Who are we + 20,000 EVs + data privacy + paraquat bans + sustainable seafood + fairer tickets + advanced catamarans
New England Good News #11
Welcome to the Good News in New England Newsletter, part of Granite Goodness. We share optimistic stories of progress, innovation, and problem-solving from across New England.
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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.
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
Not so bad actually, even considering where we are today relative to 2019.
I do talk about global progress news, but mainly through the Optimists Club newsletter
NH is nicknamed the Granite State for its abundance of the rock. Our logo is a reference to an iconic NH landmark known as the Old Man of the Mountain. My wife drew it and she is smarter and more creative than me.
In truth, they were all amazingly generous and required no convincing.
Initially I had some angst about the name because for NH locals, “granite” is so evocative of this state’s identity as opposed to a regional one, but then realized that Granite Goodness is actually the perfect name, because “granite” goodness evokes our ethos that we don’t do fluffy good news. I literally did not realize this until 12 months into the project (as it happens as well, granite is pretty abundant across the region itself.) I also am proud and enthusiastic to be in NH, which gets a lot of hate from other New England states. The name also doesn’t seem to have stopped anyone from Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, Massachusetts, or Connecticut from subscribing, so I am going to keep it.
For anyone wondering, I am doubtful I will expand the “local” scope further, other than intersecting with this wider world of progress journalism. New England feels like the perfect size to me as it’s big enough for there to be an abundance of really interesting people and stories, but small enough to still feel local and intimate.
If anyone out there wants to start an optimistic media project focused on some other part of the US or world, you should do it! Let me know how I can help you.
Absent here you may notice is science and tech. Save for a brief section of the newsletter, I’ve deliberately avoided this as a topic on Granite Goodness. Not because I don’t think it’s important, but because I think most of the conversations around “progress” and “optimism” already revolve so much around technology, and I wanted to prove first you could build a brand that is interesting + substantive + local + valuable to people that doesn’t just rely on tech culture (while admirably forward looking in a lot of respects, can feel weirdly insular and exclusionary to a lot of Americans).
Anyhow I feel Granite Goodness has accomplished this, and I will soon be doing a kind of spin-off podcast series focused exclusively on New England’s tech sector for those interested. Expect more on this soon!
Primarily though, I rely on local news to do a lot of Granite Goodness. In the interest of aiming to be net-additive to the local media ecosystem, we donate a portion of our revenue toward public interest journalism. We do a little now, and will do a lot more as we grow. Granite State News Collaborative, we love you.
All postcard images are sourced from the Tichnor Brothers Collection at the Boston Public Library, licensed under CCO 1.0.