Farmington school superintendent faces assault, obstruction charges

Town’s former health officer alleges confrontation over attempted lead inspection

By Daniel Sarch, Granite State News Collaborative

FARMINGTON — Farmington School Superintendent Giselle Pomeroy has been charged with two misdemeanor offenses: simple assault and obstructing government administration.

Arraignment is scheduled April 6 at 7th Circuit Court in Rochester.

The charges, filed by the Strafford County Attorney's Office, stem from an incident last September at Valley View Community School involving Mark Ekberg, Farmington's then-health officer. Ekberg had arrived at the school to check on the installation of a new oil storage tank, as well as the status of lead filters that had previously been installed.

According to an incident report filed by Ekberg, when he visited the school, he spoke with staff and, after leaving the building, sought to speak with the food service director. As he tried to reenter the school, he said Pomeroy confronted him.

The superintendent was “yelling at me, demanding that I leave the building,” adding that she told him he didn’t have the right to be in the building and shouldn’t be there, he said in the report.

Ekberg claimed Pomeroy told him he could not be in the school while students were present, but he told her she was preventing him from doing his job as health officer. After he protested that he was being denied access to the school, he suggested that she put her claims in writing. Ekberg said she ignored that request and alleged that she shoved him out of the building.

Multiple requests for comment from the superintendent’s office were met with no response.

However, Joel Chagnon, chair of the Farmington School Board, issued a statement that reads: “The Farmington School Board supports our Superintendent.  She was directed to remove the former building inspector from the property due to his constant harassment and threatening of school staff and for making inappropriate and unsettling comments to cafeteria personnel. We trust the judicial system will justify the actions taken to protect our schools.”

Assistant County Attorney Shawn Lampron, the prosecutor in the case, told the Granite State News Collaborative, “My office doesn't file charges unless we believe we can prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Contentious relationship

Ekberg, who was fired in December from his jobs as Farmington’s health officer, building inspector and code enforcement officer, has had a contentious relationship with town officials, much of it because of his insistence over rules enforcement, he said.

When he was removed from his jobs in December, he was notified that the decision was based on a pattern of insubordination. Reasons stated in the notification letter included imposing “after-the-fact” fines that the board of selectmen determined he had no authority to levy. (At a selectboard meeting on Sept. 29, 2025, Ekberg said the fees were a “response to unpermitted work.”)

The letter also claimed that Ekberg entered a property after the landowner refused to allow access. Ekberg refuted that claim, stating he had the right to enter as health officer after he noticed a huge pile of old trash bags — “it was at least 20 feet in diameter and 10 feet tall. … As health officer, I have the ability to try to find out if there is a health concern.”

After appealing his firing, Ekberg received another notice, signed by Selectboard Chair Gerald Vachon, denying the appeal. In that notice, additional grounds for termination were provided — including claims that Ekberg worked overtime without pre-approval and that he failed to identify or report concerns about permitting and inspection oversight software used by the town.

“Either of these bases would be sufficient to terminate your employment with the Town,” the notice read.

 But Ekberg claimed he was fired for a reason other than those provided: to halt his investigation into the lead filters. He said that without him, there is no mechanism to bring the schools into compliance.

 “I was removed as health officer in regards to the schools and in regards to the schools only,” Ekberg said.

Requests for comment from the Farmington Selectboard and town administrator were not immediately returned.

State oversight

According to Ian Atwell, manager of the N.H. Department of Environmental Services’ Get the Lead Out of Drinking Water program — which provides funding and support for dealing with and remediating lead in schools and child care facilities around New Hampshire — said the school acted when he contacted officials after Ekberg raised the issue.

“When Mark Ekberg raised these concerns in late September, I think we confirmed that, within a week, all the filters that we were questioning were changed out,” Atwell said. “The facility took reasonable action, so we were comfortable with that response.”

Atwell also said records detailing the replacement and installation of the filters were available on request, but felt that was not necessary after the district remediated the issue.

State law requires all licensed child care programs and schools to complete three rounds of testing at least six months apart. The third round of testing was conducted at Henry Wilson Memorial School on June 23, 2025. Third rounds were conducted at Valley View Community School on March 22, 2025, and Farmington Senior High School the day after. 

According to Atwood, the non-enforceable health goal is for the level of lead in drinking water to be zero because it is so toxic and can be harmful to human health, even at low exposures. But the action level for the program is five parts per billion, which is lower than the national standard of 15 parts per billion. Data results on the program’s website show that all water sources in Farmington that sampled above five ppb were remediated.

“I think it would be accurate to say that [Farmington is] in a similar spot to a number, if not the majority, of other facilities across the state,” Atwood said.

While Ekberg said he’s glad that the school is now in compliance, he feels the way he was treated during his inspection suggests that, if he hadn’t pushed the issue, students could have been at risk. 

He also said that, even though he is fighting multiple battles with the town of Farmington, proper enforcement is worth the time and effort.

“I'm the one that has to look at myself in the mirror every day,” he said. “This is a huge ethical dilemma when it comes to lead in the schools, which is why I'm not dropping that torch.”

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

A mid-session update on legislation making its way through the State House

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

As we close in on the halfway point of the 2026 New Hampshire legislative session, many key bills have been discussed in the House and Senate — legislation focusing on a range of subjects from education funding to voting in elections. What bills should Granite Staters be aware of? Here to discuss that is Anna Brown, executive director of Citizens Count, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating voters about the political process, as well as executive director of the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Service at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law.

Melanie Plenda:

What bills have you been tracking that Granite Staters should be aware of?

Anna Brown:

School funding is probably the biggest issue that I've been tracking in general this legislative session. First of all, there are identical bills in the House and Senate that would define an adequate education in a way that really pushes back on recent state Supreme Court rulings that would require the state to be providing more funding. There are also a few bills that are looking to set up open enrollment, where students would have the opportunity to enroll in different public schools around the state.

Another big trend in bills is looking to allow some separation based on biological sex, or even require it in some settings, such as schools, sports, hospitals and so on. That has been an ongoing issue between Governor Ayotte and Republicans in the Legislature. 

There are also some bills related to child care that I'm watching, which is really a perennial issue in New Hampshire that a lot of people agree is a big problem. There's a big shortage, but the state hasn't been able to make a lot of big changes to move the needle.

Melanie Plenda:

What bills do you believe are likely to pass the Senate? What about the House?

Anna Brown:

Almost all of the bills I just mentioned. When we're talking about pushing back on the state Supreme Court school-funding rulings, open enrollment, those child care bills, the bills looking to add separation based on gender identity versus biological sex. They have support in the House and in the Senate. So I really do see those issues as likely to move forward.

That being said, there are a lot of questions about the open enrollment bills and the school-funding bills, so that could slow down their progress. Recently, Governor Ayotte vetoed Senate Bill 268, which would add an exception to the state anti-discrimination laws for bathrooms, locker rooms, sports and so on based on biological sex. That's the second time she's vetoed a bill like that in a year, and so that also could really slow that down.

Melanie Plenda:

Some bills, like House Bill 1792, named the CHARLIE Act, have yet to gain sponsors within the Senate. What does this bill aim to do, and do you expect that it will be backed by Senate sponsors soon?

Anna Brown:

HB 1792 is interesting. The CHARLIE Act is named for [the late right-wing political activist] Charlie Kirk, but they came up with an acronym: Countering Hate And Revolutionary Leftist Indoctrination in Education Act. It prohibits teaching various concepts and theories. For example, it prohibits teachers from requiring students to acknowledge LGBTQ-plus sexuality as “ethical or normative.” Another example: the bill only allows instruction on critical race theory if it is presented as “Marxian theory contrary to American tradition, law and ethics.” This would apply to public schools, but not colleges or private schools or home school, and individuals could sue under the law. 

It's pretty sweeping when you think back to a couple years ago, when the state passed a law attempting to ban the teaching of critical race theory that was much more narrowly tailored and has been tied up in court cases. That being said, even though it's a potentially controversial bill, it had vocal support from House Majority Leader Jason Osborne. The fact that it was such a priority for him and for the Republican leadership in the House — and it still didn't get Senate sponsors — I think means it might not succeed in the Senate. Once again, I go back to the fact that it's a pretty far-reaching bill, and sometimes the Senate takes a more cautious approach to legislating than the House.

Melanie Plenda:

In New Hampshire, Republicans control the House, Senate, Executive Council and governor’s office. Has this caused any major disagreements during legislative sessions?

Anna Brown:

Being part of the same political party does not mean agreeing all the time. We've already talked about the bills vetoed by Governor Ayotte related to gender identity and biological sex. She's been very clear that she has no hesitation to veto some other bills she's talked about. 

So far, the House wants to repeal the Housing Champion grant program. She says she wants to keep it in place. Other bills she said she would veto includes a Senate-passed bill to increase tolls for non-E-ZPass users as a way to fund road maintenance. She said the bill is dead on arrival if it gets to her desk.

The House and Senate also are not always on the same page, so we discussed how with the CHARLIE Act I'm not sure if it's going to have the same reception in the Senate that it did in the House. Also, the House keeps passing marijuana legalization bills, and the Senate keeps on not passing marijuana legalization bills. 

Melanie Plenda:

One issue that is appearing in both the House and the Senate is school funding. Bills HB 1815 and SB 659 both look at redefining what should be included and funded by the state for students to receive a quote-unquote adequate education. Why is this an important issue in New Hampshire?

Anna Brown:

School funding has been a huge issue in New Hampshire for a few decades. Right now, schools are funded through both local and state property taxes, and there's a huge debate around if that's really a fair or constitutional split. 

Last summer, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state is not providing enough funding. It's a bit of a simplification, but they really said, “This is on the Legislature to fix. We're not going to tell them how to do it, but they have to do something.”

Now, the two bills you mentioned, they're identical — one in the House, one in the Senate. They’re sponsored by influential Republicans, and notably, both bills state, “How the state and its local governmental entities choose to raise, allocate and spend financial resources to implement this integrated public education system is a political policy matter reserved to legislative and executive judgment and control.” What that means is they're basically writing a state law that says the courts cannot decide that this is an issue for the Legislature. 

Now, can you write a state law that's going to override how the court understands the Constitution? The state recently filed an appeal in these lawsuits, arguing the court should overturn their original rulings that found the state had that obligation to be funding schools a certain way. So it's a bit of a showdown, I would argue, between the Legislature and the courts. And, even if this bill passes, I would say that it's really going to depend on how the school-funding cases play out to see what the actual impact would be on school budgets and also our property taxes.

Melanie Plenda:

HB 1196 aims to repeal the state Housing Champion designation and grant program, which helps alleviate New Hampshire’s housing shortage. Governor Ayotte has already said she wants to keep this program. Why would lawmakers want to repeal this bill in the middle of a housing shortage?

Anna Brown:

This bill was basically a way to reward towns that were adopting housing-friendly policies, and so people who originally supported the grant program are now saying, “OK, we’ve made enough changes at the state level to zoning that really this is not going to move the needle as much. The cost of administering the program is not going to give us all that much more benefit in terms of housing down the line.”

That being said, Governor Ayotte wants to put more money into the program in the next budget. I think that in the past, there was more grant money available. Now it's down to, if I recall correctly, about $3 million — which in the way of statewide housing development, is not a lot of money. So if she does have the money to put in the next budget, I think that could make a difference for some legislators. But right now, it's kind of uncertain how our budget's going to turn out at this point, and so I think legislators are very much in the mindset of cut costs, cut costs, cut costs.

Melanie Plenda:

Did anything else surprise you about this session?

Anna Brown:

I was surprised by one bill in particular. The House recently voted down a bill to repeal vaccine requirements for schools and daycares. This surprised me because the bill did have support coming out of committee. So it looked like the Republican majority was going to get on board, and they have a pretty, fairly large majority compared to the Democrats this year.

So I was surprised when the full Republican-controlled House came back and said, “Nope, we want to keep the vaccine requirements.” We've seen a lot more growth in anti-vaccine sentiment in New Hampshire ever since COVID-19. Now, RFK Jr has obviously been doing a lot of advocacy on the national level, sort of questioning whether vaccines are good. But the House, I would say, gave a resounding answer that in New Hampshire we're sticking with vaccine requirements.

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you for joining us, Anna. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visitcollaborativenh.org.

Who said you have to be famous? Celebrating the women who hold other women up

By Shamecca Brown-Granite State News Collaborative

Every March, we see the same names. The same famous faces. The same polished quotes. The same highlight reels of women who made history. Don’t get me wrong, they deserve their flowers, but who decided that Women’s History Month is only for the famous? What about the woman who covered your shift when your back gave out? What about the friend who picked up your kids when you were overwhelmed and didn’t make you feel small about it? What about the co-worker who whispered, “You got this,” when the room felt heavy?

History isn’t only made in Congress. History isn’t only written in textbooks. History is being made every single day in living rooms, shelters, schools and workplaces by women who may never trend but are transforming lives quietly.

One of my favorite women in history is Shirley Chisholm. She once said, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” That quote isn’t just bold, it’s sisterhood in action, because how many women do we know who didn’t wait for permission? Who didn’t wait to be invited? Who didn’t wait to be validated? They built their own tables. They pulled up chairs for other women and made room..

But sometimes that table isn’t a boardroom. Sometimes it’s a kitchen table with bills spread out and kids doing homework nearby. Sometimes it’s a group chat where women share job leads. Sometimes it’s a co-worker protecting your name in a room you’re not in. Sometimes it’s a woman sending you a few dollars and saying, “Pay me back whenever,” knowing you might not be able to.

There’s this narrative that women compete with each other. That there isn’t enough space. That if one wins, another loses. But I don’t believe that.

I’ve seen women hold each other up in ways that don’t make headlines. I’ve seen women sit with survivors and remind them they are not broken. I’ve seen grandmothers raise babies again without applause. I’ve seen women navigating predominantly white spaces, carrying professionalism in one hand and authenticity in the other, refusing to shrink. I’ve seen women build sister circles when the environment didn’t naturally offer one.

