Also on today’s menu:
Slippery Black Friday
Tournament To Benefit Hazel’s Light Foundation
Liberty Project To Dissolve
Franklin’s revitalization, associated with the opening of the Northeast’s first whitewater park, is bringing new businesses to the city, with new housing getting built and new people moving in. That turnabout in Franklin’s economy is fragile, however, and this week’s discovery of white supremacist graffiti on a downtown building is troubling to city leaders.
Mayor Jo Brown told InDepthNH.org that it is unclear who is behind the graffiti, and Franklin police have notified the New Hampshire Attorney-General’s Office about its investigation into the incident. However, an earlier incident over the summer has been linked to NSC 131, also known as the Nationalist Social Club, a neo-Nazi hate group. The group had targeted Miriam Kovacs, owner of the Broken Spoon, a Jewish-Asian fusion takeout restaurant. “We need to learn to accept everybody for who they are,” Brown said.
NSC 131 has an active chapter in New Hampshire. It was founded in eastern Massachusetts and its members are tied to other neo-Nazi groups, including The Base, Aryan Strike, and Patriot Front. The group has appeared at Nashua City Hall and Nashua School Board meetings, and has called for violence against Jews and minorities.
Slippery Black Friday
Low temperatures and light precipitation combined to create hazardous road conditions this morning, with black ice resulting in several cars off the road (including that of my wife, as she headed along Route 104 toward her travel nurse job in Whitefield). In most cases, there were no injuries, but Laconia Road in Belmont was closed for a period of time until sand trucks could make the pavement safe.
Other accidents were reported on Interstate-93 in Sanbornton and Campton; Brown Hill Road in Belmont; and Depot Street in Rumney.
The accidents, as well as people slipping on the ice, kept emergency crews hustling, and Black Friday shoppers are urged to stay home until temperatures rise enough to make the roads safe.
Tournament To Benefit Hazel’s Light Foundation
A shuffleboard tournament on Saturday, November 26, at Shackett’s Brewing Company in downtown Bristol will benefit a newly formed 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Hazel’s Light Foundation. Named in honor of Hazel Roy, a four-year-old who died in 2021, the group’s mission is to support bereaved families that have experienced the traumatic loss of a child.
Hazel’s parents, Peter and Charlene Roy, started a tradition of placing lighted pumpkins in Central Square for Halloween last year, and have dedicated themselves to ensuring that her light of life lives on. The ultimate goal of Hazel’s Light Foundation is to build a healing retreat for parents, siblings, and extended family members of children who have died. In the meantime, the Tapply-Thompson Community Center is building a new playground at Wells Field to be known as Hazel’s Park.
The shuffleboard tournament will begin at 3 p.m., with first-place winners receiving a one-year Mug Club membership at Shackett’s Brewery. The second-place winners will receive a $50 gift card, and the third-place prize is a $25 gift card. There also will be a number of door prizes from local businesses, and 50 percent of all sales that day will go toward the maintenance of the new playground. The entry fee is $10.
Liberty Project To Dissolve
The board of the directors of the Liberty Independent Media Project has voted to dissolve the nonprofit enterprise by the end of the year, following a period of declining support. Like many businesses and organizations, the Liberty Project was disrupted by the pandemic, and the board determined that its operations could not be sustained on donations and income from the News Café.
In the past few weeks, we have been suggesting that readers support the Liberty Independent Media Project on Giving Tuesday, November 29. In light of the pending changes, we now suggest that you choose another worthy cause for your financial support on that day.
The change does not mean the end of the News Café. It has proven to be useful in identifying topics to explore in my for-profit freelance writing, so it will move under the umbrella of Liberty Media LLC.
The original concept of the News Café was to bring people together to discuss the news of the day and allow The Telegram, the weekly newspaper that I owned at the time, to develop leads for stories that deserve coverage. That is what the News Café will continue to do going forward, just under a different business entity.
With that in mind, I’d like to pose a question for readers: What is the most absurd thing you’ve seen this month? Please respond as a comment, and the results will be presented next week. After all, the virtual News Café is intended to build a community sharing their thoughts on (as outlined in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) “life, the universe, and everything”.
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Most absurd? My capturing a possum into the tiny trap that I use to trap kittens. Got his teeth and jaw stuck trying to get out. Had to wire cut him out. Good thing that I still have some hand strength. What a start to Thanksgiving morning! I hope your wife is ok. Hate is insidious. Our family have already had an issue of our CA relatives who just missed the gun man who shot up their synagogue in San Diego. Our trans niece lives in Colorado Springs. I look forward to your newsletter arriving in my email.