Hello 2,160 optimists and WELCOME to our 102 new subscribers this month.

We will return this week with more good news but FIRST I am inviting ALL OF YOU to our next LIVE SHOW!

Come watch me somersault (literally) into a conversation with 4 local business leaders about how they do well while doing good, and meet a bunch of other people who believe in our mission.

The show is Wednesday evening, August 12 at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, NH.1

Get your tickets here!

If you’d like to go, but price is an issue for you or a friend, respond to this email : ) I will personally help.

Flow of the evening:

5:00 PM | Kickoff & Networking
5:30 PM | Live Music with SNEAKY MILES
6:00 PM | Live Podcast Recording
7:00 PM | Social Hour

The panel will feature:

• Ben Conniff: Co-founder, Luke’s Lobster

• Julianna Dodson: Executive Director, Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship (and past Granite Goodness guest!)

• Emily Warren: Director of People & Culture, W.S. Badger Company

• Cody Whelan: Co-founder, Treeline Outfitters (and past Granite Goodness guest!)

We’ll be collaborating with our friends at NH Businesses for Social Responsibility for this event, showcasing how these people and their organizations are changing the game on:

• Creating real “third spaces”

• Environmental stewardship & sustainability

• Reimagining rural economies

• Youth career paths

…and more, brought to you in classic Granite Goodness fashion. As always we’ll also be joined by acclaimed local indie-folk rockstars Sneaky Miles, whose music we use for our podcast.

For a high-level view of what sort of people will be there, check out our Optimists Club page, where you can see and hear from 100+ local leaders representing different towns + industries on what makes them a part of the Granite Goodness community.

If you want to get a sense of what our live shows2 are like, here are some pictures from our first two:

And here are the recordings!

I hope to see you there! Come meet Kaelli, our new team member. If nothing else, we’re going to take the first ever group picture of our Optimists Club, come join us!3

-Andy

• Maeve Nolan (Workforce Housing Coalition of the Greater Seacoast)

• Annie Cox (Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership)

• Cory Riley (Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve)

• Brianna Hagan (Town of Hampton)

…about how they are helping people and wildlife in new Hampshire and beyond adapt to a changing coastline and climate.

Thank you to Kirsten Howard, Alex Maxwell, Lisa Wise, and the whole team at the New Hampshire coastal adaptation working group for having me!

Big thank you as well to Brian Yurasits for your camera help during this recording, and to Maeve, Annie, Cory, and Brianna for a great conversation.

JOIN US Wednesday August 12 for our next live show at the Bank of NH stage in Concord, NH.

Big thank you to our Optimists Club for supporting us, as well as our generous partners Delta Dental, Resilient Buildings Group, Green Wave Electric Vehicles!

Excited to share our next live show is coming up on Wednesday August 12 in Concord, NH. I’ll be sharing again this week to our full list of 2,000+, but you all (114 and counting!) are the inner circle of optimists : )

Get your tickets here, use code SAVE50 for a discount!

Come watch me somersault (literally) into a conversation with 4 local business leaders about how they do well while doing good.

The panel will feature:

• Ben Conniff: Co-founder, Luke’s Lobster

• Julianna Dodson: Executive Director, Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship (and past Granite Goodness guest!)

• Emily Warren: Director of People & Culture, W.S. Badger Company

• Cody Whelan: Co-founder, Treeline Outfitters (and past Granite Goodness guest!)

We’ll be collaborating with our friends at NH Businesses for Social Responsibility for this event, showcasing how these people and their organizations are changing the game on:

• Creating real “third spaces”

• Environmental stewardship & sustainability

• Reimagining rural economies

• Youth career paths

…and more, brought to you in classic Granite Goodness fashion. As always we’ll also be joined by acclaimed local indie-folk rockstars Sneaky Miles, whose music we use for the podcast.

Check out our first two live shows if you want to get a sense of what they’re like:

3S Artspace Local Podcasters Night

Rex Theatre

Hope to see you there!

Now please enjoy some fresh good news from around the globe. Here are seven of my favorite stories lately:

1. Almost everyone in the world now has access to electricity. Since 2010, access to electricity expanded from 84% to 92% of people worldwide, even as global population swelled by over a billion. The share of humanity still without power dropped from 1.1 billion to 655 million.

2. El Salvador conquered a tropical eye disease. In just three years, the country eliminated trachoma through improved sanitation, vision screenings, and clean water initiatives, becoming Central America’s first to do so and joining 64 nations that have vanquished this neglected tropical disease.

   This story sticks out to me because the elimination of trachoma is one of these really underappreciated progress stories. Last year, seven countries accomplished this, meaning millions of people are no longer at risk of a debilitating eye infection, yet the story is largely absent from the media because it happened slowly and gradually.

3. The UN’s development agenda delivered tangible progress. While 2030 sustainability targets won’t all be met, the world has achieved remarkable milestones: internet connectivity surged from 40% to 74%, a billion more people gained safe drinking water, 1.5 billion more accessed proper sanitation, and disease and hunger have declined substantially.

   Note how the dominant media narrative will be around the “failure” to achieve the goals, rather than the extraordinary progress that has been made.

4. India’s children are surviving at higher rates. Infant mortality has dropped sharply across the country over the past decade, with several states now achieving child survival rates comparable to wealthy nations.

5. Global wealth has expanded while inequality has shrunk. Only 11% of countries remain classified as low-income today, and the proportion of economies plagued by high inequality fell by 40% over three decades, suggesting more balanced income distribution worldwide.

6. South Asia reversed its vulture crisis. In the late 1990s, vultures across the region were collapsing toward extinction. Scientists identified the culprit: diclofenac, a livestock painkiller toxic to vultures feeding on carcasses. After India, Nepal, and Pakistan banned veterinary diclofenac in 2006, they built breeding centers, developed safer drugs, and established Vulture Safe Zones. Two decades later, populations are recovering and three species on the brink are bouncing back.

7. The world is in the midst of an unprecedented drop in crime.

   

OPTIMIST FEATURE!

In this edition, our featured optimist (selected at random from club members) is…

Jayson Seaman!

“I support any initiative that helps make NH a place where young people want and are able to stay and build lives for themselves.”

Jayson is a professor at the University of New Hampshire.

For those of you who have opted into a mailed-print version (which combines our favorite good news from around New England + the world), we just mailed them today!

If you’d like to receive the mail newsletter, but haven’t shared your address with me yet, please fill out this form.

Hope to see you all at the live show!

-Andy

Hello everyone!

Excited to announce a new spin-off podcast series we are doing. It’s called Yankee Dynamism, and will be focused on New England’s tech sector.

Here I want to provide context for why I am doing this and where it fits into Granite Goodness more widely.

I’m a lifelong New Englander and New Hampshire native who spent 10 years as a career environmentalist. In that time I came to believe that our biggest problem wasn’t actually a lack of progress on important issues, but rather, that much of the public just had no idea about the solutions and progress we had made. Put another way, I think our biggest problem is too many of us are too pessimistic about the prospect of making the world better.

So, I became a solutions journalist and started a media brand called Granite Goodness, devoted to sharing optimistic local good news that actually matters across New England.

In the two years I’ve been doing Granite Goodness, I have mostly avoided technology as a topic. I did this because I felt like most of the time when people encounter this idea that we should be excited and optimistic about the future, it’s almost always about technology.

I first wanted to show audiences that you could be optimistic about the future, not just because computers get faster, but because people themselves are actually pretty good, our society solves problems all the time, and the news media tends to over-inform us about everything going wrong.

And while I feel that mission is realized, technology is an ever more important part of how the world gets shaped, for better and for worse. So I wanted to give it its own unique focus within Granite Goodness in the form of this spin-off podcast series.

Many people today have a cynical view of technology, seeing the industry as rife with out of touch billionaires obsessed with power, channeling America’s brightest minds toward figuring out how to addict us to screens and amplify our worst qualities. And while I think some of those views are justified, my job is to help tell a different story about what’s possible in the world.

The goal of this show is not to deny that tech can be used to make the world worse. Like any tool, it can be channeled towards negative or positive ends. Tech also helps spread culture and ideas across the globe. It helps people learn languages, recipes, make friends and discover art. It helps us power society with more renewable energy and raise living standards for the world’s poorest.

I believe the stories we tell literally shape the future we envision and build, and that too often we’re over-exposed to narratives of pessimism and decline. We need a different story, and a better one, that isn’t just based on hype and yet another delivery app.

