NH Secrets Legends and Lore

Nancy Childress, who is a graduate of Plymouth State, a former NH teacher until she departed from that path and, in her 40s, went back to college at Franklin Pierce Law to get her degree in Intellectual Property Law. She is also the daughter of famed New Hamsphire artist Robert Childress and his wife Nan, who spent the later years of their lives living in the shadow of Mount Kearsarge in Warner.

But the story of the Childress family began many years before their move to New Hampshire. Bob was a budding artist from his early years following his birth in 1915. Nancy describes him trapsing around town on his pony with his art supplies in tow during our conversation here and it was from this childhood start that his career developed.

Bob went on to have a long and distinguished career that culminated with ten years as the artist who brought those of us "of a certain age" Fun with Dick, Jane and little sister Sally.

He was not the first artist to bring Dick and Jane to the culture but he was the artist that brought vivid colors to a cultural institution that helped to define the American educational experience - for good or ill . During those ten years Nancy, with the staging help of her mother, was the model for Dick and Jane's little sister Sally. So those who grew up with Dick and Jane readers have seen Nancy, in the guise of Sally, for that same period of life.

Nancy has led a long and parapetitic life and is, in addition to all I have already conveyed to you, also an author of a children's book series entitled "The Little Bumpkins", In addition to a book she has recently released about her father - entitled from "The Red Hills to the White Mountains", and if all that wasn't enough, she is an inventor in addition to all of the other hats she has worn.

Today, she lives in the town of Gilmanton with her husband Tony Hartford. 

Sy Montgomery is back! This time with a backyard adventure instead of an exotic adventure globetrotting.

For more than two decades, Sy Montgomery and her husband Howard have kept a flock of chickens in their backyard. Each chicken has an individual personality (outgoing or shy, loud or quiet, reckless or cautious) and connects with Sy in her own way.

In this short, delightful book, Sy takes us inside the flock and reveals all the things that make chickens such remarkable creatures: only hours after leaving the egg, they are able to walk, run, and peck; relationships are important to them and the average chicken can recognize more than one hundred other chickens; they remember the past and anticipate the future; and they communicate specific information through at least twenty-four distinct calls. Visitors to her home are astonished by all this, but for Sy what’s more astonishing is how little most people know about chickens, especially considering there are about twenty percent more chickens on earth than people.

With a winning combination of personal narrative and science, What the Chicken Knows is exactly the kind of book that has made Sy Montgomery such a beloved and popular author.

Building Community and Empowering Lives - Dr. Michael Swack

Welcome to this joint production of The New Hampshire Secrets, Legends & Lore and The Radical Centrist Podcast. I'm your host Wayne King.

It's not often that we feel compelled to do a joint podcast but there is something quite special about our guest Michael Swack - Senior Fellow at the Carsey Center for Impact Finance, having recently stepped aside from his previous role as its director - In hopes of being able to direct more of his energy to practical and positive projects. Michael has been New Hampshire's secret weapon for Community Development for forty years. Those of us who have known him over the course of those years are very proud of him and the contributions he has made toward building community here. But he isalso a man of the world and he has worked his magic in countries from North America to Asia, Latin America and Africa. He is, by every standard we have established on the Radical Centrist Podcast, a radical centrist - more interested in getting things done than towing the line of any dogma or ideology.

Michael Swack is probably not a name that sets off a lot of bells and whistles with most folks, but for more than forty years he has been the brains behind some of the most innovative and empowering ideas for Community Economic Development and finance - not only in New Hampshire but nationally. In other words, he is a superstar, but a superstar without a super-ego. His joy - what gets him out of bed every day raring to go - is his work and the powerful understanding that his actions are making a difference in the lives of those too-often overlooked when it comes to building community and equity in our future.

All of us have a shortlist of people in our lives whom we have met and immediately realized that we were in the presence of someone very unique and talented. For me Michael Swack is one of those people.

I've known Michael now for more than 40 years. We were founding members of the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, one of the very first nonprofit loan funds in America helping low-income families purchase and manage their cooperative housing. I was the prime sponsor of two key pieces of legislation that Michael - along with two other giants in my eyes: Elliot Berry and Julie Eades - were the brains behind. To this day Those two bills, that both became law, along with New Hampshire's first homeless shelter legislation, are among the laws of which I am most proud.

