Category: Granite Views

A few months ago my husband and I were in Illinois visiting my 82-year-old mother. We pulled into a burger joint for lunch and went inside to eat. This was a favorite spot of my mother’s, and we had always enjoyed it as well. Once inside, I noticed a panicked look on her face when she realized there were no longer any waitstaff, and we were required to use a kiosk to place our order and pay. I assured my mom this was not a problem, and we could do it, which we did. However, my mom noted she wouldn’t be able to come here any longer because she would never be able to order on her own. She seemed resigned to it even though I tried to encourage her to give it a try.

Fast-forward to a conversation I had recently with our 18-year-old son regarding ChatGPT (an AI-powered chatbot) and the utilization of that in various areas. We had a very spirited debate on how it should be used in education, research and communication. We marveled that ChatGPT was able to pass a law school exam, the medical licensing exam and the Wharton MBA exam. My son commented that at some point AI will replace humans in almost everything. I disagreed, but as many of you know, you never win an argument with an 18-year-old.

Ironically, during this debate, we happened to be dining at a restaurant using a tableside tablet to play trivia games and used that to pay. This prompted me to tell our son about the experience with his grandmother. I commented that there is a segment of the population that is getting left behind with the pace of technological advancement. For these folks, the things that we take for granted (ordering from Amazon with one click, online shopping, Apple Pay, online bill paying, etc.) are not only a struggle, but many times simply impossible.

Change is difficult, and we all have different capacities for it. It seems as though we should be addressing this skills/learning gap in our society to encourage engagement and participation versus isolation and withdrawal. In the meantime, be kind and be patient. Lend a helping hand when someone is struggling ahead of you in line. Help to restore faith in mankind.

By Jeff Rapsis

Every time New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary is in jeopardy, boosters cite many reasons for keeping the tradition intact.

Among them: the New Hampshire primary forces candidates to meet actual people instead of just spending money on advertising; the state is small enough for lesser-known candidates to be heard; Granite State citizens take the responsibility seriously, and so on.

All of these reasons are now being used to argue against the Democratic party’s recent decision to put South Carolina in the lead spot in 2024 instead of New Hampshire. (Republicans are so far sticking with the traditional schedule.)

But there’s one reason that often comes up, and it makes no logical sense.

It’s the one about how in New Hampshire, we have a state law requiring us to hold the nation’s first primary.

Gee, good for us! Yes, we actually passed a state law in the 1970s, when the state’s first-in-the-nation status was being challenged by the idea of a New England-wide “regional” primary.

Am I the only person embarrassed by this law being cited as an actual, legitimate reason to justify the New Hampshire primary going first? I mean, we passed a self-serving, self-referencing law, and we expect voters in 49 other states to take this seriously?

More often than not, it’s a cop-out used by those unable to justify New Hampshire’s role on its own merits.

“Hey, I hear what you say about our state’s lack of diversity and preponderance of elderly people and absence of big urban areas and all the many other reasons it would make sense for other states to go first. But hey, we have a law. We can’t do anything about being first. It’s our law.”

Really? Well, what if Idaho passed the same exact law as New Hampshire? What would happen? If Alabama passed a law requiring the state to hold its presidential primary no later than seven days prior to a similar state, where would that put us?

This makes as much sense as minting a $1 trillion coin to help reduce the U.S. national debt, an idea that’s been seriously floated in some circles. But that’s another topic.

If anything, citing our silly state law actually unmakes the argument that New Hampshire should hold the nation’s first presidential primary. After all, any state capable of passing such a self-serving law really can’t be trusted to make sensible decisions in elections.

Jeff Rapsis is Associate Publisher of HippoPress and Executive Director of the Aviation Museum of New Hampshire.

One of my favorite childhood memories is of those family Thanksgiving dinners when, after everyone had finished the meal, the adults sat around the table telling stories and just reminiscing. For some reason, I enjoyed especially hearing about family events that took place before I was born. After hearing such stories, I admit, I looked differently at my aunts and uncles as I now saw them as characters in a larger family drama that extended many years earlier. As I grew older, I often found an opportunity to ask them for further details. Taken together, these stories and their subsequent developments grounded me in a way I didn’t understand at the time.

