Tag: 251106

Quality of Life 25/11/06

You didn’t miss jury duty and nobody is going to arrest you

As reported by WMUR in an Oct. 25 online article, there is a new phone scam telling area residents that they have missed jury duty and are about to be arrested. The article described the experience of a recent victim of this hoax: “The caller even had him Google the sheriff’s number, and then they called him from that number in an effort to prove it was legitimate. The next steps were for [him] to get a $3,500 bail bond until the situation could be figured out, but that’s when the red flags went off because they wanted him to get the bail bond from Walgreens.”

QOL score: -1

Comment: The WMUR article went on to reassure readers that New Hampshire’s court system will never ask you to send them money. “My office or any law enforcement office would never call anyone and say that you need to make a payment to clear up a warrant. That is so fraudulent,” the article quoted Merrimack County Sheriff David Croft.

Unsettling cancer trend

In a Nov. 3 online article New Hampshire Public Radio reported that the rate of kidney cancer is higher in Merrimack than in other New Hampshire communities. “According to an investigation led by state officials and researchers from Dartmouth, more research is needed to determine the cause,” the article read. “Looking at 27 years of cancer data, researchers determined the rate of kidney cancer in Merrimack is 38% greater than it is in the rest of New Hampshire. The study also found a slight increase in the rate of kidney cancer in Manchester compared to the rest of the state.”

QOL score: -2

Comment: According to the NHPR article, “The investigation began after Merrimack residents expressed concerns about their exposure to PFAS — a group of man-made chemicals that contaminated that community’s water.” Visit geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/nhscr/mkc to read the report.

Trick or trash

The Manchester Economic Development Office reported in the Oct. 29 edition of its online newsletter, the MEDO Minute, that volunteers from the SEE Science Center (200 Bedford St., Manchester, 669-0400, see-sciencecenter.org) blitzed Manchester’s parks during the last weekend of October. “The SEE Science Center led the charge on last weekend’s Trick-or-Trash in Manchester,” the announcement read. “Some 80 volunteers took to local City parks, contributing over 140 hours of time, cleaning up seven parks, and clearing away 66 bags of trash.” The next organized Park2Park event is scheduled for Earth Day, next April 24.

QOL score: +1

Comment: An Oct. 28 announcement on the SEE Science Center’s Facebook page (facebook.com/SEEScienceCenter) includes photos of interesting objects the volunteers found during the trash pick-up. These include $501 in Monopoly money, a shopping cart, a portable bluetooth speaker, a stairway spindle, house keys and what appears to be a very large chocolate cookie.

QOL score last week : 69

Net change: -2

QOL this week: 67

What’s affecting your Quality of Life here in New Hampshire?

Let us know at news@hippopress.com.

NH Fisher Cats star in WS

The Big Story – A Great World Series: It was two outs away from being the Manchester, N.H., World Series — manager John Schneider, pitching coach Pete Walker and eight players, led by Vlad Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, all spent time at Delta Dental Stadium with the Fisher Cats before ascending to Toronto. But thanks to Toronto’s answer to Bucky Dent, Miguel Rojas, tying it at 4-4 with a one-out ninth-inning homer followed by the winning run being scored in the 11th, L.A. became the first repeat series winner since the 2000 Yankees. And they actually played baseball as we once knew it with suicide squeezes, solid fielding, advancing runners to manufacture runs over relying on just homer balls, and they had the epic 18-inning Game 4. A great World Series that featured baseball as it ought to be.

Sports 101: Name the five winningest pitchers in World Series history.

News Item – Patriots Now 7-2: They say sometimes it’s better to be lucky than to be good. Which the Pats were in Sunday’s 24-23 win over Atlanta, where the margin of error was a missed extra point.

What’s To Like – Pop Douglas: The upward trend of the second-year receiver continued with four catches for 100 yards, and his TD came on a career-best 58-yard catch and run.

Key Stat: It’s now nine games in a row where the D has not allowed a runner to reach 50 yards, this time holding NFL per-game rushing leader Bijan Robinson to 46 yards.

Backslide: 1. The secondary gave up three TD catches to the same guy, Drake London. 2. In his worst game since Week 1, Drake Maye’s two TO’s led to the 10 Falcon points that let them back in the game. 3. The O-line gave up six more sacks.

