All Things Considered

Last week on All Things Considered we talked with Jason Claffey of Exeter Patch about a community effort – a successful one - to save the Exeter UFO Festival from cancellation.

During the interview we talked about a reported UFO encounter by New Hampshire residents Betty and Barney Hill as the reason why the state plays host to a UFO festival.

This week is Catholic Schools Week. For students in New Hampshire Catholic schools, that means some unusual classroom activities, from food drives to snowman making festivals.

For faculty, though, it’s a chance to reflect on the state of the school district – and some of the challenges it faces, from enrollment issues to school safety to teaching Catholic positions on social issues that may no longer be held by the majority of Americans.

We started the week with a presidential inauguration, and on All Things Considered we looked at Franklin Pierce, the only president to hail from New Hampshire and one who added some unique touches to his inaugural ceremonies.

An unusual festival in Exeter, New Hampshire has avoided cancellation with help from a seemingly unusual benefactor.

It's the Exeter UFO Festival, and to explain more we turn to Jason Claffey, editor at Exeter Patch. He's been reporting on the UFO Festival and joins All Things Considered host Brady Carlson with an update.

This week marks what would have been the 103rd birthday of Doris Haddock, better known by the name Granny D.

She made national headlines in the late 1990’s for walking across the country, 3200 miles, to highlight the issue of campaign finance reform, just ahead of her 90th birthday.

Doris Haddock died in 2010 at age 100, but you might be able to hear her voice at a birthday party in her honor in Keene.

Every American president has taken the same oath of office that President Barack Obama took earlier today - every president except one.

For nearly a decade, New Hampshire has been seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from oil companies over the chemical additive MTBE, which the state says caused contamination in the state’s groundwater. The legal proceedings originally involved 26 oil companies; as trial began this week, there were just two left, ExxonMobil and Citgo, and now there may be just one.