Daybreak Wednesday, 5/6/26

Cooler, rain eventually. It’s moving slowly west to east today, and the weather folks say it’ll be a “stratiform rain event”—meaning that the clouds above us cover a wide area but aren’t tall, while the rain they produce tends to be steady. Once it arrives it’ll linger for a bit, and while there may be some river rises, no one’s expecting any river flooding. Things will taper off this evening. In the meantime, temps reach the high 50s or low 60s with winds from the south, down to around 40 overnight.

Red fox kits in WRJ, just knocking around. For a couple of seasons some years back, photographer Jim Block got hooked on watching a fox den near his home. So imagine his pleasure when a friend recently pointed him to a nearby den—with a litter of rambunctious kits playing, tussling, and sleeping in the sun. If nothing else, make sure you scroll down far enough to check out the highly photogenic mom fixing Jim—who was far away using a big telephoto—with an implacable stare.

Route 5 in Fairlee scheduled to reopen May 29. That’s the stretch between Sawyer Mountain Road and Mountain Road that’s been closed for months now, after rock from the nearby Fairlee ledges cascaded onto the roadway toward the beginning of March. In a Facebook post on Monday, Police Chief Wayne Briggs reported that ledge stabilization work has finally gotten underway. He also added this: “For those who like to ignore the road closed signs there will [be an] eight foot deep pile of sand covering Route 5 until the road is reopened.” Briggs has been bedeviled by motorists simply ignoring the “road closed” signs and skirting the barriers to get through.

Body of woman who jumped from Quechee Gorge Bridge recovered. The Hartford PD announced yesterday that on April 28th, they got a call from the US Army Corps of Engineers reporting a body in the water south of the Quechee bridge. Corps personnel remained on site until relieved by Hartford police officers, at which point the fire department and state medical examiner’s office used a fire boat to recover the body. An autopsy has confirmed it was the woman reported to have jumped on April 13. “Due to the sensitive nature of these events, the victim’s name is being withheld,” the HPD says in its press release. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, call or text 988 or us 988lifeline.org.

New pickleball spot gets ready to open. Actually, Paddleworks Pickleball Club is already in motion after a soft opening last month with six courts. But the “hub for all things pickleball” in a former FedEx facility on North Labombard Road, as the VN’s Michael Coughlin Jr. puts it, isn’t due to hold its formal grand opening until May 15th, which is when a pro shop and fitness area are also due to open. It’s the brainchild of Greg Kutvirt, who moved to the Upper Valley last summer—and began the sport as an 8-year-old. His general manager, Loriston Fennell, tells Coughlin, “Our aim here is to make Paddleworks a destination in New England.”

SPONSORED: Help people who need a hand! Based in the Upper Valley, Hearts You Hold supports immigrants and refugees across the US by asking them what they need. These include a med student from Ghana who lives in Leb and needs basic laptops for her kids, immigrants in Vermont who need mattresses, dressers, a stroller, and other basics, and immigrants across the country who need baby supplies, kitchen goods, clothing, and school supplies. At the burgundy link, you'll find people from all over who need your help getting started. Sponsored by Hearts You Hold.

Hanover voters to decide whether to move forward or back off on zoning changes aimed at affordable housing. In addition to several uncontested elections for town offices, next Tuesday’s town meeting ballot contains six zoning-related articles. Five tweak existing ordinances, including tightening zoning language passed by voters last year aimed at making it easier to build smaller units, allow for denser housing, and make housing more affordable. But as the VN’s Clare Shanahan explains, the sixth is a petitioned article to undo those changes, brought by a resident worried by the “urban environment” they would create, as he put it recently.

SPONSORED: Planning a trip? Going on vacation, weekend away, sabbatical?  Available for your consideration: kerrhousewatching.com.  We can come by weekly (or more often during very cold weather) to make sure your home is warm and dry and quiet—and meet service people and deliveries, collect packages, make sure everything is running as it should. (Please note: no overnights or pet sitting.) Email [email protected] or call 603-252-0679. References available. Sponsored by Randy Kerr House Watching Services.

I saw the mushroom shaped cloud/with my own eyes. Peter Orner has been roaming the stacks in the Dartmouth libraries, checking out neglected and overlooked books in hopes that perhaps, as the libraries cut their holdings in the face of budget straits, the ones he chooses will survive. One of them is a collection of poems by Nanao Sakaki, who was a 22-year-old radar analyst on an island off the western coast of Japan on the day in 1945 that a small blip appeared on his screen, a B-29 headed toward Nagasaki. In this week’s Enthusiasms, Peter gives us a glimpse of the book he nabbed, Sakaki’s Break the Mirror, with poems of “a rare sort of purity.”

Plainfield debates proposed cell tower. The 130-foot tower was proposed back in February by Massachusetts-based Atlantic Tower, reports the VN’s Sofia Langlois. It would go in on a 30-acre parcel on Old Stagecoach Road, off Route 120, along a stretch of that roadway that lacks cell coverage. Nearby residents are split, Langlois writes, with some arguing that the gaps in coverage are problematic—especially in emergencies—while others contend the tower would mar the rural setting and disrupt wildlife. The zoning board “is in a fact-finding stage of the consideration process,” town administrator Steve Halloran tells Langlois.