We don’t talk enough about the emotional labor women carry for each other. The texts asking, “Did you make it home?” Or “call me when you get a minute,” “I’m proud of you,” “You’re not crazy,”  “You’re not alone.” Those are lifelines.

In a world that already tries to divide us, by race, by class, by politics and  by identity, choosing to support another woman is radical. Especially for women of color. Especially in spaces where we may be the only one. Especially when we are told to tone it down, smooth it out, quiet it up.

Sisterhood says, “Stay you. I got you.” You don’t have to be famous to be foundational. The woman braiding a little girl’s hair and teaching her to love her texture is shaping history. The woman teaching her children Black history every single day, not just in February, is shaping history. The woman who refuses to let bitterness harden her heart is shaping history. And sometimes it’s women like me. 

A single parent again. Getting life back together. Grieving, rebuilding, restructuring and still standing. I don’t always give myself flowers – in fact, I rarely do. But I am now. Because I am strong. I am willing to fight,  even through the struggles. Because even when life shifts in ways I didn’t plan, I don’t fold. I adjust.

Shirley Chisholm brought her folding chair to tables that didn’t expect her. Women today are still doing the same thing, in offices, shelters, classrooms, courtrooms, and quiet moments no one sees.

My life – rebuilding, loving, mothering, working, healing – is me making history. Not the kind that makes headlines, but the kind that makes legacy. You don’t need followers to be historic. You don’t need a stage to be powerful. You don’t need fame to matter.

This March, I’m not just celebrating famous women. I’m celebrating the women who hold other women up. The women who don’t compete, but collaborate. The women who aren’t trending, but are transforming lives every single day.

Shamecca Brown is a New Hampshire-based columnist who is family-oriented and passionate about serving underserved communities. These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

What would proposed changes in the Legislature mean for public school open enrollment?

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

A bill in the N.H. Legislature that would change open enrollment restrictions for New Hampshire public school students is being fast-tracked by lawmakers and is expected to pass within the next few weeks. Here to discuss House Bill 751 is Annmarie Timmins, a senior reporter at NHPR who specializes in education. 

Melanie Plenda:

To start, can you describe to us what is in this “open enrollment” bill and what changes it intends to make? 

Annmarie Timmins:

The crux of this bill is that a student in New Hampshire could go to any public school in the state, and their sending district, or their home district, would have to send money with them and pay for their education wherever they chose. At its most basic that’s what open enrollment is.

Melanie Plenda:

Senate Republicans are fast-tracking this bill straight to the House, without hearings in either chamber. Why are they moving the bill at this speed and is it necessary?

Annmarie Timmins:

Republicans are eager to get this through for a couple of reasons. There was a Supreme Court ruling out of New Hampshire recently that changed the way open enrollment transfers would be paid, and so that has caused, in their mind, some confusion.

The second reason is that we're right now in the middle of the annual school budget and town meeting season, and at those meetings, districts have to adopt their budget for the next school year. So they wanted to get ahead of that, because budgets are built on enrollment, in large part. They're also aware that school districts are very quickly trying to set some boundaries around this open enrollment, to manage their budgets and their enrollment. So they really wanted to get ahead of school district meetings.

Melanie Plenda:

You recently wrote an article for NHPR on this bill and its impact if passed. According to your reporting, how are different school districts feeling about these potential changes?

Annmarie Timmins:

They're largely trying to, I would say, shut them down, or very much limit them. I've heard Republicans who support this, and we have seen people speak up for this at these district meetings, that this is about school choice. If your school's not working for you or your child, in their minds, you should have the right to go elsewhere. That sentiment is coming up when I've been to deliberative sessions, but primarily school district leaders and voters are trying really hard to limit this. 

I looked at about 40 different communities, and each of those said no students may leave the district – and that's to protect their budgets. They don't want to send money away. Their frustration is maybe not open enrollment as a concept, but the way it's funded. On the other side, we're seeing limits put on who could come into a district, so some districts don't want to take any new students. Some have very specific limits, like two students could come in for kindergarten or for 3rd grade. And there are some districts who are struggling with declining enrollment, and they have seen open enrollment as a chance to fill some seats at a time when they really need students.

Melanie Plenda:

How would this bill impact lower-income school districts that can’t afford to lose large amounts of students to other districts?

Annmarie Timmins:

This is funded based on how school districts fund their schools. We know that every school district spends a different amount of money. Say a Manchester student wanted to leave and go to Bedford. Bedford spends more money than Manchester on a student. So when that student from Manchester comes, that might be a $17,000 so-called loss for Manchester. That student comes to Bedford, and while the bill tries to address this, a student is going to bring $17,000 with them, where Bedford spends $23,000 on its students. Are we giving them a tuition break to come over to Manchester? Will districts lose money if a student transfers? The supporters of this bill would say, well, you're also losing a student. But one student fewer, of course, doesn't change the light bill or the transportation budget — so that's the disagreement over why students should go somewhere else and why they shouldn't.

Melanie Plenda:

What about the higher-income districts? Will this have an impact there?

Annmarie Timmins:

They are anticipating seeing students wanting to come to them. If you spend more on education, maybe you have more programs to offer. Maybe you have smaller class sizes compared to a district with less money. So they're anticipating students coming into their district, and there's the spending discrepancy that I just described.

But also how do they control? If they can't set any limits on who can come in — which would be kind of disallowed, but there are limits on what limits they could set. So what if they have an influx of 10 to 15 students midway through the year? Their question is, “How do we budget for that?” So they're worried about that.

Melanie Plenda:

Sen. Tim Lang, a Republican from Sanbornton, who authored this bill, noted that the bill leaves it up to the school district to set the capacity for how many out-of-district students they can accept. Do you think, with the amount of pushback so far on this bill, that many districts will be doing this?

Annmarie Timmins:

I think we will see school districts definitely set the limits on what we've seen so far proposed. What Tim Lang's bill would do is let districts say what their capacity for students is. But the bill does not identify or explain how capacity would be determined. Is it just what you hope your student-to-teacher ratio would be? How do you factor in students who have far more needs in a year, or maybe a drop from 25 students to 23 is not really a drop in terms of resources that that classroom needs.

Critics of the bill will say this is one weakness of it that’s not clearly defined. While it sounds like they'll be able to set some limits, they're not quite sure what that would look like.

Melanie Plenda:

If this bill passes and goes into effect, could that impact town meetings, either this year or next year?

 Annmarie Timmins:

It could. Right now we're in the SB 2 season, which means you have your deliberative session and then you vote in March at the polls — as opposed to what we think of as a traditional school district meeting. So what we're seeing early on are these districts adopting these caps. So if those pass, they'll be in effect. 

But there's disagreement over what happens next. If this legislation passes, but doesn't take effect right away, then the school year would proceed, presumably, with these caps in place. If these caps are sort of set aside or overruled by this legislation because it passes and is signed by the governor quickly and takes effect immediately, there are just different views on what happens next. Some school district lawyers have said that just sets aside these caps; they're moot now. Others have said no, that would lead to litigation, and they would ask a court to keep them in place in the meantime. So it's one of the many unknowns of this legislation.

I should say that the governor has expressed some concerns about the timing of this bill, and so it's possible we might see a rewrite that does extend the effective date out to the next school year. But even if that happened, we're setting a budget right now for next school year. So it's unclear how much that would help.

Melanie Plenda:

Based on your reporting, what would be the long-term, lasting impacts of this bill for schools in New Hampshire?

Annmarie Timmins:

I think the long-term impacts of this are really unknown at the moment. If we only see a few students take advantage of this, what would the impact be? It might be quite minimal. If we see pockets of students sort of leaving a district and going to another district, a single district, that will have a big impact for that district.

I think we should look for what happens in communities where there are many school choices. If you live in central New Hampshire or the southern part of the state, you have nearby schools you could go to. So I think, geographically, it's worth paying attention to what happens if litigation ensues. School districts are locally funded, primarily. Critics say this is really the state taking over local control. So I think there's a lot of unknowns — and that's what's worrying school districts. 

The other question here, in terms of impact, is school districts are urging the governor to sign an alternative open enrollment bill, which would study open enrollment for a year. Now, we're different from other states that have open enrollment because some states say school districts don't have to transfer money. The student can leave, but money doesn't go. I think that would resolve a lot of school districts' concerns. We're funded very differently from other states, so the impact here might not look like the impact that has been studied elsewhere. So school districts are urging the governor to sign this study bill instead of putting open enrollment in place now. That’s another unknown — if both bills reach her desk, which bill will she sign?

Melanie Plenda:

What other education bills are you currently following? 

Annmarie Timmins:

There are lots of questions too about what school funding is going to look like.

Some lawmakers want to put more money into public education. Some want to reduce the scope of what an adequate education is, and thereby you'd be paying for less. Where does the Legislature end up in terms of the court saying, “You're not spending enough, but we're not going to give you a deadline for spending more or tell you what you should be spending.”

Also, I'm really interested in what happens with the University System of New Hampshire. Our public universities and colleges saw about a $30 million cut over two years, and students are telling us what that looks like for them — not only tuition increases but they're losing advisors, and they're seeing professors take early buyouts, so a class they need next semester to stay on track might not be offered until the following semester, and that could have long-term impacts. We have seen a bipartisan bill that would reinstate some of that money, at least for the next school year, and I'm watching that as well.

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you for joining us today, Annmarie.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

The illusion that ‘we take care of our own’ in New Hampshire

By Shamecca Brown, Columnist, Granite State News Collaborative 

New Hampshire is proud of its independence. “Live Free or Die” isn’t just a motto — it’s a mindset. We value hard work. Self-reliance. Community. We say we take care of our own.

But I’ve been asking myself lately: Who exactly counts as “our own”?

I’m a widow. When my husband died, grief was not abstract. It was physical. Sitting at the kitchen table explaining death to a child still learning algebra. Waking in the middle of the night reaching for someone who wasn’t there. And while I was trying to hold my family together, the bills didn’t pause. The car note didn’t pause. The bank didn’t pause.

I am currently facing repossession issues because when my husband died, his income died with him. And just like that, the next person in line – me –  is expected to absorb the impact.

You would think widows might catch a break. You would think there would be some grace period, some humanity built into the system. But banks don’t grieve. Lenders don’t attend funerals. Algorithms don’t care who used to sit in the driver’s seat. Someone dies, and the next person pays. That’s the system.

New Hampshire prides itself on community. On small-town warmth. On neighbors helping neighbors. And I’ve seen that spirit exist. But systems are different from neighbors.

There’s something unsettling about how quickly compassion disappears once paperwork begins. Widowhood is emotional. Repossession is transactional. The two don’t speak the same language.

We talk a lot about taking care of our own. But what does that mean in practice?

Does it mean casseroles for a week and silence after that? Condolences,but no policy flexibility? Sympathy in public, but zero grace in contracts?

Independence is a beautiful value, until it becomes isolation. Self-reliance is powerful, until life knocks you to your knees. In a state that celebrates toughness, where is the room for vulnerability? Where is system-level compassion when someone’s entire financial structure collapses because their partner died?

Death is not a budgeting error. It’s not irresponsibility. It’s not mismanagement. It’s loss, and loss has consequences that outlive the funeral.

There’s another layer we don’t talk about. In a small state, reputations travel. Struggles feel visible. Falling behind feels public. There’s stigma in financial hardship, especially when you’re a parent, a professional – someone “supposed to have it together.”

But life does not care how put-together you appear. Grief doesn’t check your credit score. And the reality is this: Many families are one death, one illness, one job shift away from crisis.

I know I am not the only one. There are widows and widowers across this state quietly navigating probate court, car loans, mortgages, credit reports and children’s grief all at the same time. We don’t wear signs. We go to work. We show up to school meetings. We answer emails. And behind the scenes, we are restructuring entire lives.

“Live Free or Die” is a powerful phrase. But freedom without support can feel like abandonment.

And if we truly believe in taking care of our own, we have to ask harder questions: Should financial institutions have structured flexibility for surviving spouses? Should there be mandated grace periods tied to documented loss? Should compassion be optional  or expected?

I love New Hampshire. I’ve built a life here. I’ve raised children here. I work here. I contribute here. I am not writing as an outsider. I am writing as someone inside the system who is learning how quickly it moves when you stumble.

We say we take care of our own. So here is the real question: When someone becomes a widow. When someone’s income disappears overnight.  When someone is trying to parent through grief, do they still count as “our own”? Or do they simply become the next account due?

Because in this state that values strength and resilience, maybe the bravest thing we can do is admit this: Community isn’t measured by slogans. It’s measured by what happens when someone falls. And right now, too many are falling quietly.

But if we start telling the truth about how many of us are one loss away from falling, we might finally build a state that catches people.

Shamecca Brown is a New Hampshire-based columnist who is family-oriented and passionate about serving underserved communities. These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Collaborative effort seeks to standardize AI use in New Hampshire schools

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Artificial Intelligence is continually changing and shaping the way we live our lives. As AI continues to become more common, it’s important that students understand how to use it to enhance learning. But what are safe ways to use AI in school settings? The N.H. Learning Initiative helped to create a guide that outlines a way to standardize AI usage in schools across the state. Here to discuss that is Ellen Hume-Howard, executive director of the N.H. Learning Initiative.

Melanie Plenda:

The N.H. Learning Initiative worked to create the N.H. AI Education Collaborative. This collaborative, made up of school districts and administrators, wrote the AI guidance for schools framework. Can you tell us more about the framework, and what went into making these guidelines?

Ellen Hume-Howard:

We're very lucky in New Hampshire — we have a very collaborative environment with the professional associations, the principals, the superintendents, the school board, and all the technical organizations in the state. We all were sharing that we thought collaboratively we would be able to maybe get on paper — a little bit of a practical guide for districts. All of our national organizations were sharing with us really great information, so we decided to work together and put our heads together and to create a roadmap for New Hampshire educators and school systems so they'd have a little bit of a starting point. 

Melanie Plenda:

Why did the New Hampshire AI Education Collaborative feel it was important to create this document?

Ellen Hume-Howard:

Lots of times in education, we tend to be a little bit behind the curve when new technology is introduced. There have been many times with different things — computers, internet, calculators — there’s sort of like this hesitation, this waiting to see what's going to happen.

