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- Written by Patrick R. McElhiney
- Category: Articles
If you are planning on traveling to Northern New Hampshire, please read the following winter weather advisory:
Concord, NH – New Hampshire Homeland Security and Emergency Management reminds residents and visitors of New Hampshire to be prepared as a winter storm will impact parts of the state Wednesday night into Thursday afternoon and evening.
The National Weather Service (NWS) in Gray, Maine has issued a Winter Storm Warning for all of Coos and parts of Carroll and Grafton Counties from 11:00 P.M. this evening until 7:00 P.M. tomorrow. Heavy, wet snow and wind gusts up to 35MPH are expected in Coos, Northern Carroll and Northern Grafton counties with total accumulations of 5 to 10 inches. Southern Carroll County will see 4 to 7 inches of total accumulation.
The NWS has issued a Winter Weather Advisory for parts of Grafton and Belknap Counties from 11:00 P.M. this evening until 3:00 P.M. tomorrow. Wet snow is expected, with total accumulations of 3 to 6 inches and winds gusting as high as 35 MPH.
Southern New Hampshire can expect periods of heavy rain from 5:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. on Thursday, with some street flooding possible. Significant river flooding is not expected.
The NWS has also issued a Wind Advisory for Coastal Rockingham County from 5:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. on Thursday. East winds of 25 to 35 MPH with gusts up to 55 MPH are expected.
“Heavy, wet snow will cause hazardous travel conditions in the warning areas until Thursday evening,” NH Homeland Security and Emergency Management Director Jennifer Harper said. “Scattered power outages are possible in northern New Hampshire. Take time today to prepare your family for disasters.”
Report power outages to your utility provider:
Eversource.............................. 1-800-662-7764
Liberty Utilities....................... 1-855-349-9455
NH Electric Co-Op.................. 1-800-343-6432
Unitil………………................ 1-888-301-7700
If you see downed power lines, stay away and call 9-1-1.Customers without power should continue to call their service providers at least once daily until power is restored.
Director Harper provides these additional reminders:
- Slow down and move over for emergency vehicles.
- Do not crowd the plows or emergency crews.
- Clear all snow and ice off your car, including your roof, around lights, and license plates before traveling.
- Bridges, overpasses and exposed road areas are the most prone to icy conditions.
- Visit ReadyNH.gov to learn more preparedness tips to help you and your family stay safe.
Take the time now to prepare. Director Harper encourages everyone to plan ahead for disasters. The core steps toward preparedness are (1) make an emergency kit, (2) have a family emergency plan, and (3) stay informed by signing up for NH Alerts. Download templates and instructions for each of these preparedness steps online at ReadyNH.gov.
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- Written by Kat Roedell
- Category: Articles
Recognized as one of the Barrington’s Best for employment opportunities, Turbocam is one of the largest employers in our area. With two campuses in Barrington alone, and over 10 locations across the world, it’s easy to recognize how in a small town, a company like Turbocam can make a big impact.
But the impact of the founders – Marian and Suzie Noronha, goes way beyond starting a business that employs over 1000 people. They started their journey over 35 years ago when they moved from the Upper Valley to the Durham area to help grow a church at UNH. From its inception as a small church with a group of founders, that church has evolved and grown over the years – now housed in a former car dealership, New Frontiers Church has a lasting impact on the Seacoast community.
As a couple, both view business as a mission ground. Businesses can move in places that a regular person could not go, or even a church cannot reach. They impact the lives of people – the employees, the customers, and suppliers. The Noronhas focus on blessing the communities where they live, and through their work.
The charitable contributions of this family and their business, have a long-lasting and far-reaching impact. Internationally, in 1999 they began by purchasing people in Nepal out of slavery. Not only did they purchase these families out of slavery, but they also paid off their debt, and bought them land to settle on. They helped provide the infrastructure necessary for living a healthy, independent life. Since then the investment in the community has branched out into providing wells, building schools, teacher training, and infrastructure development.
Locally, Turbocam tends to invest in already developed charitable giving, investing in pioneers, rather than pioneering the work themselves. They pour into their employees’ charities of choice, providing matching donations from the cafeteria purchases. Of ten charities selected, most are recurring, with one new charity a month. Originally, the donations were placed in buckets, but it got to be quite a handful managing all of them. The new system is quite sophisticated, employees select their food and/or drinks from the refrigerators, and when they pay, scan their items, as well as the charity they choose. A matching donation is provided to the selected charity and everything is tallied electronically.
Each employee has an opportunity to volunteer (often done as teams) for a day a year, to their charity of choice. Work has been done at Lydia’s House of Hope, gutting and renovating two of the rooms and fully furnishing them, and currently, they are working on the attic space to make that habitable. They’ve partnered with the local chapter of End 68 Hours of Hunger and SOS recovery. Just by perusing their Facebook page you can see the culture of giving.
It takes many drops of water to fill a bucket. While one big thing done by 1 or 2 people (like Bill Gates) can make a difference, a series of small, incremental changes can cause a flood of kindness as well. Turbocam is a place like that – with a culture that will change the world.
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- Written by Patrick R. McElhiney
- Category: Articles
Rochester, NH: Cornerstone VNA, nonprofit home health and hospice care provider, was recently awarded a $500 community grant from the Walmart Community Grants Team and Facility #1749 in Somersworth, NH. The grant funds will be used to purchase flowers and plants that a Cornerstone VNA Hospice volunteer will deliver to Hospice patients. These special deliveries are a touching way to help honor patients at end of life and bring them joy.
Nancy Nicolazzo, Hospice Volunteer Coordinator remarks, “We are so very grateful for the generous donation from Walmart that will make it possible for Barbara Kelczewski, Hospice Volunteer, to brighten the days of patients and their families by bringing them beautiful plants and flowers.” According to Somersworth Walmart Assistant Store Manager, Zac LaRoche, “We are happy to support a tremendous cause, anyway we can help, we are happy to be here for you!”
