Freudenberg Products, freudenberg-nok.com
Earlier this year, Freudenberg announced a new “sustainability roadmap,” after partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy and a number of universities to conduct energy audits at its U.S. locations. The company is also developing products that will help customers in the automobile industry meet emissions and fuel economy regulations.
Read more about Freudenberg North America at NHBR.
NHPR intern Tina Forbes, also a crew-member at Nashua’s brand-new Trader Joe’s, brought one of those quintessential tubs of Trader Joe’s miniature chocolate chip cookies to the office today, creating a noticeable boost to newsroom morale. Continue Reading
As part of our weekly “Getting By, Getting Ahead” series, StateImpact is traveling across New Hampshire, gathering personal stories from the people behind the economy. In our fourth installment, we visit a bustling boutique in the Seacoast region.
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Walk down Market Street in downtown Portsmouth, and you’ll see clothing boutiques, a kitchen store, a toy shop. Then there’s Puttin’ On The Glitz. And the name says it all. Inside, 60-year-old owner Assiah Russell is fussing with mounds of jewelry resting on her countertop, preparing her window displays.
“Eventually everything will have a home,” Russell says, laughing. “I just got done doing this window this morning. I had to get up at five o’clock to do it, because I like to have it done before the store opens.” Hands full of bracelets and necklaces, she gestures toward the finished product: Brightly painted mannequin heads sport wide-brimmed designer straw hats with pink, orange, and turquoise flower cut-outs dangling overhead.
But she’s not done yet. Russell points to the far side of the store. “Then this afternoon, because it’s a rainy day, perhaps I’ll get a chance to work on that window,” she says. Continue Reading
Amanda Loder / StateImpact New Hampshire
Keeping downtown Portsmouth retailers open for business involves maintaining a delicate balance of shops, restaurants, residential offerings and office space.
Tomorrow on Morning Edition, NHPR will air the fourth installment of our summer series, “Getting By, Getting Ahead,” which focuses on the stories of the people behind the economy. This week, we’ll look at a Portsmouth shopkeeper who decided to move to a high-rent district downtown in the hope of expanding her business.
If you’d like to learn more about why rent is so high in downtown Portsmouth, check out our Economic Snapshot. You can also hear tonight’s discussion of the issue with All Things Considered host Brady Carlson.
And, we invite you to check back here tomorrow to hear more personal perspectives on the economic recovery in the Granite State. We’ll have a multimedia tool featuring the voices–and photos–of the people we’re spotlighting this summer. It also includes an interactive map with economic data so you can see how each of New Hampshire’s seven regions stack up. And there’s email and call-in information so that you can share with us your story of getting by–or getting ahead–in the down economy.
How much does the value of your parents’ home predict where you go to college? More than one might think, economist Michael Lovenheim argues in a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economics.
Until recently, mainstream assumptions gave a lot of credence to the notion that students need a lifetime of resources to be prepared for college: high expectations from family and teachers, extra-curricular activities, engaging dinner conversations, you know the drill. It turns out that while those issues may play a part in the very big picture, a family’s short-term liquid assets have a lot more influence on college choices than economists once believed.
Specifically, economist Michael Lovenheim has found that the value of a student’s family home during her high school years directly correlates to the quality of the institution she attends in the following years. Continue Reading
Amanda Loder / StateImpact New Hampshire
High rent in downtown Portsmouth is a sticky issue for retailers, restauranteurs, realtors, landlords and the city.
Tomorrow morning on NHPR, we’ll hear from Assiah Russell, a boutique owner in downtown Portsmouth. Assiah’s story is Part Four of our series “Getting By, Getting Ahead,” examining how people across New Hampshire’s seven regions are navigating a recovering economy.
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Downtown Portsmouth, with its skyline dominated by the large white North Church steeple, and narrow streets meandering toward the waterfront looks like the picture of an old New England town. Gently overlaying the historic ambience are the trappings of chic modernity–trendy boutiques, off-beat gift shops, and laid-back cafes.
This historic, yet chic atmosphere is the culmination of years of careful design.
And it’s drawn a lot of money into Portsmouth. Tourists from all over the world come here to drink in the local flavor and browse the signature shops. The flip-side to that prosperity, however, is that it has raised the cost of living for residents–and for doing business. That is especially true for downtown shop keepers. Continue Reading
Paul Downey
On Wednesday, Employment Security Commissioner Tara Reardon resigned amid allegations that she hired her daughter as an intern, then had her layed off in order to receive unemployment benefits. The Telegraph, Monitor, Union Leader, and of course, NHPR, have all the details. We want to know: how could this happen?
Nepotism
There is a law regarding nepotism and executive officials in New Hampshire. However, it leaves quite a bit up for interpretation. As the Nashua Telegraph reports, the law “prohibits any executive branch official from ‘directly’ taking part in hiring, firing, setting the pay or supervising a spouse, child, parent, sibling or close relation by marriage.” Continue Reading
Amanda Loder / StateImpact New Hampshire
The Upper Valley is a natural incubator for high-tech start-up activity.
This week for our series “Getting By, Getting Ahead,” which looks at the personal stories behind New Hampshire’s economy, we’ve been focusing on start-ups in the Upper Valley. Bioengineering entrepreneur Tillman Gerngross was the subject of our latest profile. Recently, we discussed the regional start-up scene on All Things Considered.
Daquella Manera
At the end of May, convenience store clerk Jackie Whiton took a public stand against the unrestricted use of public assistance cash-benefits by refusing to sell cigarettes to a customer using an EBT card. Last week, House Speaker William O’Brien took up the cause. We want to know – how big a problem is this?
Right now, needy Granite Staters can receive both cash assistance and food stamps on a debit-like EBT card. Food stamps, however, are much more widely received than cash assistance: 56,962 New Hampshire households receive food stamps from the federal government, while only 13,950 households also receive cash benefits. That’s 2.7 percent of the state’s households receiving cash assistance, about 60 percent of which comes from state funds. Continue Reading
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