adventures in social media, community, and instant information

The data cloud has dropped to street level, the barrier between the real and virtual worlds has fallen, and the billion computer screens that once served as discrete windows onto the Internet have calved and splintered. Six essays illustrate the changes taking place around us every day, part of this ever-fascinating, ever-accelerating, and often confounding historical transformation in which we find ourselves unexpectedly taking part.

The Seacoast is a horror hub, teeming with writers, artists and publishers of ghastly books, comics and anthologies.

It seems our love for zombies and ghouls knows no bounds. A resurgence of horror fiction—including some new local productions—proves that the undead have a special place in our cold New England hearts.

poet and activist Nikki Giovanni will headline multi-day MLK celebration, "Art as Struggle and Exultation"

Now a distinguished professor at Virginia Tech, Nikki Giovanni says she believes humankind has made significant progress toward reaching King’s vision for a just world, but there’s still a long way to go.

That work involves more than addressing race issues, alone. Freedom is a planetary pursuit, one that applies to all people, not just blacks and minorities. “Sometimes people forget that segregation was hard on white people, too, because you had to remember to be white,” she says.

When Mark Anastas was growing up in the 1970s and early ’80s, only a handful of dedicated surfers frequented the waves off Long Sands Beach in York, Maine. That has changed. Anastas estimates the area attracts 15 times as many surfers today as it did a couple of decades ago.

“There’s more surfers now than there ever has been,” said Anastas, who owns Liquid Dreams Surf Shop in York and Ogunquit.

As a York Beach business owner and surfer, Anastas keeps a close eye on issues that affect the beach, including one recent proposal to significantly expand the beach’s surfing zone, and another to dump hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of dredged sand from the Piscataqua River off York’s coast.

Anastas is among those who want to know if the town is prepared to keep beachgoers happy.

a look at proposed legislation in New Hampshire in 2010

It was a landmark year for New Hampshire government in 2009—not only for the size of the budget deficit ($250 million) and the number of state layoffs it induced (200), but also for legislative action on some controversial social issues, like gay marriage, the death penalty and medical marijuana.

Gay marriage was the only clear winner among these debates, as the Legislature’s spring vote to legalize same-sex marriage took effect Jan. 1. The death penalty was nearly outlawed and remains under scrutiny by a special study commission. And Granite State legislators narrowly approved a statewide medical marijuana program—only to have it vetoed by Gov. John Lynch.

But these scores are far from settled, as evidenced in the new round of bills up for debate in Concord’s 2010 legislative session, which officially kicks off on Wednesday, Jan. 6. Both the House and Senate will meet every Wednesday until June, and they’ll be busy. So far, 819 bills have been proposed to create, repeal or otherwise change New Hampshire’s laws.
 

Part Three: The leaders and the people

It’s not every day that a Seacoast resident travels to North Korea. In fact, it’s remarkably rare for any U.S. citizen to visit this eastern Asian nation. The socialist country’s nuclear ambitions have had American officials on edge for years, and sour relations between our two countries stretch back at least to the 1950s. U.S. envoy Stephen W. Bosworth’s brief trip to North Korea in early December marked the first visit by a high-level American official in more than a year.

When Seacoast resident Nathan Groth took a five-day guided tour of North Korea in October, however, he wasn’t there to discuss foreign relations with the government. Groth, who had previously visited nations like Iran and Cuba, traveled to North Korea to observe a culture and geography largely sealed from American eyes. The places and events he witnessed were at times awe-inspiring and at others disturbing, but always fascinating and educational.

Groth chronicled some of his experiences for The Wire. Click here for a full slideshow.

composting programs are piling up on the Seacoast

The Seacoast doesn't have curbside composting yet, but a growing number of restaurants and businesses have begun sending their waste back to the farm. In its first week of business this fall, EcoMovement—one of several new companies offering hauling services—recaptured nearly a ton waste from just four businesses, while restaurants like Beach Pea Baking Co. are diverting 90 percent of their waste from the landfill and slowing global warming. Find out why brown is so very green.

upcoming festivals carry on seasonal traditions

Dedicated volunteers are organizing festive celebrations around the Seacoast to build community cheer and charity fundraisers. It's like a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past, since scenes like these turn back time to New England holidays before the era of Cyber Monday.

An upcoming vote on a contentious union contract will determine the fate of thousands of state workers—and the services they provide.

