Local
Youth Services Benefit Magic Show, by renowned "Frates Creations",
at the Epsom Fire Station 2/26 at 2 pm. Sponsored by the
Epsom-Chichester Lions and Fire Aux.
Admission by donation. Refreshments served. Call 736-9942 for more
information.
Northwood Softball Baseball Registration
The
registration deadline for the 2012 season of the Northwood Softball
Baseball Association is March 4, 2012. Please get the registration
and volunteer forms mailed in and postmarked by March 3rd.
We are
pleased to announce that our spring clinics will begin on March 4th
and will be held at the Northwood School gym. More information will
be posted on the website soon. This year the clinics are free to
those who have registered for 2012 season. We will be accepting
registration and volunteer forms on the day of the clinic without
the late fee being added on.
Please visit the website at
www.northwoodsoftballbaseball.org for more information.
From
Northwood’s Own Headwaters Of The Lamprey River,
NALMC
Proudly Present
Michael Caduto
•
Saturday, February 25, 2012
• 4 – 8
pm
•
Northwood Community Center
• Free
and open to the public
Michael
J. Caduto, who is well known as the co-author of the Keepers of the
Earth books and A Time Before New Hampshire, will share stories,
songs and indigenous stewardship traditions. Caduto is known
internationally for his entertaining, dynamic presentations of
science, storytelling, song and stewardship; the programs he
presents here have a special connection to rivers.
For his
children’s program Caduto uses storytelling, songs and chants to
immerse his audience in freshwater life and native stewardship
traditions.
His
exciting family program explores different paths toward
understanding the science and stewardship of riparian buffers–the
habitats along the edges of streams and rivers that serve as
guardians of aquatic ecosystems and the life therein. Michael will
also introduce Riparia’s River, his new children’s picture book
(Tilbury House Publishers).
Schedule
4 pm –
Keepers of the Waters: Stories and Songs of Stewardship; a fun
program for children
5:15 pm
– Book Signing
6 pm –
Potluck Supper
7 pm –
Riparian Buffers as Bridges: Exploring the Guardians of our Rivers
and Streams; an engaging program for the whole family.
For more information and to RSVP contact: Steve Bailey at
[email protected]
or 603-608-6624
Visit Michael Caduto’s website:
www.p-e-a-c-e.net
Letter
Be
Careful What You Wish For – SB2
Northwood School District’s first deliberative session under the SB2
form of government on February 9th was anything but a deliberation.
Rather, for the approximate 8% of registered voters (170) who
attended, it was a travesty for local representative government.
When I
attempted to amend one of the warrant articles to fund it from
surplus rather than taxation, the moderator deferred to the school
board’s attorney. She indicated she had a conversation with an
individual at the state Department of Revenue Administration (DRA)
about this. That individual allegedly informed her that under SB2 a
voter could not amend an article at the deliberative session to have
the funding source be surplus. The reason given was that the voters
were not "forewarned" about this amendment.
As a
result, the moderator refused to even allow my amendment to be read
into the record and voted on. When I called DRA the next day they
informed me that legally, I should have been able to make that
amendment, regardless of SB2.
On
another warrant article (Educational Support Personnel Contract),
the total cost that went to the budget committee was $55,487.
However, at this deliberative session, the school board announced
that due to a "clerical error" (of $117,984) the revised total
contract was now $173,471, an increase of 212% from the amount
disclosed at the Budget Committee’s public hearing.
When I
explained this to DRA, I received a written response from their
municipal auditor. It stated, "Additional purposes or appropriation
amounts cannot be inserted in the warrant or budget if not discussed
at a public budget hearing. However, amounts may be amended at the
annual meeting, special meeting, or deliberative session". This did
not happen and resulted in another miscue.
Fortunately, there are avenues available to recover from "procedural
errors" made at annual school meetings.
Sincerely,
Jim
Hadley
Northwood
Letter
To The Editor
We would
like to thank all the people who contributed to the Witham Family
Fund. It is very much appreciated. Kenny is home recovering now
after almost 4 months of being in the hospital.
We would
also like to thank our good friends and family members who drove
Donna, at night after work, to the hospitals, (Concord Hospital.,
Peabody Mass., and Portsmouth Rehab).
Thank
you to everyone who helped build the ramp at our house, and to Tim
for donating the lumber for it .
We are
just so grateful for the generosity and kindness everyone has shown
us.
Thank
you,
The
Witham Family
Under
the Radar
Submitted By Shelley Frost
One of
Northwood’s best-kept secrets is the Congregational Church – not for
its Greek Revival architectural style, but for the community within.
