New Hampshire Magazine January-February 2022

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Fat Biking in Franconia

Instruments of Peace

Meet the NH Artists Making a Difference­

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Big Changes in Little Indonesia Mocktails: Shaken, Stirred, Alcohol-Free Venting Your Anger in a NH Rage Cage

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Theo Martey of Akwaaba Ensemble

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Contents

Jan/Feb 2022

64

54 First Things

74

603 Navigator

603 Informer

12 Cow Cuddling

28 Mocktail Month

603 Living

32 Blips

84 Indoor Picnics

IMAGES TOP FROM LEFT: JOE KLEMENTOVICH / BRETT WALKER / ALLEGRA BOVERMAN / KENDAL J. BUSH / DAN DRY / SEACOAST PICNIC / MADELINE MCMAHON

6 Editor’s Note 8 Contributors Page 10 Feedback

Features 42 Transcript

Timekeeper: Meet tower clock repairman Phil D’Avanza.

by David Mendelsohn

54 Deep in the Woods on a Fat Bike

The Explorers take the path less traveled during a chilly winter fat-biking adventure in Franconia.

by Jay Atkinson photos by Joe Klementovich

64 Instruments of Peace

Can the arts save the world?

These local artists, leaders of a movement for peace and understanding, believe they can.

by Rick Broussard

74 Big Changes in Little Indonesia

A first-of-its-kind cultural project is underway in Somersworth.

by Brion O’Connor photos by Allegra Boverman

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTIONS 44 Independent School Guide 88 Ask the Experts: Guide to Retirement Living

by Lisa Rogak photos by Kendal J. Bush

16 Our Town Antrim

by Barbara Radcliffe Rogers

20 Food & Drink

Artisan Chocolates

by Jess Saba

24 Sips

Local Drinks

by Michael Hauptly-Pierce

26 You Should Have Been There “Top Chef” Goslings Rum Dinner

by Bill Burke

NH in the News

by Emily Heidt

by Casey McDermott

34 Politics

What’s in a Label?

by James Pindell

36 What Do You Know?

Presidential Quiz

by Marshall Hudson

38 First Person The Rage Cage

by Darren Garnick photos by Allegra Boverman

94 Health

Heart Health Myths and Facts

by Karen A. Jamrog

photos by Vinny Marino of Ethos & Able Creative

96 Ayuh

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

by Bill Burke

Volume 36, Number 1 ISSN 1532-0219

ON THE COVER Read about Theo Martey, the founder and leader of the Akwaaba Ensemble, in “Instruments of Peace.” Photo by Brett Walker

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 5

EDITOR’S NOTE

The holiday decorations brightening my street last month included a few illuminated peace signs — though most of our neighbors are way too young to remember the peace symbol as the potent ’60s icon it once was.

S mpshire.org

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705

(603) 606-1

l, summer, After schoo s ch program and outrea re than serving mo in New 2,000 girls each year.

Hampshire

6

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

till, I couldn’t help but smile and feel a bit nostalgic.“Maybe peace is making a comeback,” I thought to myself.

Of course, after our ugly (and still unfinished) withdrawal and evacuation from Afghanistan this year, our country is, for the first time in a generation, not at war with anyone. Officially, at least. And ignore the brewing war between the states of mind that seems to be playing out on cable news and sometimes right on our city streets.

If there is a peace movement today, it must be well hidden. It seems like most of the “movements” taking place are increasingly militant and angry and locked into their bunkers.

Peace is a worthy goal, sure, but it just seems so, well, passive. We tend to like our peaces to come after our wars so we can use them to regroup and pick another battle.

In our great religious traditions, peace is a supremely powerful state that need not move or attack, but simply absorb and transform the corrupted energy of violence or malice. Consider the example of Jesus who changed the world by his total and fatal surrender to cruelty, duplicity and hate. Try suggesting that strategy to the next street warrior you see at a protest rally.

