These belonged to my dad. I have fond memories of him wearing them. Does anybody still use or wear them? Rather find a home than toss them.
Thank you, Donna
Caroline
Dear Caroline,
What a fun memory you have!
I am sure people still do wear them. I think they would fit right into today’s styles.
In general values on them are under $10 each. Some higher depending on maker, condition and design.
I think to find them a new home I would try an antique shop for any value. If no interest there, I would go to a clothing thrift store. You might just end up donating them, but then there is a chance for a new home. I hate seeing anything go to waste!
Caroline, I hope you find a place for the ties and someone can enjoy them again. Thanks for sharing your fun memories with us.
The latest from NH’s theater, arts and literary communities
• Army band: The Soldiers’ Chorus of the U.S. Army Field Band will present a free show titled “America the Beautiful” on Saturday, July 6, at 7 p.m. at the Nashua Center of the Arts (201 Main St., Nashua), according to a press release. The Soldiers’ Chorus honors the veterans of every generation and recognizes the soldiers standing guard today in more than 140 countries around the world. Visit nashuacenterforthearts.com or call 1-800-657-8774.
• So very: Heathers: The Musicalby Kevin Murphy & Laurence O’Keefe, based on the 1989 film, produced by Ro Gavin Collaborative Theater and presented by Hatbox Theatre (715-2315, hatboxnh.com) and Manchester Community Theatre Players, runs July 12 through July 21 with shows Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. at MCTP Theater at the North End Montessori School in Manchester (689 Beech St.). The musical is based on the 1989 film, the darkly delicious story of Veronica Sawyer, a brainy, beautiful teenage misfit who hustles her way into the most powerful, ruthless, shoulder-padded clique at Westerberg High: the Heathers. Tickets cost $28 for adults, $25 for students/seniors/members, $22 for senior members. See hatboxnh.com for content details.
INSPIRED BY NATURE Two Villages Art Society presents the exhibit “Nature Wild” showcasing eight New Hampshire artists and their watercolor paintings inspired by nature. It opens on Saturday, July 6, at the Society’s gallery (846 Main St., Contoocook) with a reception from noon to 2 p.m. that is free and open to the public with music provided by Tom Pirozzoli, according to the press release. The exhibiting artists’ styles and techniques vary from impressionistic to illustrative. These artists include Sylvia Brofos, Fred Brewster, Sophia Eastley, Lenore Hall, Eva Kjellberg, Mary Jo McGowan, Carolyn Sherman and Claudia Tufo, according to the press release. Two Villages Art Society’s gallery is open to the public free of charge Thursday through Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.Visit twovillagesart.org.
• Music in Mason: Bluegrass-rock combo Kitchen Dwellers will perform with Jatoba at The Range Live Music and Concert Venue (96 Old Turnpike Road, Mason, 878-1324, therangemason. com), Friday, July 5, at 7 p.m. Tickets start at $41 in advance, $49 on the day.
• Art Walk: The 8th Annual Art Walk in downtown Peterborough will take place on Saturday, July 6, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. More than 60 regional artists will showcase their work in person, including jewelry, pottery, watercolor, fabric, wood carving, oil painting and more, according to the press release. Find live music at Depot Park and Putnam Park throughout the event, and there will be a small selection of dynamic female artists inside the Old Brick School House that’s hidden behind the Monadnock Center, through the iron gates, according to the release. This event is free and open to the public with ample free parking downtown. Rain date is Sunday, July 7. Find the Depot Square Facebook page for a map.
When it comes to papyrus, there’s more to the medium than meets the eye. That’s the message behind “Paper Work,” an exhibition opening July 5 at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth. The upcoming show highlights the versatility and resilience of kozo, an Asian paper made from mulberry that becomes stronger when soaked in water and dried.
Denise Manseau’s art is about transformation. Many pieces are combined works, like “Spring”, an arrangement of dyed kami-ito threads embedded on mulberry paper. Even Japanese kimonos have been made using this method, along with mulberry-lined silk jackets.