It’s also personal for me. My brother, a type one diabetic, has his very life sustained by an insulin pump. My sister, born with a painful jaw condition, is now being healed through advancements in medical treatment. My wife and I live in rural New Hampshire on a farm powered by solar panels, with internet access beamed in from the sky.

I’ve made the conscious choice to stay and build a life in rural New England because I think this place and its people are unique, and have a lot to offer the world as it navigates a blistering pace of change.

The American Revolution began in New England 250 years ago, and while the region has remained at the frontier of much social and democratic progress, it remains one of the few places where at a café or hiking trail, there is a pretty good chance the humans you run into could be congresspeople, chicken farmers, CEOs, volunteer firemen, or all of the above. I often remark to people that the executive director of New Hampshire’s leading tech consortium, is also actually a chicken farmer, and I don’t think this is an accident.

Tradition and progress are often experienced as conflicting forces, but in New England, more often they are mutually reinforcing ideals. Nowhere else in the world is there such a combination of farmers markets, local direct democracy, world class universities and science, reverence for history, and liberal values blended with rural character.

New England’s unique embrace of authenticity, independence, community, and progress is not a coincidence, or a fluke. It’s actually just who we are. I call this spirit: Yankee Dynamism.

I actually wrote an essay about this nearly a year ago celebrating these qualities and expressing some surprise that there wasn’t more of a tech / progress-oriented movement here given I thought we had all the right ingredients.

Not long after that, I met Rae and Ryan Lambert, who told me about this absolutely crazy project they dreamt of pursuing: an intentional community for tech enthusiasts and founders, based in NH (codenamed: Freedom Village).

If you’ve met Rae & Ryan, you know that once they decide to do anything, they don’t wait, they move fast! Before long, Freedom Village became an actual project more than an idea.

Parallel to this, I had been mulling over the concept of Yankee Dynamism in my mind, seeing all the while how crazy and fast the world of tech was moving. Given the unique attributes my corner of the world has, I felt there was an opportunity to have a bunch of cool local conversations just focused on this question of what do we want our relationship to technology to look like?

I share more about this in the podcast, but basically I think it’s not a good thing for hugely consequential industries to be led by small groups of people representing a narrow set of values and perspectives. My vision for a better future imagines a much wider diversity and flourishing of innovation hubs, across the country and the world, and less overwhelming influence from Silicon Valley.

Anyway as luck would have it, Ryan and Rae felt ready to announce their project just as I was wanting to launch this spinoff podcast, and I thought it would be the perfect way to kick it off.

Just to be super clear, Yankee Dynamism is secondary to everything else Granite Goodness already is. It is a separate podcast that anyone can opt-into listening to. Our regular programming will continue as usual, and the flagship podcast, Granite Goodness, is returning in the fall with a more inclusive, standard format. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here is episode one. I hope you enjoy it!

On episode one, I am joined by Rae, Ryan, Jeremy, and Ian, who together are building a literal village and intentional community for tech optimists, founders, and enthusiasts, here in New Hampshire. Inspired by the state motto “Live free or die” they’re calling it Freedom Village.

I think their vision is a powerful expression of the values and ideas this show is about, mainly, how can we balance being excited about technology while still embracing the things that make us human? Who is doing something about that in a way that reflects New England values?

In addition to this, they’re throwing a whole two day summit in August devoted to celebrating and making the case for why more people should build innovative businesses in New Hampshire.

We also talk about the balance between risk, progress, and regulation in biological and nuclear tech, the aesthetic of solar punk, political tribes, using tech to help people make friends with strangers, and a bunch of other fun stuff.

Freedom Summit

Freedom Village

Follow Yankee Dynamism on Spotify

Rae’s Substack: IRL > URL

Granite Bio Innovation

• Tori Gerlt (Resilient Buildings Group)

• Jackson Kaspari (Community Power Coalition of NH)

• Katharine Cusack (Clean Energy NH)

Join us Wednesday August 12 for our next live show at the Bank of NH stage in Concord, NH.

Big thank you to our Optimists Club for supporting us, as well as our generous partners Delta Dental, Resilient Buildings Group, Green Wave Electric Vehicles!

Thank you Treeline Outfitters for hosting us!

Don’t want to receive this newsletter? Adjust your preferences here.

NOTE FROM ANDY

HELLO OPTIMISTS!

We’ve been busy! Welcome to the 197 new people who’ve joined us since our last newsletter.

Across some of my shenanigans the last 6 weeks, I’ve learned that a fair amount of people who engage with Granite Goodness don’t really know the how or why behind it. To boot, there are now more than 2,100 direct email subscribers, so I feel I should take a minute to quickly re-introduce myself!

My name is Andy DeMeo, I am a life-long New Englander (mostly via NH) with a ~10 year career in the environmental / sustainability space. I’ve worked in climate policy, impact investing, beekeeping, carbon accounting, and before any of that, a whole lot of restaurants.

Through dumb luck I met some pretty smart people in my work, and over time felt that (by virtue of their smartness) perhaps the world was actually making more progress on important problems than the steady stream of negative eco-news would have us believe.

Turns out we are, and not just on environmental issues.

The gap between public perception and expert opinion on any given issue is no surprise. What is surprising is which direction it often runs, in that the public is often more pessimistic than the evidence warrants.

It matters that people know about progress for so many reasons. Having an awareness of what's going right protects your sense of purpose and agency against the ever-present pull of doom. A basic belief in the ability of people to improve things is good for your mental health. Both qualities make a person more likely to help a neighbor, volunteer, innovate, engage in civic systems, or simply talk to a stranger (optimism also makes you better looking, this is scientifically proven).

“Restored my faith in humanity” is an oft-invoked phrase, because we’ve somehow collectively settled on this notion that our default state is a lack of faith.

I find that so depressing, unacceptable, and frankly, counterproductive for anyone who wants to make the world a better place.

Thankfully, so do tons of other people, who for years have been at the work of communicating the general concept of optimism & progress via a fast-growing web of journalistic and academic outlets. Virtually all of them focus on stories of progress & good news from a global perspective, but none I could find are trying to bring this concept locally.

It makes sense why. It’s an unusual idea, because generally progress journalism / studies is concerned with weighty non-local stakes i.e. how humanity is faring in its dance with the four horsemen of the apocalypse.1 Nonetheless, the phenomenon of “progress” is experienced locally, and the most fun opportunity I see is to engage an audience + community with a local orientation.2

This led me to starting a hobby project two years ago called Granite Goodness,3 a podcast about my home-state and the ways that various people were making it better. The first ten episodes I produced totally in secret, having convinced ten friends of mine to be guinea pigs for this weird idea.4 As a last minute-addition, I also made a good news newsletter focused on NH, and then released it all at once.

Those first twelve months were a lot of fun,5 and when Granite Goodness turned 1 in June 2025, I expanded the scope to cover all of New England.6

I’ve since come to believe that this kind of solutions journalism, a dedicated beat for things going well, could (and should) be an entire branch of the media. If nothing else I think there should be a bigger ecosystem of competition here, and I hope my work can inspire others. I don’t know that optimistic solutions journalism will ever be the “whole enchilada” but it should be much bigger than it is now given how many win-win opportunities are in this space.

Granted, it is a political question what “going well” means, but I sincerely think there is plenty of relatively uncontroversial, substantively positive stuff happening that most Americans would think is pretty good i.e. how are we improving our relationship to the environment? What opportunities exist in the economy? What creative ways are we providing more housing? Making progress on social issues? Enhancing civic engagement?7

These are the stories I try to curate and share on the regular to remind people that good news exists in plain sight, and it’s not just fluffy stuff to make you feel good.

Over time this has become a really fun exercise because my brand’s aperture for “good news” is very wide, in that I draw on a lot of different sources. Local journalists + newspapers, municipal press releases, university research journals, economic briefs, social media posts, podcast interviews, and many other things!8

In that same vein, when I explain what the hell Granite Goodness even is on a given day of the week, the answer could be so many things now. It’s a digital & print newsletter / social media project / community / idea platform / mental health resource / fund-raising vehicle for local news / podcast / live event producer / speaking & emceeing outlet / podcast production company / passion, etc.

In reality, it’s a hybrid of all these things, so I’ve taken to just calling it a “media brand.”

Anyhow, enough exposition for now, but that’s the 10,000 foot view of what we’re doing here and why.

For anyone who’s been with us since day one, or yesterday, I just want to say:

Wow.

Thank you.

I love you.

This whole thing is just beginning.

