The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 26

12 North ly Boston Sunday Globe JANUARY 20, 2002 Mw IHlaiirDDp)slhior Granite Chips Changing faces greet third MLK Day Allen Lessels Derry run serves! as Marathon prep i JS sr GLOBE STAFF PHOTOJOANNE RATHE Hector Velez has won the N.H. Martin Luther King Award. public, Osvaldo Salomon followed relatives to Nashua from Florida in 1990. A partner in Oficina Hi-spana, he helps Latinos sort out their taxes and other problems, including translations for immigration. "I never in my life dreamed of being in a place like this," he said.

"Very few government institutions have forms in Spanish or people who speak Spanish." In this state still dominated by folks of English, Irish, and French Canadian ancestry, 96 percent of the population remains white. But about 1.7 percent, or 20,489, of New Hampshire's 1.2 million residents now fall into the category of Latino a whopping 80.8 percent jump from 11,333 in 10 years, according to the 2000 Census. And the 2000 Census counted Latinos as the state's fastest-growing minority. New Hampshire's Latinos hail from 21 Central and South American and Caribbean countries, said Aside from the influx of Latinos, "the state has a lot of refugees," said Alpert. "Manchester has 5,000 or 6,000 Bosnians.

There's a bunch of Africans floating around from Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo." i At 0.7 percent, the number of blacks in New Hampshire shot up 25.5 percent in the decade since the 1990 census to Asians, at 1.3 percent, grew 74.5 percent to 16,302. The 2,000 Census also showed two-thirds of the state's Latinos living in 10 communities, led by Nashua with 5,388, up 123 percent from 1990; and Manchester, with 4,944, up 133 percent from 1990. Born in Pennsylvania to Puerto Rican parents, Velez, 35, moved to New Hampshire six years ago to work for a social service agency that sought to empower Latinos. "HIV was on the rise, and they didn't have any outreach so I went on the streets door to door, anywhere you could find addicts or people engaging in high-risk behavior." In 1997, Velez became teen coordinator of Manchester's Salvation Army and its Kids Cafe an inner city feeding program that works on building inner city youth "mentally, emotionally, and spiritually." Two years ago, he founded Latinos Unidos, a group that raises money for scholarships through a Latino festival in the summer, "because I didn't see many kids going to college." For the first time last year, the group doled out $5,000 worth of scholarships to help eight youths go to college. The Martin Luther King Coalition of 17 groups is giving Velez his award at tomorrow's 20th annual Martin Luther King Day Community Celebration in recognition of his help to Latinos in a changing state.

"You're starting to see people being hired that do not look like what the system presently looks like. There are 72 different languages from 53 different countries spoken in our schools in Manchester," said Velez. "For a long time, this was a very white community, and now it's not." Velez. Scattered from Derry to Portsmouth, their largest concentrations are in Nashua and Manchester. "The biggest community is from Mexico, and a huge number of them are undocumented," said Velez.

"They need status here. In the post-91 1 world, a lot of them dont know what's going on." From Central New Hampshire to the Seacoast, Latinos now have unprecedented access to Spanish television, Roman Catholic Mass in Spanish, and three Spanish-speaking radio stations beaming into the state from Massachusetts. A Latino Sunday radio show is produced in Manchester. And two free papers, Rumbo and Siglo, are trucked across the border from the Methuen area. But Latinos face a system that has yet to catch up to their presence, said Velez.

"It's not so much prejudice as dealing with a community that's changing faster than the system." Although New Hampshire has the largest state Legislature in the country, only three of its 400-member House of Representatives are minorities. And only one is Latino Manchester Republican Carlos Gonzalez, son-in-law of GOP former governor Walter Peterson. The others, Juanita Bell of Exeter and Lionel Johnson of Manchester, are African-American Democrats. "I'm not saying it's the system's fault, but right now they're playing catch-up," said Velez. Latinos need more classes in English as a second language; youths need more Latino mentors and role models and students like them in college, said Velez.

"If they don't see enough, they'll get into the stereotype of "Why should I get said Velez. As New Hampshire celebrated its third official state King Day (compared with the Bay State's 18th), the Granite State's complexion is subtly changing. "The Martin Luther King celebration is now more than just black and white together. It's people with origins and ancestry from all over the world," said Ar-iiie Alpert, New Hampshire program coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee in Concord. By Clare Kittredge GLOBE CORRESPONDENT NASHUA New Hampshire heads into its third Martin Luther King holiday tomorrow as an influx of Latinos, many from Massachusetts, soften its traditional lily-white ethnic and racial mix.

