See if you can hear when “Gandalf” is used – an inside joke (heh!).
Thursday was when the NH Supreme Court held the oral hearing in the Manchester School District case in which a mother caught the District lying (by omission) to her by not informing her that the District was aiding and abetting her daughter in “social transitioning” to be a male – something that is a huge life event (in addition to trying to be something she can never be). It was discovered when a teacher, in trying to update the Mom over the phone on something else, inadvertently let slip the daughter’s “male” name. She brought a case to Manchester Superior Court where a Maggie Hassan appointed judge ruled that the Mom had no rights to her child when in school. She appealed.
Here is the Court recording (low resolution):
The audio is much better than what I could get; it is a large room with a lot of hard surfaces resulting in a lot of echo. Unfortunately, while the court gallery does have a “multbox” (which allows a direct audio feed from the Court’s PA system), it only had one “tap” and NHPR had already “taken possession” of it. However, the video is much darker than mine.
My recording:
Bonus!
I have to say that the security folks were quite helpful – as in “we ARE here to serve you!”. They got me set up with the Clerk of the Court so that I could register to video record the hearing (Media has to register with the Court system for audio / video recording purposes). The NH Supreme Court Clerk of Court is Timothy A. Gudas, Esq. and he was nice enough to escort me into the chambers that you see above (something that he didn’t have to do).
Quite a bit of the gallery was taken up by students and he started to speak with them in a tutelage as to how cases are handled by the NH Supreme Court while I was setting up. Apologies for not catching the beginning but I still thought it was an interesting enough tutelage to record as much as possible. Please note that while the student questions aren’t the best audio quality, I did not have permission to record them so I didn’t point my camera at them (“the better part of valor” as well as “I don’t want to end up here as part of a case instead of covering a case” as well was applied).
I have thoughts about the hearing itself and so did fellow Grokster Ann-Marie Banfield who was also present (she tipped me off about the time of the hearing). We talked for quite some time as she headed home towards the seacoast and I going northward. We’re going to try to do another test of the Riverside.fm podcasting software, that Steve and I did earlier this week, over the weekend.
