This year marked the thirty-third anniversary of the Prescott Park Arts Festival. As another successful season of music and arts in the park comes to a close, the organization responsible for putting on the festival has announced that executive director Deborah Lielasus Tombleson will be stepping down. Ben Anderson, of Wakefield, whose previous experience includes organizing the Great Waters Music Festival in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, is set to take over as executive director of Prescott Park Arts Festival in late August.

“It’s a teary goodbye. I’ve been involved with the festival in one way or another since its beginning,” Tombleson said. She was a 15-year-old audience member at the first festival in 1974 and she is confident she will step back into the audience after her position as executive director ends. “I’ve decided to pursue a little more relaxed lifestyle. I’ve been doing these kinds of jobs for many years and I have some creative projects that I want to pursue,” she said.

Anderson, who is originally from Nova Scotia, moved to New Hampshire to take over leadership of Great Waters Music Festival. When he started seven years ago, the festival was having problems with attendance and financial difficulties. Within six years, he doubled the number of programs offered at the festival and increased attendance by 500 percent. During the festival’s off-season, Anderson founded the Great Waters Folk Festival.  

The mission of the Great Water Music Festival has been building community through music, according to Anderson. “It was more of a community event than it was a concert. That’s something that’s really important to me, using music and theater events to build community,” he said. He’ll have that opportunity with Prescott Park Arts Festival.

“I was looking for the next step in my career. I love Portsmouth. It’s a fantastic area that’s full of life and has a great feel to it. I was familiar with the Prescott Park Arts Festival and I’ve been really impressed by the caliber of events they offer. It’s a wonderful setting and a great organization. It helps bring people to Portsmouth as well as build on the community that’s already there,” Anderson said.  

He claims that, in the past, people have relied on large urban centers as musical outlets, but that trend is starting to shift. “People are perhaps tired of the mammoth venues or the experience they offer. These festivals are a unique and completely different experience that people are starting to turn back to. The New Hampshire arts scene is full of great life and is certainly growing,” he said.

The Wakefield resident’s appointment as executive director seems to signify a shift in emphasis toward more music-centered programming, but, according to Tombleson, more music has been on the agenda for some time already. “During my tenure, we had wanted to place a greater emphasis on music. That’s a direction we were already headed in,” she said. During her time with the festival, three music events have been added to the program. 

“There’s no room to expand the music, but there is room to improve the music, the marketing and the audience experience,” she added. And that is where Anderson will step in. “They are interested in boosting up what they offer musically and that is my strength. I’ve been promoting concerts for my whole life,” he said.

Exeter cable goes public

When the Exeter Board of Selectmen meet on August 27, they will vote on whether the town’s cable channel will become accessible to the public. If the board approves the plan, which seems likely, Channel 22 will be open for public use “very quickly thereafter, with a lag of about a week,” said Selectmen Joe Pace, who is a member of the Exeter Cable Television Committee. 

In the past, Channel 22 has broadcast selectmen meetings, school board meetings, town parades and other municipal events. The proposal to make 22 into a public access channel would allow any resident, member of the school district or agency of the town to apply for a spot on the local airwaves. All they have to do is bring in a pre-produced program on DVD or VHS to the Town Manager, fill out an application and sign a contract that assures the material is not offensive. 

“We did a lot of research looking at other communities that are doing this and we found that the less regulation the better. You certify to us that it’s not offensive content and then it’s your responsibility. We didn’t want to get into the position of deciding what would be offensive content,” Pace said. 

He believes the station would provide an opportunity for nonprofit organizations to broadcast public service announcements or for individuals to play a recording of a speaker who came to town, for example.However, Pace remains unsure of what programming the town will see. “I’m as interested and curious as the rest of us to see what that will look like,” he said. One thing he is sure of is that a public access channel will benefit the town of Exeter. “It contributes to the community dialogue and is another way to keep information flowing,” he said.