On display in my home office is a large white postcard printed with the words, “WAR IS OVER: IF YOU WANT IT. Happy Christmas from John & Yoko.” It’s not a rare item. Thousands of fliers, leaflets, newspaper ads and billboards with those words were distributed in December 1969 as part of a massive campaign assembled by the two artists. Earlier that year they had staged two “Bed-ins for Peace” — one in a suite at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. By inviting reporters, as well as a cast of counterculture characters, to join them in bed (figuratively), John Lennon imagined that the international press would be compelled to take their message of peace “and spread it like butter.”

Among those who accepted the invitation to visit the Montreal bedside of John and Yoko was a man with a home in Seabrook. He was a cartoonist, famous at the time, named Al Capp, the creator of the syndicated “Li’l Abner” comic strip. Youngsters today (by which I mean anyone under 50) probably don’t remember Capp or his

creations, but they were enormously influential at the time. (John Steinbeck once called the cartoonist “possibly the best writer in the world today.”) Capp liked to tell people that the barefoot hillbillies of the comic strip’s setting in Dogpatch, Kentucky, were based on his Seabrook neighbors.

Capp wasn’t there to praise the couple for their idealism. He was there to mock them, and mock them he did, making insulting (and probably racist) comments about Yoko and accusing them of staging the whole thing for money.

Capp the cynic versus two idealists in pajamas: Capp went on to the archives of history while Lennon went on to secular sainthood.

While I hate to admit it, I’m more of an Al Capp than a John Lennon or Yoko Ono. My inclination is to doubt and discriminate, but deep inside I really want to believe and include.

So what should I do?

In a way, the cover story of this issue is my answer to myself. Randy Armstrong and his band of friends from around the world truly believe that by simply promoting peace through harmonious collaborations, using art and rhythm and music and goodwill, we are able to change, and finally save, the whole bloody, mixed-up, at-each-other’s-throats planet. If you are like me (and Capp), your first reaction is to chuckle and say, “Yeah. Good luck with that.”

But, really, what else have we got? The political and scientific elite seem so embedded with the corporate/media structures of our day that it’s become an act of faith to trust anyone.

Maybe simply applying our thoughts (powerful things that they are) to concepts of peace and oneness is the most potent spell we can cast upon the world. Maybe if we just give peace a chance in our own hearts and minds, we can tip the balance to a hopeful and expansive future.

Maybe the peace-sign-displaying “youngsters” on my street are onto something. That’s a lot of maybe, but insert one tiny word and the dubious “maybe” becomes the affirmation “May it be.” So here’s a naive but sincere New Year’s prayer (and song) for us all: “Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me.”

PHOTO BY LYNN CROW PHOTOGRAPHY

Give Peace a Chance

The Meals of Thanks program, sponsored by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Northeast Delta Dental, began in 2020 with more than 900 meals prepared by New England’s Tap House Grille on National Nurses Day in May, and continued that November with two more deliveries. On Veterans Day, the Tap House served lunch outside the Manchester VA Medical Center, and just before Thanksgiving, the Common Man Family of Restaurants provided more than 700 meals to the New Hampshire Food Bank and an additional 40 meals to The Way Home. In 2021, more than 700 meals were delivered to Manchester hospitals again on National Nurses Day. This past December, the Tap House prepared and helped deliver more than 1,000 meals to the New Hampshire Food Bank for the holidays. We would like to thank our sponsors and our advertisers for their support of New Hampshire Magazine, our community and this mission. Together we are Granite State strong.

Sponsors:

Supporters:

Morgan Stanley TOP LEFT AND MIDDLE PHOTOS BY KENDAL J. BUSH

for Jan/Feb 2022

New Hampshire Magazine contributing photographer Kendal J. Bush took the photos for “Navigator” and “Instruments of Peace” See more at kendaljbush.com.

Photojournalist Allegra Boverman, took the photos for “Big Changes in Little Indonesia” and “First Person.” See more at allegrabovermanphotography.zenfolio.com.