Now fast forward many years and the young people are my own adult children. The same phenomenon seems to be repeating as they ask their mother and me about details of our childhood, college years, times before we met, and subsequent events before they were born. What has helped greatly in the occasional telling of our family story is the journal I’ve kept for more than 50 years. While not replete with details, it does record events large and small that complement my own memory of the past. And now, as I read back through them, I appreciate even more my record of some of those post-Thanksgiving dinner story sessions of my childhood and can share them. They help me satisfy what seems now to be an apparently inherited curiosity about our family’s past.

Across society these days, curiosity about family history takes many forms, from the popular PBS program Finding Our Roots and the NBC series Who Do You Think You Are? to such widely used genealogical tools as Ancestry.com or 23 and Me. Templates for making a family tree are plentiful and becoming easier to populate thanks to online access to a trove of databases. And if you think journaling is a quaint custom of earlier days, Google “journals” and you will find websites that will sell you a book in which to record your experiences or even how to get started. Storyworth, an online facility, sends the subscriber a prompt each week to write a family story and then collects and prints them in a book at the end of the year.

With the recent death of my last surviving uncle, I have now become the eldest of my family generation. So it is not surprising that now it is my turn to encourage the younger generation to begin adding to our family’s growing storybook.

Might it be your turn to do something similar?

You can contact Steve Reno at [email protected].

The girl’s eyes followed me. She glanced sideways, wordlessly imploring for help. I had to respond. But how?

Thankfully, this child was not on the street but in a photo superimposed with the words “CASA of New Hampshire.” It was an ad seeking advocates for abused and neglected kids.

Much as an image like that tugs at my heart, I like to see the big picture before joining anything.

Here’s a sketch of what I’ve learned about CASA of NH and the state’s child protection process.

CASA is a 33-year-old statewide nonprofit organization. With almost 40 paid staff and 642 active volunteers, the organization’s goal is to serve 100 percent of New Hampshire’s abused and neglected kids. In 2022 that meant 1,538 children.

When a problem is reported to the State of New Hampshire Division of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), a social worker investigates. If corroborated, a petition is filed in family court against the parent for abuse or neglect. A Court Appointed Special Advocate or “CASA” is brought in to represent the best interest of the child.

DCYF proposes a plan to protect the child, either leaving them in-home with services and check-ins or placing them with relatives or foster families. The court specifies what actions must be taken for the family to be reunified, and what supports DCYF must provide.

Over the course of the year, as the parent works to address their issues, the CASA meets once or twice a month with the child. The CASA also gathers information from the parent, foster parents, social workers, health care providers, therapists, educators and others. The CASA writes a quarterly report to the court and attends the case hearings. Everyone’s goal is to get the family back together.

A year is not a lot of time to resolve some of the most difficult physical and mental challenges a person can face — problems such as addiction, domestic violence or mental illness, not to mention housing, food, transportation and employment. Sadly, reunification is not always possible. If the parent can’t convince the court that the child will be safe and secure in their care, DCYF typically requests that the plan be changed to adoption. If the court agrees, then a different legal case is filed to terminate the parent’s rights, and DCYF works to find an appropriate permanent home for the child.

Two years in as a CASA, I am astounded at the twists and turns abuse and neglect cases can take. Much as I want to know what’s ahead, it’s impossible to predict. I do know for certain these children need more advocates as well as foster and adoptive families. They need all of us.

Susan Hatem, former Director of Programs and Grant Making at New Hampshire Humanities, is a CASA of NH guardian ad litem and a connector, mentor and writer. Email her at [email protected].

By the time you read this, December will have slipped into January and another year will have ended. A time of transition, this — new calendars, new dates on checks (if you still write them), a new tax year, and the passing of the shortest day of the year. As has been my custom for many years, I pull out my journal for the year just ending and read over the entries that range from a simple recounting of daily events to musings about family, work or national happenings. There are regular mentions of the books I am reading (or want to read), of conversations with friends and occasionally strangers met by chance. Some of the earliest entries record promises made to myself back in January that I’ll get more exercise, follow less news, FaceTime my children and grandchildren, meditate each morning and take walks with my wife.