In the case of AI, though, it was coming pretty quick, pretty fast and pretty rapidly, and like the internet and phone use in the last several decades, kids were really out ahead of it — more than the educators in the system. Our intuition was telling us, “Let's see what this is going to look like. Let's see what the safety aspects are.” Because as educators, that's one of the things you're always thinking about — how safe is it? We had to find a middle-of-the–road approach to this, where we were providing guidance but also being very cautious about what the tools were like.

Melanie Plenda:

In what ways can artificial intelligence help both students and teachers?

Ellen Hume-Howard:

I think that AI can be incredibly helpful in multiple ways. One of the things that's really key is that, when it comes to students, having adults guide the process and creating conditions within schools where you can control the AI tools that students have access to really can enhance what education looks like.

Ultimately, AI doesn't replace human beings, right? So that's still a major factor in education, but what AI can do is provide a little bit of a roadmap for students in regards to getting feedback for their learning in multiple ways. Teachers, on the other hand, can find tools within AI that help them with tasks where they need feedback, also designing some lesson plans, doing some things that are often time-consuming that can be quickly done.

Melanie Plenda:

How do these guidelines in the framework help to ensure that AI is being used responsibly within schools, and which parts of the guidelines have been helpful to schools so far?

Ellen Hume-Howard:

Right out of the gate, one of the ways that we were able to cull together the different national picture and the different tools that we were sharing was the idea of what policy needs to look like. Oftentimes, with things like this, when any kind of change happens, lots of times policy is slow to catch up with what the practice needs to be. We wanted to get out ahead of it really early to help districts put in place policies that could help them guide and be able to be flexible, because this is the type of technology that changes and has changed significantly since we even published our guide last spring. 

That was a big piece — where do we start with some of these policies? What do they need to look like? What's fair? How do they align with what the state of New Hampshire requires in an educational setting, things like student privacy, all of those pieces? We built starting points for policies and gave districts sort of a springboard that, “this is how other districts are doing it.” Ultimately, we created a network thinking about this, and I think that really helped. We had some districts that were way out ahead, and they were part of this group.

As we built the guide, we tapped into what they would recommend — here is a good place to start; this is the way that you can build your technology infrastructure so that kids have access to AI but you can protect them. There were multiple things happening as we built this, and it really was reflective of the expertise of this entire committee, and we tapped into people beyond just even the committee — any kind of resources we could find and experts that weighed in and gave us some feedback. 

Melanie Plenda:

Why do you think AI literacy is important to teach in schools from a young age? 

Ellen Hume-Howard:

One of the things you're responsible for as an educator is to prepare students for the world they're living in and for the world that's going to be coming — making sure that we have sensible learning progression experiences for students where they can learn to be literate, they can learn to understand, and how to use these things. We did that when we first introduced the internet.These are all things that come into play in being digitally literate and also just AI-literate, which I think is the new literacy component that all schools need to make adjustments to.

Melanie Plenda:

What would you say to parents who may be skeptical about AI being used in the classroom?

Ellen Hume-Howard:

I think they just need to ask questions, and they need to be part of the conversation and to share what they're worried about and to have communication at the school level to demonstrate how they use AI and what it really looks like. 

We don't have to keep anything a secret about how we're going to use it. One of the things that I was most impressed with early on with AI was the idea that the school system could control what AI students had access to in school. Students have had access to lots of different AI for years, but it's been in different forms. So the control in the school, I think, is probably more strict than maybe what they find when they leave the walls of the school out on their own and what they have access to with other apps. 

I think having the conversation with parents because there are things that they would really benefit from — about how the schools lock down things, advice on how parents can lock down information. I think the conversation needs to be pretty fluid and pretty open and transparent, and no one needs to be worried, because we can have control over some of these things. What we need to be is cautious. We need to be good consumers of these types of advancements. 

Melanie Plenda:

These guidelines were released in June of 2025. How has the implementation of these guidelines played out differently for schools across New Hampshire? 

Ellen Hume-Howard:

We accomplished the policy baseline pieces, which I think have been really effective. But over the last several months we've got lots of feedback from districts. We've had suggestions on how to talk to parents about AI, about different ways to vet apps that students would have access to. We built this guide on our own, but what's happened is that everyone's starting to contribute. So one of the things that we'll do as we get closer to the spring is just relook at every section and update it and edit it based on our learning and take a little dip into where the national conversation is going. 

Melanie Plenda:

How can Granite Staters learn more about how to use AI in an effective manner? Does the New Hampshire Learning Initiative have more resources for understanding AI?

Ellen Hume-Howard:

Looking at the guide has been helpful to some parents — the guide is available on our website. I think maybe just one of the things that we've encouraged teachers to do is to navigate what type of AI workshops are good for them based on their content area. Also, for community members, they're welcome to come and learn some things. There's lots of different AI training going on everywhere, from the University of New Hampshire to the community college system. So there's lots of opportunities where people, all members of the community, are welcome to learn.

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you Ellen for joining us today. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Black History Month: Avoiding myths and telling the truth about American history

February is Black History Month, and we pay special attention to the subject. But recent events, in and outside of New Hampshire, are making that more and more difficult. On Jan. 23,, the Trump administration removed panels that discussed George Washington’s ownership of enslaved people at the President’s House Site in Philadelphia, Pa. (A federal judge on Feb. 16 ordered the Trump administration to temporarily restore displays  as a lawsuit filed by the city of Philadelphia continues.) So can we hide from history? Here to discuss that and more is JerriAnne Boggis, executive director of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire. 

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Melanie Plenda:

The Black Heritage Trail works to share New Hampshire’s connection to Black history, one of them being the story of Ona Judge, a young woman who escaped slavery to live in New Hampshire. Her story is depicted on one of the panels in Philadelphia. Can you tell us more about her and her circumstances?

JerriAnne Boggis:

What her story tells us is, first of all, that George Washington enslaved people. That's the first story that we look at when we think of Ona Judge’s story, especially here in New Hampshire, where she ends up living. The other story that it tells us is that the Washingtons knew about a law in Philadelphia, that an enslaved person, after living there for about six months, could petition for their freedom. What the Washingtons did to sidestep that law, to be unlawful, was to cycle out their enslaved people every six months so that they wouldn't have a chance to petition for their freedom. So it was on one of these moments when the Washingtons were cycling out their enslaved people that she decided that she would leave. She left the household, and with the help of the black community, the Underground Railroad, she ended up in Portsmouth. 

We know her story because on several occasions, George Washington ran an ad saying that she was a runaway. At the time, the Fugitive Slave Act was in place, and an enslaver could then have them return to that institution of slavery. On several occasions, he tried to get back what he saw as his property, and he did it under the radar, because at the same time, he's talking about gradual emancipation and getting rid of the institution of slavery.

These stories complicate George Washington at a time when we want to say a myth of the “great valor of this man.” It just shows a much more complex human being who really believed in the institution of slavery and held enslaved people himself.

Melanie Plenda:

What were your thoughts about the removal of information concerning Judge and other enslaved people from the President’s House in Philadelphia? 

JerriAnne Boggis:

I think we do our country a disservice by telling the mythology of America instead of really looking at telling the story truthfully and responsibly. I think we lose so much. We localize these stories in creating a myth of our country. 

We have the Declaration of Independence, which we're celebrating the 250th anniversary this year – the thing that defines America, that we are a place of liberty and justice for all, that we all have the right to pursue our happiness. But when we look at these stories, especially when we look at the story of enslavement black history, it is removed from American history. Because it doesn't fit that narrative of equality and justice for all. It allows us to then remain looking at people in a stereotypical way that the other story tells us, instead of looking at a fully formed human being with desires, pursuing their happiness, work, and courage to be taking a stand for democracy.  Democracy is endangered when we don’t have informed people. We are bound to repeat our mistakes if we don’t understand history.

Melanie Plenda:

In June of 2025 you joined us to discuss the Juneteenth celebration, and how the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire was faring in the current political climate. How are things now? Has anything changed?

JerriAnne Boggis:

We are in a good place. First, people wanted to know how we got where we were, and that has continued to be. On a federal level, we struggled when grants were withdrawn. Now in the environment we're in, where a lot of our sponsors are paying attention to basic human needs that have been stripped – clothing, shelter, well-being, health, schools – we see a decline in some things. 

The biggest change that we've seen since then is really our ability to talk about this history in schools. That's where we see some pushback because the teachers themselves are at a risk of losing their own jobs. So we have to be careful. We have to find alternative ways of getting this information to our students, to our younger ones. That's where long-term change happens. 

Melanie Plenda:

How have you been able to address that? How have you been able to reach out to school-age kids if the schools aren’t necessarily an avenue for that anymore?

JerriAnne Boggis:

There are some teachers that will take the risk. There are some school districts where teachers are supported. So what we do is find the like-minded people so we get the information out.

We’ve also looked beyond the schools to look at community organizations, churches. We’ve created really strong partnerships with the Episcopal Church and the Unitarian Church so that we can gather youth groups, community organizations, to really get this out, And we are really relying on our tours so that they can actually be out of the classroom and see this information right in their backyard. 

Melanie Plenda:

Can you tell us about the Ona Judge mural and the importance of the “History Through Art” initiative and continuing to tell the history of Black Americans?

JerriAnne Boggis:

Art has the ability to disarm people. Looking at something beautiful – looking at something someone created, that touch, that feel, invisibly seeing it raises that curiosity. We're fortunate that Manny Ramirez from Positive Street Art is our local artist. He is from Nashua, a young man of color who is creating the piece for us.

There's no picture of what Ona Judge looked like, so like what we did with the Harriet Wilson statue, we had to create this for what story we're telling. We do know Ona Judge had freckles, and she had curly hair. But exactly what she looked like, we don't know.

So we did the research on what she could have worn. She was the body servant to Martha Washington, and that said she was well-dressed. So that gives us an opportunity to break stereotypes of what black women look like, creating a well-dressed 18th century woman. So we have this really nice, powerful image of this woman standing tall, just tasting freedom, by her choice, here in New Hampshire, and what possibilities that await her.

Melanie Plenda:

In honor of Black History Month, every Sunday in February, the Black Heritage Trail hosts the series, “The Elinor Williams Hooker Tea Talks,” showcasing New Hampshire Black history and featuring panelists presenting on the importance of cultural expression. Why is it so significant to illuminate specifically, the importance of African American oratory, especially right now?

JerriAnne Boggis:

When we decided on doing the series, – we try to plan them a year in advance – we knew we were coming up to the 250th anniversary, and we started getting all the talk about erasing Black history. We can't talk about it in school, can't read this book – all the things that we can't do. Thinking of the 250th, of this whole voice –  the First Amendment right of freedom of speech – and then we looked at our Black history, the importance of the oratory just came to mind. It is that power that's in the voice. 

We wanted to examine right where we start, right where our independence starts – with the voice. In doing so, to look at what Black oratory is, the role the pastor played not only in spiritual life but secular life. The power of the pulpit, what Black women have done throughout America's history in using their voice to speak to social justice issues, and what our young people are doing today. How has oratory changed? What form has it taken? How are they protesting? How are they using their voice for social change? So that's what we wanted to examine with this series, where it starts with the voice.

Melanie Plenda:

Last year you wrote an op-ed for the Union Leader about using social media to project Black voices when books and curriculum are being censored. How do you think these Black influencers can make an impact, as history is being torn down right in front of us?   

JerriAnne Boggis:

This new platform of social media – all of the different avenues, whether it's above ground, underground or right in the middle. These stories cannot be hidden. Instantly, all over the world,  somebody has this information. Those platforms are so powerful in getting messages out that they open many doors for Black influencers to tell the story and tell the truth. We as the recipient of these stories, have to be discerning as to who we listen to or find the knowledge for ourselves. But you can't hide it so easily anymore, and that's the beauty of the platforms that we have.

Melanie Plenda:

Last year, the Trump administration restored a statue of Confederate general and KKK member, Albert Pike in Washington, D.C.. Now, as they remove vital pieces of Black history from sites across the nation, what is going on here? And what kind of impact do you think this will have?

JerriAnne Boggis:

This is one of the things that we're always afraid to say: This is a power move to maintain white supremacy. It's a power move to create a narrative that we already knew was false. We had gotten to a point in telling the history of our stories very openly. There were all these projects coming up that were looking at America without rose-colored glasses. We were looking truthfully at our story, and we were creating these pockets of understanding and of crossing that bridge of networking with each other to create a break. If you are in a power position, you are scared about that, because once the majority moves away from that, then that power structure has to fall, and something else has to take its place. But I want to be hopeful that it's not the majority of the country that thinks that way. I have to be hopeful that we moved further along that ladder that we thought we did.

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you JerriAnne for joining us today. We really appreciate it.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

‘The Old Homestead’: How a 19th century play can still speak to us now

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

We’re here to talk about a passion project that is at the heart of film history, New Hampshire history and perhaps even the quintessential mystique of the wise Yankee farmer. It all starts with a 19th-century play, “The Old Homestead,” which eventually became a silent movie. It has a unique history and pedigree, and to tell us more about it we have two experts also with a unique history and pedigree. We have Keene State College film professor emeritus and filmmaker Larry Benaquist and author Howard Mansfield. 

Melanie Plenda:

Larry, tell us a bit about the history of “The Old Homestead” and its connections to New Hampshire.

Larry Benaquist:

“The Old Homestead” is a play that was written by Denman Thompson, a resident of west of Swanzey, N.H., who became an actor in his early days and ended up writing a play that he could do as a skit, which he performed around the country for over 25 years. This play became so popular, so widely seen, that it astonished even him.Apparently, this vision of the New Hampshire farmer as wise, industrious, kind became the way Americans saw this. It’s not  a caricature, exactly, not even a stereotype – the authenticity of it struck people, so much so that they were turning people away at the door for 25 years. This play is one of the most popular plays in America.

Melanie Plenda:

Can you give us the basic plot, just a rundown real quick of what is, what is the play about?