Frequent contributor Brion O’Connor wrote “Big Changes in Little Indonesia.” Originally from New Hampshire, he is a freelance writer based in Massachusetts.

Darren Garnick wrote about Rage Cage NH in “First Person.”

He’s a filmmaker, writer, producer and photographer. See more at darrengarnick.wordpress.com.

Lisa Rogak, who wrote “Navigator,” is a prolific author whose book “Barack Obama: In His Own Words” was a New York Times bestseller.

See more at lisarogak.com.

Casey McDermott, who writes “Blips” each month, is an online reporter and editor for NHPR. She covers politics, policy and New Hampshire news.

The Explorers are photographer Joe Klementovich (left) and writer Jay Atkinson.

Under this title they’ve produced a number of stories for New Hampshire Magazine, including a 40-mile mountain bike ride across the northern part of the state, a DIY backcountry triathlon, a winter hike up Mount Wonalancet, remote camping at Umbagog Lake State Park, a freezing game of pond hockey and much more. You can read about all of their past adventures at nhmagazine. com/category/the-explorers.

photo of darren garnick by allegra boverman; photo of casey mcdermott by john w. hession

Contributors

Three Years Strong

New England’s Tap House Grille owner Dan Lagueux preparing to drop off meals during the 2021 Meals of Thanks program

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

For our Meals of Thanks program in December, New England’s Tap House Grille in Hooksett prepared and helped deliver more than 1,000 holiday meals to the New Hampshire Food Bank.

Meals of Thanks is made possible by our partner Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, which has been involved since day one. We’d also like to thank our new partner, Northeast Delta Dental, and our additional sponsors, Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty, Levesque Dentistry, Morgan Stanley, Sheehan Phinney Bass & Green, Tamworth Distilling and CMH Wealth Management for their support.

And, of course, a huge thanks to Tap House owners Dan Lagueux and Valerie Vanasse and their staff.

Meals of Thanks debuted in May 2020 on National Nurses Day. Also in 2020, meals were delivered to the Manchester VA Medical Center in honor of Veterans Day, and to the New Hampshire Food Bank the week of Thanksgiving. In 2021, we once again celebrated National Nurses Day, dropping off more than 720 meals to nurses at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Manchester, Catholic Medical Center and Elliot Hospital. We look forward to growing Meals of Thanks in 2022 and beyond.

photo by kendal j. bush

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Send letters to Editor Rick Broussard, New Hampshire Magazine, 150 Dow St. Manchester, NH 03101 or email him at editor@nhmagazine.com.

Feedback

emails, snail mail, facebook, tweets

nhmagazine.com, facebook.com/NHMagazine & @nhmagazine

I would just like to say how much I enjoyed the article on the Mountain View Grand Hotel [ “Our Town,” November 2021]. The article brought back many pleasant memories of when my husband and I stayed there back in the 1990s. Back then, my husband was president of a bank in Plaistow and we would stay at the hotel many summers on bank conventions.

I happily remember the afternoons on the golf course or in the pool. Some evenings we would even jump the fence around the pool and have a nice swim with the Martells from a bank in Berlin. Also, the semiformal dinners of great food and dancing afterwards. Then we would be escorted by the person in charge of the elevator to our rooms.

I will always remember the beautiful view and the many flowers adorning the building.

As I am in my 90s, I look forward to receiving your magazine and the many interesting articles in it.

— Marjorie (Midge) Wood, Plaistow

Favorite Shaw Songs

Many thanks for recognition of New Hampshire’s Shaw Brothers [“Music Is Magic,” November 2021]. Although I came to appreciate them later in life, their renditions of “Seven Daffodils” and “Lucy Come Ride in My Wagon” were favorites.

— Liz Valway, Fremont

Editor’s note: The Shaw Brothers’ influence will endure. They left so much wonderful music to discover. We’d love to hear from others about favorite songs by the duo.

