Tag: 241031

This Week 24/10/31

Friday, Nov. 1

The 24th Annual Merrimack KOC Craft Fair will take place tonight from 5 to 9 p.m. and tomorrow, Saturday, Nov. 2, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at James Mastricola Upper Elementary School (26 Baboosic Lake Road, Merrimack). There will be more than 40 crafters offering a wide variety of handmade crafts as well as a bake table, chance auction and a food counter. Admission is free.

Saturday, Nov. 2

Join the Manchester Historic Association today from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for an interactive, family-friendly STEM-based program for all ages focusing on the science of fabric and clothing production from the 1700s to present at the Millyard Museum (200 Bedford St., Suite 103, Manchester, 622-7531, manchesterhistoric.org).

Saturday, Nov. 2

Classic ’80s band Duran Duran will play the SNHU Arena tonight beginning at 7:30 p.m. The band’s hits include “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Ordinary World” and “Rio.” Tickets start at $46.50.

Saturday, Nov. 2

The Nashua Historical Society is inviting writers to the Write at the Museum — specifically the Florence H. Speare Memorial Museum (5 Abbott St., Nashua, 883-0015, nashuahistoricalsociety.org/florence-h-speare-memorial-museum) for a day of writing today, from 9:30 a.m.to 3:30 p.m. Whether staying for the day or stopping in for a paragraph, enjoy the historic ambiance with your current writing project.

Saturday, Nov. 2

Emo Night Brooklyn, a late-night DJ-based dance party, will play the Nashua Center for the Arts (201 Main St., Nashua, 800-657-8774, nashuacenterforthearts.com) tonight, starting at 8 p.m. They will blast favorite emo and pop-punk jams. There will be screaming, moshing and dancing. Tickets start at $21. This is a general admission, open floor show. Ticketholders must be 18+.

Wednesday, Nov. 6

The Walker Lecture Fund will present “A Visit To New Zealand” at 7:30 p.m. at the Concord City Auditorium (2 Prince St., Concord, 228-2793, theaudi.org). This travelog program will cover the major natural and cultural attractions, as well as many lesser-known but fascinating destinations around the North and South Island. This event is free; there are no tickets required. Visit walkerlecture.org.

Wednesday, Nov. 6

All Elite Wrestling comes to Manchester with an action-packed night of professional wrestling as AEW Dynamite and AEW Rampage invades the SNHU Arena (555 Elm St., Manchester, 644-5000, snhuarena.com) at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $25.

Save the Date! Friday, Nov. 8 – Cirque Kalabante
Afrique en Cirque , a show by Yamoussa Bangoura inspired by daily life in Guinea, will take place at the Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com) Friday, Nov. 8, at 7:30 p.m. This performance shares the beauty, youth and artistry of African culture. A colorful show beyond its scenery, costumes and staging, it makes any theater vibrate with energy and represents the strength, agility and life’s joys of young Africans. The audience will see acrobats execute gravity-defying moves and human pyramids, accompanied by the contemporary sounds of live Afro-jazz, percussion and kora. Tickets start at $48 through the Capitol Center’s website.

Featured photo: Duran Duran.

Quality of Life 24/10/31

Air and water

Air quality took a dip in southern New Hampshire on Monday, Oct. 28, with readings that night for Manchester and Londonderry in the merely “acceptable” range of the US EPA Air Quality Index according to PurpleAir.com. A map at AirNow.gov showed “moderate” air quality from Concord north to the White Mountains. The Boston Globe on Monday reported that wildfires in eastern Massachusetts were blanketing that region with smoke, and NHPR reported online that the National Weather Service had issued a red flag warning for southern New Hampshire on Oct. 27.

QOL score: -1

Comment:According to the National Integrated Drought Information System at drought.gov, 57.2 percent of New Hampshire is “abnormally dry” and 10 percent (a chunk in the southeastern part of the state) is in “moderate drought.”

Books and bragging rights

“The Nashua Public Library has been named the state’s 2024 Large Library of the Year by the New Hampshire Library Trustees Association,” an Oct. 21 press release from the library announced. The press release reports that the Library was recognized for its “impressive growth in services and programs, enhanced equity work, and strong partnerships with dozens of local organizations, city departments, and other libraries.” Over the past year the Library redesigned its online presence, worked to meet the needs of neurodiverse patrons and was a partner in hosting Nashua’s recent Multicultural Festival.

QOL score: +1

Comment: In its fall newsletter the New Hampshire Library Trustees Association named the Meredith Public Library its Small Library of the Year, and Beryl Donovan of the Gaffney Library in Wakefield its Library Director of the Year.

