Downtown
Megan Doyle
At last week’s meeting, the city council agreed to spend $2 million to bury utilities on South Main Street. That brings the total budget for the Main Street project to over $13 million for design, construction and marketing.
Officials have promised the last-minute addition will not push the November deadline for the project’s completion. Southbound traffic will still be able to flow through the work zone, though some parking spots on the west side of the street might be compromised during that utility work.
For the rest of the week, crews will install light pole bases, and working on gas and water lines.
concordmonitor.com
Ag & Eats
Elodie Reed
Pink 2.0 was one happy piglet.
He was, after all, getting a personal belly massage. Miles Smith Farm assistant manager Teresa Downey rubbed him up and down, and Pink 2.0 rolled over, stretched his legs, closed his eyes, and – there isn’t another way to describe it – smiled as he gave soft little grunts.
Downey spent some time with Pink 2.0 and his siblings as they napped in-between visitors. Hundreds visited the farm both Saturday and Sunday during the annual New Hampshire Open Doors event.
When I arrived just after lunchtime Saturday, I noticed an immediate difference in Pink 2.0: he wasn’t skittering around when people approached, but rather, welcomed the friendly pats. He didn’t flinch as children, adults (including me) sat down next to him, and gave him a good scratch.
“This is Pink 2.0’s first social event,” Downey explained. “They become extremely friendly, fast. By the end of the day, they really don’t care.”
Farm owner Carole Soule purposely holds these types of open houses to not only market her products, but to give farm animals and humans the chance to interact.
“With any animal, the more you handle them, the happier they’ll be in the end,” Soule said. It makes a meat pig’s final moments less stressful, too, she said, if the pig isn’t afraid of human handlers.
“It just makes it easier,” Soule said.
food.concordmonitor.com
Granite Geek
David Brooks
When a computer beat one of the world’s best players at the ancient Asian board game known as Go last month, a lot of people around the world were excited, but a surprising number were dismayed.
Count me among the latter.
I play Go poorly, struggling against commercial software damped down to “advanced beginner” mode, but I still thought that this beautiful, thousand-year-old game requires something uniquely human.
Go is simplicity itself – two players alternate putting black and white stones on a 19-by-19 board while trying to surround the most territory – yet the game is deeper, if not harder, than chess. Go-playing programs have always been much worse than chess-playing programs, which I found comforting. Computers and software might win on Jeopardy and take all of our jobs and humble chess grandmasters, but we carbon-based life forms can always fall back on Go!
Or not.
granitegeek.concordmonitor.com
