Daybreak Wednesday, 6/10/26

Mostly cloudy, showers moving in. Today starts a period of unsettled weather, as small disturbances pass through overhead and surface warming produces a chance of thunderstorms. Highs today in the low or mid 80s, chance of showers and thunderstorms mostly after noon and lasting through tomorrow. Lows low 60s.

Do the new VT boating regs say anything about balloons? The scene on Lake Fairlee the other evening, by Izzi Emerson. (Thanks, JB!)

You’ve got a bit over two weeks to get yourself to Randolph’s wit & grit. That’s because the popular breakfast-and-lunch spot will be closing June 28, reports Melissa Pasanen in Seven Days. The reason? Owner Hannah Arias and her family moved to ME last summer for her wife’s job, and the weekly commute—and missed family time with their kids, ages 10 and 13—eventually wore Arias down. “I’ve missed birthday parties and softball games,” she says. The spot on Merchants Row is for lease, and Arias is keeping rights to the name. “I need to close this chapter, but I hope it can be reborn,” she tells Pasanen. “Just a bit farther east.”

A death in Haverhill reminds local road cyclists of the risks. Back on May 27, 72-year-old Joseph Miller was out for a ride on Dartmouth College Highway when, according to the police report, he veered into the travel lane after checking over his shoulder and was hit by an SUV. He died the following day at DHMC. In the Valley News, Sofia Langlois reconstructs the accident—as best anyone can tell, since the only other person who saw it was the car’s driver—and checks in with a couple members of the Upper Valley Cycling Club. Leb’s Alix Norris tells Langlois that near-misses happen several times a year. Langlois includes advice, and the UVCC hosts safety workshops.

SPONSORED: Get ready to run, walk, and celebrate red, white, and blue style! One of the Upper Valley’s favorite summer traditions is back! Sponsored by the Enfield Village Association, the Shaker 7 returns June 28 at Shaker Recreation Park on Route 4A, proudly kicking off a season of celebration as Enfield joins communities nationwide honoring America’s 250th. Take on the scenic seven-mile loop or enjoy the three-mile walk. Registration opens at 7:30 am; race begins at 9 am. With music, refreshments, and festive fun, bring the whole family and register today at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by the Enfield Village Association.

Lebanon gets its July 4 fireworks back—on July 2. Last year, you might remember, the city had to cancel them in the face of budget cuts. This year Novo Nordisk, the Danish company with a facility up near the airport, stepped up with a $20K donation, reports Liz Sauchelli in the VN. “This is an opportunity for us to give back to a community that has welcomed Novo Nordisk — and a Danish guy like me and my family — with open arms,” site head Kristian Touborg tells her. They’ll be launched from Storrs Hill at around 9:15 pm, Sauchelli writes, and will be visible from Colburn Park.

At CRREL, using drones to find unexploded ordnance. “It’s estimated that up to 10 percent of ordnance does not detonate” when it hits training ranges or combat zones, writes the US Army Corps’ Justin Campfield about the effort. Generally, it’s found by soldiers on the ground, which for obvious reasons is dangerous work. So researchers at CRREL in Hanover are experimenting with a drone-carried electromagnet to be able to gauge buried objects. “Once we're able to figure out what its shape is and what its size is and what its depth is as well, we can say ‘that is going to be a munition,’ or ‘that's going to be a Coke can,’” says researcher Michele Maxson. Includes video.

SPONSORED: How is Artificial Intelligence Transforming America? Six lectures. Six Wednesdays. One of the most important conversations of our time. This July and August, the Osher at Dartmouth Summer Lecture Series brings nationally recognized voices on AI to Lebanon and screens worldwide. This year’s series opens with “What Can the Declaration of Independence Teach Us About Artificial Intelligence” with Duke’s own Brinnae Bent on Wednesday, July 8. Join us at Lebanon Opera House or YouTube Livestream. Register per session or save with the full series. Sponsored by Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Dartmouth.

Looking for a brilliant writer to spend the summer with? Try Elizabeth Bowen. The Dublin-born, England-raised novelist, essayist, and short story writer published her first collection in 1923 and her last novel in 1968, so there’s a lot to work with. Or as Rena Mosteirin writes in this week’s Enthusiasms, “Bowen left a rich legacy of novels and stories, more than enough to give modern readers an opportunity to live in her world for a while.” That world, Rena writes, is often dreamy and surreal, filled with “sensitive, gorgeous prose.” She goes on to give examples of what she’s talking about, so that you can decide if you want her in your summer, too.

And speaking of books… Heather Turner, who lives in South Sutton, NH, decided a few months back that New Hampshire authors, booksellers, libraries, schools, and readers ought to have a way of connecting, and with the help of the statewide NH Writers’ Project has launched the NH Authors Directory. It showcases authors in the state, as well as bookstores both in NH and in the VT border towns (including Norwich, Star Cat in Bradford, and COVER to Cover in WRJ). She sees it as a way for writers to find each other, readers to find NH writers, libraries to find local authors for book talks, readings, and workshops, schools to find presenters, and more.

SPONSORED: Opera North brings “The Ballad of Baby Doe” east of the Mississippi. It’s a rare and truly operatic treat! Douglas Moore wrote The Ballad of Baby Doe, about the denizens of mining boom town Leadville, CO: Horace Tabor (the Vermont stone cutter turned millionaire), his wife, Maine-born Augusta, and Elizabeth "Baby" Doe, disrupter of their marriage of 23 years. Sung in English with a full live orchestra, it's the personification of the American Dream and true love. Video trailer here. Sponsored by Opera North.