In a recent phone interview, Manseau said the pieces to be displayed in the lobby gallery of 3S Artspace came about after she moved from her inland home near Lowell to the Seacoast.
“I did a lot of purging, but there were things that were almost good,” she said. “My friend’s there helping me, and she’s like, ‘Don’t throw this out, don’t throw that away.’ I end up with all this good stuff. Then I just started tearing them up and making other things with them.”
In a statement on her website, Manseau called her artistic process “generative and divergent — I excavate possibilities from previous work as a source for new work to emerge. Drawings make their way into paintings. Prints and drawings become cut-paper assemblages and structures. Through this process, the work undergoes multiple transformations — each alteration leaves a trace of the turbulence, tranquility and beauty I encounter each day.”
Her approach recalls Joseph Cornell, who employed ephemera and found objects in his three-dimensional works, though Manseau does add new touches to her assembled creations. “But there are always these elements from past work, whether they’re prints or drawings or just pieces of paper that had color on them,” she said. “So, they’re kind of recycled in a way; I’m giving them a new life. I feel good about that.”
“Paper Work” focuses on the durability of Asian paper, something Manseau learned about after she took up the fine arts in the early 2000s. “It looks so delicate and it’s so strong,” she said. “Instead of it breaking down like our wood pulp paper, their paper just gets stronger and more robust.”
Prior to becoming a full-time artist, Manseau was a graphic designer. Her old job involved deadlines and strict rules, while working in her art studio was more open-ended. It was something that professors, teachers and friends encouraged her to embrace. Work on as many things as possible at the same time, they told her.
“That is very helpful … because it’s things in the periphery that always turn out the best in my case,” she said. “I tend to be a perfectionist and then I kind of ruin it in its perfection; it works for me. It’s always a thing on the side I’m experimenting on, and I don’t care if it gets ruined; those are always the best in the end.”
Asked if this might be a path toward a different kind of perfection, Manseau answered, “I guess, yes, because nothing can be perfect, right? Maybe that’s part of the bane of my graphic design era was that everything had to be precision, it had to go to press, it had to be a certain size, it had to line up…. I’ve been trying to go against that in the fine arts portion of my life.”
Manseau chose the woodcut image “Rye on the Rocks” to represent the upcoming exhibit. It was inspired by walks along the coastline near her home in Rye Beach and reflects the landscape influence of her work.
It’s something that can be misunderstood by those who consider landscapes “as being a pictorial representation of what you see, instead of how you experience it and how you put it together in your head,” she said. “I think that’s the hardest thing I have to explain to people. I really do consider myself a landscape painter.”
Paper Work When: Opens Friday, July 5, 5 p.m. Continues through July 28 Where: 3S Artspace, 319 Vaughan St., Portsmouth More: 3sarts.org and denisemanseau.com
Soft serve is more than just ice cream. It’s a memory maker. What exactly is soft serve in a literal, non-metaphorical sense? Well, to start, it’s all down to butterfat and machines.
Kaitlyn Witts started working at Arnie’s Place in Concord around 20 years ago. She was basically hired on the spot when she was 16 and now owns the place.
“I bought it from my old boss and now I’m running it,” Witts said.
Anrie’s has a great soft serve setup.
“We have two soft serve machines and we make over 50 flavors of ice cream right in house here,” Witts said.
So what is the difference between soft serve and other ice cream?
“It’s butterfat. Different places will use different butterfats…. The soft serve can be a 5 percent or a 10 percent butterfat whereas a hard ice cream has a 14 or 16 percent butterfat. … It’s a lower-fat option if you will. Lower — not non-fat, but lower-fat.”
Traditionally, soft serve comes in standard flavors.
“One [machine] has vanilla, chocolate, and vanilla chocolate twist, at all times,” Witts said. “[On] the other machine, we switch between flavors like … black raspberry, coffee, maple … Every week and a half or so we try to put in a new flavor.”