But the thing about Michael is that he's never satisfied and his brain is always looking beyond today for the next series of ideas to achieve even more.

All this is not to say that Michael is simply a "tinkerer" because among professionals in his field he - in fact - sets off all those bells and whistles I spoke of before, because Michael Swack is a pioneer in the field of Community Development, who never rests on his laurels. To dispense with the tinkerer analogy - and to make it even more silly but meaningful: He's the ever-ready bunny of Community Economic Development. His gears always seem to be turning, ferreting out ideas that use public and charitable dollars to leverage private sector investment,all in the name of benefitting the hub of our lives . . . our communities and more specifically the people of those communities.

That's why In 2019, the National Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) awarded Michael the industry’s highest individual honor, the 2019 Ned Gramlich Lifetime Achievement Award for Responsible Finance. Then, In 2021, Michael was appointed by President Biden to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Advisory Board - a position he has recently been reappointed to by the President. It's also why his position as a professor at UNH and as the founder of the Center for Impact Finance at the Carsey School is the ideal spot for him, teaching others is the next best thing to cloning Michael himself.

After 50 years in service to others at the State House, the last 25 as a State Senator, Democratic State Senator Lou D’Allesandro, 85, of Manchester announced he is retiring at the end of his term.

As he retires Senator D'Allesandro takes his place among the giants of NH politics, names like Raymond Burton, Walter Peterson, Stuart Lamprey, Warren Rudman, Caroline Gross, Susan McLane, Hugh Gallen, Donna Sytek all of whom he praises and calls his friends, irrespective of political Party.

Over the course of his 82 years Lou D'Allesandro has sported many titles, Captain of his UNH athletic teams, Coach of basketball teams of all ages, teacher, College President, State Representative, and now retiring "Dean" of the NH Senate, an honor bestowed upon him by his colleagues as the longest-serving Senator.

The extensive article written by In Depth NH's Paula Tracy and linked below provides a much more detailed look at all this but of course our goal was to add some color to the biography of Senator D'Allesandro through his recollections and reflections.

Paula Tracy - InDepthNH.org

Sen. Lou D’Allesandro Retiring After Bringing Us So Many Great American Days

I am joined by a special cohost, veteran journalist Garry Rayno, who has extensive experience with many of the challenges faced by Senator D'Allesandro during his tenure.

Move Over Ed Abby, Sy Montgomery’s Newest Book Exercises her Story-telling Chops and Her Inner Philosopher in a Big Way.

“(To) Wait . . . an ironic verb, an action word, used to describe inaction. Derived from the French “to wake, to become alert to” To wait and to wake are not opposites but twins. We love NOW because it IS now. “Now” holds at once all of time in its fullness”  ~ Sy Montgomery, “Of Time and Turtles”

Turtles have been around since the time of the dinosaurs, more than 200 million years ago. Even then they may have been subject to the whims of “traffic” but they have, nonetheless, withstood the test of time.

To many Native American nations, from the Navajo of the southwestern US to the Abenaki and Iroquois in my own northeast lineage, North America’s indigenous people are tied to turtles. The continent itself is often referred to as Turtle Island based on various legends that Turtle delivered North America to earth upon its back. 

So you may presume, rightly, that I would eagerly anticipate this latest book by New Hampshire’s own Sy Montgomery. 

After having read, listened to, and reread Sy Montgomery’s newest book, “Of Time and Turtles - Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell,” I am thoroughly convinced that had she been born into the Iroquois Nation, a matrilinial society, she would have been seen as a mystic and given a fitting honorific, something akin to “Speaks with Turtles.”  

Of Time and Turtles - Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell

Written by Sy Montgomery, Illustrated by Matt Patterson

This year witnessed the passing of one icon of the early days of broadcasting, Marty Engstrom, whose residence in Fryeburg, Maine was but one place that he planted his flag but not the one for which he will be most remembered. That local was at 6,288 feet above sea level inside and outside of the Mount Washington Weather observatory atop New England's highest peak Mount Washington, known as Agiocochook by the Abenaki people.