The State Employees Association of New Hampshire represents about 10,000 state workers. They provide medical services, environmental protections, prison security, highway maintenance, information technology, employment security and a variety of other critical functions.

But the SEA has not yet reached a contract agreement with the state for the 2010-2011 biennium, which began on July 1. Both state employees and politicians are anxious about the results of an upcoming vote on a contentious proposal that will decide their fate.

The SEA sent out ballots to its 6,700 union members on Sept. 24, along with copies of the proposed contract. If they reject the proposal, Gov. John Lynch will move forward with a plan to lay off 750 state workers. If they approve it, they will be forced to take 19 unpaid furlough days over the course of the next two years—and many of them still might lose their jobs.

The SEA’s bargaining senate has recommended rejecting the contract. But the decision is now in the hands of thousands of individual workers, many of whom already struggle to feed their families and are afraid of losing their jobs. They must cast their votes by Monday, Oct. 12.

Eighteen-year-old Josh Prinopoulos winces and leans back in his chair as tattoo artist Nick Filth colors in the full sleeve image on his inner forearm. It’s the Somersworth resident’s first tattoo, an elaborate Asian design that wraps around his right shoulder and down his arm to the wrist. The dreadlocked teen already has a nose ring in his right nostril and stretched earlobe piercings in both ears, but he is new to the art of tattooing. It’s taken four separate sessions at Iron Works Tattoo to get this far, and Filth says at least three more sessions will follow.

“You might get some tears,” Prinopoulos jokes as the fourth and most painful session begins. But he and Filth chat casually throughout most of the process, even as Filth wipes smears of blood from his client’s arm. The atmosphere is like that of an old-time barbershop, except instead of cutting hair, the barber drags a motorized needle across his customer’s flesh.  

People getting their first tattoos generally fall into one of two camps, says Filth, who has been working at Iron Works since it opened in downtown Portsmouth in May. Either they want an image with deep, symbolic, personal meaning, or they just want cool looking artwork. Prinopoulos belongs to the latter category.

“I’ve always been into the whole Asian style of tattooing. It’s just so sick,” he says. “I just love the images. It’s awesome.”

On a sticky, humid Friday night at Elite Hobbies in Dover, two five-man squads of Death Copters and a horde of orks are moving into position behind a blasted, crumbling miniature building. They’re not alone. A few blocks away, three trucks idle full of even more orks, waiting for something to attack. Caught in the middle of this ork invasion is a squad of daemonhunters, vastly outnumbered, out-gunned, and minutes away from being reduced to a greasy stain on the pavement.

Commanding the army of daemonhunters is 16-year-old Will Chapman of Rye. A few minutes into the battle, Chapman’s soldiers destroy a truck full of orks—but thanks to the fickle hand of fate and some unlucky dice rolls, the orks in the truck make it out unscathed. Meanwhile, the generals of the other two ork hordes, Mark Seamon, 23, of Dover, and Rabbit, a 22-year-old on vacation from California, pull out their tape measures and rulebooks and start plotting a counterattack.

“Road to Ogunquit,” a painting by Clarence Chatterton, looks and feels like the shortening days of summer in a New England coastal town. There’s a row of colonial style houses and an abandoned white rowboat along a dirt road. The light is still warm, but the long shadows are turning blue.

“You immediately understand it’s August 25,” said Thomas Denenberg, chief curator at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. He spoke about the museum’s current exhibit, “Call of the Coast: Art Colonies of New England,” during a recent visit to the Ogunquit Museum of American Art.

The painting by Chatterton, dating back to 1940, graces the cover of a book accompanying the exhibit, which runs through Oct. 12. Images from New England art colonies, such as this one, define what the quintessential American coast looks like in our minds, Denenberg says.

The four-day music festival from Aug. 15 to 18, 1969, included more than 30 of the world’s biggest bands and brought some 500,000 attendees to the small town of Bethel, N.Y. It was the culmination of the hippie movement that swept the nation during the latter half of the ’60s, a peaceful demonstration of young people fed up with war, greed and governmental deceit.

It should come as no great surprise that the eat local movement has grown exponentially over the past few years. People are becoming more conscientious about what they eat, and that means knowing where their food comes from. Local food is fresher and usually tastes better than the stuff you get at grocery chains, and the farmers who produce it are your neighbors, so there’s a bit more accountability.

