New Hampshire


Steven Goddu’s falsehoods

It’s unusual for me to write on this blog about a local politician, but I want this on the record so that people doing searches for information on Rockingham County Commissioner Steven Goddu will find this and know why they should never vote for him for anything.

Rockingham County, New Hampshire, has been negotiating with ICE to hold abductees and get money for it. County government in New Hampshire (which handles only a few functions) is headed by commissioners. Rockingham has three of them: Kathryn Coyle, Steven Goddu, and Thomas Tombarello. I was able to find contact information only for Goddu, so I wrote an email to him urging that the county not collaborate with ICE. His reply shows he is a dishonest person and should not be elected to any public office.
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An abolitionism tour?

After my enjoyable tour of the libraries of Rockingham county, I started thinking about doing something similar to follow it. My first thought was sites relating to American independence; there are plenty of them in my area. Then an idea that’s more off the beaten track came to me: a tour of abolitionist sites. William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport and conducted much of his activity in Boston. John Greenleaf Whittier was from Haverhill, just across the border from me. Frederick Douglass moved to New Bedford after escaping slavery, and today I’ve learned how much other anti-slavery activity was based in New Bedford. (Sign up with Captain Ahab, and you’ll be out of the slave-catchers’ reach!) Also today (that is, Sept. 11, when I’m writing this), I found out the MBTA has renamed a ferry after Frederick Douglass. It isn’t obvious how to tell where the boat will be at any time, but it’s at least worth knowing.
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My library tour

Somehow I thought I’d posted about this earlier, but I hadn’t on this blog. As a little summer project, I’m visiting every public library in Rockingham County, New Hampshire. Rockingham is in the southeastern part of the state and includes all of New Hampshire’s 18-mile seacoast. There are no big cities. Portsmouth, which I think is the only city in the county, has about 22,000 people. Three towns are bigger. The difference between a town and a city in this state is the form of government, not the population. Derry, the biggest town in the state at about 34,000, has two libraries, and the people at the smaller one in East Derry firmly say it’s not a branch library.
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A little ICE breaking

There’s no safety from ICE anywhere in the US. La Carreta is a Mexican restaurant in Portsmouth, NH. On July 1, ICE abducted four of their employees on their way to work. This has increased fears not only for the people at the restaurant but for everyone in the city.

That’s not far from where I live, and the restaurant looked interesting and reasonably priced, so I decided to eat there on Sunday. They had outdoor seating and it was a very nice day, so I got a table outside.
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