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

— Mary Knee, Bow

Editor’s note: Mary Knee submitted her own UFO story that was featured on the Feedback page of our October 2021 issue. We continue to invite and plan to publish more true New Hampshire UFO tales whenever they appear in the editorial mailbag.

Not a Complaint (Whew)

Not even a complaint this month, but a story about where “up-country” is located in New Hampshire.

I taught at Lebanon High School from 1971-2007, and the person with the farthest commute was our assistant principal, who lived in Methuen, Massachusetts. She drove back and forth every day and hardly ever missed a day or was even late! However, I, of course, teased her about her being from Massachusetts; then, one year, she thought she had the ammunition to shut me up.

She had gotten married over the summer to a man who lived in Keene. The first time she saw me in late August, she said that I couldn’t tease her about being from Massachusetts anymore, as she had moved to the “North Country.” I thought perhaps she and her new husband had decided to split the difference and were maybe living in Cornish or Newport. Nope — her next words were “I’ve moved to Keene!” Clearly, the definition of “up-country” and “North Country” are a matter of perspective!

— Art Pease, Lebanon

Everyone Loves Marshall I just wanted to take a moment to tell you how much I enjoyed Marshall Hudson’s “Hermit of Goat Island” [“What Do You Know?” December 2021].

I was the one who took him kayaking out to the island, which in itself was a wonderful experience.

Having someone care enough to deeply research and visit locations makes for fantastic writing with integrity. As an employee of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, many of my colleagues read the article and have told me how much they enjoyed it. In fact, some of the material came from my office here on Great Bay, and the woman who held the background information in her files commented to me that she didn’t even know about some of the things Marshall wrote about. So, I just wanted to say thanks, and it was a pleasure working with Marshall and reading the final product!

— Kelle K. Loughlin, Director, Great Bay Discovery Center, Greenland

courtesy photo

Grand Views

Here is that UFO encounter my cousin Charlie Knee had back in the late ’60s.

A little background.

He was a journalist for the Keene Sentinel in the ’60s. Charlie was chosen by John F. Kennedy to be his speechwriter when he was in New Hampshire campaigning for president. He walked into a room at the Concord Highway Hotel, and there sat the Kennedy family around a large table: John, Jackie, Joe Sr., Rose, Bobby, Ethel and Ted. He went around the table shaking hands, but when he got to Ted, he said he looked him in the eye and just tapped the table in front of him. He said there was something about Ted he “didn’t trust.” Charlie ended up driving Rose and Ted around Keene the following day.

He headed up the Red Cross at some point in his varied career, and was a high school tennis coach for many years until recently. His wife Barbara died last year, and sadly Charlie has now been diagnosed with dementia. He must be close to 90 now.

Charlie’s UFO sighting: It was mid-’60s at nighttime, and he was driving the winding, dark, rural backroad from Concord to Keene.

He came around a bend in Hillsborough when his car motor suddenly stopped running and the headlights turned off. He pulled over to the side of the road and got out to lift his car hood. He looked up to see a round UFO with white lights around the base come up over the hill to his left. It passed over the road and silently cruised to the right over a valley, and disappeared over the distant hills. As soon as it was out of sight, his car started up and lights came on all on their own! There was no doubt in his questioning journalist mind that he had a UFO encounter that night.

photo by stillman rogers

Close Encounters With Kennedys and UFOs

illustration by brad fitzpatrick

Spot four newts like the one here hidden on ads in this issue, tell us where you found them and you might win a great gift from a local artisan or company.

To enter our drawing for Spot the Newt, visit spotthenewt.com and fill out the online form.

Or, send answers plus your name and mailing address to: Spot the Newt c/o New Hampshire Magazine 150 Dow St., Manchester, NH 03101 You can also email them to newt@nhmagazine.com or fax them to (603) 624-1310.

The December “Spot the Newt” winner is Shirley Willey of Hebron.