SPONSORED: Norwich Congregational Church is hosting a benefit concert for Tysea Children's Home on May 16th at 7pm. "Music for A Home of Hope" will be performed by "The Musical Friends of Tysea Children's Home": Judy Wild, Margaret Gilmore, Henry Danaher, Emma Caffrey, Ayumi Shimokawa, and Jeanne Roiningen. They'll be performing favorite pieces by Beethoven, Handel, Gluck, Schubert, and Piazzola. Suggested donation of $25 per person—cash, check, PayPal, or Venmo at the door—benefits the Tysea Home for children in Jacmel, Haiti. Email [email protected] with questions. Sponsored by Partners in Global Change.

As the nation turns 250, only a tiny fraction of NH farms that old remain. One of them is Lebanon’s Ascutney View Farm, founded in 1771 and run now by realtor Susan Cole and her husband. Cole inherited it from her father, whose 100-cow dairy herd has been replaced by 60 sheep and 2,100 maple trees, reports the Monitor’s Rebeca Pereira (here via NHPR). Back in 1976, Pereira notes, the state found 56 legacy farms that had been held by the same family of owners for 200 years. Now there are just a few, “pastoral gems scattered across the state.” Their secret to longevity? “You have to be a flexible mind,” Cole tells her.

Facing staffing shortages, NH corrections dept. seeks $12 million more for overtime. In all, half the positions in the department are vacant, and though the total number of overtime hours worked by prison guards hasn’t risen over the last seven years, each hour now costs 35 percent more, reports the Globe’s Steven Porter (no paywall). The department “is actively recruiting corrections officers and is offering a $10,000 sign on bonus upon a recruit's graduation from the corrections academy,” Porter notes, but it still faces a hiring problem. Its request for additional funding goes before the Executive Council today.

Deep in the VT woods, hiking boots with bones inside. On April 25, the VT State Police reported in a press release yesterday, “hikers traveling through the [Green Mountain Forest] in the town of Mt. Tabor located a pair of aged and partly buried hiking boots in a boggy area. What appeared to be human foot bones were found inside the boots.” Monday, state and federal law enforcement personnel searched the area (Mt. Tabor is about halfway between Manchester and Wallingford, VT) and found more human remains and a nearby site with outdoor gear and personal items covered in “several layers” of leaves, soil, and forest growth. An investigation is ongoing.

New weather station in Lyndonville gives weather forecasters and emergency responders an eye east of the Greens. UVM’s extreme weather monitoring station opened yesterday, the first of roughly 20 stations planned for the state, reports VTDigger’s Brendan Rose. It will measure wind speed, soil saturation, snow depth and rain amounts, and more every five minutes, helping the National Weather Service and others gain more advance warning of blizzards, flooding, and other extreme weather events. Until now, Rose writes, VT’s monitoring infrastructure has been “based mostly in Chittenden County, and the Green Mountains can obstruct the view.”

How VT Public grew from leased space in Windsor. It’s been 49 years since the station in Windsor went on air, writes Steve Taylor in the VN, after a year’s scramble to raise funds, navigate approvals, and find music albums: “people turned over their collections, RCA and Columbia chipped in, obscure outfits came forward with new works.” Betty Smith, who still plays a role, was hired shortly before the station launched as a project assistant. Taylor delves back into VT Public Radio’s early history, its audio essays featuring people like Will Curtis and Willem Lange—and its eventual growth with VT Public TV into the state’s largest news organization.

Many reasons to look up, travel farther, and reconnect with the night. The 2026 Milky Way Photographer of the Year awards show us just how wrong we’d be to think there are no new images of the universe to be had. Capture the Atlas has chosen this year’s top 25—out of thousands of submissions—“where planning, patience, creativity, and technical skill came together beneath the stars.” Stefano Pellegrini’s Baobab trees in Botswana, Luca Fornaciari’s Italian garden of stars, Alejandra Heis’s celestial arch over an ancient waterfall. The judges remind us that “preserving the night is essential to keeping our connection to the universe alive.”

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

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HEADS UP
Writers Salon at the Top of the Hop with Victoria Redel. Redel, a Dartmouth grad, writing prof at Sarah Lawrence, and author of four books of poetry and six books of fiction, will talk it all over with Dartmouth writer and prof Alexander Chee at 5 pm. No charge, but ticket required. If you miss her this evening, she’ll be reading from her latest novel, I Am You, at the Norwich Bookstore tomorrow.

At the Center at Eastman, Steve Taylor and “Upper Valley? How a Newspaper War Created a Virtual State in Western NH & Eastern VT". Taylor, the immensely knowledgeable local historian, raconteur, former NH ag commissioner, and continuing VN columnist, will talk about how the term came to exist, the social and economic changes that have tied the region ever closer together, and—you can bet—lots more. 7 pm in the Draper Room.

And for today...

It’s been 56 years since the great Irish band Clannad formed in the township of Gweedore, in Donegal, made up of siblings Moya, Pól, and Ciarán Brennan and their twin uncles, Pádraig and Noel Duggan. For a couple of years, the Brennans’ younger sister, Eithne, joined in on keyboards before launching her own solo career with just one name: Enya. Last month, Moya Brennan—the ethereally voiced lead singer—died after a battle with pulmonary fibrosis. Her funeral a couple of weeks ago drew a crowd, including her sibs, the members of U2, and others. Here’s “Eleanor Plunkett”, the Turlough O'Carolan tune that Clannad performed regularly, with Pól on tin whistle, Ciarán on guitar, and harpist Cormac De Barra. Hit the image for the video.

See you tomorrow.

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