We are an energetic bunch and our mission is to be followers of
Christ who are committed to building a welcoming and loving
community so that we may serve others.
From a
¾-time pastor to a fun and lively choir, weekly Sunday School with
nursery to an active missions committee, a prayer chain and
interesting lay preachers, there is a place for all.
We’ve
been enjoying the season of the church year called Epiphany, which
celebrates the expression of God’s Holy Spirit. We’ve shared poetry,
dance, storytelling and live music. We prepared for the season of
Lent in a fusion of New England and Southern style with a Fat
Tuesday Pancake Supper and Lenten meditation.
Come see
what we’re up to for Easter, and bring a friend - all are welcome!
We’re ‘the church with a heart, found just east of Coe Brown
Northwood Academy on Route 4.
Letter
Say you
got a brightly colored mailer with the notice that "This mailing was
prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense," and discovered
that it was full of lies and misrepresentations about the supposedly
"wonderful" things your congressman was doing for you as a senior
citizen. You know that because you have done your homework. Would
you be annoyed? "Annoyed" is probably not the word, is it?
But in a
way the most annoying thing was noticing the flyer tells you Frank
Guinta has two offices set up to serve you. My first thought was,
"Gee, he finally opened another office in NH, like Carol Shea-Porter
and Jeb Bradley used to have; one in Manchester and one on the
Seacoast." But no, there’s one in Manchester and the other is...in
Washington DC! That’s a big help for the lobbyists there, but not so
much for his constituents here in NH-01.
I was
talking with a friend the other day, and he told me that he would
always vote for Carol Shea-Porter, because she is honest. I bet he
has been getting the same flyers from Mr. Guinta that I have, and
has done some homework too.
Lucy
Edwards
Northwood
Letter
Your
Vote Counts!
Three
years ago when the polls closed and the votes were tallied I was
holding a one-vote lead. A recount was completed a few days later
and the votes were officially finalized at 205 to 204. I had become
Northwood’s newest Selectman. It has been an absolute honor to
represent the citizens of Northwood. I am proud to be a Selectman
and to be part of this fabulous town.
In
addition to working for you as a Selectman, I am employed as the
Chief Financial Officer of Hampshire Fire Protection, in
Londonderry. My extensive financial background has helped me to
properly and effectively manage your hard earned tax dollars. I am
very pleased to have been a key contributor in keeping the tax
increase to a minimum this year. Given the opportunity, I believe
that we can have the same good fortune next year.
As
Selectman, I have been helping craft the 2012 Town Budget, since
last August. I have attended the budget meetings, as well as all of
the Public Hearings, and worked with the Budget Committee to
finalize the operating budget. I am the only candidate who attended
these important budget meetings.
Serving
as your Selectman has been a highlight in my career. It would be my
pleasure to continue to work with and for you, for the next 3 years.
Remember to vote on Tuesday, March 13th. Your vote is very much
appreciated. Thank you!
Selectman Bob Holden
The
Northwood Bears 3rd and 4th grade girls basketball team ended their
season with a record of 5-1-2, which was the best in their division.
Members of the team are: front row (left to right) Morgan Tatem,
Paige Valli, Makayla DeButts, and Alex Elliot; back row (left to
right) Asst. Coach Tim Cox, Jennifer Bettencourt, Addison Cox, Mary
Thoms, Madison Tatem, and Coach Dave Elliot.
Letter
In this
season of primaries, caucuses, and town hall meetings we should be
acutely aware of and thankful for our liberties as Americans. The
First Amendment to our Constitution says:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom
of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances."
So we
are guaranteed freedom of speech, press, and assembly, and the right
to seek redress, rights bought at great cost by our forefathers.
Therefore, in our open society we don’t suppress information or
people, or support those who do, because, as Thomas Jefferson said
in his first inaugural speech, "Error of opinion may be tolerated
where reason is left free to combat it."
Zechariah Chafee was a Harvard Law School professor whose books
greatly influenced New England’s great Supreme Court Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes. He spoke about our first amendment rights in his
book Freedom of Speech: "We all believe in freedom of speech, but
the question is, do we believe in it when it is disagreeable to us?
After all, if freedom of speech means anything, it means a
willingness to stand and let people say things with which we
disagree, and which do weary us considerably."
If we
are timid when fundamental rights are being violated, if we shrink
from standing up for our rights, if we look the other way when
others are denied their rights, we will gradually lose those rights.
Our unique heritage of freedom of expression must never be
compromised.
Michael
Faiella
Northwood
Letter
In
response to Tim Jandebeur’s writing, regarding Northwood’s Town
Moderator:
1) Even
more frustrating than the erratic behavior of the Moderator was the
inept audio set up with dysfunctional and disturbing output. The A-V
technician was lacking in expertise and skill on this night.
