For the first time in the history of New Hampshire public education, students and teachers have transitioned from classroom learning to remote instruction.
New Hampshire startups learn to adapt under Covid
New Licenses, Drivers Ed, On Hold During Pandemic
By Kelly Burch
Granite State News Collaborative
Rather than cruising around in the Mazda truck that he bought himself, Anthony Witfoth, 18, of Winchester finds himself stuck at home or calling to arrange rides. Courtesy photo.
WINCHESTER — Anthony Witfoth, 18, walked into the Keene branch of the Department of Motor Vehicles in mid-March, excited to get his license. But when Witfoth handed over his paperwork to take the written portion of the test and book his road test, he got bad news: the computer system wasn’t working.
“They said they needed to talk to IT and I should call back,” Witfoth says. “Then, they closed.”
Weeks later, Witfoth, a senior at Keene High School, has no license and no idea when he’ll be able to get it. Learning to drive is one of the many rights-of-passage for New Hampshire teens that are being put on hold by the coronavirus and the accompanying shutdown. On March 18 the Department of Motor Vehicles suspended all road tests (other than for commercial driver’s licenses) for the duration of the governor’s stay at home order.
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Newly opened Newburyport gallery rides the wind of change
By Terry Date
The Eagle-Tribune
Vintage Chic Anew owner Kimberley Wilson, left, and Newburyport artist Karen Fitzgerald wear their face coverings as they check on the gallery in the story. Bryan Eaton.
The fledgling Pleasant Street Gallery has aged beyond its mere two months, plying, as it has, coronavirus currents.
Framed art fills the walls in neat columns like sails on masts.
Fields, streams, skies, cityscapes and seascapes hang inside the gallery in the Vintage Chic Anew store in downtown Newburyport.
Below the oils, watercolors and photographs sit painted dressers, woven baskets, candlestick holders and vases.
Replicas of vintage signs invite nostalgia.
Seated in chairs at opposite sides of a long table are Newburyport artist Karen Fitzgerald, in a red mask, and store owner Kimberley Wilson, in a blue mask.
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N.H.’s local meat processing has avoided national turmoil
Concord Monitor
Workers cut beef into sections at PT Farm meat processing plant in North Haverhill, N.H., in September 2012. (Valley News — Sarah Priestap)
New Hampshire’s small but thriving meat-processing industry, the creation of years of effort accompanying the state’s resurgence in small farms, seems unaffected by the turmoil in the vastly larger industry in other parts of the country.
The state has four USDA-approved sites that can slaughter, cut and package beef for sale through stores, all of them tiny by the standards of national corporations. None has been reported to have shut due to COVID-19 or had reported outbreaks of the disease, perhaps in part because they have small, local work forces.
“People are taking it seriously,” said Peter Roy, owner of PT Farm in north Haverhill, who has about 15 employees at peak times. “There’s a guy who never missed a day of work in five years, he wasn’t feeling well so he stayed home to be sure. Nobody wants it here.”
The contrast with industrial meat-processing facilities, which hire seasonal labor, often new immigrants, and have high turnover, is striking, he said.
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Noticias Actualizadas de New Hampshire: 6 de mayo
By DANIELA ALLEE & MARIA AGUIRRE
NH Public Radio
Hoy en "¿Qué hay de nuevo, New Hampshire?", tu dosis diaria de noticias en español, te contamos que 77% de fallecimientos se han dado por brotes del virus en casas de ancianos o centros de salud de la tercera edad de NH.
La corte suprema de NH ordena que todas las personas que entran a una corte en New Hampshire deberán utilizar un cubrebocas. Esta orden es vigente hasta el 25 de Mayo o cuando termine la emergencia.
Centros de cuidado infantil que atienden a las familias de trabajadores esenciales en NH, cierran por falta de demanda. Los servicios de educación especial sí se darán en el verano de manera remota.
Para escuchar estas y otras noticias, haz click en el audio.
Noticias Actualizadas de New Hampshire: 5 de mayo
By DANIELA ALLEE & MARIA AGUIRRE
NH Public Radio
Hoy en "¿Qué hay de nuevo, New Hampshire?" te contamos que se confirman 72 nuevos casos de COVID-19 en NH pero ningún fallecimiento adicional. Son 2,588 casos confirmados en total.
Nueve mil pequeños negocios y organizaciones sin fines de lucros de NH fueron aprobados para recibir el PPP. La cifra supera al medio billón de dólares.
Hoy, los hospitales del estado vuelven a realizar cirugías urgentes después de haberlas dejado en pausa durante las primeras semanas de la pandemia.
Para escuchar estas y otras noticias, haz click en el audio.
Home-buying is still going strong in N.H. even though it’s gotten more complicated
Concord Monitor staff
Tom and Judy Clark get the sold sign after the closing at BHHS Verani Realty in Concord on April 30. The Clarks are moving up from East Boston to be closer to their children and grandchildren. GEOFF FORESTER / Monitor staff
As you would expect, COVID-19 has created a lot of change in New Hampshire’s economy. But you might not have expected what those changes are for the real estate industry.