December issue newts were on pages 33, 85, 100 and 101.

NEED A GOOD REASON FOR SPOTTING THE NEWT? The Jan/Feb prize is four bags of no-cook pasta salad by Homemade Specialty of Hudson valued at over $50. They will deliver ten different healthy and delicious homemade soups and their pasta salad right to your door, or their products can be found at homemadespecialty.com and the New Hampshire Made store in Portsmouth. NH Made is our state’s official promoter of all the good things made right here in the Granite State. nhmade.com

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 11

603 Navigator

“I could dance with you until the cows come home. On second thought, I’d rather dance with the cows until you come home.”

— Groucho Marx

12

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

Our Town 16 Food & Drink 20 Sips 24 Out and About 26

Udderly

Embraceable Cow cuddling is a fast-growing trend for people who can’t get enough bovine time

BY LISA ROGAK PHOTOS BY KENDAL J. BUSH

A

s a lifelong aficionado of state fairs, Brian Bradford of Goffstown spent most of his time in the cow barns trying to snuggle the long-lashed bovines. “I’ve always loved cows,” he says, but between interruptions from clipboardtoting judges and other fairgoers — not to mention a regular dose of side-eye from the cows’ owners — he rarely got his fill.

So, in January 2021, he purchased three cows that he could hug to his heart’s content. Mocha, Merl (short for Merlot) and Moscato were all born at a nearby dairy farm, where they faced uneasy fates: Merl and Moscato are male, while Mocha was born a freemartin, which is the female twin of a male.

Exposure to the male hormones meant she had a 99% chance of being infertile.

Bradford settled them on a 23-acre spread he had acquired the previous year in Goffstown, just over the Manchester town line, and christened it Granite Oak Farm after the predominant “crops” on the land. He spent every spare moment with them, bottle-feeding each one so they would become used to being handled.

He could finally get all the cow time he wanted.

He figured since he’d be there on the weekends anyway, with his son Brennen helping out, why not share it with others?

So, last summer, he launched a cow-cuddling program, where for $25 for 30 minutes or $40 for a Dixie Eastridge plants a big smackeroo on Moscato.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 13

603 NAVIGATOR / COW CUDDLING full hour — a bargain compared to therapy — people can come and hang with the cows in their individual huts. Some people brush and pet them, moving between cows so everyone gets equal dibs, while other visitors snuggle with just one cow for the allotted time.

Bradford is clearly on to something: Cow cuddling is a fast-growing trend where people can commune with a placid bovine on farms in Upstate New York, Texas, California and elsewhere.

Like Bradford, some people can’t get enough cow time and have become frequent fliers at the farm. One woman visited several

14

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

times shortly after he launched the business.

“The first time she cuddled with Mocha, her hands were black,” he says. “She told me this is the happiest her hands have ever been.”

Bradford also keeps a few sheep and goats and plans to set up a petting zoo to supplement cow cuddles. But given the enthusiastic response to his bovine trio, two more cows — Lily and Cosmo — will join the herd this spring. Some have asked him to bring the cows to birthday parties and corporate events, so a mobile cow-cuddling unit will launch once he gets a travel trailer for the herd.

Clockwise, from top left: Brian Bradford and his son Brennen show off Merl.

Brennen with Moscato Dixie Eastridge gets in her fair share of cow cuddles.

From left to right: Lisa Rogak, Dixie Eastridge, Jazz Goldman and Emily Eastridge are all smiles.

Emily Eastridge and Jazz Goldman give Mocha a four-handed massage.

He also wants to make one cuddle hut accessible to people with disabilities, envisioning a custom crane and seat that will allow a cuddler to maneuver around a cow without a wheelchair or scooter getting in the way.

None of this was on his radar a few short months ago, and it’s pretty much the polar opposite of how Bradford spends his day job in IT at PiF Technologies in Hooksett. But he still comes to the farm to hang out with the cows on his lunch break, and cow cuddling will be available through the winter.