Larry Benaquist:

It's a retelling, in a way, of the prodigal son story from the Bible. When the play opens, the old farmer’s son has left him about a year before. There had been a robbery at the bank in his town. He was accused of the robbery – he had not done it, and even though that was to be proven, he left in humiliation and went to New York City and started leading a life of and just sank into alcoholism and shame. The play opens with his father, who's a widower living on a farm outside of Keene with his sister and some interesting characters in the neighborhood who accompany him. After meeting a tramp who comes to the house, he ends up going to New York City to retrieve his son. 

It’s a very simple play. It’s in four acts and ends up where it begins – at the farm in West Swanzey.

Melanie Plenda:

How did you first hear about it?

Larry Benaquist:

The play had been put on every year in Swanzey from 1939 until 2016. After Denman Thompson’s death in 1911, the play had been filmed twice. I didn’t even know about that.

One day, before Covid, a woman in Keene said to me, “You know what, I think this play has been filmed a couple of times.” So I was isolated during Covid and had nothing to do, so I thought, “I’m going to try and find those films,” and that’s what I started to do. It took a few years to happen because no prints existed in this country. We found prints in Europe.

There was a 15-minute film in 1915, four years after Denman Thompson died that was very popular and stuck pretty  much to the play, and then in 1922, during the Jazz Age – a totally different interpretation of the story. We found the 1915 version in a small archive in Paris. The 1922 version was in two locations – Moscow and Brussels – and I found it much easier to deal with Brussels. 

Howard and I have overseen the production of a half-hour documentary dealing with this whole process, and specifically the great significance of the play in the late 19th century, which I really had no idea about at the time,

Melanie Plenda:

Howard, please tell us a bit about your background and how you came across “The Old Homestead?” 

Howard Mansfield:

I write about how places came to be the way they are, why people tell certain stories about their history, and why they refuse to tell other stories. So I'm just the guy who goes around and asks  a lot of questions, pokes around, goes through the archives.

I went to see “The Old Homestead” three different times. It's very unlike anything you've ever seen. You're used to going to the theater and seeing three or four characters and two acts. This is 50 characters played by about 25 actors over four acts, with breaks for music for barbershop quartets with live oxen walking across. It's an entirely different thing. 

One of the most important characters of the play is the barnyard – the name of play, “The Old Homestead,” that’s what people loved. His audience were farm people who had gone to the city,  and they loved the play and loved seeing the animals. There’s a lot of talk of farm chores there. They missed chores. They missed animals. 

The other was Uncle Josh himself. Denman Thompson started out as a variety actor, basically vaudeville stage, doing all sorts of very broad gestures. Uncle Josh is based on just the three years he spent in Swanzey. His family had a long background in Swanzey – he had three generations of his family. Before he was born, they left to try their luck on the frontier, which at that time was in Pennsylvania. They failed, came back, and in just those three years, Denman is going back, absorbs all that and creates this character based on two figures in town who were known for their wit. 

Uncle Josh is kind. He’s constantly sitting down listening to people’s stories, and people really reacted to that. Ministers said to their congregations, “It’s worth a dozen sermons – go see it.” People go see it over and over. The play had great resonance and great attraction.

Melanie Plenda:

There’s an event coming up in Keene about it. Larry, can you tell us more about it? And most importantly, is it too late to get tickets? 

Larry Benaquist:

Well, I'm afraid for two films that haven't been seen in over 100 years, there might be some seats available at the last minute if people don't show up. There was only room for 140 seats, but we fully intend to bring this around to other locations. I think people will want it. These are two very, very interesting films, and accompanying them is the 30-minute documentary with this history we’ve been talking about and a lot of information about how Thompson came to write the play and the aftermath.

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s dig a little deeper. Why do you think this piece resonates with people? What is its staying power?

Larry Benaquist:

Staying power is something we've talked about, as we observe in our documentary. It's very much a piece of its mid- to late-19th century origins. There's nothing about it that could be modernized. It has to be seen in the context of itself. You can do Hamlet in modern dress or Romeo and Juliet in spacesuits. But you can't do anything like that with this play, because part and parcel of it is the land itself. Howard got it exactly right. The star of the film is “The Old Homestead.” It’s a place where clarity can be achieved. Where honesty and real connections between human beings happen. The shots that are shown in the city are the reverse of that. They're teasing him because he's from the country. They get him drunk. He's flirted with by wanton women. You've got this split between the virtues of agricultural, rural life and what's lost when that's gone. 

Melanie Plenda:

What do you hope people who attend the event take away from it? 

Howard Mansfield:

I hope that they have a sense of maybe a little bit about what country life used to be like around here and why people may longed for it as it was fading. Maybe, if they think about it,, they realize how many of these images are still around today in popular culture. They are in images in Hollywood movies, and these Hallmark movies where people are always going back to the small town and finding romance at Christmas time – all these tropes. They still live, and there's still this longing for home. 

There are two stories we tell about home. Home waits for us, we can always go back there or home is fled, and we can never go back. I think you see those kinds of two things going on in this play and in the movies, and I think those are two things that people are always longing for.

Larry Benaquist:

That might explain the immense popularity of this play with urban audiences. You couldn't get tickets for this play in Boston or New York City. They were sold out. So it wasn't just country people leaving their farms and going into the small towns to see it in a local theater. It was different from that. 

Melanie Plenda:

So interesting! Thank you for sharing all this with us and our audience.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Black history is not a month— it’s a language we speak daily

By Shamecca Brown, Columnist

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” — Marcus Garvey

It’s Black History Month again. And if I’m being honest, I almost forgot.

That sentence scares me, not because I don’t know who I am or where I come from, but because it reminds me how brutal this society has been. How loud survival has become. How heavy life feels some days. When you’re busy protecting your peace, your children, your home, and your sanity, the calendar can quietly flip without permission.

And that’s exactly why this matters.

Black history has never been a once-a-year conversation in my household. It’s not something I dust off in February and tuck back away in March. It lives in our everyday language – in the stories I tell my kids, in the music playing while we clean, in the way I explain why certain doors were closed before we ever touched the handle, and how our people still built houses without blueprints.

I teach my kids Black history the same way I teach them kindness, accountability and self-worth – consistently and without apology. So the fact that I almost forgot this month shook me. Because being forgotten is happening a lot.

Black stories get buried under trending topics. Black pain becomes background noise. Black joy gets questioned, monitored, and sometimes punished. And if we’re not careful, even we can get so caught up in surviving that we forget to pause and remind ourselves, and our children, who we are and whose shoulders we stand on.

I don’t want my kids to think Black history starts with chains and ends with a hashtag. I want them to know its brilliance, resistance, creativity, love, mistakes, lessons, laughter and legacy. I want it to feel normal to talk about Harriet and Malcolm the same way we talk about math homework or weekend plans. Because it is normal. It’s our inheritance.

February isn’t a reminder for me, it’s a check-in. A moment to ask: “Am I still doing the work the other 11 months?” Am I still correcting narratives when they show up wrong in classrooms? Am I still teaching my kids to be proud without teaching them to be hardened? Am I still telling the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable?

The answer is yes, but the near-forgetfulness reminded me how intentional we have to be. This world does not reward remembrance. It rewards speed, silence and distraction. And when history is inconvenient, it gets minimized, renamed or erased. That’s why I refuse to let Black history live in a box labeled “February.”

We talk about it when we’re driving. When questions come up. When my kids notice injustice and ask why. We talk about it when it’s joyful and when it’s painful. We talk about it because forgetting is a luxury we don’t have.  Because remembrance is resistance. Teaching our children daily is protection. And Black history deserves more than one month, it deserves to breathe, to be spoken, and to be lived out loud. Every day.

We are not forgotten, unless we allow ourselves to stop remembering.

Shamecca Brown is a New Hampshire-based columnist who is family-oriented and passionate about serving underserved communities. These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Protests in New Hampshire: what are your rights?

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity. 

The right to assemble is ingrained in the American Constitution. Is that a right to protest? And what does that right guarantee you? In light of the recent deaths in Minnesota, where people are protesting about the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, officers in the area, and as other anti-ICE rallies break out here in New Hampshire and the country, what can protesters do to stay safe but effective? Here to discuss it is Margaret O’Grady, an assistant professor and constitutional law expert at the University of New Hampshire. 

Melanie Plenda:

Is protesting something we, as Americans, can do anywhere, anytime and in any manner we want?

Margaret O’Grady:

The answer is a resounding yes. It's not often a constitutional law professor can say a one-word answer, but in this case, the answer is yes. To the second part, are there limits on it? That is also a yes, but I just want to step back for a second and think about how the First Amendment does guarantee the right to assemble, which includes the right to protest.

The actual language is “Congress shall make no law prohibiting the freedom of speech or of the press or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances.” That's the U.S. Constitution from 1789. 

The New Hampshire Constitution was written five years earlier, and arguably has more robust protections for the freedom to assemble. There, it says, ‘The people have a right in an orderly and peaceful manner to assemble and consult upon the common good, give instructions to the representatives and to request of the legislative body by way of petition or remonstrance, redress of the wrongs done to them and of the grievances they suffer.” That word, “remonstrance,” actually means vocal, virulent protest, and so it is enshrined in our Constitution. It's a bedrock principle, both in New Hampshire and federally.

Melanie Plenda:

What are the restrictions? 

Margaret O’Grady:

As a blanket matter, speech is quite protected, but just because you're speaking doesn't mean you can commit other crimes. There are state statutes that say you can't riot, you can't disturb the peace, and you must follow laws, generally. There's also what's usually referred to as “time, place and manner” restrictions. That's a phrase that basically means the government, the federal government, a state, a municipality, can say you can protest, but first we're going to say that you can't protest, for example, past 9 p.m. because kids have to be asleep. 

The really important thing is, what the government can't put restrictions on is the content of that speech. So any government can't say you're allowed to have a parade or a gathering in front of the State House in support of animal welfare, but you are not allowed to have a gathering in support of the protesters in Minneapolis. That would be a restriction based on the viewpoint and the content of the speech, and that is absolutely unconstitutional. So those restrictions really just have to be based on the time, place, and manner, and not the content.

Melanie Plenda:

What about spontaneous protests? I mean, are those allowed to happen? Or do you have to have a permit?

Margaret O’Grady:

So those are allowed to happen. There's case law saying that when a group of people gathers together in immediate response to a breaking news event, for example, that's got to be allowed. Again, there are restrictions — you can’t be blocking traffic or creating some sort of public safety issue, for example. But what we saw in Minneapolis, for example, after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good, there were spontaneous, very large demonstrations happening, and those are protected. We need to see all of this together as it’s not just that speech and protest are protected in the Constitution, it’s really the bedrock — one of the most important rights that people have. 

Melanie Plenda:

What legal responsibilities does a local government have when it comes to protesters? 

Margaret O’Grady:

The main thing is to allow the speech to go forward, to protect the rights of the speakers and to protect the rights of the listeners, also. Part of free speech is the freedom to hear what someone else is saying. In that. is protecting the public safety during a protest, which is obviously their number one public safety function, but it is to protect the speaker and to protect the listeners.

Melanie Plenda:

What about police or federal officers? What legal responsibilities do they have? 

Margaret O’Grady:

They have constitutional obligations to not violate people's Fourth Amendment rights, regarding search and seizure, not to use deadly force unless there is an imminent threat to themselves or to others, and to ensure that speakers can speak and that also people can hear them. When officers are in a situation where there is a protest, where there are people exercising their First Amendment rights, public safety, of course, is their job but also not preventing speech or preventing people from listening to that speech.

Melanie Plenda:

If they cross those lines, what are the consequences and how are they enforced?

Margaret O’Grady:

That's a really complicated question, and perhaps our first reaction is that it shouldn't be complicated, but it really is.

If we look at specifically the situation of the killing of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, those were federal officers who took their lives. Were they state officers, there might be some more of an availability for a criminal prosecution, and we saw that with the murder of George Floyd. Because we have federal officers, there are other issues at play, which really do constrain the ability of the loved ones of the victims, and also the state, from prosecuting it as a crime. 

First, the Department of Justice could prosecute it as a crime. I think we all know from the reaction of the administration blaming the victims immediately, that's very unlikely to happen. In fact, people who worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota resigned because they were told not to investigate the officers, but rather to investigate the family of Renée Good. So I think it's very unlikely we'll see an investigation by the federal officials.

In terms of the state officials, that's the Supremacy Clause immunity doctrine, comes into play. That means that, although a state officer could be found criminally charged for that crime, because it's a federal officer the state will have a very hard time prosecuting that crime. They'll have to go to federal court. They will have to show that the officers cannot make any defense, that anybody in their shoes reasonably acting under the color of their federal authority would have — even if it's mistakenly in the scope of their duties — committed the acts that they committed. That makes it really hard for state prosecutors to prosecute it as a crime. 

I think they should try. I always say this to my law students: You represent your client within the confines of what the law is, and you do your best. So I think they should try. But it's a very high hurdle to clear. The vice president said federal officers have absolute immunity. That is not true, but it is true that it’s a high hurdle. 

In terms of civil liability, there is no avenue for the families of the victims to sue civilly. There's a statutory ability to sue under Section 1983 — you can sue for tort damages when your constitutional rights have been violated, or on behalf of a loved one who's been killed. But there's no such statutory authority for federal officials to be sued in the same way. 

Melanie Plenda:

When you have a conflict between a state and federal government, what are the legalities and rules at play? For example, Minnesota and federal officials seem to be at odds about investigating these deaths and who has jurisdiction. 

Margaret O’Grady:

In terms of a crime committed in a state, both should have jurisdiction. I think a lot of these questions then become more political than legal — it’s very unusual to have a federal government that has no appetite for investigating a crime committed by a federal officer, and that's the issue we have here.

The state is trying to assert its severity as a state, but they didn't want ICE to come in in the first place. So these clashes are really foundational to the safety of the people in a state. Usually, it's the safety of the people in a state, and the federal government helps a state, like after a storm cleanup, but this clash is something that is unusual, and I won't say completely unprecedented in our history, but certainly in our recent history.

Melanie Plenda:

Do you have any advice for people who are protesting at these anti-ICE rallies in terms of protecting themselves legally? 