Taking the new Windsor skate park for a spin. VN photographer James M. Patterson has a nice shot of WRJ’s Anakin Senn skating in the former railyard, on the east side of the train tracks; it’s in the midst of being turned into a skate park, dog park, and picnic area.

In Weare, a fermented-food producer aims to boost NH farmers with frozen and freeze-dried offerings. The Granite State lags northern New England for percentage of local-food sales (4.6 percent, compared to 4.9 percent in ME and 10.7 percent in VT). But now, reports Amanda Gokee in the Globe (sorry, paywall), Stephanie Zydenbos—whose kimchi, sauerkraut, and fermented carrots, sourced from NH farms, has been available for years—has bought a quick freezer (just 20 minutes!) and freeze drier to let small farmers and food producers use them to introduce frozen veggies and “novel local food products” to the state’s markets. Like her own freeze-dried kimchi.

Why NH is still in drought despite all that rain. On his Granite Geek blog, David Brooks comes up with a handy way to think about it: “Short term and above ground,” he writes, “we’re doing OK. Long term and below ground, not so much.” That’s because, while the spring’s rains did a fine job on lawns and some bodies of water, “below ground, of course, is where water collects in aquifers that we depend on for most of our drinking water. If it runs low, we’ve got a lot more problems than just crunchy lawns.” And not only has Concord’s had 11 inches less rain than normal since this time last year, but torrential rains don’t necessarily recharge aquifers if they just run off.

Police officer shoots bear in Stowe, restaurant grapples with aftermath. Last Wednesday’s shooting, reports Aaron Calvin in Seven Days, came after the bear broke into a walk-in cooler three times the same day at The Matterhorn, a restaurant on Mountain Road. At the advice of a warden with VT Fish & Wildlife—whose “bear response protocol” tries to head off such incidents but calls for killing the bear after repeated encounters—a Stowe police officer shot it. “Never in a million years would I condone something like that. It made me sick,” Matterhorn owner Charlie Shaffer tells Calvin. But the online blowback has been fierce. Calvin lays out the story.

Front Porch Forum owners hope that when they retire, employees will take over. Since its start in 2000, the Vermont company that dominates community forums in pretty much every town and city in the state except the Upper Valley (where Vital Communities’ listservs still hold sway) has been owned by Michael and Valerie Wood-Lewis. But they’re eyeing the exits, and want to ensure that FPF still serves the people and communities it always has once they’re gone. And so, reports VT Public’s Howard Weiss-Tisman, they’re exploring what’s called an employee ownership trust, in which the trust would manage the company on behalf of emploees. Weiss-Tisman explains.

Oh, maaaaan! You so have to feel for the driver here. On Monday, Colchester VT’s first responders were called out after a car went over the edge of a tiered parking lot and came to rest nose-down. “The operator remained inside the vehicle but was conscious and able to communicate with responders, initially reporting no injuries.” Colchester Fire has the photos on their FB page.

Team base camps for the World Cup: There’s no place like … a cushy boarding school in Tennessee. You have to put 48 teams somewhere, but exactly where is a jigsaw puzzle influenced by match schedules and, frankly, luck. Take France. Bien sûr that team opted for the luxe Four Seasons in Boston, write Brian McGill and Audrey Valbuena in WSJ (gift link). Spain had a different vision of paradise: a 690-acre private boarding school in Chattanooga. Bosnia and Herzegovina, not so lucky—they’re based in Sandy, UT; their matches are not. The team will fly 7,500 miles to get to their three match games. McGill and Valbuena take us on a tour of the teams and their lodgings.

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

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HEADS UP
At the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock, representatives from the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Dan and Debbie Norris will have a table set up starting at noon, and at 2 pm, they’ll be giving a presentation on high- and low-tech ways to deal with vision loss—plus helping troubleshoot adaptations.

Organist Henry Danaher at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College. Hanover Rotary invites all to this free recital of organ works, with “selections from the music Henry is performing for this year's alumni reunion memorial services, a few patriotic pieces honoring the country's Sesquicentennial, and other organ masterworks spanning the Baroque, Symphonic, and Modern eras of organ composition.” At 12:30 pm. The church is at 40 College Street, just off the Dartmouth green. No link.

The Garifuna Collective in Claremont. Presented by the West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts, the globe-trotting group of Garifuna musicians from Belize perform “with a dynamic that comes from of playing and traveling the world together, sharing their music and stories with global audiences. Their performances spark the history and soul of Garifuna culture into vivid life.” 6:30 pm, Broad Street Park.

At the Norwich Bookstore, Alex Myers and While We Were Silent. The writer and teacher’s new novel is set at a prestigious co-ed prep school in CT—where, despite a female head of school, “it’s still very much a boys’ club—a club with longstanding ‘traditions’ that involve gross misconduct and now also murder.” Myers will also be talking about his 2014 debut novel, Revolutionary, and the upcoming 250th. 7 pm.

And for today...

The Garifuna Collective (tonight in Claremont) and their get-you-up-and-out-of-your-chair rhythms, with “Merua”.

See you tomorrow.

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