“We’ve been open for 15 years; March was our single best month for new orders,” Matthew Neuman, owner of Absolute Title, a property title company with offices in Concord, said last week. “And April – we’re not even done with the month and it’s our second biggest month ever.”
Despite economic uncertainty caused by business closings and the complications that social distancing has placed on document signing and house tours, the business of buying, selling and refinancing residences hasn’t slowed at all.
“I’ve had four drive-through (closings) today. … Real estate is booming in New Hampshire,” said Robin Mooney of Broker’s Title of Londonderry, speaking at a closing in Concord’s Fisherville neighborhood on Thursday.
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Quarantine cooking with your kids? Here are 5 recipes made by budding chefs
By Sharyn Jackson
Tribune News Service
Now is a great time to get kids involved with the cooking. It can also entertain them at the same time. (Dreamstime/Tribune News Service)
My 2-year-old, Milo, has recently begun stringing short sentences together, and my favorite of his newfound phrases is this declaration of pride: “I did it!”
That’s what he said when he helped me make pizza dough by kneading the flour, water, yeast and oil with his chubby little toddler hands. Later, he sprinkled cheese over the dough and waited (OK, impatiently) while the pie baked and then cooled. Sure, he tried to nibble the raw dough a couple of times and downed a handful of mozzarella before I could stop him. Otherwise, our little kitchen adventure went pretty smoothly.
When he finally got to eat a slice of homemade pizza, he used another of his new sentences: “I made this.”
Nothing has ever tasted better.
With schools and most day cares closed and many parents working from home during a shelter-at-home advisory, sometimes the easiest way to get food on the table and entertain our kids is by cooking together.
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What two New Hampshire business owners think about reopening
By Daniela Allee
Kae Mason is owner of Salon K in Concord (Courtesy photo)
The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since Friday afternoon for Kae Mason, who owns Salon K in Concord.
She says since Gov. Chris Sununu announced that some businesses can reopen this month with restrictions, her salon has booked over 175 appointments.
“I was concerned as to whether people would feel it was too soon, and what I was seeing is that they’re more ready than too soon,” she said.
Under the new stay-at-home order, barber shops and hair salons can begin to serve the public again on May 11.
To prepare for reopening, Mason has sterilized the salon, prepared sanitizer for each station and ordered masks for her 18 employees and clients to use.
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On the front line
ParentingNH
Kaylie Stewart of Londonderry is a registered nurse at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Courtesy Photo
With New Hampshire schools closed and remote learning continuing through the end of the school year, parents are juggling more now than ever. And it’s tougher still for those essential workers who must commute to their jobs at hospitals, police stations, grocery stores, banks or newsrooms. Some receive hazard pay and protective equipment for their work, while others do not. Not only are they potentially exposing themselves to COVID-19, but they worry about introducing the virus to their families.
While working on the front lines is par for the course in professions such as health care or law enforcement, it’s new territory for others. Even for those professionals used to working during a crisis, COVID-19 brings with it new challenges and fears.
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Out & About: Keeping productivity worries in check
Valley News Staff Writer
The best representation of my inability to be productive during the COVID-19 pandemic is best illustrated by the stack of large picture frames leaning against my bureau.
They began accumulating there a couple weeks after my boyfriend and I received our instructions to begin working from home. With all our evenings and weekends suddenly free, we thought it would be a great time to finish decorating our apartment. We made a plan on what would go where: His (what I believe to be quite scary) framed Goosebumps puzzles would hang in the hallways while the blank wall in our bedroom would be reserved for nature-themed illustrations and prints.
It was successful at first. We navigated the mild frustrations of measuring walls and making sure frames were evenly spaced. It wasn’t perfect, but it was work we could be proud of. It was a physical accomplishment we could point to and say, “look what we did this weekend.”
Then the weeks went on and the malaise of staying at home began to set in. The remaining pictures were moved against the bureau instead of hung on the wall, and every time I needed to open a lower drawer in my bureau, I’d move them. “Tomorrow, after we’re done working from home for the day” became “this weekend, when our minds aren’t on work.” And then we stopped commenting on the frames altogether and moving them just became another part of a new stay-at-home routine.
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‘It’s something we’ve never seen before’: In-home care providers are on the COVID-19 front lines
Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
Home Healthcare, Hospice and Community Services nurse Kristina McGuirk visits patients who have returned from the hospital after battling COVID-19. Staff photo by Ben Conant
When patients infected with coronavirus first made an appearance on Kristina McGuirk’s case load, it was hard not to be concerned.
As a nurse with Home Healthcare, Hospice and Community Services, McGuirk’s job is to go into people’s homes to provide care for those dealing with a variety of conditions and medical concerns. But the addition of COVID-19 brought on that question of “what if?”
“You have to assume everyone has it and that’s really the best way,” McGuirk said. “I obviously don’t know what I was expecting. It’s something we’ve never seen before.”
She’s worried about being infected herself or bringing it home to her fiance. For those on her weekly caseload who had contracted coronavirus, her visits have so far come after the patient returned home from hospitalization.
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