Margaret O’Grady:

I think the important thing is to know that you are within your rights to use your voice, and so use it. Make sure you tell people where you're going to be. Do not do anything that violates the law in another way — do not disturb the peace, do not stop traffic. Be peaceful.

You also have the legal right to record. I want to be very clear about that too. There was actually a fairly recent case from the First Circuit, a man recorded an arrest happening on Boston Common, and the First Circuit found that he was within his rights to do so, because recording of police actions in public is a foundational to the First Amendment — freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Bring your phone, charge it, record it, make sure someone knows where you're going to be. 

Groups like the ACLU have a lot on their website about how to protest safely, and I think that the main thing is, try to maintain your own peacefulness. And, of course, do not be violent, and make sure you're with people who know you and you feel safe with, and continue on in a way that is as safe as you can be in this situation.

I've been to several gatherings in my town and around the state, and have never felt unsafe. I think a lot of us see what's going on, and of course the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renée Good shook a lot of people. The stakes are very high, and I think we can be inspired by the people of Minneapolis who see the wrongs being done to their neighbors, the terror being inflicted on their neighbors, and they stand out. I don't want us to start walking around and feeling silenced before we even speak out because we're afraid of violence — that would be a really tragic outcome of what we see happening.

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you so much for such great information.Thank you for joining us today. 

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

What ‘Eleanor the Great’ taught me about memory, humanity and the world we’re living in

By Shamecca Brown-Granite State News Collaborative 

I watched a movie on Netflix called “Eleanor the Great,” and I didn’t expect it to sit with me the way it did. It’s a film about an older Jewish woman whose life has been shaped by history in ways most of us will never fully understand. I’m not Jewish. I didn’t grow up with Holocaust stories in my family. But something in me connected. Something in me listened differently. Something in me felt the weight of what she carried.

Sometimes a movie isn’t just entertainment – it’s a lesson, a reminder, a mirror. Watching “Eleanor the Great” made me realize how important it is not only to learn history, but to feel it, to respect it, and to understand that survivors don’t need to scream for their stories to matter. Trauma can live quietly and still be loud.

The Holocaust was one of the darkest things this world has ever seen. Six million Jewish people murdered. Children separated from their parents. Families destroyed. Entire cultures and languages targeted for erasure. There were concentration camps, sadistic experiments, starvation, humiliation and cruelty that goes beyond what the mind wants to picture.

People like Eleanor lived through the aftermath of that. They carried memories that didn’t always make it to the dinner table or the classroom. Silence became protection. Silence became survival. And sitting on my couch, watching her story unfold, I found myself grateful to be learning about that time through someone who lived it, even if she didn’t say everything out loud.

I think about how the world is now, how cold it feels at times, how hateful people can be, how divided we are. People will tell you “that was the past,” as if hatred expires, as if genocide can’t happen again, as if ignorance doesn’t grow back when it’s watered. But watching Eleanor made me realize history doesn’t just repeat, it warns.

Even though I’m not Jewish, I felt a connection through my ancestors in a different way. My ancestors were enslaved. They were beaten, sold, raped and treated as property. They survived systems that were designed to erase them. They were told they were less. Their bodies were controlled. Their names were taken. And just like Jewish survivors, they made it anyway, and because they made it, I’m here.

Survival is a legacy

I would never compare pain in a disrespectful way. The Holocaust and slavery are not the same. But what connects them is how evil tries to operate: by stripping humanity, by spreading dehumanizing language, by creating an “us versus them,” and by convincing regular people to look away or go silent.

That’s why this film meant something to me. It reminded me that survival is more than breathing. It’s culture, language, memory. It’s babies growing up free. It’s faith, art, laughter and old age. Seeing Eleanor at that point in her life was powerful because it was proof that love still outlives hate.

While watching, I felt grateful because I was learning something schools barely teach and society barely honors. Grateful that we have films that open our minds instead of numbing them. Grateful that survivors shared their stories so the world cannot say it didn’t know.

I also felt sad thinking about how the world has changed. Hate didn’t disappear – it just found new languages, new targets and new platforms. People are bold with cruelty now – genocide denial, racism, antisemitism, homophobia. People are louder about violence and quieter about empathy, and that scares me.

What gave me hope in the movie was the quiet strength, the dignity. Eleanor didn’t have to be loud to be great. She didn’t have to perform her trauma for the world to validate it. She just lived. She remembered. She honored. And that alone carried history forward.

As a Black woman, as a mother, as someone who teaches her kids about where they come from every day –  not just in February, and not just when it’s convenient – I appreciated that. I appreciated that witnessing someone else’s history does not take away from mine. It expands it. It humbles it. It connects it..

“Eleanor the Great” reminded me that when we honor other people’s trauma, we become better humans. And I truly believe the world needs more of that right now.

Shamecca Brown is a New Hampshire-based columnist who is family-oriented and passionate about serving underserved communities. These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Why is there such low participation in the state’s Family and Medical Leave program?

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

If you are one of the lucky few with paid family or medical leave insurance in New Hampshire, you likely know how valuable it is. But despite the state’s efforts, few workers have this benefit available. Why do so few people in New Hampshire have it, and what does that mean for the state’s efforts? Joining us to discuss that is Dr. Kristin Smith, an associate professor of sociology and director of the Policy Research Shop at the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College. She is also a senior fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. 

Melanie Plenda:

What inspired you to research this topic, and why is it important?

Kristin Smith:

I have been researching working family policy for 25 years. One of the things that's really important is how families can manage their work and family responsibilities — what policies are available to help families? And paid family and medical leave is one of those policies.

Melanie Plenda:

Tell us about your recent policy brief and what it covers. Where can people find it?

Kristin Smith:

My recent policy brief is at the Carsey School of Public Policy. It was published through the Carsey School of Public Policy in one of their series on New Hampshire.

This brief came about because, in 2021,  there was a paid family and medical leave program that was passed in the state budget bill, and there was coverage to be offered, beginning in January 2023. Since I had been studying paid family and medical leave since 2016, I decided to collect some data in 2022 just prior to the launching of this program, and then again in 2023 and 2024. This was so that I would be able to track the impact of this program on the workers' access to paid family and medical leave in our state.

What this brief is covering is a look over time from 2016 to 2024 at how access to paid family and medical leave has changed, and whether there's been a change during the time since the enactment of this policy. 

Melanie Plenda:

What were your findings, in a broad sense?

Kristin Smith:

One of the major findings is that, in New Hampshire, workers lack paid family and medical leave overall. They did in 2016, and this program has had very little impact in changing the access overall for the whole state.

About 3% of workers in our state have access to paid family and medical leave through the voluntary, opt-in paid family and medical leave program. That doesn't mean that only 3% of workers in our state have access to paid family and medical leave, because employers are also offering their workers paid family and medical leave. The issue is that not all employers are offering it.

The state wanted to offer a chance for workers to opt in to a program if their employers were not offering it, and also offer employers a way to get paid family and medical leave through the insurance company that the state has contracted with, MetLife. 

There are three plans within this voluntary paid family and medical leave program. The first is that state employees were automatically offered paid family and medical leave through this program. So roughly 9,000 state workers now have access to paid family and medical leave through this program. Then private employers can opt in to the program. If you're a worker and your employer doesn't offer paid family and medical leave, you can buy into the program and pay that insurance premium yourself.

Melanie Plenda:

For those who are unfamiliar, how does paid family and medical leave work in New Hampshire?

Kristin Smith:

Employers can offer paid family and medical leave as a benefit to their employees, and some of them have been doing this for many years. Typically, it's the larger firms that are offering paid family and medical leave through the employer, as well as employers that have sort of higher-educated and higher-earning workers. That's one way you can get paid family and medical leave through your employer. 

Another recent addition is this voluntary paid family and medical leave program. This is the first. It's a very unique program because it's allowing employers and workers to opt in to the program. That's a second way that you could get paid family and medical leave in our state. 

In other states, there are two different models. One is that the states don't offer any paid family and medical leave at all, and it's just through employers that workers can get paid family and medical leave as a benefit. Another model is Comprehensive Universal Paid Family and Medical Leave, which is offered in 14 states. Those states have eligibility criteria for workers, but in general, most workers are eligible, and they have benefits that they can take if they have a qualifying medical reason. 

Melanie Plenda:

Your recent paper looked at who has paid family and medical leave across different demographics. What were some of those findings? Who is more likely and less likely to have this benefit? 

Kristin Smith:

Overall, workers who are in larger firms have paid family and medical leave compared to workers that are in smaller firms. That's a really important point, because in New Hampshire, we have a lot of small firms — like over 90% of our firms are small businesses with less than 50 workers. So that translates into a lot of workers not having access to these benefits. Workers who have higher education, workers who have higher earnings typically have paid family and medical leave, which means that those that don't have those characteristics are less likely to have that. As well as women — women typically are in occupations that don't offer paid family and medical leave, and therefore, as a whole, women have less access to these benefits.

Melanie Plenda:

Did New Hampshire’s recent efforts to team up with MetLife to offer more paid family and medical leave have any impact on the state’s workers?

Kristin Smith:

About 3% of workers in New Hampshire have covered for paid family and medical leave through the voluntary paid family and medical leave program through MetLife. That translates into about 18,000 workers. So 18,000 workers are probably pretty happy that they have access to paid family and medical leave through this program.

But in terms of moving the needle on a state level, this program, it's really falling short in terms of making an impact. There are a lot of reasons for that. 

I think the main reason is that workers don't know about this program. About 18% of workers have heard of this program, which means that 80% haven't heard of it. Despite the state's efforts to get the word out, there’s just not a lot of knowledge about the program — that’s probably the largest reason.

There are some other reasons as well. The program offers six weeks of paid family and medical leave at a reimbursement rate of 60% of the workers wages up to a cap.  In comparison to some other states that offer paid leave programs, almost all the states offer 12 weeks of leave. That might be a reason that some workers aren't signing up and taking the leave, as well as the 60% wage replacement level that is a bit lower than the other states. 

Many states have adopted a progressive scale. If you are a lower-wage earner, you would be able to get wage replacement for up to 90% of your wages, and then that would decrease up to usually around 67% or 70% for all workers. So having a low replacement level really has been shown in the research to be a deterrent for workers taking the leave if they have the leave, and I think it's probably a deterrent here in terms of joining the program among those workers who are joining as individuals. So men and lower-income workers typically give the reason of a low replacement rate as one of the main reasons they're not taking the leave, even when it's paid.

Melanie Plenda:

Isn’t there also a long waiting period to get the benefits? Does that also play a role?

Kristin Smith:

Individual workers are required to pay in for seven months before they are eligible to make claims. That’s a bit longer than some of the other programs, although programs do typically have a waiting period, it's not often seven months.

The other thing that might be a deterrent or difficult for individuals who are thinking about joining the program is that there is a two-month enrollment period in December and January. If there was sort of a sliding enrollment period, they might see more individuals joining. Employers can join whenever they want. They don’t have a two-month enrollment period, and they don't have a seven-month waiting period. So those two factors are really more important in thinking about the individual workers, if you want to increase access for those workers.

Melanie Plenda:

What are the consequences for those who don’t have paid family and medical leave?

Kristin Smith:

There are some really important consequences that have a real impact on families.

If a worker doesn't have access to paid family and medical leave, they may leave the labor force because of the demands on their time to care for their loved ones. That's an important piece to think about in New Hampshire, where we have a pretty low unemployment rate right now, and we're always looking to have a robust workforce. Not having this type of benefit can sort of deter people from moving to our state as well as in terms of recruitment and retention of workers — those are the two pieces that at the state level policymakers may want to be thinking about in terms of having a robust paid family and medical leave program. In other states, we've seen that this has been a way for states to retain and recruit workers.

Melanie Plenda:

What’s the solution here? What would that look like? 

Kristin Smith:

There are several things that one could contemplate. We in the United States don't have a national paid family and medical leave program. The most efficient way, but least likely way, would be to pass the Family Act, which has been introduced into Congress in this legislative session. The New Hampshire Legislature could pass their own Comprehensive Universal Program for Paid Family and Medical Leave, and that would increase access for all workers, regardless of whether your employer is offering this benefit or not. 

New Hampshire could also consider ways to improve the program that they currently have. The voluntary program could be improved, and those are some things that I've already talked about — offering 12 weeks of leave instead of six weeks, raising the wage replacement level from 60% to something higher, having a higher wage replacement for workers that are lower-wage workers, and expanding the job protection. 

We didn't really talk about this yet, but the job protection piece in the voluntary program that is linked to the federal Family and Medical Leave Act — which is the act that provides unpaid leave in our state and in the nation — is linked to the size of your employer, and because we are a state that has a lot of small employers, about 60% of our workers lack job protection when they take either the unpaid or paid family and medical leave. So having job protection that is more for the workers would be another thing that policymakers could consider.

Melanie Plenda:

Interesting food for thought — thank you Dr. Smith.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visitcollaborativenh.org.

COVID-19, the flu and norovirus: A seasonal update

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

This is the 250th episode of “The State We’re In,” which began during the pandemic with updates about COVID-19. Today we’re going back to our roots in a conversation with Dr. Gabriela Andujar Vazquez, hospital epidemiologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, about COVID as well as the rise in cases of flu and norovirus and what you and your loved ones can do to protect yourselves.

Melanie Plenda:

Is COVID still an issue in New Hampshire? 

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

It definitely is. I think maybe some of you might remember that we had a little bit of a spike of cases during the summer, a little bit of a lull in the fall, and we are seeing an increasing trend of COVID-19 cases in the community across the state.

Melanie Plenda:

What about flu cases this year? According to news reports, serious cases are on the rise at most hospitals. Is there something different about this strain of flu?

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

There is. Currently, the predominant strain is an influenza A virus, and that particular strain has had significant accumulation of mutations. This is what we call an “antigenic drift.” “Antigenic” actually refers to accumulation of mutations by the virus over time, and this is actually what drives seasonal flu epidemics every year, and why we need to update our flu vaccines every year. 