Game Ball – Atlanta kicker Parker Romo: The kicker cut by the Pats in training camp missed the fourth-quarter extra point that gave the Patriots a lucky one-point win.

News Item – Epic WS Game 3: It went 18 innings in six hours and 39 minutes and was won on a walk-off homer by last year’s Series hero, Freddie Freeman.

The Numbers:

12 – strikeouts by rookie Trey Yesavage, who set a WS record of 23 swings and misses in Toronto’s 6-1 Game 6 win over L.A.

59 – million dollars owed in buyouts to football coach Brian Kelly ($53 million) and AD Scott Woodward at LSU athletics because their team is 5-3.

68 – yard FG by Jacksonville’s Cam Little to set the NFL’s all-time record for longest FG ever in their 30-29 win over Las Vegas.

… Of the Week Awards

Thumbs Up – Mookie Betts: Oh, great, another reason to mourn the Red Sox losing the greatest RF in team history, as he was named the 2025 winner of the Roberto Clemente Humanitarian Award for helping communities in so many ways the list is too long to print here.

Thumbs Down – LSU Athletics: A 5-3 football program from the same state as U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson comes from, wasting $59 million in unnecessary payouts, on the same day the Speaker (and his colleagues) let food stamp payments stop helping feed needy families around that state and the country. Seems like we’ve lost perspective, don’t you think?

Hard To Believe Stat – Josh Allen: Recording the 79th rushing TD of his eight-year career to push a quarterback ahead of the great Earl Campbell for 25th place on the all-time TD rushing list during Buffalo’s win over KC.

Sports 101 Answer: 10 wins, Whitey Ford; seven wins, Red Ruffing, Allie Reynolds, Bob Gibson; six wins, Lefty Gomez, Waite Hoyte and Chief Bender. All Yankees except Gibson (Cardinals) and Bender (A’s).

Final Thought – Shohei Ohtani: It’s rare that I watch a game just to see one baseball player these days. But I did it for Ohtani in the WS. And he did not disappoint. In the epic 18-inning Game 3 marathon alone he reached base nine times via two homers, two doubles and five walks as he scored three times and knocked in three more, which tied the record for most extra-base hits in a WS game set in 1906 by some guy I never heard of and I’ve heard of everyone.

He also became the first to have three multi-homer games in the same post-season. Plus he pitched in the playoffs, where he was 2-1 with a 4.43 ERA, including a 10-K, six-inning effort in the NLCS.

It inspired ESPN’S Buster Olney to call him the greatest player ever. I say pump the brakes on that. He’s never going to catch any of the Babe’s major stats, including pitching, where at 39 to 94 he’s 55 wins behind the Babe. But that doesn’t mean he’s not the most exciting player to watch since at least Junior Griffey. Which is good enough for me.

Email Dave Long at dlong@hippopress.com.

Nashua pop-up pantries help take up SNAP slack

Sara Ceaser is the Director of Volunteer and Community Engagement for the United Way of Greater Nashua, which organizes five pop-up food pantries each week across Nashua. She said that with SNAP benefits scheduled to run out in November food insecurity in the city is likely to increase.

“We started our [food pantry] program at the beginning of the Covid pandemic to make sure that there was food available in neighborhoods,” she said, “and we saw that there was a continued need. So we stay in those locations and yes, most of the people who attend will walk there.”

“We do these pop-up pantries at different locations in the community every week. I’m hearing anecdotally from the people that are there that we’re seeing an increase already, even before SNAP benefits have run out. We are preparing to provide more food when we can, and being a little bit creative on how we can source food. Another project that we do is grocery deliveries to homebound people from food pantries. I just checked the numbers for Sept. 15 to Oct. 15. We did 52 deliveries, which was an increase of almost 20. We had 34 deliveries the previous month. So things are definitely changing.”

Part of being creative in sourcing food, Ceaser said, is working with groups such as the Regenerative Roots Association. “They are located in Nashua and they are doing what’s called Fresh Rescue,” she said. “They go to stores and they will pick up food in their refrigerated van and drop it off for us for the food pantries as well. Most grocery stores do this fresh rescue program where they have food that’s still good but they need to get it off of their shelves. Most of what we get from this program at the moment is protein, so meat and other types of things like that, and a lot of bread too.”