I want to especially thank our Optimists Club, the amazing group of paid supporters to Granite Goodness, as well as our several incredible partners (early believers!) Resilient Buildings Group, Green Wave Electric Vehicles, and Delta Dental. Grappone Automotive as well I’d like to thank for sponsoring our first ever live show last fall.

If you like what we do, hop on this optimistic pirate ship. We’re seeking more partners and sponsors. Last month >200,000 people saw our social media content, so the ground here is fertile and growing fast. Year 1 was about exploration, year 2 was about proving the concept, and year 3 will be all about executing the vision. Expect a lot more of everything we do.

In that spirit, we also just made our first ever hire. Welcome Kaelli Gehrung, who is going to help us get more Granite Goodness out there to more people.

Now enjoy some good news.

PS if you’re local to NH and around on Tuesday evening 6/30, we’re doing a live podcast at Auspicious Brew in Dover, NH to close out pride month. I have unironically named this event “Granite Gayness.”

Sustainability & Nature

Maine residents can now power their homes with plug-in solar. Maine is the second state to legalize plug-in solar, the small panels that hang on a balcony or fence and feed power straight into a standard outlet. The panels require no rooftop, no permit, no utility sign-off, and are saving locals up to 20% off their average electric bill.

Vermont just became the first state in the country to ban paraquat. The pesticide has been linked to Parkinson’s disease for years and is already banned in more than 70 countries. Other states are lining up to follow Vermont’s lead.

Rhode Island is reducing food waste in schools. A new law requires schools to audit what they throw away and divert all of it by 2029, expanding what gets recovered and shared so less edible food ends up buried in landfills.

Building & Infrastructure

Maine is paying homeowners to expand housing supply. Residents in Rockland, Bath, and Brunswick can get up to $10,000 from the Midcoast Council of Governments toward an accessory dwelling unit built in their backyard, provided it becomes a long term rental.

Rhode Island is turning pavement into sponges for heavy rains. Ten communities from Providence to Block Island won nearly $1.1 million in EPA grants to redesign how they handle stormwater, trading aging drainage for rain gardens, tree filters, and basins that absorb heavier storms.

Batteries are a growing part of powering New England’s grid. In Massachusetts, three electric school buses in Acton-Boxborough are kicking off the state’s first vehicle-to-grid pilot, charging overnight when power is cheap and clean, then feeding it back on hot afternoons when the grid is straining, potentially earning the district enough to cover a year of charging.

Similarly, in New Hampshire, new utility programs let home and community batteries do the same, easing strain on the grid and paying owners for the power they share, with publicly owned buildings joining in as well. For example, Lee, NH’s public library battery system allows them to double as an outage-resilient community center. This is what libraries can be in 2026!

Economics & Opportunity

In Connecticut, farmers are organizing to solve shared problems. The state's 120 markets long operated in isolation, each one troubleshooting vendor rules, permits, and slow days on its own. A new statewide coalition now connects organizers to share resources and knowledge about how to smoothly operate local markets.

Massachusetts is training a new generation to drill for clean heat. The country’s first geothermal drilling training center opens in Framingham this year, built to retrain gas workers and bring in newcomers. America’s geothermal workforce is projected to triple by 2050, with centers like these leading the way.

The University of New Hampshire is leading a push for America to grow its own seafood. The US imports $20 billion more seafood than it catches or farms at home. NOAA has tapped UNH to lead a new five-year, $13.5 million institute to close that gap, building on the university’s successful model in New Castle, NH, where it already raises 20,000 pounds of steelhead trout a year.

Science & Technology

Scientists are vaccinating New England’s trees against Dutch elm disease. In Vermont, researchers are deliberately infecting 5,000 saplings bred from rare survivor elms, then breeding the heartiest survivors. The goal is to bring American elms back to the floodplains where they once slowed floods and filtered water.

Connecticut just unveiled its next-generation ocean research craft. The Sound Outlook, a $2.2 million catamaran (for the non-nautical, this is a boat with two hulls), can slip into bays and estuaries as shallow as two feet, opening up eelgrass beds and coves unreachable to previous crafts that have monitored Long Island Sound’s health for decades.

New Hampshire is clearing the path to STEM careers for low-income students. Saint Anselm College won its largest-ever NSF award to fund up to 80 scholarships for students moving from community college into STEM degrees. The program builds a path all the way from a two-year school to a master's at UNH.

Civics & Community

For the first time since 2013, Massachusetts lost fewer than 1,000 people to opioids in a year. It’s a milestone a decade in the making, the product of years of steady investment in treatment, harm reduction, and recovery across the state.

Connecticut just passed one of the strongest data privacy laws in the country. Residents will be able to wipe their personal information from every registered data broker with a single request. The law also bans surveillance pricing, where companies use your personal data to charge you more than they'd charge someone else for the same thing.

Vermont just made concert tickets fairer. A new state law caps resale prices at 10% above face value for independent venues. It also bans fake “official” ticket sites designed to trick fans, prohibits selling tickets you don’t actually have, and requires resellers to be upfront about who they bought from.

New Hampshire's theater scene just got a boost. Plymouth's beloved Flying Monkey theater was donated to a local nonprofit, shifting the venue into community ownership. The move allows for grants and donations that ticket sales alone would struggle to match. Similar models have helped sustain independent theaters across the country.

That’s it for this edition of the Good News in New England Newsletter!9 If you’d like to support Granite Goodness, consider joining our Optimists Club. Learn more about the people behind these stories on our podcast.

Hungry for good news beyond the borders of New England? Check out our very own Optimists Club newsletter or our friends at Fix The News and The Progress Network.

Thanks for reading!

-Andy

I cannot believe there are now over 100 of you. If you haven’t shared your info yet and would like to be displayed on our page, please let me know!

If you missed it, the recording from our last live show is now out.

Kicking off the new month with some fresh good news from around the globe. Here are seven of my favorite stories lately:

1. American fathers aged ~30-45 now spend as much time taking care of their kids as the average American mother in 1985. New research has found that since the pandemic, fathers have been voluntarily trading work hours for more time cooking, cleaning, and raising their kids.

2. There is a massive, underappreciated boom happening in both the number of museums worldwide and their willingness to engage in the return of looted artifacts to formerly colonized states. The world has gone from 22,000 museums in 1975 to over 104,000 today.

3. Colombia’s multidimensional poverty rate has dropped from nearly 30% in 2010 to under 10% today, a measure that captures not just income but access to education, healthcare, and infrastructure.

4. Brazil’s deforestation rate fell by 42% last year, helping forests recover from a record year of loss. Additionally, deforestation in the country’s most threatened biome fell to its lowest level in 40 years.

5. West Africa is making major progress toward a power grid capable of powering the region. A World Bank-financed program has connected 15 West African countries through more than 4,000 kilometers of transmission lines.

6. Scottish sea creatures are doing well, a decade after Scotland banned bottom trawling in a protected coastal area, scientists found protected seabeds supporting twice as many species and three times the marine life of nearby fished zones.

7. Sales of combustion engine cars peaked in 2017

Our friends at also just launched a podcast network. Very cool to see optimistic solutions journalism gaining momentum!

They also shared a particularly interesting study on climate change messaging across 63 countries, showing that while that doom-and-gloom is great for social media shares, it’s bad for actually motivating behavior change. People exposed to catastrophic framing were less likely to act than those who read nothing at all.

Instead, what tended to work better was moral framing that makes people feel capable and part of something bigger, but that kind of message doesn’t go viral (or does it?)

OPTIMIST FEATURE!

In this edition, our featured optimist (selected at random from club members) is…

Anna Wells!

"I support Granite Goodness because Andy is 100%+ the vibe we need right now. I desperately need the good stories and good energy - uplifting the goodness keeps me motivated to keep working for a better world."

Anna is a Program Coordinator at PLAN NH, based in Contoocook, NH.

For those of you who have opted into a mailed-print version (which combines our favorite good news from around New England + the world), you can expect a mailing this week!

If you’d like to receive the mail newsletter but haven’t shared your address with me yet, please fill out this form.

For anyone who had been anticipating a live show on June 10 with NHBSR, know that that is being rescheduled for later in the summer.

We will be doing a very casual show in celebration of Pride month on Tues evening June 30 at Auspicious Brew.

Expect a full New England newsletter soon + an exciting announcement (we’re growing!)

-Andy

The theme of the evening was simple: we aren’t competing with each other, we’re all competing together against the giant media industry of conflict entrepreneurship pumping out cynicism 24/7.