After all, as he says, “You can’t have a bad day when you hug a cow.”

Granite Oak Farm is located at 227 Goffstown Back Rd., Goffstown. Learn more at graniteoakfarm.com. NH

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 15

603 NAVIGATOR / OUR TOWN

Antrim’s town hall features murals on its tower.

The Villages of Antrim A textbook example of a New England small town

BY BARBARA RADCLIFFE ROGERS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY STILLMAN ROGERS

T

he most visible sign of Antrim, for those of us who travel frequently along Route 9 between Concord and the Monadnock Region, is the row of white wind towers spinning atop the ridgeline of Tuttle Hill. These turbines, which generate enough energy to power more than 10,000 homes, have also generated mega-controversy — opinion in town is still as sharply divided as it was during the application process.

But most of Antrim is not visible from busy Route 9. To find its villages (and there are several), we headed south on Route 31 to a scattering of buildings around a crossroad at the town’s geographical center. Appropriately, this is Antrim Center, and the site of the original settlement.

The Grange Hall at the crossroads was once the meeting house, built in 1785, and it

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

stood atop the hill behind it. The town had been incorporated only eight years earlier, in 1777, and was named for County Antrim in Northern Ireland. That was the former home of landowner Philip Riley, one of the early Scotch-Irish settlers.

Antrim’s history differs from most of New Hampshire’s early towns, which were mostly settled by people from England. In 1718, a large group of Scottish Presbyterians, who had been living in Ireland, migrated to Boston, and later to what is now Londonderry.

From there, smaller groups spread west, one settling in Antrim in the summer of 1844.

Three years after the meeting house was built, about 60 settlers, most of Scottish ancestry, established the First Presbyterian Church, holding services in the meeting house until their new brick church was dedicated in 1826. For almost 40 years, it

was the only church in town, and around it were a store, post office, schoolhouse, tavern, parsonage and several houses.

In 1798, a house just east of today’s Grange Hall became a hotel and tavern; this and local homes hosted summer boarders who arrived in Bennington by train and came to Antrim Center by the daily coach. The building was replaced in the 1840s by a farmhouse that today again hosts guests as the Uplands Inn. By the late 1800s, the manufacturing at the mills along the falls of Great Brook caused a population shift to South Antrim, soon making it the town’s commercial center. Early mills sawed lumber and ground grain for flour, and at one time more than 20 mills stood between Gregg Lake and the brook’s junction with

A closer look at one of the murals on the town hall tower

the Contoocook. These included, at various times, woolen and silk mills, a shovel factory, a tannery and mills making shoe pegs, hoes, mirror frames, window blinds, powder kegs and furniture.

The Goodell Company was the largest and longest lasting, beginning in 1851 with the manufacture of cast iron apple peelers, branching into knives and other cutlery in the 1870s. It was the town’s largest employer for more than a century.

By the late 1800s, largely thanks to the Goodell Company, Antrim’s hub was well established in the South Village. With most of the congregation living there by then, the Presbyterians built a new church next to the Maplehurst Inn. A brick town hall was built opposite to them.

Today, the dramatic architecture of the First Presbyterian Church, the mansardroofed inn, the town hall (look for the murals on the tower) and the traditional whitesteepled Baptist Church are the focal point of Antrim. Extending along Route 31 are two homes adorned with Victorian “gingerbread” fretwork, and the Antrim Church of Christ, an eye-catching shingle-style Victorian with stained-glass windows all around. These, together with the 1908 Colonial Revival library and the remaining brick mill buildings, form a textbook of late 19th- and early 20th-century small-town architecture.

Meanwhile, back in Antrim Center, in 1898, the Congregationalists built the lovely

little Stone Church out of local fieldstone and added stained glass windows. After serving the congregation for a century, it was saved from deterioration by the Rymes family, and is now the home of the nondenominational At the Cross ministry.