Witts has her own favorites. “I would probably go with just a regular vanilla chocolate twist. The maple is really good, though, if you use a maple syrup in it and that’s really, really good, especially if you put some blueberry on top of it — it kind of reminds you of a blueberry pancake.”
Arnie’s is the last stop for local third-graders from Broken Ground School when they do a little field trip around Concord. “They make three lines…. They get a little kiddie cone of vanilla, chocolate, or vanilla chocolate twist. That’s always a really fun field trip that I look forward to coming here every year,” Witts said.
Arnie’s has stayed pretty much the same since the beginning, she feels: “I wouldn’t say it’s changed too, too much.”
But they also serve flavors that are harder to come by nowadays. “People come for flavors they can’t really get a lot of other places. We get requests for frozen pudding, rum raisin, and butter pecan. Flavors that you just don’t see a lot of times at other restaurants,” Witts said.
The soft serves are very customizable, especially with the flurry option.
“We definitely do a lot of soft serve because people really like it,” Witts said. “We definitely go through a lot of soft serve.”
The largest size, she said, is around seven to nine swirls — “We’re not going for the whole gigantic cone thing here.”
This does not mean that soft serve here is any less fun. In fact it’s the opposite. “We have the ability to play around. We tell everyone all the time what we have on the board are just like suggestions as far as flurries go,” Witts said.
So what type of device makes the soft serve? “There are different kinds of soft serve machines. Some you load the soft serve on the top. That’s a gravity soft serve machine. Some you put the mix on the bottom and that’s a pump system because you have to pump it up and into the machine,” Witts said.
The soft serve machines at Arnie’s have seen a lot of swirls. “They’ve been here as long as I’ve worked here, so they’re over 25 years old,” Witts said. The ice cream machine at Arnie’s has been there over 45 years. “That’s pretty cool, that’s my baby.”
On top of daily maintenance and cleaning, these machines go through a deep clean.
“Regularly, once a week, I clean each machine. It takes about two hours to flush the whole thing, pull the entire, all the pieces and o-rings and stuff apart. Like, an hour and a half I’d say for each machine to clean those each week,” she said.
At Arnie’s they have one of the pump machines. Once the machine is sparkly clean, the fun begins. “Pretty much, you put the mix in on the bottom, right, and when you hit the pump button, it pumps it up. It pumps it up through a tube, into the machine, into the barrels of the machine, and once it’s up in there, that’s where it freezes,” Witts said.
After the freezing comes the churning.
“There are blades in there. There’s a big giant metal piece that has these plastic, they’re now plastic blades. They used to be metal blades but they realized they were way too expensive to make, so now they’ve gone to more plastic blades. That thing spins, and as that thing’s spinning, the blades are scraping the barrel of the machine and pushing out the soft serve into the cone or dish,” Witts said.
This machine of tasty delights is complex, she noted. “If you put one tube in the wrong spot and you go to turn the machine on, all of the sudden you’ll have an explosion of soft serve everywhere. … There’s a lot of moving parts in there.”
The human element of making the twists itself is an art.
“Being able to drop the hand that has the cone or dish in it and swirl it at the same time as putting the right amount of pressure on the handle to get it to come out at the right speed — it definitely takes some practice for sure,” Witts said. “Different people have different ways…. There definitely is a learning curve.”
Witts has fond memories of ice cream and as a kid would head to Tee Off at Mel’s to grab some scoops.
“I used to rollerblade down there on the way to my friend’s house,” she recalls. “I’d get a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of Oreo with rainbow sprinkles on it. That was always my go-to. I actually had somebody order that exact thing the other day and it brought all the memories back.”
Since soft serve ice cream is the darling of summer, there are many locations across the Granite State where you can catch that memorable taste.
Soft serve is definitely a star at Golick’s Dairy Bar in Barrington and Rochester. “That is our speciality,” said Alan Golick, who owns the two shops.
“I loved soft serve as a kid,” Golick said. “When I moved up to Dover in the ’70s I used to go to the Princess Dairy Bar.”