It was a very special, very optimistic night!

THANK YOU TO:

• Green Wave Electric Vehicles for sponsoring the evening

• 3S Artspace for having us

• Hutch Heelan for the wonderful photos

• InFocus Media for the videography

• Haley Levesque for joining us at intermission to share about NH Community Media

• Ivo, Laura, Becky, Alison, Liz, Marissa, Emily, and Jenn for joining us!

Dr. Beewell explores holistic health, entrepreneurship, and wellbeing through wide-ranging conversations on mind, body, and modern living, hosted by Dr. Steve Ivanoski.

Creative Guts is an interview-style podcast exploring the roots of creativity and how it connects us to the world around us. Hosted by Laura Harper Lake, Becky Barsi, and Joe Acone.

Real Time Creator is a voice-note style podcast documenting the raw, real-time journey of creative reinvention after a career break, hosted by Alison Kinsey.

New Hampshire Has Issues is the podcast that dares to ask, how many issues can one state have? Hosted by Liz Canada, an advocacy director who helps people understand issues and take meaningful action.

One Quick Thing shares quick, actionable ways to connect with your community when it matters most, hosted by Marissa Emanuele and Emily Briand.

Telltalks Northeast features deep-dive conversations with small business owners, entrepreneurs, creatives, and makers across the Northeast, hosted by Jenn Bakos.

Sydni Collier is Director of Leadership Programs at Alnoba, where she coordinates leadership offsites for strategic partners and leads youth development programming.

This episode was recorded at Alnoba in Kensington, NH.

Learn more at alnoba.org

Music provided by Sneaky Miles

Thank you to our Community Partners Resilient Buildings Group, Green Wave Electric Vehicles, Delta Dental, and Treeline Outfitters for their support.

Zeina Eyceoz is the current Executive Director of NH Businesses for Social Responsibility (NHBSR). She joined the organization after teaching sustainability at Southern New Hampshire University and Harvard Extension School.

Michelle Veasey is the former Executive Director of NHBSR, where she served for 13 years before transitioning to the role of Advocacy Director. She is recently retiring after a career defined by coalition building and relationship-driven change across the New Hampshire business community.

This episode was produced in partnership with NH Possible, focusing on NH Businesses for Social Responsibility. Learn more about them at nhpossible.org and nhbsr.org

NH Possible is a collaboration between:

• Health Strategies of NH

• NH Health Cost Initiative

• HealthForce NH

• Foundation for Healthy Communities

• NH Center for Justice & Equity

• NH Fiscal Policy Institute

• NH Businesses for Social Responsibility

• and the NH Center for Nonprofits

Together, they are building a statewide movement envisioning a New Hampshire where individuals, families, communities and businesses all have what they need to thrive, including a sense of belonging, opportunities for civic engagement, optimal health, and access to educational and financial opportunity.

Music provided by Sneaky Miles

This episode was recorded at Ripple Effect Studio in Manchester, NH

Don’t want to receive this newsletter? Adjust your preferences here.

NOTE FROM ANDY

WELCOME to the 31 new people who have joined the Granite Goodness community since our last newsletter.

Over here in Granite Goodness world we have some good news to share: we now have 100+ members of our Optimists Club!

Shout out to Jo Porter, Ande Lyons, and Andrea Folsom for joining last week and taking us over 100!

Come hang out at Treeline Outfitters on May 4 and listen to what’s optimistic in New England’s energy space for NH Energy Week.

Big thank you to the Partnership for Public Health, who gave me a great excuse to wear a cape last week when they asked me to come moderate their panel about the “superpowers” non-profits have : )

Now enjoy some good news!

GRANITE GREENERY: Sustainability & Nature

Shrewsbury, MA just won the largest federal recycling grant in Massachusetts history. A $2.7 million EPA award will launch townwide curbside composting, a new recycling facility, drop-off for hard-to-recycle items, and will divert up to 1,000 tons of waste a year from incineration. - Massachusetts Municipal Association

Maine is about to get a lot wilder: $4.6 million is flowing to ten wetland restoration projects, more than double last year's funding. The funds will help remove dams and rehabilitate Acadia National Park's largest freshwater wetland, strengthening ecosystems and improving flood resilience across the state. - The Maine Monitor

Rhode Island is protecting 174 acres of open space using $1.23 million in voter-approved Green Bond grants, covering four projects from forestland in Glocester to a shoreline property overlooking Mount Hope Bay in Tiverton. This same program has protected more than 13,000 acres since 1985. - RI DEM

GRANITE GRIT: Building & Infrastructure

Vermont is creating 10 pre-approved home designs that builders can fast-track through local permitting for free, making it the first state in the country to do so. The "802 Homes" program is being piloted in Essex Junction, Hartford, and Manchester, with the full catalog expected by end of year. - VTDigger

Braintree is turning a long-vacant 30-acre industrial site into 752 apartments less than a mile from the Red Line, one of the largest housing developments on Boston's South Shore in years and a model for how Massachusetts is converting industrial relics into housing. - Boston Globe

Connecticut is upgrading the freight rail network that helps keep its economy running, repairing bridges over the Connecticut River, modernizing grade crossings, and upgrading track for heavier freight cars across six railroads statewide. The work is backed by $20m in state grants + $4m in private railroad investment. - CT DOT

GRANITE GROWTH: Economics & Opportunity

The 144 households of Cotton Farm Village in New Hampshire just became co-owners of their manufactured-home park, joining a network of 152 resident-owned communities across the state. The cooperative, financed through the NH Community Loan Fund, gives residents control over their own rents, rules, and future. - NH Community Loan Fund

Farmington, Maine just got a new food co-op, where 250 community members have already bought $150 lifetime memberships to co-own a local organic market on Front Street. Members get monthly discounts, a share of yearly revenue, and a vote on how the business is run. - WMTW News

Vermont farmer Charlie Watts just launched a seed company built to solve a problem every New England gardener has: a growing season too short for half the things worth growing. Homecoming Seeds in Northfield sells only open-pollinated varieties adapted to cold, fast-maturing conditions, grown on Watts’ own farm or contracted locally. They ship nationwide! - Seven Days

GRANITE GADGETS: Science & Technology

Massachusetts is positioning itself as the global capital of climate tech, backed by $1 billion in state support. Greentown Labs in Somerville sits at the center of the ecosystem, incubating over 100 startups working on everything from iron batteries to biodegradable potato plastic. - WBUR

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire just won $600,000 to make water data accessible to anyone who needs it, building an open-source platform that lets scientists run water cycle simulations without a supercomputer. Access to the data will help enhance practices for drinking water protection, agriculture, and more. - UNH

UConn researchers are using controlled burns to help New England prepare for a future with more wildfires, studying how soil microbes recover after fires and testing how to restore forest health faster. The work aims to help reshape wildfire management across the region. - UConn

GRANITE GOODS: Institutions & Community

A donated building in Portland's Bayside neighborhood is becoming a nonprofit-owned community center, hosting organizations focused on housing, welcoming immigrants, music, and food access. The landowner sees it as a replicable model for community-driven development across the city. - Portland Press Herald

New Hampshire is planning its first fully ADA-accessible public beach on Blaisdell Lake in Sutton, anchoring a new outdoor learning and conservation destination that will bring programming, accessibility, and economic activity to the Kearsarge region. - Concord Insider

The University of Rhode Island launched a Community News Lab sending student journalists into Rhode Island towns that no longer have local coverage, with their stories appearing in real newspapers across the state. The program is part of a nationwide movement of universities stepping in to fill news deserts, with 172 institutions now publishing over 11,000 student-reported stories. - URI Magazine

Partner Spotlight!

BIG THANK YOU to our Community Partners Green Wave Electric Vehicles and Resilient Buildings Group (RBG) for your support of Granite Goodness.

That’s it for this edition of the Good News in New England Newsletter!1 If you’d like to support Granite Goodness, consider joining our Optimists Club. Learn more about the people behind these stories on our podcast.

Hungry for good news beyond the borders of New England? Check out our very own Optimists Club newsletter or our friends at Fix The News and The Progress Network.

Thanks for reading!

-Andy

Don’t want to receive this newsletter? Adjust your preferences here.

NOTE FROM ANDY

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 216 new people who have joined the Granite Goodness community since our last newsletter and to Marisa Rafal, Anna Wells, and Talia Wujtewicz for joining our Optimists Club!

