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For those who may be unfamiliar with Padilla—and, let’s face it, he is not exactly a household name in the United States—his story is bizarre, yet strangely inspiring, in a dancing-with-madness type of way.
This column is about a particular car that was gifted to me at a particular time in history that honestly saved my sanity and is now a part of our family lore.
Before entering public service, I spent part of my professional career reviewing and drafting environmental and economic impact statements. Those documents shape major public decisions. They are supposed to present facts clearly, test assumptions rigorously, and weigh both benefits and costs honestly. I learned quickly that the most important question is not what an impact statement includes—but what it leaves out.
In early January 2025 a business leader was quoted anonymously celebrating the ability to use “retarded” again in polite company thanks to Donald Trump’s return to power. At the time, I had a bad feeling, this was a harbinger of things to come.
When we moved into our current house, almost a decade ago, my wife and I shared the downstairs bathroom. It’s a small, standard affair—a bathtub, a toilet, a sink—but it was tacitly agreed upon when we moved in that our three kids would share the bathroom upstairs, and we would take the one downstairs.
I wasn’t around in the ’80s, but lucky for me it was such an iconic era that there were lasting echoes which managed to reach even us kids from the late nineties and early 2000s. One of those echoes was the satanic panic. It’s a fascinating yet devastating situation that started as a mistake and snowballed into a conspiracy that affected thousands, resulting in decades of trauma, jail time, and, more relevant than ever, the modern interpretation of the Epstein files.
Writer and poet May Sarton prefaces her 1968 memoir Plant Dreaming Deep with an untitled poem whose last two lines are “…Homeward at last toward the native source /Seasoned and stretched to plant his dreaming deep.”
When HCA Healthcare stepped forward, they did far more than keep a hospital open. They preserved an anchor for the West Side, a part of the city that touches me deeply. And that anchor is not only holding steady, it is gaining strength.
I was talking to a friend on Friday, and we were discussing how everyone is different. We talked about how some people are introverts, some are extroverts, and some are ambiverts. Although I believe that everyone has tendencies of all three, people fall primarily into one of the three classifications.
So now it is time to plan for yet-another Sunday night Super Bowl party, another debauched outing where everyone tries to pretend that they’re not going to call out from work on Monday morning.
Throughout her 45-minute attempt at a victory lap, the Governor rattled off a laundry list of “accomplishments” and cherry-picked accolades from her time on the job. But at no point in her remarks did Ayotte display a genuine understanding of the dire financial straits that Granite Staters are facing under Republican leadership. And for all her talk about prioritizing affordability, she has a track record that says the exact opposite.
With February being Black History Month I thought I would dedicate this column to a woman I never met but I heard about my whole childhood, Fanny. Fanny was my mom’s caregiver when she was a little girl. Her parents were divorced, and this was in the 1920s, before divorce was common. My mom’s parents both worked, her father drove the 69th Street trolley in Philly and her mother worked in the PX at the Navy Yard. I think. My memory is not so great these days and my Mom is gone more than 20 years now.
At the February 3, 2026 meeting of the Manchester Board of Mayor and Aldermen, I spoke during the public comment portion to raise a practical issue related to snow removal and winter parking enforcement that many residents experience every winter, and to provide the Board with draft ordinance language for its consideration.
I could tell a hundred stories like this, but you get the point. Manchester isn’t a scary place. Unless, maybe you scare easily. I make an effort to talk to everyone that approaches me, and not everyone wants to do that. I accepted money from a drunk woman when she saw me walking home with the cat I’d just rescued in a rainstorm. I learned French behind Cat Alley from a Congolese man on my lunch break. Maybe doing those things are risky behaviors. I think they are the bare minimum of accepting socialization when it offers itself to you.
The documents released yesterday by the ACLU of New Hampshire confirm what many of us have feared: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been actively planning to build a detention facility in Merrimack while avoiding transparency and public input.
The home of Punxsutawney Phil in Pennsylvania is not easy to get to, either, not being on the way to someplace or other. You have to want to go there. And yes, about 10,000 souls descended on Punxsutawney yesterday, as they annually do, to bear witness to Phil the groundhog’s winter predictions.
House Bill 1703 seemed to suffer a setback, but it may rear its head again, possibly in some revised form.
Trump wants a ballroom citing national security and a simple argument: ballrooms are protected play spaces. The ballroom resembles a fenced sandbox. A $400,000 sandbox, but a sandbox, nonetheless. Guests can safely play. Trump exiled respectable reporters from the White House, so he’ll get positive coverage of his ballroom playdates. Is it necessary?
The purpose of our NH car inspection system is safety – it is not a question of whether we should have an inspection system, but what kind of inspection system. It needs updating, not tossing out. I believe the newly proposed system includes a 3 year grace period for new cars where no inspections are necessary. Sounds very reasonable. Other such changes should be discussed.
The towel, I’m going to assume, fell from the rack this morning as The Blonde Woman and The Gray-Haired Man were hurrying to get ready for work—harrowed as they often are at 6:30 a.m. while I snooze on their bed—and failed to notice the towel on the tiled floor.