NH civic health is in decline

A recent report by the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire revealed that the state’s civic health — behaviors, beliefs and actions related to public life — has declined since 2020. An Oct. 8 press release from UNH stated, “Researchers found long-term data suggests that there have been declines in areas that need attention — including how much people trust each other, attend public meetings, vote and help neighbors, with more than a 30% decline in how New Hampshire residents feel they matter in their own communities.” According to the study, “the share of residents across New Hampshire who do favors for neighbors fell by half. Only 1% of residents reported that they trust the national government all the time and 49% almost never trust the national government.“

QOL score: -2

Comments: Read the report at carsey.unh.edu/publications.

Was it you?

In an Oct. 22 press release, The New Hampshire Lottery Commission announced that a $1.475 million winning lottery ticket was sold in a convenience store in Derry. The ticket was “for the drawing on Saturday, October 19, 2024,” the press release read. “The winning ticket was sold by the Speedway Convenience Store.”

QOL score: +1

Comment: According to the State’s Megabucks website (nhlottery.com/Games/Megabucks) the odds of winning a jackpot are 1 in 4,496,388.

QOL score: 78

Net change: -1

QOL this week: 77

Tell us what’s affecting your Quality of Life at [email protected].

The week that was

The Big Story – Celtics Open Season in Record-Setting Fashion: Setting aside the World Series, where L.A. is just up 2-0 as I write this, let’s focus on the historic 3-point shooting by the Celtics in their opening day 132-109 annihilation of the New York Knicks, where they tied a league record with 29 3-balls.

In doing it with 33 assists the passing was even better than the shooting. But even with both those numbers, the stat of the game was New York somehow finding itself down 29 at 99-70 despite shooting 59 percent from the field. The C’s followed that up with a 122-102 rout vs. Washington and a sorta lucky 124-118 win over spunky Detroit. So mission accomplished with the 3-0 start sparked by sharp 3-point shooting and Jayson Tatum going for 37, 25 and 37.

Sports 101: Who’s the only pitcher to win Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young Award in the same season?

News Item – Thoughts on the World Series:

Wow, what a Game 1 to start it off. Hey, Aaron Boone, why in the name of Miller Huggins would you bring Nestor Cortes into a bottom-of-the-10th, winning-runs-on-base situation when he hadn’t pitched in a month? Then, BANG, Freddie Freeman hits the game-winning walk-off grand slam.

Dave Roberts, why would you yank Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the seventh when he’d given up just one hit and thrown 86 pitches and the two guys due up were 0-4 against him?

L.A. wins despite the analytics-crazed Roberts. Batting Shohei Ohtani lead-off with low OBP eighth and ninth hitters batting in front of him four times a game is just dumb.

News Item – Jets Crash at Gillette: It had all the makings of disaster when Drake Maye went down after taking a blow to the head. That brought in the maligned Jacoby Brissett. But he surprised by sparking the offense to 17 second-half points, with the high point coming after the Jets took the lead with 3 minutes left. As then came the game-winning drive culminating with Rhamondre Stevenson’s 1-yard TD dive with 22 seconds left for the 25-23 win while dropping New York to 2-6 and basically ending their season.

The Numbers:

4.39 – most-ever-paid-for-a-baseball-at-auction million dollars for the ball Ohtani hit to make him the first 50 homer and 50 steals player in history.

5 – with the hiring of former Tampa Bay executive Taylor Smith, the number of assistant general managers the Red Sox have in their front office.

… Of the Week Awards

Thumbs Down – Drake Maye Injury: Let’s hope he’s OK and the concussion is not serious.

Play of the Week: I know the Freeman grand slam was historic, but that was aided by a bad managerial decision. Instead it goes to rookie QB Jayden Daniels, who put another notch in his MVP portfolio with a miraculous 52-yard walk-off hail mary TD pass to Noah Brown that turned a certain loss into an 18-15 win over Chicago on the final play.

Choke of the Week – The Celtics Bench: Sitting in the aforementioned tie with Milwaukee for most threes in history at 29 and the crowd roaring for the record, the bench guys bricked 10 in a row to leave it a tie. Which brought them from over 60 percent on threes to 47.5 percent.

Random Thoughts:

In case you ain’t been paying attention six Red Sox alums — Mookie Betts, Ryan Brasier, Michael Kopech, Alex Verdugo, Kike Hernandez and Anthony Rizzo — are playing in the Series.

Sports 101 Answer: The only joint RoY and Cy Young winner was Dodger lefty Fernando Valenzuela in 1981.