Don’t miss our latest podcast episode featuring Sam Evans Brown from Clean Energy NH : )

If you’re around come join us May 4 for a free casual live podcast + drinks at Treeline Outfitters in Portsmouth, featuring panelists from Clean Energy NH, Resilient Buildings Group, and the Community Power Coalition of NH.

Now enjoy some good news!

GRANITE GREENERY: Sustainability & Nature

Revolution Wind, New England’s first major offshore wind project, has begun delivering electricity to the regional grid. The 65-turbine project off the Connecticut coast will generate enough power for 350,000 homes, projected to save ratepayers $500 million a year on energy costs. - Rhode Island Current

All six New England governors issued a bipartisan commitment to explore advanced nuclear energy, the first time the region has united behind the technology, as ISO New England projects regional electricity demand will grow more than 40% over the next two decades. - Mass.gov

New Hampshire is removing a century-old dam in Goffstown, unlocking nearly 70 miles of the Piscataquog River for the first time in decades and restoring the natural flow of water, sediment, and wildlife. - Vermont Public / NHPR

GRANITE GRIT: Building & Infrastructure

Massachusetts is betting that the best way to prepare for climate change is to let towns figure it out themselves, putting $3 million behind the idea through Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grants going to more than 30 communities for wetland restoration, infrastructure upgrades, and tree planting. - Massachusetts Municipal Association

Maine has secured federal approval to bring high-speed internet to more than 22,000 homes and businesses, one of the largest broadband expansions in state history, closing the digital divide in rural communities across the state. - Sunrise County Economic Council

Vermont’s legislature unanimously approved an expansion of its “10% in VT” housing fund, which has already financed more than 1,700 homes across the state using low-interest loans to offset borrowing costs that would otherwise kill housing projects. - Vermont Business Magazine

GRANITE GROWTH: Economics & Opportunity

Three years in, Nashua’s downtown performing arts center is exceeding expectations, with restaurants reporting significant revenue increases, parking revenue climbing, and $3.6 million in regional economic impact generated. - Nashua Ink Link

Maine just deployed $25 million across 23 companies and research institutions, from seafood processors in Downeast Maine to life sciences labs on the Midcoast, drawing 113 proposals requesting $127 million and projected to create or preserve nearly 4,000 jobs. - Maine.gov

Vermont’s economic development authority just invested $13.8 million into a cross-section of small businesses: a community-owned grocery in St. Johnsbury, a grain center in Ferrisburgh, a fitness center in flood-damaged Montpelier, and a donut shop in Rutland. - Vermont Business Magazine

GRANITE GADGETS: Science & Technology

Maine researchers have engineered a zebrafish (dubbed the “atrofish”) that can reproduce decades of age-related muscle decline in just days, dramatically accelerating the search for treatments for sarcopenia, the muscle loss condition affecting millions of older adults. - MDI Biological Laboratory

UConn and Yale are bidding for $160 million to make Connecticut the country’s quantum computing capital, backed by $61 million the state has already committed through a public-private partnership called QuantumCT. - UConn Today

MIT and two Boston biotechs won federal awards to develop a sensor that monitors your health through your tears in real time, and drugs that repair damaged lymphatic vessels rather than just managing symptoms. Massachusetts has now secured more than $330 million in ARPA-H funding since the agency launched. - Mass.gov

GRANITE GOODS: Institutions & Community

Rhode Island has cut chronic absenteeism by 12 percentage points since 2022, adding 3.7 million hours of learning back to students, and now leads all of New England in post-pandemic academic recovery. - RI Public Expenditure Council

Boston Public Schools won a national award for installing 4,000+ air quality sensors across more than 100 schools, making it one of only five districts in the country recognized for indoor air quality leadership. - Boston Public Schools

New Hampshire’s Farm Future Fund is back for its seventh year, offering $100,000 to help farms conserve land and strengthen their business viability, having already protected 2,402 acres and supported 22 farms statewide. - Morning Ag Clips

Partner Spotlight!

BIG THANK YOU to our Community Partners Green Wave Electric Vehicles and Resilient Buildings Group (RBG) for your support of Granite Goodness.

Come join us May 4 at Treeline Outfitters for a free live podcast featuring some of our friends from RBG + the Community Power Coalition of NH + Clean Energy NH.

That’s it for this edition of the Good News in New England Newsletter!1 If you’d like to support Granite Goodness, consider joining our Optimists Club.

Learn more about the people behind these stories on our podcast and social media.

Hungry for good news beyond the borders of New England? Check out our very own Optimists Club newsletter or our friends at Fix The News and The Progress Network.

Please reach out to granitegoodness@gmail.com with sponsor or partner inquiries.

Thanks for reading!

-Andy

We are also joined briefly by Clean Energy New Hampshire’s Communications Coordinator (and my friend!) Kyana Burgess.

Learn more about their work at cleanenergynh.org

Granite Goodness is made possible by the generous support of our Community Partners, big thank you to Resilient Buildings Group and Green Wave Electric Vehicles.

Join us May 4 for a free live panel at Treeline Outfitters for NH Energy Week.

Returning to you here with another edition of our Optimists Club newsletter.

We had a great night on Friday at our second live show. Official pictures to come but here are a couple previews!

A bunch of our Optimists Club members joined us there! Thank you to Laura Cleminson, Ryan + Rae Lambert, Brittany Carr, Anna Paddock, Matt Doubleday, Nikki Schultz, Andrea Martin, and Jesse Lore (who also was our generous show sponsor via Green Wave Electric Vehicles)

GOOD NEWS

I am often asked how I can be so optimistic. In this issue, I’ll tell you how.

Granite Goodness is just one among many organizations devoted to telling optimistic stories. There is a wide and growing network devoted to this mission, and they are where I got the idea to bring this concept to New England.

Even in the short time I’ve been doing this (20 months) I have also observed a shift amongst major media outlets. More and more, they are investing resources into optimistic solutions journalism.

I thought it would make for a fun piece to compile all of my favorite sources together. A curation of good news curators!

I also hope this list may serve to show fellow media people that solutions journalism is not just a niche thing, but increasingly seen as a savvy investment by traditional media outlets.

We’ll share some of our favorite good news stories lately at the bottom for Optimists Club members.

MY TOP PICKS

(est. 2014)

Based out of Australia, this team is “the world’s leading solutions journalism newsletter” boasting ~80,000 subscribers across 195 countries. I would agree with that assessment. These people are the true originals, and have been at it for over 10 years. They were formerly known as Future Crunch, and I have a vintage t-shirt to prove it.

When I need to explain people what I’m doing and why, I literally pull up their website, and simply say “I am trying to do this, but for New England.”

Their testimonials page is also a work of art. It’s like they literally just published every nice thing anyone’s ever said about them. The page is enormous and feels so human. My dream is to style my Optimists Club page after it— impractically large and positive.

(TPN, est. 2020)

Headquartered at the New America Foundation, this organization was founded during the pandemic. They are the leading convening organization for optimistic / progress oriented storytelling, and also produce a ton of excellent original content themselves. Their podcast “What Could Go Right” is my personal favorite. Granite Goodness is proud to be an official member of The Progress Network. The rest of their members are far more notable than myself, though I never hear Scott Galloway talk about being in TPN. I wish he did!

Their founder also writes an excellent substack . My favorite thing about Zachary is that in the beginning of every podcast episode, he rephrases the mission statement of TPN (“An idea movement that speaks to a better future in a world dominated by voices that suggest a worse one”) in a completely original way, off the top of his head. It’s wildly impressive.

Our World in Data (est. 2014)

This organization is less on the journalistic side of progress and more on the data side. In fact I would just say that they are the data side. Their website is like a modern library of Alexandria. You can imagine Aristotle weeping if he were able to see this information— accurate data about all the worlds biggest problems, neatly categorized and visualized, free to use for anyone, anywhere, all the time, everywhere, forever.

This website and org are the spiritual grandchild of Hans Rosling’s infamous TED talk, where for the first time in the internet era, a wide audience was optimistically educated about the improving state of the world (imagine how happy I was getting to emcee TEDx Portsmouth last year! One of the top TEDx events in the world!)

My favorite quote, which I often cite as how to reconcile an awareness of suffering with the desire to improve the world, comes from them.

The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.

They also have a page devoted specifically to optimism.

HONORABLE MENTION

(est. 2024)

These guys are more tech focused, but tell amazing stories nonetheless. The name comes from Matt Ridley’s wonderful book, The Rational Optimist. Their platform has grown wildly fast, and they happen to also be incredibly nice.