What’s more, consuming locally produced foods is better for the environment and the local economy. By getting food from nearby farms, you cut back on harmful emissions associated with transporting truckloads of food from all corners of the country. And purchasing from local, independent outlets keeps more money circulating through the local economy. All in all, a pretty good bang for your buck.

Golf is hard. And expensive. And there’s usually a dress code. Not the case with miniature golf. On the contrary, mini golf requires little money and even less skill. You don’t have to bring your own clubs, and you usually get to choose your ball color. Goofy pants are optional.

There are a number of mini golf courses on the Seacoast with various themes and levels of difficulty. In two marathon sessions, we visited all five courses in this area and assessed them based on a number of factors, including difficulty, creativity, ambiance, price and strength of theme.

Nitrogen pollution is killing eelgrass and threatening aquatic life in Great Bay, and environmental groups are taking action. 

In 1972, under increasing pressure to protect the nation’s vital waters, the federal government passed the Clean Water Act. Section 303(d) of that statute requires states to develop lists of “impaired waters.” These are waters in which existing regulations are not stringent enough to maintain water quality standards.

The N.H. Department of Environmental Services has identified the Great Bay Estuary as impaired, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to approve that designation within the next couple of weeks.

“We’re still in the about-to-do-that category, but it’s kind of a given that that’s going to be the result,” says Paul Currier of the DES. “We’re under the gun, so it’s going to be shortly.”

yard sales offer good deals in a bad economy

Like literal signs of spring, hand-drawn yard sale posters appear around the Seacoast in warm weather.

We meet our neighbors and handle the discarded contents of their lives, exposed to the sunlight and priced cheap. We pass by the toys their children outgrew and the furniture their loved ones left them. We look curiously at the “as seen on TV” gadgets, the record collections and Atari games, and take home a used book.

People always have yard sales in the summer, but this year the motivation may be different. “More out of necessity,” said Brian Gottlob, principal of PolEcon Research in Dover.

A new N.H. Seafood brand will help residents purchase local fish. Can it help preserve our local fishing industry?

Travel anywhere on the Seacoast and you’ll see fishing boats along the shore. But where to eat their fresh fish? Good luck with that. About 11 million pounds of fish, including just over 3 million pounds of fin fish, landed on the New Hampshire coast last year, and nearly all of it left the state after being unloaded on the pier.

Like most of us, I didn’t have a clue that our fish are heading down the interstate. But for those who’ve been watching the industry consolidate over the last 30 years, it’s like standing by while trucks full of money disappear down the road. And seeing 400 years of tradition being sold to out-of-staters. And, for some reason, saying “no, thanks” to an affordable supply of fresh healthy food, only to buy it back a few days later and older, at a higher price.

To explain the dauntingly massive, multi-faceted, all-encompassing reach of the U.S. health care system, Everett Page pointed to the term “reification.” It means regarding something abstract as a physical, material thing. Health care, he said, is a living, breathing organism, a giant anthropomorphous creature that crawls across the nation, constantly consuming and growing and swelling. Picture an overweight komodo dragon towering over the country, flicking its forked tongue and getting bigger every second. That’s health care.

Page is the former CEO of Matthew Thornton Health Plan, a Manchester-based health insurance company. His experience gives him a unique perspective on one of the most vilified aspects of the health care system. And, indeed, Page characterized insurers as a crew with precious little compassion for families struggling with high premiums and health care costs. “Frankly, Scarlet, we don’t give a damn,” he said.

But Page said there’s no point blaming health insurers for the myriad problems associated with a system that has left at least 45 million Americans without coverage. Insurance companies are not solely responsible for driving up prices and leaving millions uncovered, he said.

“We can beat on insurers all we want,” Page said. “The rate of growth is coming from an aging population and what’s happening within the health care system.”

At the onset of summer in 2007, The Wire issued a stern warning to readers about the various perils of the great outdoors. We warned of ticks carrying Lyme disease, mosquitoes transmitting EEE, timber rattle snakes, black bears, mako sharks and even brown recluse spiders.

We did not run a guide to summer dangers last year, but watched in horror as a menacing giant red ant conquered Market Square in Portsmouth. A local hero’s efforts to decapitate the ant were foiled when it simply grew a new one, also sprouting spikes on its back to discourage future acts of bravado.

The sharp crack of wood against packed leather reverberated through Hadlock Field in Portland, Maine, as New Hampshire Fisher Cats second baseman Bradley Emaus smacked a foul ball into the leftfield stands.

