Daybreak Wednesday, 4/29/26

Mostly sunny and then… Oh well. This recent string had to end sometime. We get one more beautiful day, with highs getting up toward 70, but there’s a slow-moving upper-level low-pressure system moving in from the Great Lakes, so clouds will build in ahead of it this afternoon, and once temps drop below 60 this evening, that’s the last time we’ll cross that mark until next week. Rain arrives overnight, lows in the mid 40s.

Clouds above, clouds below.

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SNL alum and Tony nominee Rachel Dratch will deliver Dartmouth’s commencement address. Dratch, a member of the Class of ‘88 and of the Hopkins Center’s board of advisors, will address the Class of 2026 and receive an honorary doctorate at commencement June 14, the Office of Communications announced yesterday. Dratch, who got her acting start with an improv group at Dartmouth—“I felt like, ‘Oh my God, these are my people,’” she said last year—was on Saturday Night Live from 1999 to 2006 with the likes of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey; her iconic role was as Debbie Downer. Other honorary degree recipients to be announced later.

For now, just call it V-2. If you’re an avid follower of VINS’s eagle cams, you know this already: Last Friday, eagle couple Windsor and Dewey welcomed a new chick into the nest, when the egg they’d been protecting hatched. Live cams are at the burgundy link. Here’s Windsor bringing a fish to the nest; and here’s VINS’s greatest eagle-cam hits. Meanwhile, executive director Alden Smith tells the VN’s Liz Sauchelli, “You can tell the eaglet is getting bigger before our very eyes.”

SPONSORED: Spanish language for healthcare careers from Dartmouth’s Rassias Center. Spanish for Healthcare Professionals encompasses Spanish language and grammar for a medical setting, using both general and healthcare-specific vocabulary so that medical professionals will gain skills and confidence needed for interactions with their patients and community. All adult Spanish learners are welcome to attend, with the understanding that the curriculum is focused on healthcare. This is an intensive language program that runs June 27 through July 5. Sponsored by the Rassias Center.

It’s spring ephemeral time! All sorts of short-lived wildflowers are popping up out there, and VT State Parks has just gone up with a helpful little scavenger hunt PDF. Red Trillium, Bloodroot, Blue Cohosh, Trout Lily, Jack in the Pulpit and more… you can check them all off as you find them. (Thanks, HHC!) Thanks HHC!

SPONSORED: Crank it up! Green Day’s landmark album explodes onto the Hop stage May 27-31 in American Idiot, a high-octane, two-time Tony Award-winning hit musical featuring every song from the album, plus several songs from its follow-up release. The energy-fueled rock show is produced by the Dartmouth Department of Theater and performed live by students who have something to say. Get tickets today! Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.

Behind NH’s economic numbers: “for many families it’s getting harder to keep up.” The state has a low unemployment rate, writes the Fiscal Policy Institute’s Ben Reynolds, but more people are looking for work, and as of December, 2025, there were 8,800 fewer jobs in the state than a year previously. And while the state’s average hourly wage grew very slightly from 2024 to 2025, “once you factor in inflation and particularly the rising costs of groceries, health care, and other everyday essentials, a New Hampshire worker earning the average wage effectively saw a 2.2% pay cut,” Reynolds reports. It all adds up to less purchasing power and uncertainty.

Aargh! An early-morning brain freeze yesterday 🤦‍♂: Alice Dodge, not Amy Lilly, wrote Seven Days’ engaging profile of Burlington artist and crossing guard Christine Tyler Hill and her hugely successful zine, “The Cloud Report.” Apologies to both. If you haven’t read Alice’s piece yet, you should. You’ll find it at the link.

VT, feds ramp up rabies vaccination efforts as incidence rises. As VT Public’s Lola Duffort reports, 2024 and 2025 each saw 66 reports of rabid animals—”more than double the previous annual average in Vermont.” This year, officials have found 16 rabid animals so far, especially in Orleans County. As a result, the state and USDA plan to spread 900,000 blister packs of vaccine in the wild, scented to attract skunks and raccoons. “If you encounter these blister packs while you’re out, it’s important to leave them alone so wild animals can find them,” Duffort writes.