In 1986 Alan bought the Princess Dairy Bar and that shop had three or four soft serve machines. “I’ve always considered soft serve to be my specialty because to do it right is not particularly easy. You have to do a good job of maintaining the machines or what you get isn’t always going to be so good.”
Shops do have a choice when it comes to soft serve machine brands.
Arnie’s Place. Courtesy photo.
“Taylor is a very common machine. I run six soft serve machines between my two shops; most of them are Taylors,” Golick said. He also has an Electro Freeze model at the Barrington location.
On a macro level, a standard soft serve machine has a particular build.
“All my machines are what they call a triple head machine…. Each machine is basically two machines in one. The vanilla and chocolate is made side by side so there are three dispensing heads on the machine. One is just straight vanilla, one is straight chocolate, and the middle one does the twist,” Golick said.
That standard chocolate vanilla swirl is joined by other refreshing swirls at Golick’s.
“I have a product called Princess Twist … which was a twist of black raspberry and vanilla, and I continue that to this day and continue to call it a Princess Twist because that was kind of the original,” Golick said.
An almost endless amount of flavors can be found at Golick’s.
“I have a system that allows me to flavor the vanilla soft serve with one of, I think I carry 50 extracts, so just about every flavor under the sun I can create with this system. There’s a pretty good variety there.”
No matter how it’s scooped or swirled, soft serve and hard ice cream are not enemies. In fact, they’re good buddies. “I sell soft serve and hard ice cream side by side in my shop and I honestly can’t say that one sells better than the other on any kind of particular weather day; I think it’s just dependent on what somebody’s in the mood for, you know.”
If soft serve is your treat of choice, getting a proper cone takes experience.
“It’s an acquired skill. It’s not rocket science, but to make a cone look good it takes some technique that we have to teach. The idea is to stack it up nice and tall. The ice cream has to come out from the machine firm enough for that to happen. That involves making sure the machine is adjusted correctly. The product has to come out at a proper temperature, which is usually 17, 18 degrees … when it comes out of the machine.”
A particular favorite is a dip cone, which involves a coating, like chocolate.
“I remember getting those as a kid,” Golick said, “and that involves tipping the cone upside down, which if you didn’t put the ice cream on the cone right it will fall off, but if you do it right, you dip it and turn it right side up and the coating hardens with the temperature of the ice cream cooling it down and you end up with the ice cream coated with chocolate. That’s kind of a classic thing that people like with soft serve.”
Soft serve
Here are some of the local ice cream spots offering soft serve, with information according to their websites and social media. Call ahead to check out current offerings and flavors. Know of one not mentioned here? Let us know at [email protected] and we’ll publish ice cream scene updates in upcoming Weekly Dish columns.
• Arnie’s Place (164 Loudon Road, Concord, 228-3225, arniesplace.com) offers vanilla, chocolate and twist soft serve, as well as a rotation of other flavors such maple, black raspberry and coffee.
• Axel’s Food and Ice Cream (608 DW Highway, Merrimack, 429-2229, axelsfoodandicecream.com) offers soft serve in cones as well as soft serve sundaes and “The Dirt Dessert,” which features chocolate soft serve mixed with crushed Oreo cookie pieces and gummy worms.
• The Beach Plum (3 Brickyard Square, Epping, 679-3200; 16 Ocean Blvd., North Hampton, 964-7451; 2800 Lafayette Road, Portsmouth, 433-3339; thebeachplum.net) offers soft serve in various sizes.
• The Big 1 (185 Concord St., Nashua, thebig1icecream.com) offers vanilla, chocolate and twist soft serve, as well as “Nor’easters,” which feature your choice of any of the three flavors mixed with toppings like M&Ms, Oreo cookie pieces, peanut butter cups, gummy bears, chocolate chips and more.
• The Brick House Drive-In Restaurant (1391 Hooksett Road, Hooksett, 622-8091, bhrestaurant.net) features soft serve as well as hard serve ice cream, sundaes and more.
