Daybreak Wednesday, 5/13/26

Showery. The models have been all over on timing, but whatever, at some point today a “solid shield of precipitation will translate northeastwards,” say the weather folks. Chance to a likelihood of showers later this morning and this afternoon and evening, with some falloff overnight but picking up again tomorrow. Highs in the mid 50s, lows in the mid or upper 40s, winds today from the south.

Incoming! Though maybe that’s a bit dramatic, since this hot air balloon is coming down so peacefully, for what to a layperson seems like a pitch-perfect landing in a field off E. Thetford Rd. in Lyme on Monday morning.

Less peaceful. Richard Swenson’s photo in yesterday’s Journal Opinion newsletter of a car ablaze on I-91 N just north of the Bradford exit on Monday evening. “The car appeared to be an SUV, per photos posted by the Bradford Fire Department to social media,” writes Alex Nuti-de Biasi. “The fire spread to nearby grass before it was extinguished.” The BFD’s photos are here.

Hanover passes zoning tweaks, narrowly votes down Article 7. The Dartmouth’s Iris WeaverBell, Max Hubbard, and Olivia Sapper did pretty much wall-to-wall coverage of yesterday’s Australian ballot voting and last night’s business meeting. In the day’s voting, 1,596 ballots were cast, with the big-ticket item—a petitioned article to reverse an option to build three- and four-unit residences on smaller lots that was approved last year—defeated 816 to 792. The 181 attendees at the business meeting approved spending measures including a multi-use path along Reservoir Road and a new tower truck, tabled social zones, and, going late into the night, approved an “anti-apartheid” pledge aimed at Israel by a vote of 59 to 35. Details and debates at the link.

Jeanie McIntyre, longtime Upper Valley Land Trust president, to step down. McIntyre, who grew up in Lyme, went to work for the nonprofit in 1987, two years after it was founded, and went on to steer it for nearly four decades—years during which it conserved hundreds of parcels across more than 59,000 acres, including agricultural land, “ecologically significant habitat,” 52 trails and trail systems, and 35 conservation areas that UVLT owns and manages. She’ll be replaced on an interim basis starting July 1 by Manning Rountree, who retired as CEO of White Mountains Insurance Group late last year. Press release at the link.

SPONSORED: Can’t sleep? You may already know the usual sleep hygiene tips—limit screens, keep a consistent routine, and create a calm sleep environment. But in this brief reflection, Cioffredi & Associates founder Billy Cioffredi looks beyond the standard checklist to explore a commonly overlooked reason our minds stay active at night: the unresolved concerns we carry with us. Read “Beyond Sleep Hygiene” at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by Cioffredi & Associates Physical Therapy. 

“All you have is what you are and what you give.” Fans of Ursula K. Le Guin may recognize that line from The Dispossessed, her novel about a utopian anarchist society—and a title that, understandably, pulled at Michaela Lavelle as the former Quechee/Hartford Libraries director got ready to pull up stakes and leave the Upper Valley. In this week’s Enthusiasms, Michaela writes that Le Guin “depicts a functioning anarchist society with detail and measure…. [She] uses the theoretical underpinnings of anarchy and collectivism to build a world in Annares so rich and complex it feels tangible.” Please wish Michaela a fond good-bye; we’ll miss her words and insights.

Former Rivendell art teacher seeks to open teaching studio in the old Cuttings building in Hanover. “I never want to grade a piece of artwork again,” Jenny Ellis, who taught art at Rivendell Academy, tells the Valley News’s Sofia Langlois. “I just want to make artwork for the joy.” Given the location of the Lyme Road building that once housed Cuttings Northside Café—across from the Richmond Middle School and nearby the Ray School—Ellis thought it would be an ideal spot for after-school classes. She’s got a five-year lease, but first needs a special zoning exemption to open an art studio, since the building sits in a district zoned for residences and offices.

SPONSORED: Learn Spanish, French, or Italian fast! The Rassias Center for World Languages and Cultures at Dartmouth specializes in immersive language experiences using dramatic techniques, rhythmic drills, and energetic reinforcement strategies to make learning an engaging experience. This speeds language learning, increases language retention, and has participants speaking and understanding quickly. Our Accelerated Language Programs (ALPs) run July 7 through July 12 on the Dartmouth campus. Learn more here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by the Rassias Center.

Windsor’s American Precision Museum hits nearly $3 million fundraising goal. Its purpose is to renovate the old building’s second floor into a “learning laboratory,” to be called the Gene Haas Center for Manufacturing Inspiration, reports Liz Sauchelli in the VN. The CA-based Gene Haas Foundation, which backs manufacturing education, kicked in $1 million of the funds the APM needed. The new space, Sauchelli writes, “will include a STEM + M lab, with milling machines, lathes, lasers, 3D printers and fabrication equipment.” “Our goal,” says exec dir Steve Dalessio, “quite simply is to instill in young learners that manufacturing offers great careers and opportunities.”

NH adds seven properties to State Register of Historic Places—including Dorchester’s town offices. Which, actually, were originally the Cheever School, closed in 1955 when students started attending school in Canaan. “The one-story clapboarded building is divided into two rooms and many original features remain intact,” writes the NH Division of Historical Resources in a Monday press release. Also on the list: Goshen’s 1908 library, Jaffrey’s Woodbound Road Bridge (with cobblestone walls), the Little River Chapel in N. Hampton, the Isaac Stafford House in Plymouth, Rye Congregational Church, and Washington’s Purling Beck Grange.