This particular clade is called K, and it has high antigenic drift, and what that means is that, compared to prior years, it has accumulated a little bit more mutations, and what results in is larger outbreaks, a quicker and very steep increase in cases and higher transmission rates, which is what we’re seeing this season

Melanie Plenda:

What are the symptoms of flu? 

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

Fever, usually, which makes it distinct from common colds. Usually, people will have some high fevers,particularly young children and older adults. Cough, which can be dry or productive. You can have some shortness of breath, body aches, muscle aches. It really can send people to bed or home for a day or two. This is regardless of whether you're healthy or have medical problems.

It can hit people quite quickly for the first two days of the illness. Illnesses like common colds, where you have maybe the sniffles, you feel like you're still able to sort of function. But the flu can take a toll on one's body quite quickly.

Melanie Plenda:

When should you head to a hospital, versus just staying home and resting?

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

When you feel shortness of breath — you're not able to breathe well, and it just keeps persisting. It can lead to seizures, febrile seizures, in those less than two years of age, mostly. It's keeping an eye on the temperatures, and if you feel that by day four or five, the person who is sick continues to feel sick and is not able to function, seeking medical attention with either your primary care provider, depending on the urgency, or an emergency room or urgent care clinic visit would be appropriate to to get ahead of it. 

Melanie Plenda:

What about norovirus? Are cases also on the rise? 

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

Norovirus is an interesting virus. It has some seasonality to it. There are some years where there are lulls. There is some component of climate, meaning that it can sort of spread quicker in certain summers, for example. Every three to four years, we see high epidemics and then lulls, years where it sort of stays low. In 2025, we did see a higher incidence of norovirus being identified during the summer and into the winter months than compared to other years.

Melanie Plenda:

What are some of the symptoms of norovirus?

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

It's very explosive diarrhea. It's a very contagious virus. You just need a little bit of exposure to a couple of those variants to get ill. It usually lasts 24 to 48 hours. Some patients that have weak immune systems may have more prolonged days of symptoms. What makes people very sick and needing to seek medical attention, or sometimes emergency room visits, is dehydration. They're not able to keep up with any fluids orally, so patients can become dehydrated quite quickly. So the most vulnerable patients — like young children, older adults — are more susceptible to dehydration, and that would encourage them to seek medical attention.

Melanie Plenda:

Is it too late for flu vaccines at this point? 

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

Absolutely not. The flu season started a couple of weeks earlier than the U.S. in European countries. We do have some estimates out of England regarding the flu vaccine efficacy. They found it’s about 70% to 75% effective against hospitalization for children, and about 30 to 40% for adults against hospitalization. There was more concern that it was not going to be as similar to other flu vaccine seasons because of the antigenic drift that we talked about. So what that means is that there is still a chance, if you haven't been vaccinated for the flu, to get the vaccine to protect yourself and the community.

Melanie Plenda:

When is the best time to get that vaccine?

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

In general, I tell my patients to get it before Halloween. Starting in December is when we see the increase in cases, but you want to get it at least two weeks before it starts circulating, because that's when you get the most protection. 

Melanie Plenda:

What should you do to stay healthy? Should we break out masks and gloves again? Is hand sanitizer enough?

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

Wash your hands — hand hygiene is always encouraged. Hand sanitizer is effective against eliminating influenza virus and other viruses from our hands. It just has to be more than 70% alcohol to be able to kill that virus or bacteria in our hands.

Regarding the mask, if it's well-fitting and used appropriately, it should protect yourself and others, particularly if you're sick. Wearing a mask will do what we call source control, which is prevent you from spreading illness to others. I know that using a mask regularly every day is not necessarily something that's feasible, but the more you can use it in certain situations, it sort of accumulates that risk mitigation. 

Melanie Plenda:

Speaking of vaccines, the federal government has released new guidelines reducing the number of required vaccines for children. What do you think of the guidelines?

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

I think, like all of us in the medical community, we are concerned by these changes. The childhood vaccine schedules in the United States have been developed through many, many years of rigorous review, looking at safety and effectiveness data, taking into consideration our health care system, how fragmented it is, how there are pockets of patients that are vulnerable and are unable to access care. So a lot of thought and debate over the years around how we have implemented our childhood vaccine schedules went into it, and so I think we're all concerned that this thoughtful process did not happen when these changes were issued.

The prior childhood vaccine schedules were meant to protect all, not just individual children — but entire communities. So reducing the recommended vaccines without necessarily having strong scientific justification, or at least transparency on how these decisions were made, will potentially increase preventable diseases and end up undermining the public's trust in the system that has saved countless lives for the past 50-plus years.

Melanie Plenda:

What advice would you give parents about getting kids vaccinated?

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

One thing we should make clear is that nothing has changed. We haven't had any evidence that the safety or efficacy of the vaccines that we have been delivering and recommending in our childhood vaccine schedules for many years has changed. No evidence has been brought to light that would prompt us to drastically change our schedule.

I would encourage parents to ask questions of vaccine safety and whether this is what's right for their child. But I would also point out that nothing has changed in terms of safety or evidence to make these unilateral changes. So I would advise parents to continue to visit their child's providers and have discussions if they do have worry or confusion. Because I think that right now, a lot of patients may be confused about whether the changes were something that they should be looking into or not. 

Melanie Plenda:

Do you have any other advice for people trying to stay healthy this winter?

Gabriela Andujar Vazquez:

I almost always say similar things when I talk about general public health and staying healthy. There has been a lot of confusion and different opinions around how to stay healthy. I think that having conversations with trusted sources of information and bringing up difficult questions and challenging sometimes things that we thought were to be true — that’s part of how we move, how we evolve, how we identify issues in public health. But that doesn't mean that by asking questions that it should completely eliminate the rigorous reviews that have happened before. Continue to talk and find common ground on some of these issues that are complicated, because our health care system is complicated.

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you for those tips, doctor.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visitcollaborativenh.org.

Carrying warmth when the world turns bitter cold

By Shamecca Brown, Columnist

There’s a heaviness settling over the world these days, and most people can feel it, even if they don’t want to admit it out loud. The news cycles are soaked in hate, cruelty and division. Social platforms reward outrage over empathy. Headlines read like warnings – another war, another shooting, another attack, another person stripped of dignity for simply existing.

People are growing numb. Not because they’ve stopped caring, but because caring has become exhausting. The human heart wasn’t designed for a constant drip of global suffering and personal struggle all at once.

And the coldness isn’t just happening out there, it’s happening in everyday interactions. In the rushed conversations. In the lack of eye contact. In the judgment before curiosity. Somewhere along the line, we stopped offering each other grace. We stopped assuming the best. We stopped acknowledging strangers as people with whole stories behind their faces.

But even in this frost, there are people who refuse to surrender their warmth. They’re not loud. They’re not trending. They’re not chasing applause or making speeches. They’re simply showing up. Showing up for their kids, for their neighbors, for communities that are hurting, and sometimes for people they don’t owe anything to at all.

They’re the resilient ones, the people who don’t let coldness dictate their character.

Resilience doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine. It doesn’t mean smiling through suffering or ignoring how bad things have gotten. It means acknowledging the darkness and choosing, stubbornly, to plant something good anyway. That’s a quiet resistance. A protest of the spirit.

Resilience shows up in how we show up for each other. I’ve seen it firsthand. When I lost someone I loved deeply, I expected the world to give me space and mind its own business, because that’s what we’ve been trained to do. Instead, my friends showed up. They stepped into my grief without hesitation. They checked on me, they fed my kids, they sat with me in silence. Not because they had the right words – nobody really does – but because they refused to let me drown alone.

That kind of presence rebuilds trust in humanity. It gives you air after you’ve forgotten how to breathe. It reminds you that, even in grief, even when life breaks in front of you, you are not abandoned. You learn that community is not just a concept. It’s a lifeline.

Showing up for someone in grief is not glamorous. There is no applause for it, no social media highlight reel. But it matters. It’s a statement that says, “I see you. I’m not leaving.” And in a cold world, that kind of warmth is hope in its purest form.

Learning to carry warmth

Some of the coldness that’s taken over society is rooted in fear – fear that resources are scarce, that vulnerability is weakness, that someone else’s joy or success is a threat. But the resilient know a different truth: Connection doesn’t shrink the world, it expands it.

What doesn’t get reported enough are the stories of people who are still choosing connection despite everything. Communities rebuilding after disaster. Teens organizing food drives. Survivors becoming advocates so someone else’s suffering isn’t wasted. Strangers forming human chains in emergencies. And yes, friends showing up to carry a grieving mother through the kind of loss that splits life into “before” and “after.”

These stories don’t cancel out the hate  but they prove that humanity is not dead, just quieter.

The cold world wants you to believe that caring makes you naïve. But caring is not naïve; it’s revolutionary. It takes strength to stay soft when the world pushes you to harden. It takes courage to keep loving when bitterness would be easier. And it takes faith to believe that helping someone matters even when there’s no spotlight.

Maybe the work ahead isn’t about eliminating all the cold. Maybe it’s about learning how to carry warmth through it so others don’t freeze.

The world may be colder than it used to be, but it is not frozen. Not as long as resilient people exist – and they do. They’re everywhere. Some are loud about it, but most are quiet. Some are rebuilding communities, some are raising children, some are healing from things they don’t talk about, and some are simply choosing not to let hate win.

In a time like this, resilience isn’t just survival. It’s proof that humanity is still breathing.

Shamecca Brown is a New Hampshire-based columnist who is family-oriented and passionate about serving underserved communities. These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Child care on freeze: A crisis families everywhere can’t ignore

By Shamecca Brown, Granite State News Collaborative, Columnist 

The Trump administration recently said it would freeze child care funding nationwide, although only five states so far have been affected, and New Hampshire isn’t one of them. So far.

The idea of even thinking about freezing child care assistance, let alone actually doing it, is shameful. Child care is not a luxury. It is not a “nice to have.” It is a necessity for families who are trying to work, survive and build stability. Freezing access to child care is not just a policy issue, it becomes a daily crisis for parents – especially single mothers, fathers and low-income families.

I know this issue personally, but I also recognize how much worse it has become over time.

I moved to New Hampshire from New York in 2005, at a time when things were not nearly as bad as they are today. While child care assistance wasn’t perfect back then, it was more accessible, and families were not facing the same widespread freezes and closed waitlists that exist now. Applying for child care was still difficult. The paperwork was overwhelming, the process was stressful and the uncertainty was real, but it was possible to navigate.

In 2026, the reality for families looks very different. Families are being shut out entirely, not because they don’t qualify, not because they aren’t trying, but because programs are frozen. Parents are told to wait indefinitely, with no clear timeline and no alternatives. Many never even make it onto a waitlist. This is a level of inaccessibility that did not exist in the same way years ago, and it has left families in crisis.

A child care freeze doesn’t mean families stop needing care. It means parents are forced to make impossible choices. Do you quit your job because you can’t leave your children alone? Do you work unstable hours and hope a friend or family member can help? Do you risk losing housing because your income drops? These are not hypothetical situations, this is real life for families every single day.

Single parents are hit the hardest. When you are raising children on your own, there is no backup parent to step in. No second income to fall back on. No flexibility when child care falls through. Without child care, you can’t work. Without work, you can’t survive. 

Low-income families face an added layer of stress. Many are already working multiple jobs, attending school or participating in required programs to keep benefits. Child care freezes create a system where parents are still expected to meet all their obligations, but without the support needed to do so. It becomes a setup for failure.

Moving the finish line

What’s frustrating is that child care assistance is often talked about as temporary help, but in reality, it’s an investment. When parents have reliable child care, they can work consistently, improve their financial situation, and eventually move off assistance. Freezing child care doesn’t save money in the long run, it creates deeper instability, higher unemployment and more families in crisis.

I’ve worked closely with caregivers and families, and I see the same patterns over and over again. Parents want to do better. They show up. They try. But the system keeps moving the finish line. One moment they’re told to get a job, the next they’re told child care isn’t available. One moment they’re encouraged to be self-sufficient, the next they’re blocked by policies outside their control.

Child care freezes don’t just affect parents, they affect the emotional and developmental well-being of children. Children don’t understand funding gaps or state budgets. They understand stress. They understand when their parent is overwhelmed. They understand when routines change, when caregivers disappear, and when stability feels out of reach.

Freezing child care assistance sends a message that families are an afterthought – that parents should “figure it out,” even when the system makes it impossible. But families are the foundation of our communities. Supporting them should never be optional.Child care should not depend on luck, timing or where you live. It should be accessible, consistent and treated as the essential support that it is.

Until that happens, parents will continue to struggle, not because they aren’t trying, but because the system is frozen while their lives are not.

Shamecca Brown is a New Hampshire-based columnist who is family-oriented and passionate about serving underserved communities. These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Unrest at state health care commission leads to membership change

Dispute over vetting process for spending millions leads to removal of the panel’s two public appointees

By Meera Mahadevan-Granite State News Collaborative

A state health care commission — created to oversee millions of dollars in funding to benefit consumers following a recent wave of hospital acquisitions and consolidation — is being rocked by change in leadership and membership. 

And two of the commission’s members are proposing to prevent the N.H. Executive Council from overseeing its expenditures and removing funding for academic research related to the hospital mergers. 

Yvonne Goldsberry, a longtime community health advocate and president of the Endowment for Health, and Marie Ramas, a primary care doctor in Nashua, are the only two public members of the Healthcare Consumer Protection Advisory Commission, which has been meeting publicly since the summer of 2024 to advise the state attorney general’s office on matters relating to health care mergers and acquisitions. 

But both have been notified that their two-year terms will not be renewed, effective immediately.

Goldsberry was chair of the seven-member commission, which was created by the attorney general’s office and established by the Legislature in July 2023.

Attorney General John Formella has been appointed as the new chair, and Goldsberry has been replaced with a new member, Dr. Mitchell Cohen, a physician in Nashua. It is not clear if a new member has been named to replace Ramas. The governor appoints members of the commission.

Ramas said the abrupt change in leadership and her departure were unwarranted and are a setback for health care consumers.