“I love that sound,” remarked a fan in one of the stadium’s 7,368 seats, on hand to see the Cats take on their division rival Portland Sea Dogs. 

As right-handed pitcher Jarod Plummer gazed in toward home plate, leadoff hitter Adam Calderone took a few steps off first base. Calderone had reached when Plummer hit him with a pitch to open the game, and now he was looking to swipe second. When Plummer wound up to deliver his next pitch, Calderone dug his cleats into the dirt and took off, sliding in safely beneath the tag.

“The Shoes of Rochester” not only celebrates the city’s significant mill history, but also paves the way for a future in which Rochester is recognized for its talented artists.

The community art exhibit is the first project by Art Esprit, a group of about 40 visual and literary artists who have been planning it for more than a year. Together, they created and decorated 11 over-sized, sculptural shoes, which will double as planters and beautify the downtown area. The shoe styles include a Zodiac brand western-style boot, of a variety once produced in one of five Rochester shoe mills.

From the early 1700s to the mid 1900s, Rochester had a long history in shoe manufacturing. As factories moved overseas, the shoemaking industry disappeared, but the history and many of the workers’ families still live in the city.

The sculptures will be revealed in their various locations around the city at a kickoff event on Saturday, June 6, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The shoes are arranged in a walking tour, with signs for each one that include a poem relating to it. Brochures with a map can be found online or at many area businesses. “The Shoes of Rochester” will be in place until Sept. 26.

Temperatures have finally snapped the 90-degree mark, and the sultry weather brings thousands of visitors to the Seacoast to absorb the cool ocean breezes that massage the beaches and docks. Residents and tourists alike can find plenty of outdoor gatherings over the next few months, celebrating the area’s diverse foods, art, music and history. Summer is festival season on the Seacoast, and there are well over 20 to choose from this year. What follows is The Wire’s annual summer festival guide.


Prescott Park Arts Festival
begins June 6

Portsmouth’s summer-long attraction in Prescott Park kicks off with the 25th annual WOKQ Chowder Festival on Saturday, June 6. When the gates open at 11 a.m., thousands of residents will flood the waterfront park and sample fresh chowders from a record number of area restaurants. Judges from Taste of the Seacoast magazine and local food critic Rachel Forrest will award the finest selections.

Green Commute Week, Bike/Walk to Work Day, and the Seacoast Bike Tour bring attention to our increasingly bike-friendly state

 In 1971, Belgian cyclist Gustave Van Cauwenberghe founded Gus’ International Bicycle Shop in North Hampton. Twenty-eight years and two owners later, the shop still does good business on Lafayette Road. According to current owner Jeff Latimer, who took over the store in December, many shoppers are now buying bicycles as part of a general shift in their lifestyles.

“They’re not coming in for expensive road bikes, they’re just looking to get started,” Latimer said. “It’s being done in tandem with a lifestyle change.”

Seacoast residents are looking to lose weight and get healthier, Latimer said, while also being environmentally conscious. That means more and more people are commuting to work on bicycles instead of in cars, getting exercise while saving money on fuel and keeping harmful emissions out of the air.

The second weekend in May is filled with opportunities to see and support the arts on the greater Seacoast.

On Friday, May 8, ArtsFest combines an eclectic mix of theater, dance and music performances in one show at the Rochester Opera House. On Saturday, May 9, another creative collaboration makes up the second annual Arts Festival at One Washington Center in Dover. That same day, artists at the Salmon Falls Mill in Rollinsford will open their studios and offer other entertainment to visitors. 

ArtsFest Showcase is an innovative performance that includes hip-hop, reggae, Broadway, African drumming, visual arts, modern dance, comedy skits and more. “It’s so entertaining that everyone’s going to like it,” said artistic director Erin Lovett Sherman. 

People of all ages milled about the lobby of Newington’s Regal Cinemas at 9:30 a.m. on a recent Sunday, sipping coffee, munching doughnuts and chatting amiably. Some guests were in their 20s and arrived with friends, while others were whole families with parents and children. Some wore T-shirts that said “No Perfect People Allowed.” Rock music blasted through the sound system as a couple of hundred guests filed into one of the theaters and took their seats. The atmosphere of anticipation seemed more typical of a rock concert than a church service.