A Little History – Fernando Valenzuela. The big Dodger lefty, who passed last week at 63, was a sensation when he broke in as a 21-year-old rookie. He won his first eight starts, with five being cg shutouts. Equally surprising to my usually reliable memory was that given all the L.A. hoo-ha then, he only won five more games in the strike-shortened ’81 season to finish 13-7 with a 2.48 ERA. However, he was 3-1 in the playoffs and in Game 3 of the World Series he delivered a 5-4, 147-pitch complete game win. Overall it was 173-153 with a 3.53 ERA to make it a solid career, rather than the one many thought was Hall-bound during his magical rookie season.

Final Thought – Thumbs Up Maura Healey: To the New Hampshire native and Massachusetts governor for demonstrating what a true basketball person she is by telling the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy at last week’s banner-raising why she loved wearing Bob Cousy’s No. 14 from before her days as a Winnacunnet HS star through her years as the Harvard point guard.

Email Dave Long at [email protected].

Electric history

How power changed rural New Hampshire life

Steve Taylor is a lifelong scholar of New Hampshire agriculture and rural life. He has been a daily newspaper reporter and editor, freelance writer, dairy farmer and for 25 years served as the state’s commissioner of agriculture. He was the founding executive director of the New Hampshire Humanities Council and in recent years has been an active participant in its Humanities to Go program. Steve spoke to the Hippo about his program “Late in Arriving, How Electricity Changed Rural New Hampshire Life” that he will give on Thursday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. at St. John Episcopal Church Parish Hall in Dunbarton. The event is hosted by the Dunbarton Historical Society.

Can you give a brief overview on what you talk about regarding electricity in rural New Hampshire?

The period between World War I and the middle of the 1950s was a time when there were two distinct civilizations in the state of New Hampshire: those who had electricity and those who didn’t. Those who didn’t lived almost the same as people would have lived in the 1890s. That means having to fetch water, run kerosene lamps, use privies, wash clothing by hand … as late as 1936, nine out of 10 rural residents of New Hampshire did not have electricity. But the coming of the New Deal with the Rural Electrification Administration addressed that problem. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he was campaigning in 1932, promised that the federal government would get behind electrification of rural United States, all over the country. … what is now known as the New Hampshire Electric Co-op … came in December 1939 in the little town of Lempster in Sullivan County. And it’s very, very amazing today to think how they accomplished so much, given the difficulties of the wartime economy, shortages of labor, shortages of materials so that by 1950 rural New Hampshire was largely wired and served by electricity.

Did the rural communities and people without electricity want electricity? Did they know how beneficial it would be to their lives?

Certainly, yes, the majority of people did. There were some holdouts. There were guys who milked their cows by hand and they said that was good enough for them. There were people who cut ice from the local pond and put it in an ice box and they thought that’s all they needed. Some people heated and cooked with wood. … But the majority of people jumped at the chance to have electric service brought in. And it was very remarkable because in order to qualify for an REA loan you had to have three potential customers signed up per mile and in order to sign up they had to put up five dollars … but there were some people that just couldn’t come up with five dollars and they did it with IOUs; eventually got it done. …

Does access to the internet mirror the issue with electricity?

There are echoes of that time today where you have people that don’t have high-capacity broadband service if they have any broadband service and that is a big, that’s a defining thing for many rural residents. … [I] n the little town where I live and the next town over they’ve gotten together and they’re getting some kind of grant support to have a company come in and string the fiber optic cable to get that service level raised.

Do you know the last place that got electricity in New Hampshire?

Hart’s Location in the White Mountains, a very, very small town, the last town to be wired was 1968.

Would you want to speak on New Hampshire Humanities?

We got it started back in the ’70s. It was just a little tiny venture in the early days… There’s a lot of emphasis on history, on literature, well some of it is more sociology I guess you’d say, but it’s a very remarkable organization what they do. I specialize in rural and agricultural history.

—Zachary Lewis

Late in Arriving, How Electricity Changed Rural New Hampshire Life
When: Thursday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m.
Where: St. John Episcopal Church Parish Hall, 270 Stark Highway North, Dunbarton
Info: nhhumanities.org; Alison Vallieres, 774-3681

Featured image: Steve Taylor. Courtesy photo.

News & Notes 24/10/31

Voting info

The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Find information about registering to vote, which can be done at the polling place on Election Day, as well as what identification to bring and information about accessible voting at the NH Secretary of State’s website, sos.nh.gov. The Voter Information Lookup page (app.sos.nh.gov/viphome) allows you to search for your voting registration status and tells you your polling place, with hours.

Chief retires

Manchester Police Department Chief Allen D. Aldenberg announced his retirement effective Nov. 29 earlier this week. “After 27 years as a law enforcement officer, it is without reservation that I submit my formal letter of retirement,” Aldenberg said in a letter to Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais on Oct. 28. “Over the years, I have had the honor to work beside the committed and professional men and women of New Hampshire law enforcement. During the course of my career, I have experienced many challenges and difficult times. However, there have been many great moments along the way and I have been extremely fortunate throughout my career,” the letter said.

