Local voices chime in on a variety of topics.
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. Â
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?