And indeed, a six-piece rock band soon took the stage beneath the movie screen. The band leader, who played acoustic guitar and sang, instructed audience members to rise to their feet and sing along as the group energetically rolled through three songs, the lyrics scrolling across the screen.

Downtown South Berwick does not look terribly different today than it did 150 years ago. A framed photograph hanging in the Sarah Orne Jewett House museum shows the town square as it appeared in 1870, and other than a group of cows clogging the dirt road, the landscape hasn’t changed much. Many of the wood buildings that surrounded the intersection of Main and Portland streets are still standing, lending this southern Maine community on the New Hampshire border enduring charm.

The house, constructed in 1774 by a wealthy sea merchant named Tilly Haggens, is also remarkably unchanged. Sarah Orne Jewett was born in this luxuriant Georgian home in 1849 and lived there, on and off, until her death in 1909—exactly a century ago. Jewett’s second-story bedroom is just as she left it, with various trinkets and pictures on the fireplace mantle, her reading glasses hanging from a wood-framed mirror. Not far from her bedroom door, an old writing desk sits beside a sunny window that overlooks the square. It was here that Jewett penned some of the locally set novels that earned her a permanent place in the nation’s literary canon.

Pontine Theatre is commemorating the 100th anniversary of Jewett’s death with an original stage adaptation of the “Dunnet Landing Stories,” which represent some of the famed local author’s final works. The two-person ensemble of Marguerite Mathews and Greg Gathers, along with an arsenal of handcrafted puppets, will offer performances at West End Studio Theatre in Portsmouth beginning on Friday, April 24. Five stories will come to life with the integration of two live actors, intricate puppets and other homemade props.

Polyvinyl chloride records nearly fizzled out of existence in the 1980s and ’90s. Compact discs, with their conveniently portable size and polished sound, became the preferred package for recorded music. But vinyl has experienced a steady resurgence in recent years, as more and more collectors dust off old record players and drop the needle down to the sweet sound of amplified crackles and pops.

Local collectors attribute the vinyl resurgence to a variety of factors. For one thing, the album art is much bigger on a record sleeve than on a CD case. “It’s more of a piece of art at that size. It’s like the difference between a painting and a postcard,” said Alden Ulery, manager of the Loaf & Ladle in Portsmouth.

Others point to the general vogue of vintage items in American culture. “The technology has gotten so far, people just kind of want to revert back and be nostalgic,” said Michael Bray, manager of Bull Moose in Portsmouth.

Still others insist that the purity of the vinyl sound exceeds all other forms of recording. “There’s nothing that sounds like vinyl, really. It has a much warmer sound,” said Bruce Pingree, manager of The Press Room.

2009 RPM Challenge participants step forward to host global listening parties

Every month or so, multi-instrumentalist Taylor Weston clears out all the furniture from his living room in Seattle and hosts a concert for area artists. Weston lives with the three other members of his metal band, Gladiators Eat Fire. Their spacious living room has capacity for up to 60 people, and they have hosted as many as four bands on a single night, sometimes expanding their jams to the rooftop or the backyard.

“We’ve had bands all the way from England,” Weston said.

On Saturday, March 28, Weston will host a different kind of musical house party in the Emerald City. His home will serve as one of at least 16 venues for RPM Challenge listening parties taking place around North America and beyond.

In the state-of-the-art Chase Ocean Engineering Laboratory on the University of New Hampshire’s Durham campus, students and researchers test their designs in huge tanks of water with simulated waves and currents.

They are mindful of all the ways an experiment could go wrong, because outside, they don’t have that kind of control.

A team of engineering students and professors recently tested a tide turbine in the Great Bay estuary. They moored off the old General Sullivan Bridge between Newington and Dover, led by Martin Wosnik, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering.

Wosnik said the turbine had to be lowered from a 35-foot floating platform in just the right place and time. There’s a limited area, between the water’s width and depth, where the current is fast enough to properly spin the turbine while remaining outside of the lane of marine travel. There were only about 10 minutes to catch the slack water from the incoming tide.

If something were to go wrong, it would happen “quickly and badly,” Wosnik said. But professor Ken Baldwin, director of the Center for Ocean Engineering, who watched from the bridge above, said it looked as though nothing at all was happening.

“It may not look treacherous from shore, but it’s quite dangerous,” said Wosnik. He said the platform was struck by an “iceberg” during the February test (really just a floating layer of ice) and one of the crew members was humming the theme song from the “Titanic” movie.