Aldenberg also praised the Manchester Police Department, saying the officers and staff “who serve you do so with dedication and courage. It’s easy to point out flaws from the outside, but true progress happens when we all engage in solutions together. Never forget that a law enforcement officer will lay down his/her life in a moment’s notice so that others don’t have to, and to me there is no more profound commitment.” He also encouraged the city to “continue to invest in the mental health and overall wellness of our employees. The Mental Health and Wellness Program that is currently in place at the Manchester Police Department serves as the standard bearer across New Hampshire.” And Aldenberg wrote, “The retention of our employees must be the number one priority. They have invested in Manchester and we share a collective responsibility to respect their commitment through competitive wages, safe workplace conditions, and a strong investment in their overall well-being.”

The letter also thanks former Mayor Joyce Craig and the Board of Mayor and Aldermen who appointed him chief and his wife Emily and their children as well as Chief Steven Monier of the Goffstown Police Department, where Aldenberg started his career in 1998, and Chief John Jaskolka in Manchester, who hired him in 2003.

Library for sale

The Boscawen Select Board is selling the 1913 Library at 248 King St. in Boscawen. The library building was designed by American architect Guy Lowell, was picked as a Seven to Save by the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance in 2013 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, according to boscawennh.gov. The property is “offered for $350,000 ‘as-is’ … Covenants would include maintaining the exterior facade of the building and would prohibit demolition,” the website said. The town’s current public library is at 116 N. Main St.

Work recognized

The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Information Technology won the state an Outstanding Achievement Award for “exemplary work in Health and Human Services in the Center for Digital Government’s 2024 Digital States Survey,” according to a press release on the DHHS website, which said New Hampshire was one of three states to receive the award. “The Center for Digital Government recognized New Hampshire for the state’s efforts to improve its technology infrastructure and security features, a commitment to transparency, and an enhanced and consistent web presence. … The State’s most significant technological achievement has been establishing relationships with local, state and county government; schools; technology advisory sources; the private sector, other states; and most importantly, the residents of New Hampshire,” the press release said.

Hospital recognized

The Foundation of Healthy Communities, a New Hampshire nonprofit “that builds healthier communities for all by leading partnerships, fostering collaboration, and creating innovative solutions to advance health and health care,” gave its Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Award to the Concord Hospital Health System, according to a press release. The Concord Hospital Health System “focused on improving outcomes due to a strong culture of safety, including launching a skilled and restorative care program to provide a new level of post-acute skilled care within its system; reducing health disparities among specific patient populations; and promoting transparency among care teams, with patients, families and community stakeholders,” the release said. See healthynh.org for more on the Foundation.

Toy season

Liberty Tax in Manchester is partnering with Toys for Tots of Southern New Hampshire in November for a national effort called “Torchie’s Toy Drive,” according to a press release. (Torchie is the Liberty Tax mascot; see libertytax.com/torchie.) Bring new, unwrapped toys to Liberty Tax, 245 Maple St. in Manchester, Tuesdays through Fridays from noon to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon throughout November (closed Thanksgiving), the release said.

The Squam Lakes Association will hold a “Let’s Go Nuts!” program
with Lakes Region Conservation Corps member Meg at
Chamberlain-Reynolds Memorial Forest in Center
Harbor on Tuesday, Nov. 5, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The easy
2-mile walk will highlight “anything nut-related: mast years,
trees, seeds and more” according to a press release. Sign up at
squamlakes.org or call 968-7336.

The Craftworkers’ Guild shop in Bedford
(3a Meetinghouse Road, down the hill in the Library parking lot) will
open for the holiday season on Friday, Nov. 1. The shop will be open
in November Thursdays through Sundays (plus Veterans Day) from 10
a.m. to 5 p.m. and in December Wednesdays through Sundays from 10
a.m. to 2 p.m. through Sunday, Dec. 22. See thecraftworkersguild.org.

The Derry Public Library, 64 E. Broadway in Derry, will hold a program about retirement planning with financial advisor Dan Blakeman on Wednesday, Nov. 20, at 6 p.m. Register at derrypl.org.

The United Way of Greater Nashua will hold Care-E-Oke at the Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., on Friday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $27 for adults, $10 for ages 14 and under, at tinyurl.com/Care-e-oke24Tickets. Sign up to sing at tinyurl.com/SinginCareEOke.

The Southern NH Ukulele Group relaunches its Sunday Jam Socials at Milk Street Studios, 6 Milk St. in Dover, starting Sunday, Nov. 10, from 2 to 4 p.m. Sign-ups are first come first served on the group’s Meetup page and at the door, according to a press release. See dovernh.org/news.

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