Epsom Bible Church invites you to join our Monte Carlo Night (Wist
Game) on Saturday, January 18th, 2014. This fun adult fellowship
event begins at 6:00 PM and will be held on premises at 398 Black
Hall Road in Epsom. If you would like, please bring something salty
or sweet to munch on. Hot food is OK, but please don’t prepare a
meal. Beverages will be provided.
Snow date is 01/25. Any weather cancellations will be
made through our Facebook Page at Epsom Bible Church and our
internal One Call system. Also check the website at
www.ebcnh.com for weather
cancellations. You can call our office at 736-9354 for more
information or directions.
Free Social Security Workshop
Bill Meyers of Meyers Financial will be speaking at a Free Social
Security seminar on Monday, February 24 and again on Tuesday,
February 25, at 7:00 PM both nights. This seminar will be held at
the Epsom Public Library on 1606 Dover Road (Route 4), Epsom. People
with questions about their Social Security should attend either
event, ready with their questions for Bill Meyers. Please RSVP by
calling the Meyers Financial office at 603-225-6235.
Letter
To my constituents in Allenstown, Epsom, and Pittsfield,
This week, the House met to finish the 2013 session, with the only
real business left three vetoed bills. HB183, which allows election
workers to start processing absentee ballots two hours after the
polls open, was briefly debated and the veto sustained, 176-163. The
vetoes on HB403, establishing a committee to study end of life
decisions, and HB505, changing the composition of the economic
development advisory council, were also sustained, 124-218 and
165-175. After adopting deadlines for House activities through June,
we adjourned and came back from lunch to the 2014 session.
516 new bills were introduced and sent to committees, then we dealt
with 68 old bills at once. HB525, raising the age of minority from
17 to 18 for the criminal justice system, passed 324-17 without any
debate. Then we had HB544, which became the most important bill of
the session. This had been an attempt to repeal the ban on a state
healthcare exchange, rejected unanimously by the Commerce committee.
However, since we had passed Medicaid expansion in the special
session (it died in the Senate), the Speaker was determined to pass
it again.
Nobody had changed their mind in the meantime, so this was an
exercise in posturing. The original motion to kill the bill failed,
165-178, so the amendment on Medicaid expansion passed, 186 -155,
after a number of procedural motions failed and despite my speech
against. After additional procedural motions failed, the bill passed
182-154, with all votes overwhelmingly on party lines.
After that, we passed (on a voice vote and without debate) SB92,
which forbids insurors to mandate a patient fail more than once on a
cheaper drug than his doctor prescribed.
Interested readers can email me for my newsletter, with more details
than fit here.
Representative Carol McGuire
[email protected]
782-4918
Letter
To my constituents in Epsom and Pittsfield,
The 2014 legislative session has started and I wanted to tell you
about HB 1369. While most of my bills were suggested by constituents
(thanks!), this one, the Uniform Marital Property Act, wasn’t. It
has three major benefits: reducing or eliminating federal capital
gains taxes for widows and widowers, less contentious property
division in divorce, and more flexible estate planning for couples.
Due to historical accident, there are two ways that states structure
their law dealing with how married couples legally own property. One
is what we have now, English common law, and the other is what the
bill would implement, community property. There are ten community
property states including Texas and California. Under community
property law, a marriage is an economic unit so property earned
during marriage is owned by the marriage and would be split 50-50 in
a divorce.
The federal tax advantage comes when one spouse dies and the
surviving spouse inherits their property. For example, suppose a
couple starts a business. Years later the husband dies, and the wife
sells it for $100,000. In New Hampshire today, the wife would pay a
$10,000 capital gains tax to the IRS, calculated as follows. She
inherited her husband’s half when it was worth $50,000, then she
sold it for $50,000, so no gain. Her own half had a gain of $50,000,
the tax rate is 20%, therefore the tax is $10,000. In a community
property state the wife inherits the entire business from the
marriage when it is worth $100,000. Then when she sells it for
$100,000 there is no gain and no tax!
This is a big bill with a lot more details. Feel free to call or
email with questions or comments.
Yours,
Rep. Dan McGuire
782-4918
[email protected]
Epsom Central School Staff And Faculty
Mr. Carl Swain, Music Teacher
A visitor to Mr. Swain’s classroom notes a wide variety of musical
instruments around the room, as well as colorful posters covering
the walls, which were an assignment to middle school students to map
out (timing, arrangement, artist, etc.) their favorite song. Mr.
Swain teaches classroom music to Grades K-8, and sees each group 45
times a year. He characterizes his teaching approach as
differentiation, both in terms of tailoring instruction to each
student and also emphasizing on one of the six approaches to music:
vocal, instrumentation, dance, reading and writing, production, and
critical appraisal. Mr. Swain is proficient in the flute, clarinet,
trumpet, trombone, and piano, and will practice on any instrument in
which a student is interested in order to play along with them. One
of his classroom sessions praised by other teachers is an intriguing
drum routine played by 12 kids who beat on drums, buckets, and
plastic cups in different rhythms and phases.
Mr. Swain has BS Ed from UConn and a Masters in Music Appreciation
from UNH. He focused on band instruments in college, which
emphasizes wind instruments and percussion. He taught in the
Colebrook area for four years, in Barrington for 12 years, and is
now in his sixth year in Epsom.
Mr. Swain once taught band and chorus, but found he lacked the time
to teach those subjects properly. His favorite aspects of teaching
are those moments when he can connect with kids doing exciting
things around making or listening to or moving to music. He enjoys
the way his teammates support one another and also the ways in which
Epsom Central makes the best of the tools and resources available.
By way of illustration, Mr. Swain points out that, when a problem
arises, Admin is flexible in altering schedules, personnel, and
budgets to solve the problem. He believes that parents should, as a
minimum, have one meal a day together as a family, which he feels
will make a huge difference in their child’s growth and development.
Mr. Swain lives in Barrington with his wife of 24 years, Dorothy, and a school nurse at Barrington Elementary. Their three sons are,
respectively, a BU graduate, a Northeastern undergrad, and a Dover
High School senior. In his spare time, Mr. Swain enjoys woodworking
and playing his trumpet.
Epsom Public Library News
Early American Handmade Pottery
Jeff Lalish of Northwood Stone Pottery will speak at the Epsom
library about his work as a potter on Saturday, January 18, at 2:00
p.m.
Beginning with redware in the 1600-1700’s through salt-glazed
stoneware of the 1800‘s, he will also discuss the impact of the
Industrial Revolution. At that time, mass-produced wares replaced
the hand-thrown pottery, introducing such new wares as creamware and
spongeware.
Jeff will also include his many years of pottery at his
grandparents’ farmhouse in downtown East Northwood, his wife’s
artistic contributions, and subsequent owners through 2010 when new
owners moved the business to North Carolina.
Anyone attending is welcome to bring in their own pieces to be
looked at and discussed.
Book Club
The Book Club will meet on Wednesday, January 15, at 7:00 p.m. to
discuss Part One of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, a book
concerning “The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.” The book
concentrates on the personality and character of Lincoln and his
cabinet.
Doris Kearns Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1995 for
No Ordinary Time, an in-depth work on Eleanor and Franklin
Roosevelt.
Anyone wishing to join in the discussion is invited to drop by the
library to pick up a copy of the book.
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