It has been just three years since New Hampshire, famous as the first-in-the-nation presidential primary state, became the nation's last to cast the King holiday into state law. And Hector Velez, a Manchester community activist and winner of this year's New Hampshire Martin Luther King Award, says Latino emigrants from Massachusetts often are struck by New Hampshire's bare-bones approach to helping newcomers. "Every single one says Mass. was easier," said Velez. On the other hand, "people leaving the Lawrence area want to get away from crime and the ghetto mentality in search of something better." Take Elizabeth Pena.

Now 33, she moved to New Hampshire from Lawrence almost two years ago "looking for a quieter place." Originally from the Dominican Republic, she now gathers data on diabetes and hypertension among minorities for tl i New Hampshire Minority Health Coalition in Manchester. "Lawrence has a very high volume of Spanish-speaking people, so they provide better services, and it's too new here," said Pena. But she finds New Hampshire "100 percent more peaceful. After 10, you don't see a soul." Also from the Dominican Re- Mfg. list $495 HouseThumWwtk Cdr 1 111 1 thing.

Most runners running that distance are not going to hurt themselves. The runners getting ready for Boston want to push themselves a little more." More information may be obtained from Breeden at 603-432-6865. WEATHER UPDATES: Still time to check out the display of military items and memorabilia from the Revolutionary, Civil, and World wars at the Stratham Historical Society. There are World War II posters, a Civil War canteen, the honor roll of Stratham citizens who served in the Civil War, along with other odds and ends. While you're there, take a look at some of the other bits of the eclectic collection.

"We've got a grand and glorious bunch of furniture," said Graeme Mann of the Historical Society. "There's not a whole lot of it, but there's an 1 8th-century high chair and a 19th-century stepback cupboard made by a resident of Stratham. The collection is centered around Stratham. We don't really collect artifacts not related, to town." One of Mann's favorite items is Josiah Brown's daybook, for the period 1795-1830. "He was a farmer and owned a lot of land and did a lot of things," Mann said.

"He left a very neat record, especially of the weather. Every day he tried to record the weather. He recorded the days in 1810 or 1820 when the world was covered with volcanic ash and we never had a summer and he recorded it snowing in June. And he has the two great fires of Portsmouth in 1810 or so." The Historical Society hours are Tuesdays, 9 to 11:30 a.m.; Thursdays, 2 to 4 p.m.; and the first Sunday of each month, 2 to 4 p.m. More information maybe obtained at 603-778-1347.

Allen Lessels writes from New Hampshire and may be reached at chips (ri globe.com. Confucius is that we have cultivated a culture that demands rights and pays lip service to obligations. As we mark the decade into the Claremont education decisions, here's a recap of the situation: Education reforms do not exist, revenues have not been secured, communities are divided, poor school districts still are struggling, and Supreme Court justices are being threatened by legislative leadership. Blame spews like so much snow from the latest blower, while obligations are ignored. We are thematic.

In this legislative session we are being inundated with parents-rights bills. Clamor for parents' rights trump common sense in every arena from library usage to the degradation of the standard of abuse needed to remove a child from a home. While rights are championed, obligations to protect, to educate, and to care for are sidelined. Confucius led by moral authority but the key to his success was that he was practical and moderate in his expectations. But he did have expectations.

What is missing in New Hampshire is a collective sense of expectations. We claim that children are our most important resource. Why then do we need a court order or even a constitutional provision to underscore our obligation "to cherish" our children? Long-term stability and prosperity for any society requires achieving a balance between rights and obligations, Or, to put it a better way, Con- "Each generation builds on the foundation of the past By studying history, we can see what each generation has added and what it has discarded. Therefore, we can generally determine what the future will manifest" Arnie Arnesen can be heard on WNTK and seen on WNDS-TV. In training for the Boston Marathon, three months down the road and fast-approaching? Interested in challenging the winter conditions and cavorting over the hilly backroads of Derry with afew hundred other folks of similar motivation? Or even up for a little well, maybe not that little workout on a Sunday morning? The Greater Derry Track Club's 16-mile "Totally for Kids" race next Sunday morning at 10 maybe just the thing for you.

