World Day Of Prayer

The 2012 World Day of Prayer service will be held at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on Friday, March 2nd at 1 pm. As has been the custom for many years, all churches in Northwood will join together for this community prayer service.

St. Joseph’s Church is located next to the town hall, near the intersection of Route 4 and Bow Lake Road in Northwood Center. Everyone is welcome to attend; refreshments will be served after the service.

Michelle Williams from Northwood, NH, has been named to Fisher College’s Dean’s List for the Fall 2011 semester.

To qualify for Dean’s List, students must achieve a minimum grade-point average of 3.3, earn at least 12 graded credits, and have no failing grades throughout the semester.

Center School To Hold Parent Cooperative Preschool Auction

The 12th Annual Auction will be held on Saturday, March 31st at the Bow Lake Grange Hall in Strafford. A preview of the auction items starts at 6:30 and the auction will begin at 7:00 pm.

There will be many exciting items to bid on, including a Tornado Wood Bench, Annalee Snowman Doll, Sky Diving gift certificate, night at the Holiday Inn, Jellystone Park Camping Weekend, night at The Inns and Spa at Mill Falls, Chichester Massage, See Science Center Family Membership, York’s Wild Kingdom Passes, Handmade Items, Monarchs and Fisher Cats Tickets, many gift certificates for area restaurants and other businesses, and of course the "famous" preschool bowls. With so many diverse items, there will be great bargains and lots of fun.

The Center School is a preschool located next to the Northwood town hall in the old American Legion building. It is indeed a small one-room school house! Since it is a parent cooperative preschool, it is up to the parents to raise money for items such as playground equipment, classroom supplies, and any building repairs. The annual auction is the school’s biggest fundraiser. Local businesses are contacted for a donation to our school, a non-profit organization, which we then auction off. Thank you to all who donated items or services for the auction, last year as well as this year. We are hoping this year’s auction will be our biggest yet! This year’s proceeds will be used to do some building maintenance for the 200+ year old schoolhouse and purchase bookcases, shelving, and some new playground equipment.

For more information or to make a donation, call the Center School at 942-7686.

Letter To The Editor

Early in February (Feb. 8) you printed a letter from Dan Schroth Piermarocchi about the stone wall he’s building in front of David Docko’s "rock pit" on Route 4 in Northwood. Dan writes "David tells me this hill was once called mile marker hill due to there used to be a granite highway marker near the top of the hill."

Almost right, but, as Northwood’s town historian, I’d like to make a correction, changing mile marker to mile stone.

Route 4 was originally the first turnpike in New Hampshire. It was built as a private enterprise (no state highway funding then) and was a toll road. It extended from the Piscataqua River to the Merrimac in Concord, a distance of thirty-six miles. Each mile was marked by a slender post, rounded at the top. A mile stone.

Now most of those markers no longer exist, or are broken and buried. Only a few remain.

In Northwood there is the bottom half of one of the markers just west of the entrance to Bow Lake Road. There’s a state sign beside it to make identification easier. Traveling east to west that identified marker is the one preceding the location of the one that gave the hill its name, the hill leading down to the Narrows.

Depending on a number of variables in the measuring, the mile marker would have been near the eastern end of the wall Dan is building near the top of Mile Stone Hill.

Joann W. Bailey

Northwood

CBNA Theatre Presents Killing Bill And But We Don’t

Prepare for an evening of fun as Coe Brown Northwood Academy Theatre presents an evening of two one act plays, Killing Bill and But We Don’t by Vermont playwright Alan Haehnel on March 8, 9, 10, 2012, at 7 pm in the Gerrish Gym on the CBNA campus.

The first, Killing Bill is the story of a newspaper reporter, Don, (senior Tom Masison) who is determined to get an interview with Shelly Mackerel (senior Kendall MacGowen), the director of the strangest version of King Lear that he’s ever seen. As the interview illuminates Shelly’s bizarre artistic choices, we see her version of Lear in all of its pseudo-Eastern glory complete with dubbing, Karate battles, giant pancakes and flying forks.

