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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

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

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...

By DAVID BROOKS

Americans love flat-faced dogs: French bulldogs beat perennial favorite Labrador retrievers to be the most commonly registered purebred dog last year, according to the American Kennel Club, while pugs and pekes aren’t far behind.But popularity has its...

Like many of you I am really looking forward to next month’s solar eclipse, but there is one small drawback: It will do a number on my solar panels’ output.For slightly over two hours on April 8, parts of the sun will be blocked by the moon. I live in...

By DAVID BROOKS

Next weekend marks four years since New Hampshire saw its first death from what was then called “the novel coronavirus,” and although COVID-19 isn’t taking many lives these days, the passage of time shows it has ushered us into an unhappy new normal...

By DAVID BROOKS

Concord and several area towns are getting on the community power bandwagon.The City Council unanimously voted Monday to adopt the program, which allows communities to participate in buying electricity rather than just getting it through the local...

When the AT&T mobile network went down nationally last month, taking some other networks down with it, folks in Dunbarton were able to shrug things off.“Oftentimes folks say, ‘I haven’t had a landline in years. I always rely on my cell phone.’ ... We...

By DAVID BROOKS

An electric-car-charging station has just been installed at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport.Actually, that isn’t quite accurate. It’s really an electric-car-and-electric-plane-charging station. That might surprise you because there aren’t any...

By DAVID BROOKS

There’s one month to go before a full solar eclipse comes through New Hampshire and people are getting excited. The McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center has the numbers to prove it.The science museum alongside NHTI put in an order for 500 pairs of...

By DAVID BROOKS

Another proposal to bring large amounts of electricity from Quebec into New Hampshire, one that would have used existing power lines that cut through a corner of Concord, has died despite hefty support from the federal government.National Grid said...