• Cremeland Drive-In (250 Valley St., Manchester, 669-4430, find them on Facebook) offers soft and hard serve in cones and in sundaes.
• Devriendt Farm Stand and Ice Cream Shoppe, cash only (178 S. Mast St., Goffstown, 497-2793, devriendtfarm.com), offers soft serve — vanilla, chocolate and twist, and as Razzles, blended with your choice of toppings including, when in season, their own strawberries.
• Dudley’s Ice Cream (846 Route 106 N, Loudon, 783-4800, find them on Facebook) offers vanilla and chocolate soft serve, plus a variety of flavor swirls, like “blue goo” (cotton candy) bubble gum, tropical orange, banana and pistachio.
• Findeisen’s Ice Cream (297 Derry Road, Hudson, 886-9422; 125 S. Broadway, Salem, 898-5411; find them on Facebook) has the traditional soft serve offerings of vanilla, chocolate and the twist as well as more than 40 flavors of ice cream, slush and yogurts
• Frekey’s Dairy Freeze (97 Suncook Valley Road, Chichester, 798-5443; 74 Fisherville Road, Concord, 228-5443; frekeysdairyfreeze.com) offers chocolate, vanilla and twist soft serve as well as sundaes and flurries with a variety of mix-ins.
• Frosty Soft Serve Ice Cream Truck (Londonderry, 892-2888, find them on Facebook) offers soft serve ice cream, sundaes, root beer floats and frappes.
• Funway Park Country Ice Cream (454 Charles Bancroft Highway, Litchfield, 424-2292, melsfunwaypark.com) has lots of ice cream options, and patrons can now add flavors to their vanilla soft serve such as mango, bubblegum, black raspberry, strawberry, blue goo (cotton candy), butterscotch, cheesecake and pistachio.
• Goldenrod Restaurant Drive-In (1681 Candia Road, Manchester, 623-9469, goldenrodrestaurant.com) offers chocolate, vanilla and twist soft serve as well as otherhard serve, frappes and desserts.
• Golick’s Dairy Bar (683 Calef Highway, Barrington, 664-9633; 17 Sawyer Ave., Rochester, 330-3244; golicksdairybar.com) offers dozens of unique flavors of soft serve ice cream at both locations, including black raspberry, banana, strawberry, grape, pina colada, pomegranate, red velvet, espresso and more.
• Greaney’s Farm Stand (417 John Stark Highway, Weare, 529-1111, find them on Facebook) offers soft serve ice cream.
• Hawksie’s Ice Cream Fac-Torri (144 Main St., Salem, 890-0471, find them on Facebook) has vanilla, chocolate and twist, as well as 24 flavors of syrups to mix with the vanilla soft serve.
• Hayward’s Ice Cream (7 DW Highway, Nashua, 888-4663; Merrimack 360 Shopping Plaza, DW Highway, Merrimack; haywardsicecream.com) has the traditional vanilla, chocolate or twist, and many other hard ice cream flavors.
• High Tide Takeout (239 Henniker St., Hillsborough, 464-4202, hightidetakeout.com) has soft serve on the menu along with Gifford’s Hard Ice Cream, soft serve, frozen yogurt, sundaes, frappes, banana splits, flavor bursts, fruit smoothies and tidal waves.
• The Inside Scoop (260 Wallace Road, Bedford, 471-7009, theinsidescoopnh.com) serves soft serve options featuring two frequently changing flavors creating twists such as the recent orange and vanilla, and black raspberry and pineapple, according to their Facebook posts, as well as Richardson’s Ice Cream.
• Jay Gee’s Ice Cream (327 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-1167, jaygees.com) has soft serve available in vanilla, chocolate and the twist as well as hard ice cream flavors.
• King Kone (336 DW Highway, Merrimack, 420-8312; kingkonenh.com) boasts “the best soft serve you’ve ever had” on its website and features a chocolate, vanilla and chocolate vanilla twist option as well as a changing line-up of other soft serve flavors including, recently, peanut butter and black raspberry, which could be swirled together as PB& J; orange and vanilla, which could be swirled to create a Creamsicle, and pineapple and coconut, which could be swirled into a piña colada. The menu also features sundaes, Razzles and more.