Throughout town are attractive signboards with historical information, and upstairs in the James A. Tuttle Library is the museum of the Antrim Historical Society. This active group, along with its other projects (including an oral history archive and historical catalog of local houses), maintains a collection of

newspapers chronicling daily life here from 1875 to 1951. Annual society activities include the Reading of the Declaration of Independence at the Bandstand in Memorial Park on July 4th.

Not all of Antrim’s mills were on Great Brook. At the former village of North Branch, where today’s Routes 9 and 31 intersect, that stream had its own mills, and one of them stood at the start of one our favorite hiking trails.

The first mill at the falls of North Branch was built in 1798 by one of the settlers from County Antrim, and, over the years, expanded from a saw and grist mill to making pails and barrels. In 1864, Josiah Loveren bought the mills and produced lumber, shingles and siding. Subsequent owners produced dowels for cribs, cable reels, and the boxes that held the “talking” mechanism for Mama dolls.

A hiking trail begins near the mill site, off Loveren Mill Road, where the foundations of the mill as well as remnants of the dam and sluiceway are still visible. The trail leads along the river, then into the forest to an Atlantic white cedar swamp, reached by a boardwalk that sits above a fragile habitat of sphagnum moss, Labrador tea, leatherleaf, snowberry, tamarack and balsam fir. Such habitats are rare in New Hampshire, and this is one of the finest examples in New England. The trail, maintained by The Nature Conservancy, leads on a three-mile loop marked by some gigantic glacial erratic boulders.

The Lovern Mill Trail is one of three good places to hike in Antrim. Another is the 1,700-acre dePierrefeu–Willard Pond

The Maplehurst Inn was built around the turn of the 18th century.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 17

603 NAVIGATOR / OUR TOWN Wildlife Sanctuary, where the Tamposi Trail leads past more giant boulders and up to ledges with beautiful views. The third is the 200-acre McCabe Forest, where two miles of trails meander through open woodland and orchards and alongside the many bends and curves of the Contoocook River.

The Antrim Baptist Church and War Memorial

Back on Route 9, near Lovern Mill Road, is a roadside pull-off with large tarp-covered objects that may puzzle passing motorists.

Unless they drive by in June, when the area comes alive as The Tent — a spot well known to bikers bound for Motorcycle Week. The Tent is a safety stop for bikers, maintained by Cornerstone Outreach Ministries Inc., founded and organized by the late “Papa Joe” Delio, a former Swanzey resident whose name is legendary to bikers. For eight days each June, volunteers of the Cornerstone Motorcycle Ministry feed three hot meals a day, gallons of coffee, and homemade cookies to all who stop, a lasting memorial to Papa Joe. NH

The trailhead at McCabe Forest

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

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603 NAVIGATOR / FOOD & DRINK

This Valentine’s Day, give the gift of artisan chocolate.

For the Love of Chocolate Four craft chocolatiers prepare for Valentine’s Day

BY JESSICA SABA

B

eautiful chocolate art is available across the state. If you know where to look, you can find local chocolatiers who source the finest cocoa and work with the highest-quality ingredients to craft incredible bonbons, truffles, bars and even sculptures.

For craft chocolatiers, February is survival month. With specialized production techniques and small teams, these skilled ar-

20

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

tisans work tirelessly from Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day to meet the demand for gifts of handcrafted chocolates. Many specialty items sell out ahead of the holiday, so stop soon at one of the shops to talk with a local chocolatier and taste test their creations.

Plan to place your orders two to four weeks in advance of the big day to ensure you have gifts in hand to share.

“Money can’t buy happiness.

But it can buy a chocolate, which is pretty much the same thing.”

— Hanako Ishii

Dancing Lion Chocolate 917 Elm St., Manchester dancinglion.us/cacao

BEST FOR: To surprise and delight, memorable in-store experiences, and gifts for special moments Dancing Lion specializes in surprising flavor combinations and ever-changing items centering on variety, imagination and craft.