The Smile that Charmed Northern New England

Marty Engstrom ended his weather forecast every night except his very first this way.

Though his nightly weather forecast from the top of Mount Washington was rarely more than one minute long, it was a minute that charmed the folks of the tri-state region to the extent that today, more than 20 years since his retirement, he is remembered with such fondness. Marty was, for all intents and purposes, our very first rock star. 

What began as a project to tell the story of Waterville Valley as the birthplace of Freestyle skiing quickly morped into Waterville Valley as a crucible of cultural vision and change. In the coming weeks we'll take you into the lives of JD Nelson and his friend Jack Sanders who took a young Wayne Wong, Floyd Wilkie and George Askevold under their wings to make sure that they were not taken advantage of as they began their journey to superstardom in the brand new world of Hotdog Skiing - soon to be called "Freestyle". 

You'll meet Frank Dubois, the first certified African American ski instructor in America, Jerry Dunfey who intersected with their lives from his perch at the Parker House Hotel in Boston and the slopes of Waterville. as well as John and Donni Hughes, Bernie Weichsel, Executive Director of the first professional Freestyle association The International Freestyle Skiers Association, and others. 

Through it all Tom Gross, trusted friend to Olympic superstar and Waterville Valley founder Tom Cochran, was often at the center of the media storm. He was there at the beginning, announced races and competitions all over the country, and hobnobbed with celebrities (He's the only person I know who actually got Bill Russell to autograph something for him.)

Whenever I would engage someone from Waterville Valley the conversation would invariably lead to Tom Gross who has forgotten more about Waterville Valley than the rest of us know.

He's a great storyteller on top of it all. 

David Watters laughs off the moniker of Renaissance man of the Senate but there's a lot of truth to it. A mutual friend wrote me with the following:

"David is an expert on all kinds of things: New England graveyards, the New England Primer, hornbooks of New England, clown history, Shaker history (particularly African American Shakers), African American history and literature, slavery in New Hampshire, New Hampshire African American history, Grace Metalious, Robert Frost, human rights (he was active in a local chapter of Amnesty International and I think headed that chapter) and more. He also is interested in Native American history and has sponsored legislation on behalf of Natives in this state." 

This podcast focuses on his work in the Senate but I suspect we will do a future podcast where we explore some of these other passions of this very interesting fellow.

Peter Powell has been in the Real Estate business in Lancaster NH for 50 years now and he's very well respected and talented at it. But ask him what he lives for and he will begin to spin stories of family, New Hampshire, and his community, both local and in the broader sense NH and the US, long before he gets to his business career.

I think it's that focus on community that allows Peter to have been the choice of both Republican and Democratic leaders in the US and in NH as a leader they can count on to build bridges. . . and if there is anything we need desperately these days its a restoration of a sense of community. From his heartfelt call to the legendary US Senate Republican Leader Mark Hatfield at one of the most trying points of his life to simply say, I'm proud of you. Keep on." To the moment that Democratic candidate for President Fritz Hollings poked his head into a latenight bull session at a local store in Lancaster and asked "Anyone here know Peter Powell? Tell him Fritz Hollings says hello!" There followed appointments to prestigious state panels in the humanities, the Trust for NH Lands, The NH Charitable Fund and so many other state honors that it would take too much time to mention.

Peter spent a few years working in Washington after college, working for Norris Cotton and the Senate Commerce Committee as well as congressman Louis Wyman before deciding he wanted the country life and making the move to Lancaster. His father Wes Powell was governor of NH for two terms and of course that invites hundreds of stories into the conversation so we are going to schedule another podcast in a month or two so we can get in a few more of those. Wes was from the rough and tumble area of Puddledock in Portsmouth which seems to play prominently into many of those stories.

SAVE THE DATE: THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 2024

IN THE RAMP-UP TO THE 2024 NEW HAMPSHIRE PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY, STUDENTS AND PUBLIC FIGURES WILL EXPLORE POLICIES AND SOLUTIONS FOR BUILDING A ROBUST AND RESILIENT CLIMATE ECONOMY WHILE HIGHLIGHTING THE IMPORTANCE OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND VOTING