• Lang’s Ice Cream (510 Pembroke St., Pembroke, 225-7483, langsicecream.com) offers traditional soft serve and many other ice cream flavors and desserts.
• Lix Ice Cream Parlor (55 Charles Bancroft Highway, Litchfield, 438-4797; find them on Facebook) offers Dole Whip soft serve in flavors such as pineapple, strawberry and watermelon.
• Memories Ice Cream (95 Exeter Road, Kingston, 642-3737, memoriesicecream.com) offers chocolate and vanilla as well as rotating vegan flavors, such as raspberry and lemon, which can be swirled.
• Moo’s Place Ice Cream (27 Crystal Ave., Derry, 425-0100; 15 Ermer Road, Salem, 898-0199; moosplace.com) offers a variety of soft serve flavors, like orange, black raspberry, cheesecake, pina colada, peanut butter, root beer and more.
• Pete’s Scoop (187 Rockingham Road, Derry, 434-6366, petesscoop.net) offers chocolate, vanilla and the twist along with soft serve selections from Dole with flavors like watermelon, cherry, lime, pineapple and more.
• Sissy’s Sweets & Ice Cream (1 Suncook Valley Road, Barnstead, find them on Facebook) offers vanilla, chocolate and swirl soft serve and flavor burst options as well as soft serve-based treats such as Sissy’s Flurry, Jumbo Cookie Sandwiches and more.
• Sundae Drive (346 Route 13, Brookline, 721-5209, find them on Facebook) offers a variety of soft serve ice cream flavors in addition to vanilla and chocolate, like strawberry, coconut, cheesecake, bubble gum, pistachio, salted caramel, orange and black raspberry.
• Twin Lanterns Dairy Bar (239 Amesbury Road, Kensington, 394-7021, find them on Facebook) offers coffee, black raspberry and coffee and black raspberry twist soft serve, in addition to vanilla, chocolate and vanilla and chocolate twist.
Concord celebrates Independence Day today at Memorial Field (70 S. Fruit St.) with food, vendors, and music starting at 6 p.m. and fireworks at 9:20 p.m. See concordnh.gov. For more July Fourth celebrations, see the story on page 18 of the June 27 Hippo issue; find the e-edition at hippopress.com.
Saturday, July 6
The Fourth Annual Lions Club Car Show will be held today at The Nick recreation park (10 Trotting Track Road, Wolfeboro) from 11 a.m to 2 p.m. This is a free, fun-filled experience for car enthusiasts of all ages. Unlike traditional car shows, the Lions Club Car Show is a non-judged event with no classes, allowing participants to showcase their vehicles without the pressure of competition.
Saturday, July 6
Release your inner singer at Rockstar Karaoke at the Bank of NH Stage (16 S Main St., Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com) from 7 to 11 p.m., with George Cox. This is a 21+ event, and free and open to the public. Doors open at 6 p.m.
Saturday, July 6
Roller Disco returns to Manchester at Remix Skate and Event Center (725 Huse Road, Manchester, 912-7661, skateremix.com) from 9 p.m. until midnight. Remix’s adult nights are a crowd favorite. Admission is $20 per person and includes rentals of roller skates or roller blades, if needed. There will be drink specials, games and prizes all evening. Tickets are available online.
Saturday, July 6
Moody Blues guitarist Justin Hayward and 1980s singer-songwriter Christopher Cross will play at the Tupelo Music Hall (10 A St., Unit 3, Derry, 437-5100, tupelomusichall.com) tonight at 7 p.m. with support from Mike Dawes. Tickets start at $99 and are available through the Music Hall’s website.
Sunday, July 7
The New England Reptile Expo is today from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the DoubleTree by Hilton Manchester Downtown (700 Elm St., Manchester). The show features more than 200 vendor tables full of reptiles, pet supplies and more. Tickets are $12 for adults, $6 for kids ages 7 to 12 and free for kids ages 6 and under. Visit reptileexpo.com.