The cast features the talents of seniors Tyler Bowden, Samantha Lepicier, Matt Paganelli, Quinn Palmer, Erin Powers and Emily Yurek; juniors Marianna Barnhart, Ashlyn Correia, Ryan Cunningham, Kylie Gagnon, Mariah Mazzochi, Kestyn Ritchotte, and Noey Struthers; sophomores Erin Barnard, Taylor Bowden, Kennedy Chaney, Shane Chittum, Branden Emerson, Jessica Gallant, Gwen Horne, and Allyson La France; and freshmen Setse Bush, Jillian Burrows, Julia Collins, Rachel Dallaire, Jordan Roach and Colton Rush.

The other short play, But We Don’t, centers on a group of students asking themselves this simple question, "Why not do all the things we possibly could?" and soon find out that the answer is anything but simple. This ensemble cast features Matt Paganelli, Kylie Gagnon, Quinn Palmer, Marianna Barnhart, Olivia Anatone, Tyler Bowden, Kyle Bousquet, Mariah Mazzochi, Allison Irish, Julia Collins, Taylor Olsson, Samantha Lepicier, Kestyn Ritchotte, Jordan McAllister, Ashlyn Correia, Shane Chittum, Samantha Corwin and Taylor Pitre.

Reserved tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for students and seniors and will be available after March 5th by calling 942-5531, ext. 237, by email at [email protected] or at the main office.

Letter To The Editor

It is important to me you have the correct facts all of the time but especially now, at voting time, 3/13/12.

If you vote yes on all of the School issues you will be raising the Budget Committee’s recommended school expenditures over $820,000. That, in and of itself, speaks volumes. Your call, you know my position. Our problems are not from lack of money.

But, when you get in the voting booth, School Article #5, the support staff contract, deserves special scrutiny. In my opinion, there are three problems that stand out. 1) There are expensive provisions in this contract that were not discussed at any legal School Board Meeting. 2) The cost of the contract is inaccurately portrayed. The step increases for year 3 and 4 are far more than stated or the contract is miswritten; horrible attention to detail. In addition, I believe the insurance cost are wrong but I have been blocked from that information, an answer in itself.

3) The worst. Two monsters are being created. It separates 7 para-educators from the other 19 (previously always equal) with more hours, more expensive benefits, better training, and much more. It also divides out the care of special needs children. So if your child is autistic he/she receives education from 7 para-educators who get more of everything from money to training.

If your child is intellectually disabled, has a speech, language, emotional or orthopedic disability, an acquired brain injury, or is developmentally delayed, he or she will get instruction from a para-educator who gets less. Not class but Special Education warfare.

Vote No! But vote yes on Article #6 to give the new Board a chance to rework this contract.

Tim Jandebeur

Northwood

Letter

Free and Open Discussion

Free and open discussion is the essence of the democratic process. Robert’s Rules of Order are clear and logical and insure fairness in decision making at meetings.

Robert’s says, "Debate, rightly understood, is an essential element in the making of rational decisions of consequence by intelligent people. In a deliberative assembly, this term applies to discussion on the merits of a pending question. That the right of debate is inherent in such an assembly is implied by the word deliberative."

Robert’s insists that "every member of the assembly has the right to speak to every debatable motion before it is finally acted upon, and…this right cannot be interfered with except by a two-thirds vote." Therefore, "the right of members to debate or introduce secondary motions cannot be cut off by the chair’s attempting to put a question to vote so quickly that no member can get the floor."

Nor should a citizen’s attempt to "call the question," or end debate, be successful without a two-thirds majority. Such a vote is required "for protecting the democratic process. If this rule were not observed, a temporary majority of only one vote could deny the remaining members all opportunity to discuss any measure that such a majority wished to adopt or kill."

At New Hampshire town meetings and deliberative sessions, citizens and their elected moderator can cooperate on a simple selection of Robert’s Rules whose principles ensure a fair and orderly process. Everyone should know that democratic meetings are meant to be controlled–not by a moderator and not by an impatient citizen–but by the people. In order for that to happen, however, citizens need to know their rights and be willing to assert them.

Michael Faiella

Northwood