(est. 2013)

A project of the Cato Institute, their newsletter Doomslayer is an excellent regular curation of progress stories around the globe. Their podcast and work mostly take a economics-centered point of view, and I find Marian Tupy wonderful to listen to on their podcast. Chelsea Follett, their managing editor, also runs the fantastic substack .

(est. 2022)

The personal substack of Hannah Ritchie, Deputy Editor at Our World in Data, where she breaks down almost every environmental issue imaginable in an entertaining and data-backed way. She is 33 years old and also the author of the incredible book Not the End of the World.

(est. 2017, becoming a non-profit in 2021)

This organization is devoted to studying and advancing the progress movement, in particular accelerating the careers of progress researchers. I view them as a kind of academic companion to the Progress Network (who, to their great credit, contains almost all of these organizations within their network). They run the world’s premier progress conference, just recently established in 2024. Funny story, I was almost hired to help organize this conference! The team there is great.

Their founder, Jason Crawford, is based in Boston. I hope to get him on the podcast sometime!

TRADITIONAL MEDIA + SOLUTIONS JOURNALISM

Here is a curation of more established media outlets and some of their component solutions journalism work I’ve come across:

Reasonably Optimistic from the Washington Post (est. 2025)

Future Perfect from Vox (est. 2018)

50 States, 50 Fixes from the New York Times (est. 2025)

The Solutionaries from Time Magazine (est. 2025)

An Optimists Guide to the Planet from Bloomberg (est. 2024)

How We Fix This from Spotify (est. 2024)

People Fixing the World from BBC (est. 2016)

There are probably tons more I haven’t even heard of.

OTHER GREAT RESOURCES WORTH SHARING

Reasons to be Cheerful

Blue Sky Podcast

The Goodness Exchange (run by my friend Lynda Ulrich!)

Positive News Magazine

Cleo Abram (a massively popular content creator who explicitly covers tech optimism)

Pessimists Archive

Good Good Good

(Earth Hope)

(Positive Sum)

Warp News

Institute for Progress

There is even a subreddit for optimistic data content, r/optimistsunite, which grew from 0 to more than 350,000 members in two years.

There are many more I could list here. Maybe I’ll edit this post sometime to also include books. But for anyone seeking out where to find more optimistic information and content about people making the world better, this list is a pretty good place to start!

Below here are my top good news stories from around the world lately, for Optimists Club members only!

ANDY’S TOP GLOBAL GOOD NEWS LATELY:

• Oil spills from tankers have fallen by more than 90% since the 1970’s

  • “In the 1970s, oil spills from tankers — container ships transporting oil — were common. Between 70 and 100 spills occurred per year. That’s one or two spills every week. This number has fallen by more than 90% since then.”

• Global terrorism deaths hit their lowest point since 2007

  • “Deaths from terrorism fell by 28 per cent to 5,582, and incidents decreased by 22 per cent to 2,944, marking the lowest figures since 2007.”

• Young people are using social media less

  • “A 2025 Deloitte consumer trends survey of more than 4,000 Brits found that nearly a quarter of all consumers had deleted a social media app in the previous 12 months, rising to nearly a third for Gen Zers. Meanwhile, social media use has steadily declined since time spent on the platforms peaked in 2022, according to an analysis of the online habits of 250,000 adults in more than 50 countries by the Financial Times and digital audience insights firm GWI.”

• Share of adults globally who think women in their country are treated with respect increased to 72% from 63% in 2022 (Gallup)

• Smoking rates in the United States near all time low

  • “The cigarette smoking rate among U.S. adults fell below 10% for the first time in recorded history in 2024.”

OPTIMIST FEATURE!

This month’s featured optimist (selected at random from club members) is…

Anna Paddock!

“I believe that the trajectory of the universe arcs towards justice. There's no denying that there are a lot of bad things in the world, and we should put energy into fixing those problems. However, we NEED to know what is going right in the world - what solutions humanity is creating - in order to have the desire and will to make the world a better place. Granite Goodness is my dose of hope, that reminds me that there are lots of people who care and are working hard to make this world a better place. Joining the Optimists Club is how I show my appreciation for these much needed stories of genuine progress.”

Anna works at the Chocorua Lake Conservancy here in Tamworth. Two weeks ago, we toured the Stonyfield yogurt factory together in Londonderry, NH thanks to the wonderful people at NH Businesses for Social Responsibility.

Thank you for being an optimist Anna!

That’s it for this edition of the Optimists Club Newsletter. New podcast episode and New England good news dropping shortly. See you soon!

-Andy

Tim focuses on helping nonprofits grow, connect, and operate more effectively. In this conversation, we discuss common issues non-profits face, and what led to our new partnership, the Earnest Impact Lab

Notes:

This episode was sponsored by our friends at Green Wave Electric Vehicles, who just opened their second location in Salem, MA!

Get your tickets here for our next Granite Goodness live show! March 27 at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, NH.

*In this episode, I (Andy) referenced a couple of my favorite progress trends. In one of them I said that “deforestation in the Amazon had basically gone to zero”. I was thinking of this story from Mongabay, showing that Amazon deforestation is approaching an all time low. Not technically zero, but wanted to back up and clarify that statement!

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NOTE FROM ANDY

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 244 new people who have joined the Granite Goodness community since our last newsletter, and to Shelby Miuzzo, Kaelli Gehrung, and Chad Moore for joining our Optimists Club!

Come join us Tuesday March 17 for a community gathering at Treeline Outfitters in Portsmouth, NH with our friends at Give and Gather. Co-organizer Andrea and I made a quick video about it.

Coming up as well on March 27 is our rescheduled LIVE SHOW at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, NH. We will be opened by friends of Granite Goodness SNEAKY MILES and joined by other excellent local pods. Gene and Troy cannot make the rescheduled date, so we will instead be joined by Alison Kinsey of Real Time Creator and Steve Ivo of Dr. Beewell — tickets here!

I recently got interviewed on Dr. Beewell, so check that out if you want a deep dive into Granite Goodness. Big thanks as well to my friend Aimee Terravechia and NH Culture Review for their recent feature of our work. If you’re curious, we compile all the fun stuff Granite Goodness is up to on our media page. It’s a fun timeline!

Now enjoy some good news!

GRANITE GREENERY: Sustainability & Nature

Rhode Island towns pilot curbside composting to cut waste and emissions

Three Rhode Island communities have launched the state’s first municipal curbside composting programs, helping divert tons of waste from landfills while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. - Governing

Geothermal network expands in Massachusetts

An $8.6 million federal grant will help double the size of a pioneering geothermal heating and cooling network in Framingham, bringing efficient underground energy to more homes and businesses. - Canary Media

Local fund helps electrify homes in New Hampshire

A community program in the Monadnock Region has raised more than $350,000 to help residents install heat pumps, solar panels, and other clean energy upgrades. The locally funded effort aims to help dozens of households cut energy costs and reduce emissions while transitioning homes away from fossil fuels. - NHPR

GRANITE GRIT: Building & Infrastructure

Rhode Island launches $20 million push for entry-level homeownership

Rhode Island is launching a $20 million initiative to accelerate the construction of affordable starter homes and expand homeownership opportunities for low- and moderate-income residents. Funds will support developers building smaller, lower-cost homes while helping more Rhode Islanders buy their first home. - RI.gov

Vermont invests $100 million in housing, infrastructure, and workforce programs

More than $100 million in federal funding will support affordable housing, drinking water and wastewater upgrades, workforce training programs, flood resilience projects, and expanded dental care services across Vermont. - VTDigger

UNH expands ocean mapping research center

The University of New Hampshire has broken ground on a new 70,500-square-foot Ocean Mapping Center of Excellence that will support cutting-edge seafloor research, workforce training, and collaborations with ocean technology companies. - University of New Hampshire

GRANITE GROWTH: Economics & Opportunity

Mt. Washington Valley becomes hub for independent ski innovation1

Black Mountain in Jackson, New Hampshire will remain independently owned as Indy Pass founder Erik Mogensen consolidates Indy Pass and ski-industry tech firm Entabeni Systems at the mountain. The historic ski area will serve as a testing ground for new technology, business models, and ideas aimed at helping independent ski resorts thrive, while bringing new jobs and investment to the Mount Washington Valley. - NHPR

Vermont expands training program for women in the trades

A workforce program in Vermont is expanding to four locations in 2026 to train women and gender-expansive residents for careers in construction. The free Trailblazers program provides hands-on training and paid internships to help more people enter high-demand skilled trades. - Construction Owners