Another group working with the United Way is the Hillsborough County Gleaners. “They are a group that is run out of UNH Cooperative Extension,” Ceaser said. “They go to farms, and they have volunteers who pick what’s left in a farm’s field after the initial harvest. And so we benefit from that also. The harvest is kind of winding down a little bit, but we’re able to provide fresh fruits and vegetables during the growing season. We’re working on other ways to provide fresh fruits and vegetables as well; we’ll hopefully be able to purchase that using gift cards donated by stores and possibly grant funding as well. So we’re hoping to kind of ramp things up as we can.”

In the meantime, Ceaser said, the United Way’s pop-up pantries have just moved indoors for the winter.

Pop-ups
The United Way of Greater Nashua’s pop-up pantries are open from 11 a.m. to noon:
Monday: Harbor Care, 45 High St.
Tuesday: Girls Inc., 27 Burke St.
Wednesday: Arlington Street Community Center, 36 Arlington St.
Thursday: Nashua Community Music School, 2 Lock St.
Friday: Crossway Christian Church, 33 Pine St.
All locations are in Nashua.

News & Notes 25/11/06

More food news

The New Hampshire Food Bank “is intensifying its fundraising efforts to address the anticipated statewide rise in food insecurity as the federal government shutdown persists,” as the shutdown has impacted funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), according to a Food Bank press release on Oct. 31 at its website, nhfoodbank.org. “The New Hampshire Food Bank has already increased food distribution by 26% year-over-year to meet the growing demand.” The NH Food Bank has a webpage — nhfoodbank.org/govshutdown — with information about SNAP, a food map of partner agencies throughout the state and links to information on mobile food banks and SNAP-recipients-specific mobile food banks. The page also features links on donating to the NH Food Bank.

Veterans Day parade

Manchester’s Veterans Day Parade will kick off changes to the city’s parade route, according to a press release from the Manchester Emergency Operations Center. “Beginning with the Veterans Day Parade on November 11, 2025, and all parades moving forward, the parade route will start at Bridge St and Elm St continuing south on Elm St and concluding at Elm St and Central St,” the release said. The parade steps off around 10:45 a.m., according to the police department.

To celebrate Veterans Day the city is also offering free parking to anyone with a Veteran plate at metered spaces in downtown Manchester, according to The MEDO Minute, the newsletter of the city of Manchester Economic Development office.

At the DMV

The New Hampshire Division of Motor Vehicles is fully appointment-based as of Nov. 3, according to a press release from the state’s Department of Safety on Oct. 27. Go to dmv.nh.gov to make an appointment at one of the state’s 14 locations. “DMV staff will assist walk-in customers with finding appointments, including at other DMV locations if necessary,” the release said. “The busiest DMV locations in Concord, Manchester, Nashua and Epping will also offer appointments during extended hours until 5 p.m., twice a week. Additionally, a limited block of same-day appointments will be made available each day for customers with urgent transactions,” the release said. This new system is designed to reduce waiting times in DMV lobbies and manage customer flow more effectively, the release said.

The new exhibition “If You Had to Choose: Patriots and Loyalists in Revolutionary New Hampshire,” which “presents the stories of New Hampshire colonists in 1775 and 1776,” is on display now at the New Hampshire Historical Society, 30 Park St. in Concord. Also on display is “Lafayette’s Visit to New Hampshire,” about the Marquis de Lafayette’s 1825 visit to the state, according to nhhistory.org. The Society is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“Hive Mind: Nature Inspired Group Art” from the New England-based artist group NAV Arts will be on display through Dec. 27 at the New Hampshire Audubon’s Massabesic Center, 26 Audubon Way in Auburn. An artists’ reception will be held Saturday, Nov. 8, from noon to 3 p.m. See nhaudubon.org.

The Friends of the Newfields Public Library will hold an antique and vintage item appraisal event called “What’s It Worth?” on Saturday, Nov. 8, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at The Brook Casino in the Showroom, 319 New Zealand Road in Seabrook, according to an email from organizers. The event is 18+, with no firearms allowed, up to three items per person and a fee by donation, the email said. See newfieldslibrary.org/whats-it-worth-2025

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