Monday, July 8
Roland Emmerich: King of the Disaster Film? This program at 6:30 p.m. will look at the surprising inspirations for some of Emmerich’s movies. Register for this online event at the Derry Public Library (64 E. Broadway, Derry, 432-6140, derry.org).
Tuesday, July 9
New Hampshire Humanities (117 Pleasant St., Concord, 224-4071, nhhumanities.org) will present “12,000 Years Ago in the Granite State” tonight at the Goffstown Public Library (2 High St., Goffstown, 497-2102, goffstownlibrary.com) at 6:30 p.m. with Franklin Pierce College’s Professor Robert Goodby. The event is free and open to the public.
Save the Date! Friday, July 26 The 15th annual Live Free or Die Tattoo Expo, runs Friday, July 26, through Sunday, July 28, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Manchester Downtown (700 Elm St., Manchester). The event features tattoo artists, contests, vendors, live music and performances. Show hours are from 5 p.m. to midnight on Friday, from 11 a.m. to midnight on Saturday, and from noon to 8 p.m. on Sunday. See livefreeordietattoo.com.
On June 24 the Food and Drug Administration announced a recall on ice cream made by Totally Cool, Inc. of Owings Mills, Maryland. In a press release, the FDA wrote that the company is voluntarily “recalling multiple brands of ice cream products, because they have the potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems.” The recalled products include Friendly’s ice cream cakes, several Hershey’s ice cream cakes and cones, and Cumberland Farms’ ice cream sandwiches. For a full list of recalled products, visit fda.gov/safety.
QOL score: -1
Comment: Consumers who have recalled products in their possession are urged to return them to the place of purchase for a full refund. Consumers with questions may contact Totally Cool, Inc. at 410-363-7801 or [email protected].
Number of deadly fires is up
WMUR reported in a June 29 online story that deadly fires in New Hampshire have increased significantly from the last two years, and that the number of deaths so far this year has surpassed the total number from last year. Quoting the State Fire Marshal’s Office, WMUR reported “13 deaths from 11 unintentional fires so far this year. In comparison, authorities recorded 12 deaths from 11 unintentional fires in all of 2023 and nine deaths from eight fires in 2022.” So far this year Hillsborough County has had the largest number of fatalities. WMUR reported, “From Feb. 20 to June 17, officials said there were five deadly fires in Hillsborough County.”
QOL score: -3
Comment:Worryingly, the Fire Marshal’s Office confirmed that several deaths occurred in buildings without working smoke alarms.
Kudos to Nashua and Manchester
In a recent ranking by WalletHub.com, an online financial services company, Nashua is the fourth best-run city in the United States. It was ranked No. 4 out of 148 cities included in the study, which focused on factors such as financial stability, education, health, safety and infrastructure. The study ranked Nashua as the safest city in America. Manchester came in at No. 18. See wallethub.com/edu/best-run-cities/22869.
QOL score: +1
Comments: Virginia Beach was the highest-ranking city on the list, and Detroit was the lowest.
Local organizations recognized with grants
In a July 1 press release, the Norwin S. and Elizabeth N. Bean Foundation, a philanthropic organization with a mission to aid nonprofit organizations in Manchester and Amherst, announced that it has awarded $178,000 across six local nonprofit organizations. This set of grant recipients includes Families in Transition (fitnh.org), Girls, Inc. of NH (girlsincnewhampshire.org), the Manchester Police Athletic League (manchesterpoliceathleticleague.org), NH Audubon Society (nhaudubon.org), the New Hampshire Historical Society (nhhistory.org) — all located in Manchester — and Opportunity Networks (opportunitynetworks.org), in Amherst.
QOL score: +1
Comments: Visit beanfoundation.org.
QOL score last week: 74
Net change: -2
QOL this week: 72
What’s affecting your Quality of Life here in New Hampshire?