Western Massachusetts invests in farmland protection

Three regional planning agencies in western Massachusetts are launching a new effort to help towns preserve farmland and support local farmers. Backed by a $268,000 state grant, the initiative will develop planning tools and partnerships to protect agricultural land. - Greenfield Recorder

GRANITE GADGETS: Science & Technology

UConn research aims to slow biological aging

A national research effort involving the University of Connecticut is testing whether a drug originally developed for HIV treatment could reduce inflammation linked to aging. The $22 million project aims to help older adults stay healthier, stronger, and mentally sharp as they age. - University of Connecticut

Maine researchers develop mushroom-based alternative to plastic packaging

Researchers at the University of Maine have created a biodegradable food packaging material made from mushroom mycelium and wood fibers that can resist water and oil like plastic. The new material could provide a sustainable alternative to traditional food packaging while breaking down naturally after use. - University of Maine

MIT researchers find new way to make protein medicines cheaper

MIT scientists have developed an innovative method that helps yeast produce important medicines more efficiently, which could lower the cost of making vaccines, hormones, and other lifesaving drugs. - MIT

GRANITE GOODS: Institutions & Community

Connecticut expands water bill assistance for low-income households

The South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority has expanded its financial assistance program, increasing grant amounts and widening eligibility so more families can receive help paying their water bills. Qualifying households can now receive up to $300 per year through the program. - CT Insider

Maine communities invest opioid settlement funds in recovery and prevention

Local governments across Maine spent $3 million from opioid settlement funds last year to support addiction treatment in jails, behavioral health workers, recovery centers, youth prevention programs, and outreach services. The investments are helping expand treatment access and strengthen community-based responses to the opioid crisis. - Maine Monitor

New Hampshire strengthens school safety with funding and reforms

New Hampshire has implemented 47 of 59 recommendations from the bipartisan 2018 School Safety Preparedness Task Force and awarded $8 million in SAFE grants to fund security upgrades and preparedness projects in schools. The state has also completed 1,300+ school safety assessments and reached 99% compliance with required emergency operations plans. - Rochester Post

Partner Spotlight!

Thanks to our Community Partner, Green Wave Electric Vehicles, for helping support Granite Goodness!

Green Wave founder Jesse Lore has been an enthusiastic and early believer in Granite Goodness. I chatted with him on the podcast last year and it remains one of my favorite convos.

As an EV owner who lives in rural New England, I can’t speak positively enough about my experience. Yesterday I did the math on how much electrifying my car has likely saved me (I drove ~29k miles in 2025, 12k of those for Granite Goodness purposes) and it was easily $1,400 - $1,600 annually in offset gas + maintenance costs (excluding how much my solar panels also saved me in electricity). Plus, I can bring my dogs anywhere I like and they can stay safe and comfortable in a climate controlled environment.

Big congrats to Jesse and the Green Wave team for opening a second location in Salem, Massachusetts. If you’re around, come join us for the opening celebration there on April 2 (tentative date!).

That’s it for this edition of the Good News in New England Newsletter!2 If you’d like to support Granite Goodness, consider joining our Optimists Club.

Learn more about the people behind these stories on our podcast and social media.

Hungry for good news beyond the borders of New England? Check out our very own Optimists Club newsletter or our friends at Fix The News and The Progress Network.

Please reach out to granitegoodness@gmail.com with sponsor or partner inquiries.

Thanks for reading!

-Andy

Writing to share that our next live show— originally scheduled for tomorrow evening February 20 at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, NH, is being postponed to March 27 due to weather.

To all our new subscribers— welcome and thank you! Typically, I don’t write about schedule changes for every event, but this is a last minute change that the community should know about.

Next week, if anyone is local and interested in environmentalism, come join us at Treeline Outfitters in Portsmouth on Wednesday evening 2/25. I help run a casual meetup group for anyone working in / interested in environmental or sustainability careers. We call it “Sustainabilibrews”. Here is the Linkedin group if interested. We will also be hearing from one of our Community Partners, Resilient Buildings Group, who specialize in energy efficiency!

Connect with me on Linkedin if you have any ?s.

Here are some good news hits to make up for me emailing so late:

From around the world, deforestation of the Amazon is on track toward its lowest ever recorded level.

From New England, last year Massachusetts exceeded their heat pump installation goal.

Stay warm tomorrow and see you next week with our regular good news and some fresh interviews.

-Andy

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NOTE FROM ANDY

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 41 new humans who have joined the Granite Goodness community this past week, and to Alexander Sterling for joining our Optimists Club!

THIS FRIDAY 2/20 is our next LIVE SHOW at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, NH. We will be opened by local legends SNEAKY MILES and joined by some cool local podcasts. Get your tickets here!

Also save the date for a community meetup on March 17 with our friends from Give and Gather.

Partner Spotlight!

THANK YOU to our Community Partner, Resilient Buildings Group (RBG), for helping support Granite Goodness!

Resilient Buildings Group helps expand high-performance, energy-efficient buildings across New England. This work often goes unnoticed, but it’s one of the most effective ways to reduce emissions and lower costs. While large energy projects get all the attention, improving building performance delivers real impact today instead of in 10 years.

I know many of the people behind RBG personally, and their mission closely reflects the values behind Granite Goodness. We share a deep zest for the people making our corner of the world better and brighter!

With support from partners like RBG, Granite Goodness keeps growing.

Now enjoy some good news!

GRANITE GREENERY: Sustainability & Nature

Penobscot Nation regains 1,700 acres of ancestral Maine forest

The Penobscot Nation will regain 1,700 acres of forest and wetlands in central Maine, restoring access to ancestral lands and strengthening tribal stewardship of wildlife, water, and forests. The transfer is part of a broader effort to return tens of thousands of acres to tribal care across the state. - Tribal Business News

Connecticut launches landmark geothermal network in New Haven

New Haven has begun building Connecticut’s first networked geothermal system, delivering clean, low-emission heating and cooling to Union Station and nearly 1,000 public housing units. The effort advances the city’s goal of fully decarbonizing municipal buildings by 2030. - Canary Media

230 acres conserved atop NH’s Mount Kearsarge for future generations

NH’s Forest Society has permanently protected 230 acres of high-elevation forest at Mount Kearsarge, securing some of the last private inholdings within the state forest. The conservation strengthens a 9,500-acre protected corridor and prevents future private development on the summit. - Society for the Protection of NH Forests

GRANITE GRIT: Building & Infrastructure

MBTA Communities law unlocks nearly 7,000 new homes across Massachusetts

A recent report showed the laws’s zoning reforms have enabled nearly 7,000 new housing units across 34 Massachusetts communities, allowing projects that previously could not be built. The law has been especially effective at encouraging both housing near transit and more multi-family units. - WBUR

$4.5B plan will upgrade roads, bridges, and transit in Maine

MaineDOT has unveiled a $4.5 billion, three-year plan to complete nearly 2,800 transportation projects, including paving more than 3,000 miles of roads and repairing or replacing 235 bridges. The investments will also expand transit, strengthen ports and rail, and improve access to economic hubs statewide. - Mainebiz

Vermont construction boom continues

Construction activity remains strong across Vermont, with steady homebuilding, infrastructure upgrades, and major projects underway statewide. A growing pipeline of housing, manufacturing, and community investments is helping expand supply and support long-term economic growth. - Vermont Biz

GRANITE GROWTH: Economics & Opportunity

Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont break 5% growth in Q4 2025

Connecticut’s economy grew 5.6% in the third quarter of 2025, one of the fastest rates in the nation, with New Hampshire (5.5%) and Vermont (5%) also posting strong gains. Rhode Island (4.4%), Maine (3.8%), and Massachusetts (3.3%) all saw continued growth, showing broad economic momentum across New England. - Westfair Online

Maine’s workforce grows as broadband access rapidly expands

Maine’s labor force has grown beyond pre-pandemic levels to 705,000 workers, reflecting strong economic momentum across the state. At the same time, high-speed broadband access has expanded from 13% to 50% of the state in just three years. - Maine Public

Adaptive sports fuel $10.3M boost to Vermont’s economy

A recent report showed that adaptive ski & sports generates more than $10.3 million each year for VT by helping people with disabilities participate in skiing, cycling, paddling, and other outdoor activities across the state. - Mountain Times