Nat Baldwin played a dangerous set. Standing alone with his double-bass, he lurched from his written material, to guttural free jazz. The rhythm to “Enter the Light Out” was askew; the bow against his strings sounded raw. The half-hour or so set was searching at worst and exhilarating at best. And the audience, rapt as they sat on the floor or leaned against the dark walls, worked with him the whole way.

There are few sounds more satisfying than a 12-pound ball colliding with a set of wooden pins and scattering them off the floor and walls. The savory clatter echoes down the lane and through the entire alley, overlapping with the noise of other collisions and contributing to the general din of strikes, spares and gutters. The sonic texture is strangely soothing to the ear. It’s the sound of people setting aside their assorted quandaries and having fun despite it all. It’s the unmistakable sound of bowling.

The number of bowling alleys on the Seacoast has shrunk slightly in recent years, with Bowl USA vanishing from Newington more than a year ago. But other alleys in the area have adapted to the times, finding new ways to draw people to an age-old sport. Even with the economy in shambles, some alleys report that business has remained relatively steady, as people of all ages seek inexpensive forms of entertainment.

On a Saturday evening in late December, a car hit a female pedestrian at the intersection of Market and Bow streets in downtown Portsmouth, outside Fat Belly’s Bar and Grill. Emergency personnel rushed the victim to the hospital with serious leg injuries. According to police, she is still in a wheelchair.

About a month later, authorities responded to The Page on Hanover Street after receiving a report of an unresponsive woman in the bar. That woman was only 19 years old and had to go to a hopsital emergency room to get her stomach pumped.

Both cases led to arrests. The 27-year-old driver who struck the woman outside Fat Belly’s faces felony charges of driving under the influence, reckless conduct and vehicular assault. The 19-year-old patron of The Page faces one count of unlawful possession of alcohol. 

An upcoming event at The Red Door in Portsmouth will stir booze, superheroes, comedy and literature into one potent cocktail of entertainment. As part of a new reading series co-sponsored by RiverRun Bookstore, the State Street bar will present humorist G. Xavier Robillard, author of the new superhero satire “Captain Freedom,” on Tuesday, Feb. 24.

It’s not every day that a Port City bar hosts an author reading, but RiverRun events coordinator Michele Filgate hopes it will be “the perfect mix of booze and books.” Filgate modeled the idea after a similar literary series in Massachusetts called Four Stories. She attended a recent installment of the series at a martini bar in Boston.

Late last month, police in Manchester arrested a 43-year-old man for allegedly stealing a number of unattended purses, wallets, checkbooks and credit cards from several homes and businesses. A brief article about the arrest posted on the Union Leader’s Web site spurred a short chain of comments from readers.

“And it’s one, two, three strikes he’s out!” wrote Rob, of Manchester.

“Lock him up and throw away the key!” added Jim, also of Manchester.

February has arrived, and close to 2,000 musicians around the globe are now holed up like hobbits in their bedrooms, basements, attics, garages—wherever they managed to clear out some space for a makeshift studio—recording new albums for the 2009 RPM Challenge. Although their methods may vary wildly, each band’s ultimate goal is the same: to write and record 10 songs or 35 minutes of original music by March 1.

The Seacoast marked the fourth annual challenge with a kickoff party at The Press Room in Portsmouth on the evening of Jan. 31. By the end of the next day, around 2,000 artists had signed up to participate in Record Production Month.

Only once has sixth-degree black belt Matt Randall been forced to use his martial arts training outside the ring or classroom. He was at a bar in Durham while in college when he accidentally bumped into another patron, spilling some of his beer. The man became “quite irate” and grabbed Randall’s shoulder. In a flash, Randall swept the assailant’s arm and locked up his wrist. He then calmly advised the man that accosting him was a “bad idea.”

how New Hampshire could benefit from President Obama’s stimulus plan

As the U.S. Congress considers one of the costliest bills ever to hit its desks, many state officials and citizens are wondering what New Hampshire stands to gain from President Barack Obama’s proposed $825 billion economic stimulus plan.

The latest version of the proposal put together by Obama’s economic team and House Democratic leaders reportedly calls for federal spending of $550 billion and tax cuts totaling $275 billion over the next two years. Votes on the controversial bill known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan should come within the next few weeks, kicking off the freshly inaugurated president’s first term with a mighty big bang. The plan is intended to generate up to 4 million jobs nationally.
Because the bill has not been finalized, it’s unclear how much money would funnel into New Hampshire or how it would be distributed within the state. But many state agencies and municipalities already have their stimulus wish lists drawn up—including Portsmouth and Dover.

