Daybreak Wednesday, 6/24/26

Just a reminder: No Daybreak next week. Daybreak will be off all next week, as well as the following Monday, July 6. Back as usual on Tuesday, July 7. There’ll also be a stint at the end of July and in early August, but more on that then.

Sunny (once the fog clears), getting warmer. High pressure began building in yesterday, and over the next little while, each day will be a few degrees warmer than the last as heat builds up to our west and that air begins moving in. So today, we’re looking at highs in the upper 70s under mostly clear skies, winds from the northwest. Lows tonight in the mid 50s.

It may be mostly clear today, but the clouds the last few days have been eye-catching.

Claremont’s planning board okays converting former state office building into apartments. The site plan approval to a Darien, CT-based developer envisions a total of 25 one- and two-bedroom units in the 32,000-square-foot Water Street building, reports Patrick O’Grady in the Valley News. The building, which began life in the 1830s and spent most of the next century as part of Monadnock Mills, is on the National Register of Historic Places; renovations, O’Grady writes, “will require approval from the National Park Service in order for the developer to qualify for historic tax credits.” The city council has already approved property-tax relief for the project.

In Royalton, costs for bridge replacement keep growing. So do frustration and resignation. Roughly 80 households in town were cut off from easy access to Route 14 when state engineers shut down the Foxstand Bridge two years ago, reports VT Public’s Sabine Poux—and “the yearslong wait has caused mounting strife within the Windsor County town.” One big issue: the estimated cost of replacing the bridge rose this spring from $6 million to more than $11 million, and the town is on the hook for a portion of it; it’s considering levying a local option tax. The town’s administrator says the bridge is due to reopen in 2028. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” says one resident.

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“A mishmash of films. But oh, what a mishmash!” So writes Carin Pratt, who for this week’s Enthusiasms recommends not a book, but an entire film series. “When I arrived in the Upper Valley, I realized it was pretty much a movie desert—or, if not completely a desert, it was at least arid,” she writes. But that was before Arthur Kahn and the Thetford Arthouse Cinema arrived on Tuesdays and (usually) Fridays in the early summer and fall. He screens 24 films: old, new, sad and tragic, happy and comic, foreign and domestic. “You’ll always find something new and wonderful,” Carin writes.

Lebanon closes in on plan to extend rail trail through West Leb. At the moment, writes Sofia Langlois in the VN, the Mascoma River Greenway ends near the top of Glen Road. The proposed $2.9 million project would add 1.3 miles and extend it to 12A. “Once we finish this project, it will, I think, be a very popular way for people to get between the two sides of the town,” parks director Paul Coats tells Langlois—especially since many consider Glen Road itself too dangerous to bike. The city “is in active contract negotiations with…Stantec, the firm that designed the existing Mascoma River Greenway, with a goal to finalize the design by the end of 2027,” Langlois writes.

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The West Windsor Music Festival is no “buttoned-up night at the symphony.” Pianist Sakiko Ohashi had visited Vermont for almost two decades, so in 2022, when her husband suggested that the West Windsor Town Hall would be a perfect place to perform, she saw it as a “chance to bring the people she loved most into a room with an audience waiting to be touched by live music,” writes Armita Mirkarimi in a festival profile in the Standard. Now in its fifth year, the festival—June 26 to 28—features Ohashi and friends from Juilliard. Ohashi praises the landscape, the venue, and the audience. “They’re just so ready to go on the ride with us.

SPONSORED: TEDxWoodstock: Art Is… returns June 27 at Pentangle Arts in Woodstock, VT, bringing together renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp, artists, educators, musicians, entrepreneurs, and students for an afternoon exploring creativity as a force for connection, leadership, and change. Saturday's event is complemented by a Masterclass, “The Creative Habit: A Day with Twyla Tharp,” on Friday, June 26th, inspired by Tharp’s bestselling book that combines guided creative practice, reflection, and an intimate in-person session with Tharp herself. Learn more at the burgundy link or here. Sponsored by TEDxWoodstock.

First day of summer or last day of winter? That’s what extremely dedicated skier Ava Dall asks on her Instagram reel from Sunday, when she and Blake Licata hiked the woods and forded the streams to get to the few patches of snow left in Tuckerman Ravine. Which they then skied down.

Where NH’s population growth is concentrated. It’s mostly in smaller towns in the southeastern part of the state, writes Jess Williams in a brief from the NH Fiscal Policy Institute—though among the state’s 13 cities, Lebanon’s growth between 2020 and 2025 was fastest. The state’s “natural amenity-rich areas” also saw greater than average growth rates, including towns in mountains, the lakes region, and both Newbury and Croydon, near Lake Sunapee. Meanwhile, a small knot of Upper Valley towns (Piermont, Orford, Lyme, Warren and Wentworth) saw small population losses.