2)
Regarding the moderator, no doubt his actions and behavior over the
years are as biased as an Iron Curtain news agency, spewing
misinformation, misrepresenting critical facts, and sometimes
protecting the guilty and obvious, suppressing the truth and overall
free speech.
A
replacement moderator has been long overdue.
The
pro-school clique that huddled "as cheerleaders" for more school
money made the usual "meaningless noise" yet it is doubtful they
will invest ten minutes to have their votes counted, as Mr.
Jandebeur infers in his writing.
Honorable Mention: Jim Vaillancourt’s straight forward presentation
of Budget Committee findings and recommendation to the voters.
Dis-Honorable Mention: Helen Ash, as presiding school board
spokesperson, totally overlooking any mention of a fellow school
board member who is making a steady medical comeback after months of
ICU treatment and rehabilitation, yet touting recognition and
compassion for fellow crony Dave Ruth, present school board
president, absent from this event due to a family emergency.
Ken Rick
Northwood
Northwood Recreation Update
The
Northwood Recreation Department is offering ABC Music and Me, taught
by Miss Kim. The program offers 4 weeks of themed classes. Each
class will include instrument exploration, basic keyboard
introduction, and singing and dancing. Class will meet on Thursday,
March 15th, 22nd, 29th, and April 5th from 10:00-10:45 at the
Northwood Community Hall. This class is designed for children 3 to 5
years old. Register by March 8th. Cost is $17/child and
$12/additional sibling.
The class is open to both Northwood residents and non-residents.
Register in advance with the Recreation Department. Registration
forms and additional information can be found online at
http://recreation.northwoodnh.org/.
Chesley
Memorial Library
Book Launch
The
Chesley Memorial Library and Friends will host a book launch for
Rebecca Rule’s new book "Moved and Seconded: Town Meeting in New
Hampshire, the Present, the Past, and the Future" at the Northwood
Masonic Hall on Saturday, March 3, at 6:00 p.m. Becky will share
stories from her new book and autographed copies will be available
for purchase. For a small donation, audience members will be able to
enjoy light refreshments (including baked beans to bring back
memories of town meetings of days gone by!)
Town
Meeting is a sacred institution in New Hampshire. It has rituals,
traditions, and a unique history. Town meeting is democracy in its
purest form.
For
three years, noted New Hampshire author Rebecca Rule has been
gathering stories, attending town meetings and writing "Moved and
Seconded: Town Meeting in New Hampshire, the Present, the Past, and
the Future." She has crafted an instant New Hampshire classic.
In
"Moved and Seconded", you’ll meet the characters who keep the drama
cracking, from silent knitters to rabble-rousers, from deep-rooted
hoary historians to transplants, from across-the-board cutters to
homespun philosophers. You’ll dip into the literature – poems,
novels, short stories and essays – some by famous writers and some
by writers who may be new to you. You’ll sample the legendary dry
humor as well as the down-home wisdom, which inspires well beyond
the walls of the Olde Meeting House.
"Moved and Seconded" is a colorful portrait of a unique
institution with a storied past and an uncertain future.
Rebecca
Rules has several credits. Her collection of short stories, "The
Best Revenge," was named one of five essential New Hampshire books
by New Hampshire Magazine. Other books include "Could Have Been
Worse: True Stories, Embellishments, and Outright Lies"; and "Live
Free and Eat Pie: A Storyteller’s Guide to NH", and "Headin’ for the
Rhubarb: A New Hampshire Dictionary (well, kinda)."
She
writes regularly for UNH Magazine and hosts an interview show, the
New Hampshire Authors Series, on New Hampshire Public Television.
She
performs a touring program called Crosscut, with photographs and
stories on logging, the mills, and the community of Berlin. She has
received an honorary doctorate from New England College for
storytelling and contributions to New Hampshire literature,
prompting her to change her nickname from the Moose of Humor to
Doctor Moose of Humor.
Three
years of research and writing took the author from town to town,
archive to archive as she traced the 300 year history of this
uniquely New England institution, studied its evolution, and
witnessed how it works – and it still does – today. She interviewed
longtime moderators and town meeting enthusiasts with long memories.
Additional help came from officials and historians in many towns, as
well as from contributors who’d done some thinking and writing about
town meeting themselves. Dartmouth Professor Jere Daniell
contributed a chapter on how New England town meeting was perceived
in America over the years – the pendulum swinging from town meeting
the best of democracy in action to anachronism and back. Writer and
historian Ron Jager wrote in lively detail about two Washington town
meetings one held in the 1970s and one in the 1990s – what changed,
what didn’t.