“Considering that I am a family physician and president of the New Hampshire Medical Society and have a very broad and deep knowledge from the industry side as well as from a public health and public policy side, I was surprised that the governor did not see my areas of expertise and the population and constituents that I have a direct voice to as beneficial for the purposes of this commission,” Ramas said. 

A spokesperson for Goldsberry said that, under her leadership “and in partnership with other health policy experts, she succeeded in getting the commission started and inviting public participation. Several members of the commission continue to advocate for a thoughtful and fair process in the expenditure of funds managed by the commission.”

In a statement, Formella said the commission is grateful for the services and insight provided by Goldsberry and Ramas, but he declined to say why their terms were not renewed. 

In addition to the two public members and the AG, the other four members of the commission are: N.H. Sen. Tim McGough, R-Merrimack; N.H. Rep. Julie Miles, R-Merrimack and McGough’s wife; a designee from the state Insurance Department; and a designee from the state Department of Health and Human Services. 

The commission is tasked with managing funds from the Healthcare Consumer Protection Trust Fund, which are to be used solely for benefiting health care consumers and for supporting initiatives that enhance competition, access and quality in the state’s health care market. 

As of December, the trust fund had a balance of about $4 million, Formella told the commission last month. The commission estimates the fund will receive an additional $1 million this year related to Massachusetts-based Beth Israel Lahey’s acquisition of Exeter Hospital in 2023. It will also receive about $1.75 million between 2027 through 2032 related to the Exeter deal, as well as from HCA Healthcare’s purchase of Catholic Medical Center in Manchester. Half of the money from the HCA-CMC transaction is required to be used in the greater Manchester area. 

Contentious meeting

The changes in membership came as the commission was in the early stages of rolling out its stated purpose and discussing how best to get public input on the impact of several high-profile hospital acquisitions, including Beth Israel’s acquisition of Exeter Hospital and HCA’s purchases of Frisbie Memorial in Rochester and Catholic Medical Center. 

McGough and Miles are sponsors of House Bill 1784, which calls for removing the Executive Council’s oversight of expenditures. It also calls for prohibiting the funding of academic research related to mergers and acquisitions. When the commission was established, funding decisions were supposed to be approved by the commission, the governor and the Executive Council.

Neither McGough nor Miles could be reached for comment.

The commission has already passed a measure awarding a four-year, $1.6 million contract to the University of New Hampshire to conduct research on health care consolidation and its impact on the state. It is not clear if the governor and the Executive Council have approved that funding yet, or if that funding is in limbo. 

The UNH Center for Studying Healthcare Markets has already been created and is headed by Dr. Bradley Herring, a professor of health economics. Herring has made initial presentations to the commission and is expected to appear in front of it again soon.

For its part, the attorney general’s office said that, if HB 1784 is passed, it anticipates a significant increase in attorney and staff time to evaluate proposals and ensure compliance. It also said the bill would require hiring an assistant attorney general and a paralegal at a cost of between $100,000 and $500,000 per fiscal year.

The departures of Goldsberry and Ramas came after what has been described as a contentious meeting last October, when two proposals were made by entities seeking funding.

One was a request from the Plaistow Fire Department for about $1.4 million to replace advanced life support services for 18 communities that were eliminated in the fall of 2024 following the Beth Israel-Exeter hospital transaction. The request was approved unanimously. 

However, a proposal for $182,500, submitted by Sen. McGough on behalf of Merrimack Adult Day Health Center, a for-profit senior center, passed narrowly on a 4-3 vote. Goldsberry, Ramas and Melissa St. Cyr of the state Department of Health and Human Services voted against the request. 

McGough told the commission that the center allows for the socialization of seniors from seven communities and needs two additional vans with wheelchair lifts to reach four more communities. 

According to draft minutes of the meeting, some commission members questioned the connection between the center’s request and the intent of the trust fund money. Supporters of the proposal said the center provides much-needed meals and meets other needs, while other members said the commission has not yet assessed how it will even accept proposals from the public, or even what criteria will be used, and said that opportunities have not been extended equitably to all potential grantees. 

Ramas said it is unfair to allow proposals to be brought to just one person on the commission. 

“I think those were fine ideas and fine intentions that were brought up,” Ramas said. “But we didn’t have a process in place to review the proposals. The group is very new, so it’s not a question of whether the proposal is good or bad. It’s that I don’t know what the process is.
“We need to be clear and equitable so that the public is informed. …  It was not equitable for the couple of requests that came in to be directly associated with one person on the commission. We need to make sure we have a process so we can measure outcomes.”

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

State House update: What to expect during the 2026 legislative session

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Our state Legislature has been hard at work. New laws passed in 2025 have just gone into effect, and the 2026 legislative session has just started. Here to explain what’s going on is Anna Brown, executive director of Citizens Count, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating voters about the political process. Brown is also executive director of the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Service at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law.

Melanie Plenda:

Can you give us a brief overview of some of the new laws that went into effect on Jan. 1?

Anna Brown:

The biggest headline was an end to mandatory car inspections, and there has been some litigation around that, but that was a big change that a lot of people were probably watching. We also have a new ban on certain gender-related care and treatment for minors and a ban on sanctuary cities, which are towns and cities in New Hampshire that would otherwise not cooperate with ICE and immigration enforcement from the federal level. 

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s dig a little deeper. Tell us more about what the gender-affirming care law for minors entails. How will that affect people?

Anna Brown:

This is looking at surgeries, hormone therapy, such as puberty blockers, and other interventions that minors would get related to a gender transition. Any minors that were getting procedures prior to Jan. 1 will be able to continue them — that was an amendment to the bill that got some more support on board — but going forward, there won't be the opportunity to do that in New Hampshire for those under 18. 

Melanie Plenda:

What about sanctuary cities? How will this ban affect the state and its residents?

Anna Brown:

The definition of sanctuary city is a little subjective, but basically, a sanctuary city would have a policy in place that they're not going to cooperate with ICE detainers, that's Immigration and Customs Enforcement. When local law enforcement cooperates with ICE detainers and a person is arrested, they would hold that person up to 48 hours for ICE to come and move forward with immigration enforcement proceedings.

In New Hampshire, this wasn’t a widespread issue. There has been one town, Hanover, that had a policy against cooperating with ICE. They were at risk of losing state funding if they didn't change that policy. So they have changed their policy coming into the new year. New Hampshire’s big cities, not to mention all of the small towns, this wasn't really something that was happening, so there shouldn't be big differences in terms of what law enforcement is doing.

Melanie Plenda:

Another law has to do with ambulance costs. Can you tell us more about that?

Anna Brown:

Yes, this is a ban on balance billing. What that means is if you're calling an ambulance to the hospital — it’s an emergency, you're not going to ask them the network they're in or the rates. But when the ambulance submits to your insurance, there might be a disagreement. The ambulance might want you to be paying more than what your insurance is willing to cover, so the individual would get a bill for the balance — that’s why we say balance billing. It was also sometimes called surprise billing because if you're taking the ambulance ride and you have insurance, you're not expecting to get a big bill after the fact. So this law blocks that and sets rates for ambulances providers in terms of what they are allowed to charge insurers.

Melanie Plenda:

What about the law involving AI chatbots and minors? What’s behind that? 

Anna Brown:

This is an interesting one, as AI is just constantly evolving, and it's a really strange legal landscape in terms of determining who is responsible when bad things happen.

This bill is looking at what happens when an AI chat bot or similar tool encourages suicide, makes sexual suggestions or encourages other harmful behavior. This law adds civil penalties, such as a fine, though the law that's going into effect says specifically that the owner or operator must know that they are intending to facilitate, engage or encourage this harmful behavior.

Realistically, most of these AI technology developers are not sitting there with the intention to encourage harmful behavior among children. So I am not convinced that this law is going to have a really big impact at the moment, but there was hesitation among legislators to go farther than that, because it is such a rapidly changing landscape. Again, it's hard to assign blame and responsibility when it's so complex that people aren't even sure where some of this information is coming from. 

Melanie Plenda:

Parents now have a right to see their children’s library records. How did that come about? 

Anna Brown:

This is related to a lot of general concern around certain books about sex and gender, in particular, that minors have access to.

Previously, if a minor had their own library card with their name on it, the parent did not automatically get access to see what that child was checking out. There was an argument that this is a concern. The counterargument was, “OK, then a parent doesn't have to allow their child to have their own library card.” But after a few years of debate, legislators ultimately decided that we want all parents and legal guardians to be able to go to a library and say, “I would like to see the books that my children have checked out.” There are still some questions in terms of what libraries are going to be able to do to verify if someone is definitely a child's parent and if they should be having access to that child. Because, of course, we do have some scary and unfortunate situations in this world when a parent is not a safe person for a child.

Melanie Plenda:

There’s also a new law about returning confiscated firearms. Can you tell us more about that?
Anna Brown:

This law basically is shifting the default in courts towards immediately returning a person's firearm after a protective order expires. I do expect there to be ongoing debates around this. In the upcoming legislative session, there are some bills that are looking to change what's going on with the return of firearms after protective orders. 

Melanie Plenda:

Let’s look ahead, what about some of the things coming up in the Legislature this year. What about housing? 

Anna Brown:

For every zoning change that was passed at the state level last year, I am pretty much seeing a bill in 2026 to roll it back or hem it back in.

For example, there was a law that allows multifamily residential development in commercial zones — they’re looking to repeal that this session. There was also an expanded right to accessory dwelling unit development, which puts accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, completely back under local control. Given what I've seen in the past, it seems unlikely that the Legislature will immediately repeal a law that they just passed the previous year. 

There are a couple bills that are looking to add extra taxes on second homes. I feel like new taxes don't have a lot of success in the Republican-led Legislature, but it's a novel idea. There's bills that are looking to transfer surplus state-owned property that would be suitable for housing to developers for very low amounts. Then there are ideas about special assessment districts or tax increment financing for housing development, which, to keep it really simple, would be basically allowing special taxes or fees in certain areas that would go specifically to that infrastructure development and other supports that can really encourage housing.

Melanie Plenda:

How about school funding? Any chance the state will start helping towns fund their educational needs?

Anna Brown:

There are many proposals this year that are looking to change how the state law defines an adequate education and many bills that are looking to change the funding formula, particularly related to special education, because those costs have been going up a lot, and there's a limit on how much the state currently reimburses at the local level. But there's also an interesting sort of side debate that's happening about if schools can take out loans from the state. 

I don't think there's going to be major changes to the school-funding formula this year. I think the Legislature is likely to start talking about it. Since this has been an intractable issue for decades, I don't see any quick changes. In fact, some legislators have explicitly said they think the Supreme Court overstepped its bounds and they shouldn't make any changes in the Legislature. I am expecting to see maybe some changes around how budgeting happens for school districts at the local level.

Melanie Plenda:

What about the death penalty in New Hampshire? Do you think that will come up in 2026?

Anna Brown:

There are a few bills that are looking to reinstate the death penalty for capital murder. There's also interest in doing that for child sexual abuse.

This is really related to the fact that Gov. Kelly Ayotte was attorney general when Michael Addison's case came up — he is the only inmate we currently have on death row. New Hampshire does not have a death chamber. It does not have the capability to implement the death penalty. We repealed it about a decade ago. If it was reinstated, Governor Ayotte has said she's open to that. So this is really going to be a question of the legislature. 

I think we can all agree, whether you're for or against the death penalty, that this is an issue that really touches everyone. There are very strong ethical, legal and financial questions about this. I will say last time we repealed the death penalty, it was a squeaker vote. It barely went through. A lot of legislators changed their mind throughout the process of how they were voting. So I would also encourage people, if you have an opinion on this, to be engaging with your legislators.

Melanie Plenda:

What else do you expect to come up in the next few months? 

Anna Brown:

We’ve touched on school funding — that's really huge, along with gender and housing. I’d say those are probably the top issues that I'm going to be watching, along with child care. As for some other issues, a lot of legislation is looking at whether a site evaluation committee for landfills is needed.

Then there are two constitutional amendments that I think are intriguing, because the whole thing with a constitutional amendment is it doesn't go to the governor, it has to pass the Legislature with a supermajority, and then it goes to voters at the polls in November. The first one is a constitutional amendment that would legalize marijuana. This is an issue we've seen again and again. The governor has put a block on this. The House frequently has passed some version of marijuana legalization. I'm not sure if the Senate would be on board. 

The other constitutional amendment that I think is interesting would be protecting the right of same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, and so on. This relates to recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings, and there's concern that same-sex marriage is is not just a given. We need to aggressively protect this in New Hampshire, not just in state law, but the constitution itself. I think this is interesting, because at one point, not too long ago in our history, same-sex marriage was a very controversial issue. Now we've seen generally widespread acceptance of that among the public. But does that rise to the level where people are going to agree this needs to be in the state constitution? I'm not sure. But the fun thing about constitutional amendments is, as I said, voters will potentially have a chance to weigh in on the issue in November, so I'll be watching those debates closely.

Melanie Plenda:

Interesting as always. Thank you for joining us.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

‘In the now’: Holding it together while the world feels like it’s falling apart

By Shamecca Brown-Granite State News Collaborative

We are living in a moment when it feels like the world is constantly on edge. There’s an unshakable sense that time is moving fast while so many of us feel stuck, bracing ourselves for what comes next. Every time we look up, there’s another headline, another crisis, another reminder that nothing feels stable anymore. Wars we can’t escape seeing on our phones. Children growing up faster than they should. Families one emergency away from losing everything. Systems that were already cracked are now completely breaking under pressure.

Yet we are still expected to wake up, go to work, parent, smile, pay bills – and act like this level of chaos is normal.

It’s not.

What feels most exhausting isn’t just what’s happening globally, it’s how heavy it all feels inside our bodies. The quiet anxiety we carry. The clenched jaws. The deep sighs we don’t even realize we’re taking. The way our nervous systems are constantly in fight-or-flight mode, even when we’re sitting still. We are processing grief in real time while being told to keep moving forward.

There’s a strange loneliness in knowing so many people are struggling, yet feeling like we have to struggle silently. Everyone is hurting in different ways, but the pain overlaps. Mental health is in crisis, families are stretched thin, and people are surviving instead of living. The cost of simply existing feels higher than ever financially, emotionally, spiritually.