When it comes to ticks, says Patti Casey, “I don’t think we’re going back.” Casey, who among other things manages VT’s Vector Surveillance Program, is pretty grim about the rise in tick bites and in tick-related illnesses. “There are people really desperately trying to figure them out and better control them,” she tells Indi Rose for UVM’s Community News Service, “but I think that ticks and their diseases are going to outpace the research.” A sweep by Casey’s team found blacklegged ticks (carriers of Lyme, among other diseases) are spreading north in the state as temps warm. Rose looks into the tick and tick-borne illness picture.

Jimmy “The Iceman” DePierro, Mr. Cheeseface’s owner, dies at 79. Odds are good that, unless you frequented Jimmy’s Italian Ice in Montpelier or went to his pool hall, you’re not family with DePierro. Odds are also good you don’t recognize Mr. Cheeseface’s name. But if you’re old enough or are into legendary magazine covers, you know Mr. Cheeseface: He was the “striking black-and-white mixed breed with a harlequin face” who featured in the infamous “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog” National Lampoon cover. In Seven Days, Dan Bolles marks DePierro’s death—and here, in a classic 2018 story, recounts Mr. Cheeseface’s life and death.

We all have days like this. A so-far-unnamed lion cub at the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium works on imitating her dad’s roar.

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

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HEADS UP
Virtual “lunch & learn” on VINS’s Eagle Cam. Director of Wildlife Ambassador Programs Anna Morris and Executive Director Alden Smith sit down via Zoom to talk and answer questions about the eagles, the nest, the cam… 12:30 pm.

At Chosen Vale, the second installment of “New and Unusual Music for Trumpet.” with works by Kagel, Rizzetto, Smalley, Šiurys, Fede, and Harvey. 2 pm in the Mary Keane Chapel at the Enfield Shaker Museum.

Artistree’s Music on the Hillside kicks off. First up for the every-Wednesday summer music series: Last Train to Zinkov, the father-son duo of David and Nathan Gusakov (their band takes its name from the ancestral home in Ukraine), with banjo and fiddle tunes influenced by Appalachian old-time, classical, gypsy jazz, and experimental folk traditions. 6:30 pm on the hillside at Artistree.

The Oak Hill Music Festival continues. Tonight, it’s chamber music for strings, winds, and piano, with Felix Mendelssohn’s Scherzo for String Quartet in A Minor, Carl Nielsen’s Serenata in vano, Matthieu Lussier’s Bacchanale, and a second half devoted to Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartet No. 3. 7 pm at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon.

In Brookfield, VT, Man With a Plan returns—with director John O’Brien. It’s a celebratory screening to mark the 30th anniversary of the cult classic featuring Orange County dairy farmer Fred Tuttle as himself, in a fictional story in which he runs for the U.S. House of Representatives. Two years after the 1996 film, Tuttle went on to run in—and win—an actual GOP US Senate primary; he died in 2003. Q&A with O’Brien (who himself served in the VT House) afterward. 7 pm, Brookfield Old Town Hall.

Tim Mayo and Chard deNiord at the Norwich Bookstore. The two VT poets will read from recent books: Mayo from his new collection, Muscle Memories of Love and Disaster, and deNiord his VT Book Awards finalist collection, Westminster West. 7 pm.

The Center at Eastman presents, “Redcoats and Rebels, New Hampshire and the American Revolution.” The NH Historical Society’s Mary Adams will talk about little-known details of NH’s revolutionary past: Paul Revere’s ride to Portsmouth in 1774 to warn that the British were coming to reinforce Fort William and Mary—months before his more famous ride; the key role of NH troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill; NH’s jump-the-gun state constitution in January, 1776; and more. 7 pm in the Draper Room.

Interplay Jazz swing dance. “We’ll take you back to the heyday of swing dancing in Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, when nightly dances attracted the best dancers in the New York area. Come and swing dance the night away to the sounds of Interplay’s faculty band featuring faculty and student vocalists. As a bonus, dance instructor Jamie Orr will lead an Introduction to East Coast Swing from 7 to 8 PM.” The dance itself runs from 8 pm to 11 pm, in the Barrette Student Center at Kimball Union Academy in Meriden.

Valley Improv returns to Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover. Here’s what they say: “We've done all-fem shows in the past, but we've never publicized them before. This show will be entirely fem-directed and fem-performed, which is of course especially cool when improv is often male-dominated.” 8 pm.

And for today...

New Ghost Hounds! In an essay back in February, the band’s lead singer, SAVNT, wrote about Sam Cooke: “His tone and execution make my heart sing and the smooth texture of his voice is unlike any other. Sam made me want to sing from my soul; I know his body of work from top to bottom. From Sam Cooke And The Soul Stirrers to The Best of Sam Cooke there are no skips for me, I know every song and can sing each album in order. His songs have been prevalent in every phase of my life. When I was 6 years old I sang Chain Gang around the house, in high school I performed ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ and now I sing ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘Nothing Can Change This Love’ to my wife whenever I can. I credit Sam with shaping my voice and in my eyes he is soul personified.” And now, with fiddler Kristin Weber and Joe Munroe on keyboards, he sings “Nothing Can Change This Love” for the rest of us.

See you tomorrow.

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