In the back of the journal, however, there is a list of the names of relatives, friends and colleagues who have died that year. The list is much longer than a single year, however, as it is one to which names are added regularly and it stretches back five years to when I began so noting the deaths. Akin, I recognize, to the Litany of the Saints that was a liturgical practice in my Catholic youth, I read down that now very long list (more than 50) and softly speak the names. The very sound of a deceased’s name immediately brings to mind some memory of a time spent with them — an event, a snippet of conversation or an image of something they have done. While there is no “Ora pro nobis,” as in the liturgy of my past, there is my own silent expression of gratitude for the time I did have with them. Each name is a so very distinct person who entered my life and left an impression. At the end, the litany itself is a mosaic of vastly different individuals who, together, have enriched my life and to whom I owe great gratitude.

After the hustle and stress of preparations for Christmas, followed by the celebrations of the day itself, there comes each year a more quiet time. The daily emails are fewer, there are fewer appointments to be met, and even, on occasion, a day completely free and clear of obligations. These are truly sacred times in the sense that religions the world over built them into their calendars to give people time to reflect and resolve. They are like a “Sabbath” for the year, a time when we leave off ordinary responsibilities and pay attention to our inner selves as we reflect on the year passing, those we have lost, and begin to set a new course for the year ahead. Soon enough the routine will be reestablished and these treasured days will have passed. One solid resolution is to not lose them in the moment of their quietude and reflection.

There’s an old saying about living in interesting times and it seems fitting for this era. It seems more fun to read about them in history books than to live them. My guess is that in 2023 times will continue to be interesting. If any of my 2023 predictions come true, please do not call or email me. With that, here are my 2023 predictions.

• Gov. Chris Sununu has been increasing his national profile. For a growing number of Republicans he could look like the future of a party without former president Donald Trump. So what’s next in the national exposure tour? The Masked Singer. Yes, the guv sings the 1980s hit “Welcome to the Jungle.” You know you love it, Xer.

• Republican candidate for New Hampshire’s First Congressional District Karoline Leavitt decides politics just isn’t for her after losing to Democrat and incumbent Chris Pappas this past fall. So what’s next for one of the youngest candidates to run this past cycle? Poker, of course! Karoline signs up for the World Poker Tournament and does surprisingly well. So well that she’s invited to create her own reality TV show with the tagline “A better hand doesn’t always mean you win.”

• The Rochester February revote for Ward 3 that ended in a tie in November ends in a tie again; the legislature votes to seat both candidates on a rotating basis, so each gets 26 weeks a year and shares the $50-a-year salary.

• For a reason no one is able to explain, America’s Stonehenge in Salem starts to attract both domestic and wild cats from all over the region. So many cats come that town officials start calling it cat caves.

• House Majority Leader Jason Osborne opens a new business in downtown Manchester right across from City Hall called Orborne’s Free Hats. It’s a haberdashery specializing in brimmed hats.

• Shockingly, the Democratic National Committee, headed by South Carolina native and President Joe Biden supporter Jamie Harrison, strips New Hampshire of its first-in-the-nation primary in favor of South Carolina. Oh, wait, already that happened. Just to recap: Joe Biden won South Carolina and saved his presidential bid and lost New Hampshire in, like, fifth place. What did you think was going to happen, New Hampshire?

• Former WMUR sportscaster Charlie Sherman returns to public life in the Granite State by opening the nation’s largest sock store in Nashua, called Tubes for Everyone. Welcome back, Charlie! I’ll be by to get some socks.

• Tired of Maine attracting more visitors, New Hampshire’s tourism department announces a new advertising campaign for the state with the tagline, “Come for the cheap booze and smokes, stay for the ocean, lakes, mountains and sports betting.” Hey, whatever it takes.