Concord has the best water
According to a tasting panel of fourth- and fifth-graders, Concord’s municipal water is the best-tasting. As reported by the Concord Monitor in a May 13 online article, this year’s New Hampshire Drinking Water Festival (nhwaterfestival.org), hosted by the Department of Environmental Services, brought “professionals from around the state to show fourth and fifth graders how water treatment — and contamination — works.” The yearly event includes a water-themed science fair and a poetry contest. The Water Festival itself features classes, demonstrations and a blind taste-test of “five tap waters from five New Hampshire municipalities: Concord, Hooksett, Manchester, Plymouth and Rochester,” according to the Monitor story.
QOL score: +1
Comment: According to the Monitor story, this is Concord’s sixth victory in the past seven years.
That’s a lot of Tagalongs
Some Loudon Girl Scouts have put their cookie money to good use in traveling to New Mexico. According to a May 15 press release, the seven girls from Loudon Girl Scout Troop 60180 “planned the trip themselves with help from their leaders and funded it from the proceeds of their Girl Scout Cookie sales. The troop voted on where to go, where to stay, eating, packing, and picking out a car.” The press release quoted Girl Scout Dalia, who said, “The trip was completely worth the cold, long cookie booths!”
QOL score: +1
Comment: During the trip in March, the Scouts visited White Sands National Park and Carlsbad Caverns. They rode horseback and met with “female college students that were volunteering at the caverns to clean lint that builds up from visitors.”
All girls. All named Willow.
According to a May 17 online story by NHPR, retired Forest Service ecologist Scott Bailey has tracked down something elusive to the point of near non-existence: male specimens of a rare New Hampshire tree. “Specifically,” the NHPR story read, “Bailey has been inventorying satiny willow trees, also known as Salix pellita. They’re more shrub than tree, native to northern parts of the United States, and shiny.” Like all trees, the satiny willows need blossoms on female trees to be fertilized by pollen from male trees. But nobody had been able to identify any male satiny willows since it was discovered until Bailey finally identified two males this spring.
QOL score: +1
Comment: Male silky willows are incredibly difficult to find, as it turns out, because they produce blossoms for an incredibly short time, often a matter of hours, before dropping them, the story said.
QOL score last week: 62
Net change: +3
QOL this week: 65
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