And for communities that were already marginalized, already overlooked, already under-resourced, this moment hits harder. There is a deep frustration in watching decisions being made by people who will never feel the consequences. There is anger in seeing wealth protected while everyday people are told to “figure it out.” There is grief in watching compassion get buried under politics, profit and power.

What hurts the most is the feeling that humanity itself is being tested, and too often failing. We see cruelty justified. We see empathy labeled as weakness. We see people dehumanized because of where they’re from, who they love, how they identify, or how much money they don’t have. And somehow, we’re expected to not let that harden us.

It takes strength to still care. It takes courage to feel deeply when it would be easier to shut down. It takes intention to raise children with values of kindness, accountability and truth when the world is loud with hate and misinformation. It takes resilience to keep showing up for others when you yourself are running on empty.

Many of us are carrying private battles the world knows nothing about – illness, loss, financial stress, fear about the future, concern for our children, worry about our partners, aging parents, or our own mental health. We are learning how to function while grieving outcomes that haven’t even happened yet. That kind of anticipatory grief is real, and it’s heavy.

Still, in the middle of all this – the good and the bad, the hope and the heartbreak – people are finding ways to love. To help. To show up. To build community where systems have failed. To listen. To advocate. To write. To speak. To hold space for one another when everything feels like too much.

That matters. Especially now, as we enter 2026, when it’s becoming clearer that no one is meant to survive this moment alone.

It matters that there are teachers who still care deeply about their students. Advocates who refuse to give up on survivors. Parents who are trying to raise emotionally aware children. Neighbors checking on neighbors. Writers telling the truth. Everyday people choosing empathy, even when it costs them something.

Being “in the now” doesn’t mean ignoring what’s happening. It means recognizing that as human beings, we need each other more than ever, across differences, across pain, across perspectives, even when it’s uncomfortable. It means acknowledging it fully, without sugarcoating, without pretending we’re okay when we’re not. It means giving ourselves permission to feel anger, sadness, fear, and hope all at the same time. It means understanding that two things can be true: The world can be on fire, and we can still find moments of beauty worth protecting.

If you’re tired, you’re not alone. If you’re overwhelmed, it makes sense. If you’re still trying, even on the days you feel like giving up, that says more about your strength than you probably realize.

In 2026, maybe the goal isn’t to have all the answers. Maybe it’s to choose kindness more often than cruelty. To protect what truly matters – our children, our elders, our communities, our mental health, our shared dignity. To remember that needing one another isn’t weakness; it’s how we survive.

Shamecca Brown is a New Hampshire-based columnist who is family-oriented and passionate about serving underserved communities. These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visitcollaborativenh.org.

N.H.’s rural health care windfall an ‘investment,’ but won’t make up for billions in lost Medicaid funds

Despite over $700 million coming from the federal government, ‘significant challenges’ still lie ahead

By Meera Mahadevan-Granite State News Collaborative

State officials and local hospitals are thrilled to be getting a large financial bounty from the federal government, hoping it will help stabilize rural health care in New Hampshire. 

That enthusiasm, however, is tempered by cautious optimism amid drastic cuts in Medicaid and the threat of rural hospital closures and dwindling operating margins.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced late Monday that it will award New Hampshire over $204 million for 2026 as part of its federal Rural Health Transformation Program, a $50 billion, five-year initiative that is part of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed during the summer. 

The money announced this week comes on top of the $500 million each of the 50 states will receive over five years, also as part of the $50 billion allocation. 

New Hampshire’s portion is the largest among the New England states and is slightly more than the $200 million that the state had requested. Maine and Massachusetts will receive $190 million and $162 million, respectively. New Jersey will get the lowest amount in the country at $147.3 million and the highest will go to Texas at $281.3 million. 

“We are very pleased to see New Hampshire is going to be receiving $204 million to strengthen health care,” said Steve Ahnen, president of the N.H. Hospital Association, which represents the state’s 31 acute care and specialty hospitals.

But, he added, the new money will not compensate for the estimated $3 billion to $3.5 billion cut in Medicaid funding the state will face over the next decade under the same law, as well as potential revenue losses stemming from a significant increase in the number of uninsured people that is expected after the expiration of Affordable Care Act premium tax credits. The Medicaid cuts start in 2028.

“We have some significant challenges ahead of us,” Ahnen said. “Can we use these dollars to stem some of those headwinds? It’s not a replacement of those funds we will lose, but $204 million is a significant investment that we should take advantage of.” 

‘Beginning of a bold effort’

The federal money comes at a time when health policy analysts and think tanks have said that about 30 percent of rural hospitals in the U.S. are at risk of closing, including at least four hospitals in New Hampshire, due to high costs and poor reimbursements for services. 

However, those hospitals, including Cheshire Medical Center in Keene and Concord Hospital-Laconia, said they are safeguarded by the fact that they are affiliated with larger entities such as Dartmouth Health System and Concord Hospital Health System, which can help mitigate their financial losses.

Ahnen said the state’s 13 rural hospitals are often the sole source of emergency care, primary care and behavioral health services for large geographic areas in the state, but face persistent workforce shortages, rising health care costs and growing demand for care. 

Non-rural hospitals in the state are also squeezed by low government reimbursements and insurance payment delays, and Ahnen said that all of New Hampshire’s hospitals stand to benefit from the new funding. 

“New Hampshire is a very rural state,” he said. “There’s opportunities to invest these dollars to help all hospitals. The tremendous focus on rural hospitals is appropriate. We are going to work to ensure that the health care system functions together. The last thing we want to do is create silos.”

Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s office, which submitted an application to CMS in November, said it received input from more than 300 stakeholders, including rural hospitals and mental health centers before submitting the application. 

The state hopes to allocate money to improve health care access, improve workforce shortages and boost the use of technology, such as telehealth services and use of artificial intelligence. It is not clear exactly how the state will disburse the money and whether it will be given directly to hospitals, clinics and other entities, such as high schools and colleges that may participate in strengthening rural health care.

Ayotte has created an office known as GO-NORTH — the Governor’s Office of New Opportunities and Rural Transformational Health — to help plan and implement its ambitious initiatives. The office will also monitor and assess how the money is being spent once it’s been distributed. 

“This is the beginning of a bold effort to expand access to affordable, high-quality care closer to home for Granite Staters in rural communities,” Ayotte said.

The new funding does not require states to use the money solely for rural hospitals and caps the amount of money that can be spent on hospitals and other providers at 15 percent. 

The funding also contains some controversial requirements, including that the money cannot be spent on gender-affirming care or reimbursement for most abortion services, according to KFF, formerly known as Kaiser Family Foundation, a research organization. KFF reported that the funding also places limitations related to citizenship documentation requirements.

“Many hospitals do not currently collect patient immigration status, but may need to do so to be reimbursed for patient care with rural health funds,” KFF said in one of its reports assessing the rural health fund.

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.

Why the Granite State News Collaborative’s Community News Survey matters

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

The Granite State News Collaborative, a network of local news organizations, is conducting a Community News Survey to take the pulse of news consumers in New Hampshire. Melanie Plenda, host “The State We’re In” — who’s also executive director of the collaborative is here to tell us what the survey is, why it’s being done and why you might want to participate. 

Rosemary Ford:

Melanie, what is the Community News Survey, and why is the collaborative doing it?

Melanie Plenda:

It is exactly what it sounds like. It is a very short — we promise — series of questions just trying to get at the heart of what people want from their news. What are they missing? What do they care about? We want to know what you're concerned about and how you get your news.

The whole reason for doing this is not only to shape the coverage across the state from all of our local news partners, all of whom will have access to the survey results. It’s not only to make sure that we're covering the things that people actually care about and we're answering questions that people actually have, but we also want to assess, “Are we delivering news in a way that people are consuming it?” Because it’s great that we have amazing coverage and amazing reporters and they're doing all this great work, but if we're not delivering it in a way that people are wanting to receive it, then that's a real problem. So it's really going to help us to better understand how people are interacting with news, — whether they're even consuming local news, and if not, why not? And how we might bring them back to local news.

Rosemary Ford:

What sorts of questions does the survey have? 

Melanie Plenda:

We tried to keep it very straightforward and also a little open-ended because we wanted to let people really kind of not just be relegated to some multiple-choice questions.

We do ask, “What kind of news do you consume?” Where do you get your news? If you do consume local news, what outlets are you reading, listening, or watching? What concerns you? What questions do you have about those sorts of things?” We do understand there's lots of surveys out there, and people have a lot of demands on their time, so we wanted to be mindful of that. So we wanted to keep it short and sweet, but really still be able to get to the heart of what would help us better serve our communities?

Rosemary Ford:

How will this survey help the Collaborative better serve the community? What will the answers help you do?

Melanie Plenda:

All of our 20-plus partners will have access to the survey results. So from there, individual outlets can assess where their coverage is relative to what people say they want. They may be able to see that a lot of people are actually getting their news on social media. So how can they do a better job of disseminating that information out on social media?

From the Collaborative perspective, I can help gather up that information, disseminate it out to the partners. And then once they've had a chance to assess what their needs are, what resources do they need in order to be able to get the news out in a way that will satisfy community members? If it turns out they do need some additional resources, or if they need a larger project then that's where I come in, and GSNC as an organization, can try to fill in those gaps or try to coordinate projects that will better help the partners do the work that they are best at.

Rosemary Ford:

Can you tell us about some of the challenges the Granite State’s news organizations are facing in these times?

Melanie Plenda:

This is nothing new that local newsrooms — not only across the state, but across the country — have really taken a hit in the last couple of decades. And by that, I mean they've lost reporting staff. Let's say, they have 20-plus communities in their coverage area, and only two or three reporters — sometimes only one —  there to cover it. What happens then? A lot of that watchdog piece that we are supposed to be there for, a lot of community connection pieces, aren't able to happen and that's a real shame.

It takes a toll on communities when local newsrooms go away altogether. Then really people are only left with national news, or the sort of doomscrolling that we all do on social media, and that can lead to people being more polarized, that can lead to local decisions being made that really impact everyone's daily lives without local people having a say on that. 

Now that said, I will say, and I will brag about our local news partners a bit. While everyone has struggled with maintaining a staff that can do the job they need to do, I'm really and just humbled every day by how dedicated our local reporters, editors and publishers are here in New Hampshire. They don't use it as an excuse that they don't have as full of staff as they would like to have. They just keep going, and they keep serving their community as best they can.

Rosemary Ford:

According to the Pew Research Center, 70% of U.S. adults have trust in local news while only 56% have trust in national news. Why do you think there is such a significant difference between the two? How is that playing into what local news organizations are doing?

Melanie Plenda:

The only way I really know how to answer that question is by looking at how local news reporters conduct their business.

Local news reporters live in the communities or near the communities that they cover, which means they are not just taking in information about their community or learning about their community in the eight or 10 hours that they're on the job. They're living there. They're going to restaurants. They're going to local businesses. They send their kids to the local schools. They are part of the community there. They have a vested interest in the community, and I think that absolutely makes a difference in coverage. I think that means that maybe you have a vested interest in providing just straight-up information to your neighbors so that people can make decisions. 

I have a lot of respect for a lot of the national news outlets, and they do present information. But I also think that a lot of times, the coverage is more about horse races and it's more about conflict and less about actual policy and information about those things that people need to make their decisions.

I do think that there's a difference in the way people feel when they read local news. I think most people pick up on that. I think they know that if they have a problem with something that's written in the local newspaper or their local online news outlet, they can call that person up and have a conversation with them and talk it out. There is the connection with local news that you don't get from other news resources.

Rosemary Ford:

According to the Pew Research Center, 38% of adults regularly get their news from Facebook, and 55% of TikTok users get news updates there. What’s the impact of this on local news?

Melanie Plenda:

People get a lot of their news on social media. I don't see that, in and of itself, as a bad thing. I do think that we should give people more credit than we do. I think many of them can tell the difference between very obvious disinformation, and that’s not what I worry about. There are sources that present themselves as legitimate or who play just a little bit fast and loose with facts,and people not being able to discern the difference — or worse, and probably more likely, don't have time to go do their own research to suss out whether that is true or not. 

In my perfect world. I think that local news — and maybe this is kind of what I'm hoping we might learn from our survey — is that if this is where people are getting their news, then I kind of feel like we need to flood the zone with accurate local news. If more of us were finding ways to innovate and bring local news to where people are getting their news — whatever the platform, I think we'd be doing the community a great service. Then kind of screaming it from the rooftops that we’re there. That's what I would like to see. A lot of outlets are doing that, they just need to do it more and get more creative.

Rosemary Ford:

Could you tell us more about that? How are local outlets adapting to that kind of social media environment?

Melanie Plenda:

I have noticed a lot more outlets embracing things like the idea of starting a podcast, or they're doing vertical videos for online or they're giving quick hits from meetings — just like a quick result, saying the story will be out later. So really interacting one-on-one through social media with their audiences. I've seen that over the past few years for sure, and I think that that's only going to increase. 

People are picking up on these sorts of innovations and new technologies and new media, and bringing those into their newsrooms and integrating them more into their day-to-day. And I think that's only a good thing.

Rosemary Ford:

So beyond the community news survey, how else can New Hampshire residents support local news organizations?

Melanie Plenda:

I would say, first and foremost, if everyone who is scrolling their social media shared one local news story a day, just imagine how many more people would be able to get connected to their local news. I think that is one of the best things you can do — not only to support local news, but to support your communities. You can be confident that those stories are written by people who live here, who care about your community and are trying to do right by it. I feel like that is one of the best ways to support local news and to help your community. 

You can also get a subscription to your local news outlet. You can give gift subscriptions during the holidays, for a birthday, why not? You can also donate to news funds that accept donations. You can also just reach out to your local news organization and see if there's opportunities to contribute, either as a writer or a volunteer, or if you have a special skill that you might want to share — all of those things help keep local news strong and keep our community strong right along with it.

Rosemary Ford:

Thank you Melanie.To take the Community News Survey, you can visit collaborativenh.org/communitysurvey.

“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visitcollaborativenh.org.