It's not only for kids it's named that way because the proceeds of the race benefit the track club's summer fun runs for kids. As much as anything, next Sunday's run is a Boston prep race. Deal with the snow and the slush and the hills of Derry in late January, and you're well on your way to being ready for the legendary Boston Marathon in mid-April. Last year, 500 folks signed up, and 350 completed the race despite 3 inches of snow on race day, said race director Dave Breeden. "People getting ready for Boston should be doing a long run, somewhere around 16 miles, in late January and building up to a 20-mile-long run," Breeden said.

"It's one of the building blocks to getting there." Breeden estimated that maybe half the field for the race it starts at the West Running Brook School will be in training for Boston. "It's a good gauge," he said. "It's a good training run. If you can get through these hills and feel good and survive, you can get through the hills in Boston." Of course, the killer hills in Boston come 18 miles into the race. But that's a minor detail.

For now, if there's a long training run to be done, why not do it with friends and fellow runners? "It's just the idea that whenever you race, you always go a little faster, you always push yourself harder, work yourself a little harder," Breeden said. "That's a good markably effective in practice. Judged on the basis of its ability to maintain internal peace and prosperity, China, for a period of two thousand years, was on the average the best -governed region on earth." Obligation. The word resonates with many. The term inspired Senator John McCain and Senator Evan Bayh to suggest a new national program of service for American youth.

The concept compelled Harvard's Robert Putnam to write "Bowling Alone," a book that examines, even as it laments, the decline in our civic engagement, a.k.a. our civic obligation. On the home front, with the poor school districts drawn back to court for the umpteenth time, it is the word that needs to be reintroduced to every New Hampshire legislator, governor, and governor wannabe. Isnt it time to ask them, what is our "obligation" to New Hampshire's children? Before the Claremont cases began, every governor and most legislators collectively denied their obligation to public education. New Hampshire found nothing embarrassing or even peculiar about the fact that we ranked 50th in public education support and, if you tripled our state funding, we would still be 50th.

Unfortunately, not much has changed. A decade later our obligation to children proves lacking on another front, preschool investment Once again we find ourselves taken to task in the most recent edition of Education Week, because New Hampshire ranks 50th in support for early childhood education. Without a lawsuit demanding we address the needs of preschool children, we do nothing. Even with a lawsuit breathing down our necks vis a vis public education, we delay and deny and do little. New Hampshire's problem is not an overreaching Supreme Court or a group of malcontent towns.

New Hampshire's problem Lessons for today's state from mi Arnie Arnesen bout a year ago a friend suggested I read "The 100 -A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History." Although I consume periodicals by the bushelsful, I cannot seem to find the time, or maybe the word is patience, for books. The 100 is an interesting hybrid. The book is a compilation of the 100 most important people in human history, arranged in order of importance. The list is an exclusive product of author Michael Hart. He brilliantly defends his choices and their ranking with 4 J.

fjT I id 11 III I Country Traditional Fumitui i cm UBBINGTONS iff pithy descriptions of each. The book was originally published in the late '70s and then revised in the early '90s. The biographical selections can be read discretely, a la my Economist or Harpers. Each remarkable description invited, nay demanded, consumption of the next choice and the next, and so on. The compromise? Combine vocation and avocation by reading a person a week to my radio audience.

After all, my personal media mantra always has been: never get enlightened alone. As of this writing we are heading into week six. We have absorbed his first five choices. They are, in Hart's order of magnitude: Mohammed, Sir Isaac Newton, Jesus Christ, the Buddha, and Confucius. In light of the rationalization, by some fanatics, of the events of Sept.

11, you can imagine the listeners' confusion when I started with Mohammed. Hart's explanation is defensible and helpful in understanding the troubles festering in the Middle East It is my most recent reading, that of Confucius (551-479 BC), that inspired this column. Hart introduces Confucius this way: "The great Chinese philosopher Confucius was the first man to develop a system of beliefs synthesizing the basic ideas of the Chinese people. His philosophy, based on personal morality and on the concept of a government that served its people and ruled by moral example, permeated Chinese life and culture for well over 2,000 years." According to Hart, Confucius was not a founder of a religion but a "secular philosopher interested in personal and political morality and conduct" His concluding paragraphs struck a nerve. "Confucianism, which stresses the obligations of individuals rather than their rights, may seem rather stodgy and unappealing by current Western standard.

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