SPONSORED: Sailing, moorings, and community on Mascoma Lake. The Mascoma Sailing Club invites Upper Valley sailors to enjoy another season on beautiful Mascoma Lake. Memberships are open for 2026, and a limited number of seasonal moorings remain available for sailboats 19 feet and under. Based at Mascoma Lakeside Park in Enfield, MSC is ideal for experienced sailors but also offers community sailing opportunities for adults and youth looking to learn or refresh their skills. Members can access club sailboats, races, and events from May through October. More at the burgundy link. Sponsored by the Mascoma Sailing Club.

Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest to remain open. It’s been an open question for the venerable federally funded research station that’s done key work on forest ecosystems in the White Mountains, ever since the USDA announced in March that it was reorganizing the US Forest Service—and that Hubbard Brook’s companion site in the mountains, the Bartlett Experimental Forest, would be shuttered. But on Monday, Gov. Kelly Ayotte, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, and the USDA announced there are no plans to close Hubbard Brook—and that Ag Secy Brooke Rollins will “review” the current plans for Bartlett. NH Bulletin’s Molly Rains chronicles the guardedly happy reaction.

VT House ed chair will not seek reelection. After ten years in office and four leading the House Ed Committee, Rep. Peter Conlon tells Seven Days' Alison Novak that he is ready for a break. Education reform, a pressing topic in Vermont as enrollment declines and costs increase, became even more central last year when Gov. Phil Scott proposed mandating school-district consolidation. Conlon says he's torn about the idea, but that if Scott wants it passed, he needs to do more to advocate for it statewide. Also pushing him to step down, says Conlon, is the fact that he lost federal subsidies for his health insurance this year and will need to find a full-time job that covers healthcare.

Is your last name Smith? As of the last Census, there were 2.4 million of you. Yax? A mere 1,300. Meanwhile, there are over 3 million each of Michaels and Johns, the two most common first names. Male names “dominate the list of most common first names because there’s less variety in baby boy names than baby girl names,” according to a new report by Census Bureau senior geographer Joshua Comenetz. Whose last name doesn’t actually how up in the searchable list of the top 20,000 last names in the US that NBC News’s Joe Murphy (65th most common last name) includes in his data roundup of first and last names. Go find yours! (Or not.)

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

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HEADS UP
NH Fiscal Policy Institute state budget tour rolls into Lebanon. The public policy think tank is hosting a series of presentations—”The State Budget: What You Need to Know”—that offer a nonpartisan look from research director Phil Sletten at how the budget works, what it funds, how state-level decisions affect local services and taxes, and more. It’s at the Upper Valley Senior Center, 10 Campbell St. in Lebanon tonight at 6 pm, and will be back in the Upper Valley on June 3 at the Newport Community Center.

The Etna Library hosts Meg Mott for “What the Declaration of Independence Offers U.S. Social Movements”. Mott has made a specialty of engaging audiences of ordinary people in talk about the Constitution and the Declaration—or as she puts it, “To bring humor and intellectual excitement to contentious issues…[and] to free up stuck energy so that we can think more creatively about the problems of our time.” Tonight, she’ll be talking about “how the language of the Declaration guides social movements, across the political spectrum, to institute a government that seems most likely to protect each other's unalienable rights.” 6 pm in Trumbull Hall.

At the Howe Library, “Frontier of Revolution: The Upper Valley in 1776”. Dartmouth historian Paul Musselwhite, who specializes in early America, will talk about the Upper Valley at the time of the Revolution. 6:30 pm in the Mayer room and livestreamed.

Northern Stage’s production of Wonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret debuts. Talene Monahon’s play, based on a 1714 farce, involves a family vacation gone awry when a famous painting is discovered missing and the culprit is suspected to be one of the passengers aboard the Aqua Royale: Paris to Portugal. Directed by Aileen Wen McGroddy and featuring “an iceberg-phobic captain, a frustrated musical revue performer, a scheming mother-in-law, and an enterprising toilet maid,” among others. 7:30 tonight, runs through May 31.

Valley Improv at Sawtooth Kitchen, with a twist. “Unlike our typical show in which our cast cycles through time and space as different characters in different games,” they explain, “this show will be in the style of a play. One universe, with consistent characters and an overarching plot, but it will all be made up on the spot, never seen before and never seen again. We think it will be a blast!” 8 pm.

And for today...

Every year for the past dozen years, the people behind NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts have run a contest for the “next great unsigned artist”—called, fittingly, the Tiny Desk Contest, which offers a chance to win fame if not fortune by putting on a show at the famous desk. There’s always an intriguing mix of entries (you can find them all here, searchable by state, genre, and artist—most of whom, pretty much by definition, you’ve never heard of). Before announcing the winner yesterday (the Dallas hip-hop collective Cure for Paranoia), contest organizers put up five finalists. Including the 15-member Lehi, Utah-based gospel/soul ensemble the King will come—some of them Mormons, some Pentecostal, some with no denomination at all. “The whole group is about a kind of stepping away from where our traditions raised us,” says Tamy Stevens, the soloist in their Tiny Desk submission, “Welcome”. (Thanks, DL!)

See you tomorrow.

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