TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2011
VOL. 20 NO. 155
BERLIN, N.H.
Story tellers Dick Conway, Jonathan Dubey, and Mary Champlin, (l-r) kept a full house at the Northern Forest Heritage Park bunk house entranced for better than an hour Saturday with their readings of Christmas stories, familiar and new, serious and humorous. (GAIL SCOTT PHOTO)
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Santa Claus (Jason Rigg, of Berlin) hears the Christmas requests of Daniel Ducharme, 6, of Berlin, while Mrs. Claus (Chantal Rigg, of Berlin) provides an amiable presence to the tableau at the Northern Forest Heritage Park Saturday. (GAIL SCOTT PHOTO)
NFHP greets the season with big dinner and Christmas stories BY GAIL SCOTT THE BERLIN DAILY SUN
BERLIN—What more could you ask of a Christmas season evening: good food, good stories well told, and Santa in the Boss Shack, when “the moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow, Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below”—the moon rising brilliantly over Mt. Carberry just as people were gathering at the park at about 5 p.m. The Northern Forest Heritage Park offered all of the above on Saturday, plus cookies, almond flavored krumkaka with whipped cream, hot chocolate, rides in a hay-filled cart, towed by a tractor, and a chance to see a panoramic toy Christmas vil-
lage. By 6:30 p.m. the folks who had made their way to the park for the evening had eaten the sumptuous dinner and gathered in the Bunk House where a small stage set awaited: a comfortable wing chair, a lighted Christmas Tree, two stools at a Christmas decorated table. The story tellers seated in the set were Theatre North members: Jonathan Dubey, Mary Champlin, and Dick Conway. They took the audience on a pleasing tour of Christmas stories beginning with a proclamation of Christmas from the Virginia Almanack of 1766, through Francis P. Church’s famous 1897 response
County Attorney’s office to move back into courthouse BY BARBARA TETREAULT THE BERLIN DAILY SUN
WEST STEWARTSTOWN – The Coos County Attorney’s office will be moving back into the Coos County Courthouse in Lancaster next year. The county attorney’s office has been operating out of the former Lancaster National Bank building in downtown Lancaster after a court ruling last year that the office’s former space in the court-
house was unsuitable. The Coos delegation Saturday voted unanimously to spend up to $85,000 to renovate the former probate office into space for the county attorney and victim witness advocate offices. County Attorney Robert Mekeel said he has gone over renovation plans for the office with the commission’s representative, Attorney Phil Waystack, and Colebrook con-
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Elderly services absorb bulk of county tax dollars BY BARBARA TETREAULT THE BERLIN DAILY SUN
WEST STEWARTSTOWN – Elderly services, particularly the operation of the county’s two nursing homes, absorb more than three quarters of Coos County’s tax dollars. The Coos County Commissioners presented a proposed 2012 county budget of $31.5 million at their annual public presentation Saturday. While the budget is up two percent, the amount to be raised by taxes is up 8.8 percent. Coos Administrator Sue Collins warned the budget is still a work in progress and there are likely to be some changes
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to a letter to the (New York) Sun from Virginia O’Hanlon: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”; and on, varying between serious and humorous readings, to the last, well-loved, final chapters of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” The Northern Forest Heritage Park intends to make this evening a regular Christmas celebration, and, indeed, it drew people from as far away as Rhode Island. Robin and Jim Vallese, of Narragansett, RI, found the event on the NFHP web site and included it in their brief holiday visit to northern New Hampshire. “We were looking for a meal and an evening with the old, traditional Christmas feeling,” they said.
before the delegation meets in March to vote on a final 2012 budget. She noted the budget contains no cost-of-living increase. The county currently is negotiating new collective bargaining agreements with unions representing Berlin nursing home employees and corrections officers. Collins also called the projected surplus figure of $1.74 million “conservative” – the present budget had a $2.2 million surplus figure. In a three-hour presentation, Collins reviewed the highlights of the proposed budget. She said of the $14.35 million to be raised by taxes in 2012, 77 percent or $11.1 million will go to elderly programs. see ELDERLY page 6
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