GRANITE GADGETS: Science & Technology

Dartmouth engineers create implant that helps skull regrow naturally

Dartmouth researchers have developed a neural implant that encourages the skull to regrow around it, allowing safer, longer-term access to the brain without metal plates or repeat surgeries. The breakthrough could improve treatments for conditions like Parkinson’s, epilepsy, and brain injuries. - Dartmouth College

$4.5M investment accelerates Rhode Island’s biotech growth

Eight life science companies expanding in Rhode Island were awarded $4.5 million, advancing breakthroughs in cancer, genetic medicine, and medical technology. The funding strengthens Rhode Island’s emergence as a growing hub for biotech innovation and scientific leadership. - RI Life Sciences Hub

University of Connecticut helps advance breakthrough treatment for kidney disease

UConn Health is participating in a clinical trial testing a first-of-its-kind therapy that directly targets the root cause of IgA nephropathy, the world’s most common kidney inflammation. Initial results show treatment can quickly remove harmful proteins, offering hope for protecting kidney function and improving patients’ lives. - UConn

GRANITE GOODS: Institutions & Community

$750K Rhode Island effort turns food waste into meals

A new $750,000 partnership will redirect surplus food from restaurants, schools, and businesses to people who need it while expanding composting statewide. The program also trains residents to lead food waste and climate solutions in their own communities. - Eco RI News

Vermont’s child care law expands access and strengthens workforce

Vermont’s landmark child care law has expanded financial assistance to nearly 12,000 children, helping families afford care and stay in the workforce. The investment has also stabilized child care providers and strengthened Vermont’s economy. - Waterbury Roundabout

Resident owned communities expand in NH

Residents of Cotton Farm Village in New Hampshire successfully purchased their community, becoming the state’s 152nd resident-owned cooperative. The change puts land ownership in residents’ hands, giving more than 140 households control over rent, maintenance, and long-term management. - NHCLF

That’s it for this edition of the Good News in New England Newsletter! If you’d like to support Granite Goodness, consider joining our Optimists Club.

We also post on Instagram, Linkedin, and Facebook. Learn about the people behind these stories on our podcast. You can customize what you receive from us here.

All postard images are sourced from the Tichnor Brothers Collection at the Boston Public Library, licensed under CCO 1.0.

Hungry for good news beyond the borders of New England? Check out our friends at , , or our Optimists Club newsletter.

If you are interested in sponsoring this newsletter or partnering with us, please reach out at hello@granitegoodness.com. Thanks for reading!

-Andy

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NOTE FROM ANDY

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 57 new people who have joined the Granite Goodness community this past week, and to the 4 new members of our Optimists Club, Megan Murray, Adriana Torres, Nikki Shults, and Keith Sandbloom.

Save the date for a community meetup on March 17 with our friends from Give and Gather.

If you haven’t gotten tickets yet for our upcoming live show on Fri 2/20, now is the time! Come hang out with us and some of our other favorite local podcasts at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, NH. Tickets here!

Partner Spotlight!

This week we’re again celebrating our Community Partner, Resilient Buildings Group (RBG).

RBG works to expand the number and quality of high performance, energy efficient buildings across New England. This kind of work often stays out of the spotlight, even though it is one of the most effective and highest return ways to reduce emissions and lower costs. While large infrastructure projects and new energy systems tend to grab attention, improving how buildings actually perform delivers real impact today.

I know many of the people behind RBG personally, and their values align closely with Granite Goodness. We both care deeply about the organizations and people doing the quiet work of progress.

Thanks to the support of our partners like RBG, Granite Goodness continues to grow!

Now enjoy some good news.

GRANITE GREENERY: Sustainability & Nature

Massachusetts tests a new way to cut grid costs

Massachusetts is piloting a utility marketplace that uses customer owned batteries, EV chargers, and smart devices to ease grid strain at peak times. By relying on flexible clean energy instead of costly infrastructure upgrades, the program aims to lower electricity bills and modernize the grid faster. - Canary Media

Vermont secures major funding to protect land and biodiversity

The Nature Conservancy has awarded $500,000 to conserve more than 1,400 acres across seven sites in Vermont. The funding will help protect forests, support public access where possible, and advance the state’s goal of conserving 30 percent of its land by 2030. - Nature Conservancy

Antioch University boosts environmental education with major gift

Antioch University New England has received a $1.5 million gift to expand Environmental Studies scholarships and launch a new conservation fund at Glover’s Ledge. The investment supports hands on learning, student access, and long term stewardship of a living research landscape. - Antioch University

GRANITE GRIT: Building & Infrastructure

NH housing construction hits 20 year high

New Hampshire built more housing in 2025 than in any year in the past two decades, with more than 5,800 new units permitted statewide. The growth, driven in part by increased multi family development and supportive state policies, signals strong momentum toward expanding housing options across the state. - NHPR

Rhode Island investing in waterways, safety, and ocean innovation

Rhode Island is set to receive nearly $8 million in federal funding to clean up waterways, modernize public safety systems, and invest in RI SmartBay’s undersea monitoring technology. The projects will deliver real time ocean data, strengthen coastal research, and help grow RI’s blue economy. - Congressman Gabe Amo

Maine unveils powerful new tool to accelerate housing

Maine has launched a statewide housing dashboard that puts real time building data in one public place. The new tool sharpens accountability and coordination, helping communities move faster on expanding housing statewide. - News Center Maine

GRANITE GROWTH: Economics & Opportunity

Maine pioneers remote work program that links rehabilitation and restitution

Maine is leading a new approach to corrections by allowing eligible inmates to work real remote jobs while incarcerated. The program builds skills, provides purpose, and directs a share of earnings to victim restitution, showing how meaningful work can support accountability and successful reentry. - News Center Maine

50 year analysis shows New England state income risen faster than national average

Since 1970, every New England state has seen inflation adjusted household incomes grow faster than the national average, with New Hampshire up 62 percent and Massachusetts up nearly 48 percent. Massachusetts now ranks first in the nation for median income, while New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island all sit comfortably in the top 15, showing decades of steady gains across the region. - Urban Institute

Southwestern Vermont launches new foundation to invest in regional growth

The Southwestern Vermont Chamber of Commerce has launched a new charitable foundation with more than $150,000 already committed to support workforce development, small businesses, leadership, and community investment. - Bennington Banner

GRANITE GADGETS: Science & Technology

UConn lands NSF grant to strengthen extreme weather preparedness

A UConn based resilience project has secured more than $250,000 from the National Science Foundation to help communities across the Northeast better prepare for severe weather. Led by the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation, the effort will transform research into planning tools that reduce risk and protect communities. - The Daily Campus

Rhode Island lays out bold plan to lead on AI

Rhode Island has unveiled a new statewide AI roadmap that pairs innovation with guardrails. The plan focuses on workforce training and pilots in government, positioning the state to harness AI’s benefits while managing risk. - Route Fifty

UMass Amherst scores $3.5M to supercharge life science innovation

UMass Amherst has landed more than $3.5 million in state funding to power advanced research and next generation medical manufacturing. The grants back cutting edge tools that could transform how diseases are studied, treated, and translated from lab to clinic. - Western Mass News

GRANITE GOODS: Institutions & Community

Maine sees third straight year of progress on overdose deaths

Drug overdose deaths in Maine fell for the third year in a row, dropping 20 percent in 2025 to the lowest level since 2019. State officials credit widespread naloxone access, targeted outreach, and evidence based response efforts for the continued improvement. - Maine Public

Connecticut breaks records for generosity

A new study ranks Connecticut among the top charitable states in the region and in the top quarter nationwide. High levels of volunteering, donations, and community service show a strong culture of giving, even as residents contribute both money and time to support their neighbors. - CT Insider

NH expands maternal care with doula certification

New Hampshire has launched a new state certification for doulas, making their services eligible for Medicaid reimbursement. The change expands access to emotional, physical, and postpartum support for families while strengthening maternal and infant health statewide. - NHPR

That’s it for this edition of the Good News in New England Newsletter! If you’d like to support Granite Goodness, consider joining our Optimists Club.

We also post on Instagram, Linkedin, and Facebook. Learn about the people behind these stories on our podcast. You can customize what you receive from us here.

All postard images are sourced from the Tichnor Brothers Collection at the Boston Public Library, licensed under CCO 1.0.

Hungry for good news beyond the borders of New England? Check out our friends at , , or our Optimists Club newsletter.

If you are interested in sponsoring this newsletter or partnering with us, please reach out at hello@granitegoodness.com. Thanks for reading!

-Andy