Take two tons of mascarpone, 19,000 eggs, 150,000 ladyfingers, and 400 kilos of sugar… What do you get? A Guinness record-breaking tiramisu. Last weekend, a hundred Italian chefs gathered in London to achieve that feat, which they say measured in at 440.6 m (1,445 ft), but I dunno: Does that look like three football fields to you? Must be square meters. Whatever, organizer Mirko Ricci says it’s "the most incredible dessert that Italy has exported.“ The Guardian has the video.

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

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HEADS UP
At the Tuck School: “Building What Matters: Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and the Human Side of Scaling”. Bob Coughlin, former board chair and CEO of the HR services company Paycor, talks with Dartmouth prof Charlie Wheelan about the “challenges of growth, the importance of values-driven leadership, and what it means to build organizations that put people at the center.” Noon in McLaughlin Atrium, register at the link.

Former GE CEO Jeffrey Immeldt in a Teevens Center conversation on “what it takes to lead through uncertainty, failure, and rapid change.” The Dartmouth alum will be in conversation with Teevens Center director Duncan Simpson on “leading at the highest levels, including how leaders adapt across changing contexts, make tough decisions under pressure, and help people and teams move forward when the future feels unclear.” 2 pm at the Top of the Hop, registration required at the link.

Howard Coffin’s lecture at the Norman Williams Public Library, “The Great Bennington Battle and Vermont”, has been postponed. Just in case you were planning to go. No date’s been set yet for this final lecture in the NWPL’s four-part series on the American Revolution.

Dartmouth’s Dickey Center hosts “Words Without Borders: The Commerce of World Literature”. A panel of all-star translators—Maureen Freely, Tess Lewis, Allison Markin Powell, and Samantha Schnee—tackle the big question of why “some authors and books become known around the world, while others of equal merit languish in relative obscurity,” looking at the larger literary ecosystem, the role that translators into English play as cultural gatekeepers, and more. 4:30 pm in Haldeman 41 and livestreamed.

VINS virtual talk: “Respectful Owl Observation”. As VINS writes, “Owls are really good at not being seen.” But when they are, the can attract a crowd, which can stress them out. Educators from the International Owl Center will explain “the behaviors of relaxed owls and stressed owls as well as laying out a list of things to do and not to do when observing or photographing owls.” 5 pm, via Zoom.

Los Lorcas at the Tunbridge General Store. The poetry/music trio of Peter Money, Partridge Boswell, and Nat Williams is back from touring California and just officially launched their new album, Wild Island, on Sunday in Bellows Falls. They’ll be the general store’s Music Night starting at 5 pm.

At the Center at Eastman: “Where Interchangeability Changed the World: How a Vermont Armory Transformed Manufacturing”. The American Precision Museum’s Devon Kohrau and Molly Holleran will talk about the birthplace in Windsor of machine-made interchangeable parts, their impact on modern manufacturing, and how the APM continues not just to tell that story, but to inculcate its spirit. 7 pm in the Draper Room.

Rebecca Mahoney and Thrall at the Norwich Bookstore. Here’s the premise of Mahoney’s new horror novel: “Lucy Easting has at last broken free from her grim home life and is ready to truly live. But her long-awaited new beginning at Rollins University isn’t what she expected. After attending the first campus party of the year, Lucy awakens the next day with a memory block…and two puncture marks on her neck.” 7 pm.

Upper Valley Symphony Orchestra spring concert at Lebanon Opera House. The “Autumn” and “Winter” movements of Pablo Santiago Chin’s work-in-progress, Upper Valley Seasons, plus Carl Maria von Weber’s Overture to Der Freischütz, Carl Nielsen’s Saga-Dream, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6. 7:30 pm.

The Dover Quartet at the Hop. The Grammy-nominated chamber ensemble, which formed originally at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, is performing a program that “reflects the complexity, spirit and evolving soundscape of America”: Jessie Montgomery’s Strum, Pura Fé’s Rattle Songs as orchestrated by Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, Tate’s own Abokkoli' Taloowa' (Woodland Songs), and Dvořák’s “American” Quartet. 7:30 pm in Spaulding.

And for today...

The Dover Quartet, in a slightly different iteration from the foursome appearing at the Hopkins Center tonight, with the finale of Antonin Dvořák’s “American” Quartet.

See you tomorrow.

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