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By DAVID BROOKS

If you, like me, often despair of producing a garden in the mix of stones, sand and grit that New Hampshire optimistically calls “soil,” remember that it could be worse. You could be working with dirt from the moon.“It’s hard to grow in this material....

By DAVID BROOKS

New Hampshire’s two coal-fired power plants in Bow and Portsmouth look similar to the passer-by with their aging industrial buildings, rail lines and smokestacks. But as both places prepare to transition from burning coal to hosting fleets of...

By DAVID BROOKS

If all goes as planned, a just-opened facility in Ohio may be destroying PFAS chemicals from New Hampshire fire departments later this year, the first step that could lead to a PFAS-destroying operation being built in New England.“This isn’t a forever...

Ted Kitchens, director of the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, will answer questions about recent airfield developments plus effects of the global aviation industry in a free talk, open to the public, on Thursday, May 9.The session comes as the...

By DAVID BROOKS

NASA’s return-to-the-moon program Artemis has 18 New Hampshire companies and institutions supplying products or services, from temperature sensors to gaskets to research projects, so it was no surprise that business was featured when astronaut...

By DAVID BROOKS

This year’s tax season was like all the others, a real pain in the neck to get through especially if, like me, you had to file for an extension because one stupid piece of paper was late. Argh!!!Which made me wonder how things went with the intriguing...

By DAVID BROOKS

When the Monitor ran a story recently that some residents in Boscawen were disagreeing about the design of a town flag, it produced this reaction among an awful lot of readers: “Wait – towns have flags?!? Who knew?”Not many people, it turns out,...

By DAVID BROOKS

When your job involves thinking of a new topic for a newspaper column every single week of the year, your ears perk up when an intriguing phrase floats by. And you can’t get much more intriguing than “laser scarecrows for New Hampshire farmers.”I hit...

By DAVID BROOKS

With Concord reduced to a single movie theater for the first time in living memory and New Hampshire chain Chunky’s Cinema Pub closing two of its three locations, going out to the flicks in the Granite State just keeps getting harder.Don’t expect that...

By DAVID BROOKS

One year after it made a radical change to how it charges students by slashing both tuition and financial aid, Colby-Sawyer College’s president says the benefits seem to be outweighing the risks, indirectly helped this year by problems with the...

By DAVID BROOKS

More than 28 years ago I interviewed Kenneth Levasseur, a professor at UMass-Lowell, about his innovative new project: A math class via email.In the resulting column I noted that the course, the school’s first official online class, would have...

By DAVID BROOKS

One of my favorite parts of hiking in New Hampshire is coming across a rushing brook or mountain stream. They are one of nature’s most beautiful creations. But we live in reality so I realize there are complications even when things are beautiful. For...

By DAVID BROOKS

By the standards of the world’s increasing climate disasters – the tornadoes, wildfires and deadly heat waves that fill headlines every week – the back-to-back snowstorms that just clobbered New Hampshire’s power grid weren’t too bad. But don’t get...

By DAVID BROOKS

A decade ago concern spread among folks who ran power grids that too much wind and solar power, which comes and goes in semi-unpredictable ways, would cause our electric system to go all wonky. I remember 10% of total output being tossed around as a...

By DAVID BROOKS

When leaders of the Concord Quaker meetinghouse replaced their old boiler with a geothermal heat pump, they were excited about operational benefits and with helping out the climate. But the best part, it turns out, is all the little kids.“This is...

By DAVID BROOKS

Next Monday I will be lazing around while watching the solar eclipse up near the Canadian border, having received assurances that there will be no clouds whatsoever, but some folks around New Hampshire will be approaching the event more seriously as...

By DAVID BROOKS

You probably don’t want to hear this but there’s a chance we’ll be seeing power outages again Wednesday and you should get ready.A major winter storm moving east is expected to intersect with a nor’easter moving up the coast, bringing hail, snow, ice...

By DAVID BROOKS

The region’s last coal-fired power plants, located in Bow and Portsmouth, are expected to switch to large-scale solar power and battery-storage under plans put forward by their owner, Granite Shore Power, marking New Hampshire’s first big transition...

The last person who had to live inside an iron lung due to polio recently died but it didn’t draw much attention even though it marked the symbolic end to a plague that haunted humanity for millennia. The truth is that it’s hard for people to worry...

By DAVID BROOKS

Ambulance service might be one of the most basic and important parts of the health-care system, but it’s also a financial mess in New Hampshire, both for patients and private companies.“We’ve talked to consumers who say, ‘I’ve fallen at home and...

By DAVID BROOKS

The cable and internet company Breezeline, which recently completed its fiber-to-the-home installation in Concord and other New Hampshire communities, is preparing to expand into mobile phones, part of an industry trend in which companies combine...