The Town of Exeter authorized the use of $40,000 provided by Comcast to make infrastructure improvements on their broadcasting capabilities. Pace explained that cable companies who wish to provide service have to negotiate with individual towns. Comcast is the company that provides service for Exeter. A portion of the bill that each customer pays the cable company is called a franchise fee. The fee comes out to a few pennies per person, which is then put into an escrow account, which gains interest over time. That money is put aside for equipment upgrades for the town, which Exeter plans to use for new cameras and other equipment. 

marine patrol to test UNH voice control technology

Despite David Hasselhoff’s recent decline into drunken YouTube stardom, “Knight Rider” remains one of the coolest television series ever, at least to a child of the eighties. But, of course, the real star of the show was KITT, the automated voice that provided the Hoff with critical information and backup. Now, much to the delight of countless “Knight Rider” fans, engineers from UNH’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department have developed voice command technology that is being used in law enforcement vehicles across the country. In the coming weeks, the New Hampshire Marine Patrol will test the technology on one of its boats in Portsmouth Harbor. If the testing is successful, officers will be able to control lights, radar, sirens and other functions of their boats through voice commands.

Project 54 was started with a $4 million federal grant in 1999. The team of engineers behind the project includes UNH professor Andrew Kun, associate research professor William Lenharth, three part-time faculty members, five full-time staff members and roughly 24 graduate and undergraduate students. Their original intention was to design voice control systems for law enforcement vehicles. 

So far, the technology has been a success, especially on the Seacoast. Portsmouth, Newington, Durham and several other towns have adopted the technology, which can be used to run records, control lights and sirens, as well as operate the radio. There is also a hazmat module that allows police and fire officials to investigate if a certain material is potentially harmful. Along with local police, N.H. State Troopers and several fire departments throughout the Granite State, Maryland, California and a number of other states have also adopted the voice control technology. Texas is currently considering adding it to its fleet, as well.

The technology works when officers give voice commands to a small, noise-canceling microphone mounted on a vehicle’s sun visor. Custom-written software registers the spoken words, processes the command and executes the proper response. “It’s user independent, which means there is no extra training required,” Lenharth said. 

Transitioning the technology from street vehicles to a marine environment will not be difficult, according to Lenharth. The engineers had already developed water-resistant technology for motorcycles and ATVs, and slight improvements allowed them to install the same models on boats. One component they developed specifically for the marine version is a waypoint tracking software application. Since currents, varying depth and other factors prohibit rescuers from traveling a straight line to a distress call, this application was developed to show the safe waypoints the marine patrol could travel in order to get where they’re needed. The engineers also had to make sure that the hardware would be resistant to saltwater corrosion.

From a law enforcement perspective, the coolest function of this technology is its ability to run license plate numbers and get an instant response, Lenharth said. And law enforcement is not the only group interested in the voice command technology. Lenharth has received numerous inquires from people who are curious about its capacity for controlling industrial machinery, trains and buses. A recent caller wanted to know about the possibility of using the technology for luggage handling at airports.

children’s museum gets go-ahead

Say goodbye to the Portsmouth Children’s Museum. Say hello to the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire. On Wednesday, August 8, the Dover City Council voted 6-1 to approve $650,000 in funding to help bring the Children’s Museum to Dover. The museum will move from its current location at 280 Marcy Street in Portsmouth to the Butterfield Gym facility on Washington Street in Dover. The approved funding will go toward stabilizing and improving the Butterfield facility to make it more suitable for the museum’s needs.

The new location is a boon for Dover. “It makes Dover a destination for an estimated 130,000 visitors a year,” said Douglas DeDe, city councilman for Ward Two, who voted in favor of funding the museum. By developing the Washington Street location, the museum will be able to use the adjacent pavilion and bandstand and sections of Henry Law Park to offer concerts and theater performances as part of its programs.

Despite the potential benefits of moving the museum to Dover, there were some who opposed the plan, calling it too expensive. “There is an element within the City Council and in some quarters of the city that are critical of virtually everything the administration does,” DeDe said. He calls this element of the city “the negoholics,” a phrase he borrowed from the Manchester Union Leader.

But many people are happy to see the museum make its way to the banks of the Cocheco River. Some have even made private donations to the project. “After the council passed the resolution, one individual made a single donation of $100,000, which he was always ready to make, but he wanted to make sure the City of Dover lived up to their promise,” DeDe said.
 With Dover now living up to its promise, the museum is one step closer to making the big leap. “According to individuals from the museum, they expect to open up in the beginning of the summer in 2008,” DeDe said.