And who
knew town meeting is well represented in literature, including poems
by Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon, Dudley Laufman, Jody Wells, Neil
English, and former New Hampshire Poet Laureate Marie Harris.
Winston Churchill, not the English fellow, the New Hampshire
novelist, shows how a town meeting can shift power from the old
guard to the new in his 1906 political potboiler, "Coniston". A
crucial scene in Ernest Hebert’s classic, "The Dogs of March", takes
place at, you guessed it, town meeting.
Of
course, Rule includes a chapter on town meeting humor: "Fella run
for selectman once. Unopposed. And he lost."
Yes,
town meeting is serious business, but with plenty of room for (and
need for) belly laughs, as Ken Sheldon, also known as Fred Marple,
sage of Frost Heaves, NH, shows in his short story, "Heaves, Hoops
and Early Hadley: The Shocking Truth about What Went on at Town
Meeting."
"I’ve
always loved town meeting," Rule says. "I love the drama, the sense
of the community, the idea that together we can figure out what’s
best for our town."
Ironically, as she was finishing up the book in 2011, her town,
Northwood, voted town meeting out in favor of SB2 and Deliberative
Sessions. "That was a blow," she says, "It made a tidy ending to my
chapter on 250 years of town meetings in Northwood, but it was a
blow." She explains the differences between traditional town meeting
and SB2 and adds her voice to many concerned about the future of the
institution.
On a
hopeful note, Professors Inez McDermott and Maura McNeil at New
England College teach a course on town meeting. Students Zach Harris
and Ashley Paul write:
Where
will you find a place where an individual voice can still be
recognized, accounted for, and really mean something?
Perhaps
it is outdated to use a system that has been around for over 300
years, but in a developing culture where voice and individuality are
cocrucial, why would we even consider limiting the voice of every
person? A pen is mightier than the sword, but a voice is mightier
than a pen. Town Meeting’s roots are historical, cultural,
influential, and are symbolic to the founding of the United States
of America.
Not
every New Hampshire town found a spot in "Moved and Seconded", but a
lot of them did, from Langdon, which boasts the record for the most
consecutive town meetings held in the same hall, to Mason, which has
fought the good fight against SB2 for years, and is still fighting.
"Moved
and Seconded" makes stops in Andover, Bow, Brookline, Cornish,
Deerfield, Exeter, Franconia, Gilmanton, Hillsborough, Lincoln, New
London, Nottingham, Plymouth, Seabrook, Weare, Wilmot, and many
others.
Turns
out over the years a lot of folks have had something to say about
town meeting. Back in the early 1800s, French writer Alexis de
Toqueville, declared it, a "more perfect" democracy, "than any of
which antiquity had dared to dream." Ralph Waldo Emerson was a fan.
As was Thomas Jefferson who said, "Town meetings have proved
themselves the wisest invention every devised by the wit of man for
the perfect exercise of self-government and for its preservation."
James Madison, on the other hand, didn’t trust group decisions
making: "In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character,
passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every
Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would have
been a mob."
Henry
David Thoreau called town meeting "the true congress." And he meant
it as a compliment. He wrote, "When, in some obscure country town,
the farmers come together at a special town meeting to express their
opinions on some subject which is vexing the land, that, I think, is
the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever
assembled in the United States."
"Move
and Seconded" is a tour of New Hampshire then and now through the
lens of one of its oldest and most respected institutions, town
meeting.
Letter
To The Editor
Budgeting is an extremely important part of any organization. If you
don’t take it seriously it’s at your peril. The Northwood Town
budget this year is an example of a thoughtful budget process. It
takes time and work. In a Budget Committee Town the BC is tasked
with taking the budget submitted by the Selectmen and using all
available info, crunching it and submitting it to the voters. Works
well.
Ditto
for the school budget, until it gets to the works well part. I like
the system, the School Board does not. Short of a blank check, I am
not sure what would please them. The problem is that it’s a well
known "secret" that we are paying a lot more for a lot less. Why?
The answer is how we spend the money. Budgeting is not taken
seriously, the money is not going to the kids. So when a lady gets
up and says that students are sharing books (she is right) she is
thinking that there is a lack of money. Baloney! Other
districts spend thousands less per child and educate them better.
How do they do that? If you look at their budgeting, more of the
money appropriated from the taxpayers to educate students, in fact,
goes to those students. They have books, pencils and paper.
Just
like our Country, the Northwood School District does not have a
revenue problem, it has a spending problem. Contemplate that while
you think of your voting options.
Tim Jandebeur
Northwood
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