For more information about the Hospice Volunteer program at Cornerstone VNA, contact Nancy Nicolazzo, Chaplain/Hospice Volunteer Coordinator at 603-332-1133 x1239 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
About Walmart:
Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) helps people around the world save money and live better - anytime and anywhere - in retail stores, online, and through their mobile devices. Each week, nearly 275 million customers and members visit our more than 11,300 stores under 58 banners in 27 countries and eCommerce websites. With the fiscal year 2019 revenue of $514.4 billion, Walmart employs over 2.2 million associates worldwide. Walmart continues to be a leader in sustainability, corporate philanthropy, and employment opportunity. Additional information about Walmart can be found by visiting corporate.walmart.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/walmart and on Twitter at twitter.com/walmart.
About Cornerstone VNA:
Cornerstone VNA is a nonprofit organization currently serving Rockingham, Strafford, Belknap and Carroll Counties in New Hampshire and York County in Maine. The team at Cornerstone VNA provides award-winning care and support through five distinct programs: Home Care, Hospice Care, Palliative Care, Life Care-Private Duty and Community Care. For 107 years, Cornerstone VNA has been committed to bringing services to people of all ages so that families can stay together at home, even when facing the challenges of aging, surgical recovery, chronic or life-threatening illnesses or end-of-life care. To learn more about Cornerstone VNA, visit www.cornerstonevna.org or call 800-691-1133.
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- Written by Ginna Schonwald
- Category: Articles
Wayne Picard, owner of the Good and Plenty Restaurant on Route 125 in Barrington, has been in the restaurant business for nearly 50 years. “My dad owned Suzelle’s Restaurant in Somersworth and I started working for him when I was 13,” Picard says. At the time he worked every weekend, doing whatever needed to be done. He recalls once being given shoe polish and told to re-blacken the bottoms of scuffed booths. Eventually, he rose to head cook at Suzelle’s until the restaurant closed its doors in 1991.
Within a few years, Wayne Picard started a new restaurant: Good and Plenty in Barrington. “I was working down the street and I saw a ‘for lease’ sign on the building,” he explains. “I put my van up for hock to borrow money and I borrowed money from my sisters and I leased the building.” That was 27 years ago. The restaurant opened its doors on the day after Thanksgiving in 1993.
The restaurant got its name “Good and Plenty” not from the famous candy of the same name but from his dad, who had visited a restaurant in Amish country by that name. “I liked it,” Picard says. “Good food and plenty of it. That’s what we wanted to do.”
Picard notes that one of the things Good and Plenty is known for is making a lot of its food inhouse from scratch. “We cook our own turkeys, gravies, soups, chowders. We make our own coleslaw. We started with fresh French fries because we didn’t have anywhere to store the frozen ones. We had no walk-in cooler, just a few chest freezers.” Picard explains that when he did put in a walk-in cooler, he tried serving frozen fries. “People let me know right away that they didn’t like it.”
One of the restaurant’s specialties is the prime rib, which is available with breakfast every Friday through Sunday. Another is a New England boiled dinner. While most restaurants only have this local favorite around St. Patrick’s Day, Good and Plenty offers it every Wednesday and Thursday for lunch.
“Breakfast is our busy time,” he notes. “We probably average around 100 meals a day on a slow day. On a weekend in the summer, it can be around 200 to 225, just breakfast and lunch. We always made our money on the weekends during the summer, when there are a lot of transient people coming through.”
Nonetheless, he says, it’s the locals that really have kept him in business. He notes that some local groups, such as the Red Hat Society and ROMEO motorcycle group use the restaurant as a regular meeting place. (ROMEO stands for Retired Old Men Eating Out.) “It doesn’t matter how many times they’ve been in, we try to treat everyone as if it’s their first time and we want them to come back,” Picard says.
When he first opened the restaurant in 1993, Picard notes that there were only 3 restaurants in the 125 area. “It was just us and Phil’s and the Gateway,” he says. At the time, the restaurant was open from 5:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., 7 days a week, 363 days a year – every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas. Good and Plenty is still open 363 days a year, but staffing shortages and the increasing number of restaurants along Route 125 in Barrington caused them to cut their hours from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. The number of restaurants along that same strip of Route 125 has grown from three to twelve. “Every new restaurant that comes in takes another little piece of the pie,” Picard says.
Luckily, Picard learned from his dad’s experience that tough economic times can mean the end for even a well-loved local restaurant. Suzelle’s thrived for nearly two decades in Somersworth. In fact, Wayne’s dad and his two brothers even started a new venture: The Firehouse One Restaurant in Dover. But in the late 1980s, hard economic times hit, and people started eating out less. Eventually, Dick’s brother kept the Firehouse One and Dick focused full-time on Suzelle’s. Unfortunately, Suzelle’s still struggled to make ends meet. Eventually, the restaurant was forced to close its doors.
When Picard started Good and Plenty, his dad came to work for him. “He still thought he was in charge,” Picard says, chuckling. “My dad worked for me for 20 years.”
Picard notes that he learned from his dad to be cautious with expenditures. “One of the big things I learned from my father is to do one big project per year and pay cash for it – replacing the septic system, putting in central A/C, putting in a walk-in cooler.”
Over the years, Picard’s focus has been to create a good family atmosphere in his restaurant, offering something for everyone. What is important to Picard and his staff, most of whom have been with him for several years, is to make people feel welcome and to have something for everyone on the menu. One customer describes the menu as ‘comfort food,” which is exactly what Wayne Picard has been striving for since the opening of Good and Plenty in 1993. “Our motto is, ‘Cooking so good you think your mom’s in the kitchen,’” he explains.
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