Forget the $70 lift tickets, gas money for the two-hour trek to the slopes, airport-priced resort food, lessons and equipment. No doubt, there are things to be depressed about financially right now, but the exorbitant cost of winter sports does not have to be one of them. Alpine skiing and snowboarding are merely two options among a long list of winter sports that rival in adventure and win in affordability.

cross country skiing

Long before the days of gondolas, groomed trails and manmade snow, people in northern latitudes set out on skis as a mode of winter travel. Invented by the Nordic peoples of Norway and Sweden 1,000 years ago, cross country or Nordic skiing exists today as a sport of worldwide popularity.

Hillary Behr, a Dover resident and long-time skier, says she loves cross country because it can be done almost anywhere.

In a world battling with bombs, aching with hunger, plagued by AIDS epidemic, and rampant with deforestation and desertification, why is 2009 the International Year of Astronomy?  While many of us are fretting about problems here on Earth, the United Nations General Assembly, the major governing body responsible for linking particular dates with international meaning, has endorsed space as a focal point for international attention in 2009.

The choice highlights the 400-year anniversary of the first scientific use of the telescope by Galileo, an event that empirically debunked the widely held belief that the Earth was the center of the universe. By refining the spyglass used by sailors, Galileo constructed the telescope from which he was able to observe craters on the moon, the phases of Venus, the four biggest moons orbiting Jupiter and individual stars in the Milky Way, all of which were previously unknown.

At 85 years old, the characteristic sea foam green that the Memorial Bridge wore so well in her youth is being replaced with signs of old age. Deep red blotches pattern her once smooth skin. Her life has been dedicated to public service, and a wonderful hostess she has been. She welcomes travelers by foot, car or ship, assuring a safe journey to all who approach.

The bridge works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So, at the respectable age of 85, it should come as no surprise that specialists are calling for major surgery. The procedure is far more expensive than anyone anticipated, but unless the operation is performed, our dear old Memorial Bridge may have less than five years to live.

Eric Waleryszak was 14 years old when he took down his first deer. It was before 7 a.m. on Oct. 13, 1962, when he spotted the doe in the woods of Norwich, Vt. From a distance of 30 feet, he pulled his bow taut and launched a single arrow that lodged in the animal’s side, and with that, the young teen had bagged himself a 100-pound whitetail deer.

Since then, Waleryszak has killed a total of 26 deer, most of them with a bow and arrow. His most recent kill came in Kensington on the icy-cold morning of Nov. 22, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, when he got a small spike horn buck with a shotgun. With the 50 pounds of meat the animal yielded, Waleryszak made steaks, chops, roasts, tenderloin and venison stew, which he shared with his family.

tree lighting, parades & santa

Dec. 4 Exeter Open House and Festival of Trees: The tenth annual festival takes place during the annual downtown Open House, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., at local stores. The event includes hay rides and tree lighting at 5 p.m. with Santa. More than 40 dazzling live trees will adorn Town Hall from 2 to 8 p.m., then will be auctioned off to benefit the Exeter Area Chamber Children’s Fund, which provides warm clothing and bedding for local children during the winter. Other events include an art show at the Town Hall from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and a Gift Bazaar and performances by a handbell choir every twenty minutes at the Congregational Church from 4 to 8 p.m. For more information, call 603-772-2411.

Dec. 5 Light Up Durham tree lighting with Santa, bonfire and dessert, starting at 5:45 p.m. on the Main Street stage. See “Festivals” (below) for a full schedule of events.

If Holly Balch was getting paid to be a stay-at-home mom, she’d be earning overtime.

Most days start around 5 a.m., getting the older children ready for school, followed by cleaning the five-bedroom apartment in Dover, filling appointments and caring for the toddlers into the afternoon. Then, there’s supervising homework and chores, making dinner and, finally, getting the kids to bed.   

The holidays are even more chaotic than other days for a family with eight young children, she said, but Balch and her husband make sure the family sits down together and says a prayer before each meal. They share what they’re thankful for, and she says they’re “healthy and happy.” This year, though, she’s especially thankful for a food basket from Cornucopia Food Pantry with a turkey and all the trimmings.