftermath, and more.

NH officials identify victim, suspect in Haverhill death. After Haverhill police responded to “multiple 911 calls directing them to an apartment on Nelson Street” in Woodsville, the NH AG’s office says in its press release, they found the body of a 23-year-old man from Springfield, MA. WCAX reports that court documents say “multiple people broke into the home armed with guns.” Late on Monday evening, Jayden McClanahan, 21, of Hartford, CT, was arrested on burglary charges “related to this investigation.” He’s being held in preventative detention; others may still be at large.

SPONSORED: What does it mean to begin again? The Spitfire Grill, presented by We the People Theatre, tells the story of a young woman seeking a fresh start and the unexpected ways a small town helps her heal. Filled with warmth, humor, and soaring music, it celebrates resilience, friendship, and the power of community. Where new beginnings find a home. Join us April 30–May 17. Get your tickets today! Sponsored by We the People Theatre.

“I remember Patti Smith’s comment that if she encounters a wall without a door she makes one.” In this week’s Enthusiasms, poet, novelist, and musician Peter Money visits with May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude, Max Porter’s Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, Michael Ondaatje’s Handwriting, and the singer-songwriter Andrea von Kampen (who “sings so sweetly, as if held by gravity but lifted up in light”) as he muses on doors and windows and what they contain and can’t contain. “I am enthused about doors, and a window is just a smaller idea of a door,” he writes.

AI is transforming high school in NH. And not for the better. The Concord Monitor’s education writer, Jeremy Margolis, talked with eight students at four schools. All were unsettled by the advent of LLMs, and what they told him “revealed a burgeoning crisis in New Hampshire’s schools. The students described feeling sapped of motivation, noticeable cognitive deterioration among their peers and a sense of hopelessness about whether their school leaders were equipped to address the problems they see.” They told him about rampant AI use, teachers wrongly accusing students who don’t use it, and their own declining zest for writing.

Missing Massachusetts hiker found dead on NH’s Kinsman Pond Trail. Kent Wood, 61, had driven to Lafayette Campground in Lincoln Friday, camped out, and begun his hike Saturday morning. After not hearing from him for two days, his family called NH Fish & Game Monday, telling officials that he’d prepared for warmer conditions on his hike. Some 3 to 5 inches of snow fell in the Franconia Notch area Sunday and Monday. Yesterday morning, reports WPTZ’s Molly Ormsbee, conservation officers and PEMI Valley Search and Rescue set out, and last night found his body 5.5 miles from his vehicle. They reached the trailhead with him early this morning.

Judge says Market Basket board had right to fire CEO. It’s the latest bit of news in the ongoing saga of Arthur T. Demoulas, who was fired last September in the midst of a long-running dispute with his sisters, who control a majority of the board. As Catherine McLaughlin writes for the Monitor (here via NHPR), Demoulas has “built a reputation as the flag-bearer for the company’s longstanding practices of paying workers decent wages and giving shoppers lower-than-average prices.” But a Delaware judge found that he “stubbornly resisted board oversight and excluded his sisters and their families from the business,” and were justified in believing Demoulas was gearing up for a fight.

Wait. A cake with planets spinning around it?! Jenn Gryckiewicz is the new bakery manager at Cold Hollow Cider Mill in Waterbury Center, VT. She’s been a competitor on various baking shows and, as Seven Days’ Melissa Pasanen describes it, is a master at making cakes that don’t look like cakes: “A pair of chopsticks dangling with noodles hovers magically over a bowl of ramen. A heap of Cheetos and a stuffed turkey are ringers for the real things. A board featuring five different cheeses crafted from cake almost fooled a dairy-averse colleague.” Pasanen asks her about baking shows, the hardest cakes she’s made, and “Does anyone actually think fondant tastes good?”

A hidden wildlife highway captured on the world’s greatest trail cam. Deep in the forests of Kenya’s Mara Maasai reserve, a river runs through a secluded valley. “Most people think of the Mara as endless open plains,” writes photographer Will Burrad-Lucas, but this was different: “Huge fig trees towered overhead, palms leaned over the river, and thick undergrowth screened well-worn animal trails.” Working with the Rhino Unit team, who “know both the landscape and the individual animals intimately,” he positioned remote cameras above the trail. Soon, dazzling images appeared: elephants, leopards, hippos, giraffes, bushbucks … and many rhino, including one last seen in 2023. 

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

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HEADS UP
Joseph Ellis at the Norman Williams Public Library with “The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding”. The great historian of the founding era presents the third lecture in the library’s four-part series on this country’s birth. His new book, with the same title, explores questions that have been with us from the beginning, including, “How could a government that had been justified and founded on the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence institutionalize slavery? How could it permit a tidal wave of western migration by settlers who understood the phrase ‘pursuit of happiness’ to mean the pursuit of Indian lands?” 2 pm. (The talks are being filmed: You’ll find the first two here, with Ellis to come.)

Earth at Lebanon Opera House. Part of LOH’s Come As You Are film series (no tix needed), this 2009 film is narrated by James Earl Jones and “follows the journeys of three animal families — polar bears, African bush elephants, and humpback whales — over the course of one year. Earth is an astonishing documentary that illustrates how climate change and warming temperatures disrupt animal habitats and migration patterns.” 6:30 pm.

Running on Native lands: A Dartmouth Earth Day celebration. It’s a series of short films—on running—with runner, documentary film producer/director, and activist Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Whetstone. Sponsored by an array of Dartmouth offices. 7 pm in Filene Auditorium.

Sally Pinkas at the Hop. The Hop’s pianist-in-residence performs a program of Beethoven's Sonata Op. 110, Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words Op. 102, and Brahms’ Intermezzi Op. 118: “distillations of wisdom, experience, joy and perhaps sorrow: a celebration of a rich life lived in music.” 7:30 pm in the Morris Recital Hall—pre-bought tickets are sold out, but standby tickets will be available at the box office at show time.

And for today...

Béla Fleck and BEATrio (his collaboration with harpist Edmar Castaneda and percussionist Antonio Sanchez) are at the Chandler tonight — and no surprise, it’s sold out. But also no surprise, the banjoist extraordinaire has multiple projects going on at once, and his latest is a collaboration with opera soprano Renée Fleming and a host of other musicians on The Fiddle and the Drum, an album that draws from a “deep well of America’s musical heritage,” including mountain songs, ballads, and folk hymns. The first song from it went up last month, with Dolly Parton singing the old Appalachian melody, “In the Pines”.

See you tomorrow.

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