Richard Tango-Lowry, master chocolatier, seeks out rare heirloom cocoa beans and deals directly with small-scale cocoa farmers to understand how to bring out the nuanced flavors of each bean.

Tango-Lowry, a trained physicist and master chocolatier, brings experimentation into each new batch and specializes in small-batch creations. Varieties are available for limited runs and, once something runs out, it’s gone. He hopes you’ll fall in love for a moment, indulge in the present and be all right with the realization you may never experience a specific flavor again.

As is the nature of the freshest ingredients, Dancing Lion chocolates have shorter shelf lives than commercially produced chocolates. Order a box of bonbons around the time you plan to give them. To splurge, commission a creation. Work with Dancing Lion Chocolates to design an edible sculpture — if you can imagine a design, their team can build it out of chocolate.

Your Stories Are Our Story

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A bar from Dancing Lion Chocolate in Manchester

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603 NAVIGATOR / FOOD & DRINK

These beautiful candy hearts with touches of gold are from La Cascade du Chocolat located in Exeter and Portsmouth.

109 Water St., Exeter 214 State St., Portsmouth lacascadeduchocolat.com

BEST FOR: Cheerful holiday items, melting away stress, expressions of affections, and gorgeous host(ess) gifts La Cascade du Chocolat specializes in fine chocolates made with premium ingredients. Hand-painted chocolate art is a signature item here along with bonbons, truffles and chocolate bars.

To truly express your love with chocolate, work with the chocolatiers to design a chocolate card — a note written in chocolate. Each one is a beautiful, hand-painted, edible “love letter.”

The Chocolatier’s Choice BonBon Box includes seasonal flavors handmade and chosen by the shop’s master chocolatiers. Check in each season to catch holiday specialties like the cheerful and sweet hand-painted penguin or white chocolate snowman.

Or gift a winter’s supply of the Old World Style Hot Chocolate Mix or the Single Serve Hot Cocoa Discs to make it convenient to warm up by drinking rich and creamy chocolate during the cold months.

22

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

My Brigadeiro

33 S. Main St., Hanover / mybrigadeiro.com BEST FOR: Desserts for a crowd and for creating a new tradition A brigadeiro is a ball of soft chocolate slightly thicker, creamier and denser than caramel. A treat popular in Brazil, they are now available in Hanover. Paula Fernandes, owner and founder of My Brigadeiro, makes her desserts with organic and all-natural ingredients sourced within driving distance from suppliers in Vermont and New Hampshire.

The bakery specializes in brigadieros and also produces cupcakes, cakes, cheesecakes and a large selection of freshly baked pastries. For winter gatherings, a cupcake tower or a special ordered cake would feed a group. For special celebrations, gifts of gratitude or romance, consider the bespoke box of brigadeiros. Holiday flavors include gingerbread, peppermint and eggnog.

More classic options include chocolate varieties.

Packages of brigadeiros make a lovely gift.

COURTESY PHOTOS

La Cascade du Chocolat

Loon Chocolate

252 Willow St., Manchester loonchocolate.com BEST FOR: For the conscious chocolate lover, allergen-friendly gifting, and gift basket items Consider Loon Chocolates for the person in your life who struggles with food allergies.

All of the products are gluten-free, some are vegan and dairy-free, and there are soyfree options as well, and each bar is clearly labeled. Feel confident knowing you’ve found a high-quality, locally made chocolate bar that you can share without concern. Scott Watson, owner and founder of Loon Chocolates, believes in offering small-batch chocolate bars sourced ethically from producers around the world.

If you’re planning to create a gift basket, Loon Chocolate bars are a great alternative to gifting bonbons and truffles as the bars have longer shelf lives. Loon Chocolates currently offers 12 varieties: five singleorigin chocolate bars and seven flavored bars with additions such as nuts, dried fruit, coffee, and sea salt, to the more imaginative rainbow cereal and ghost pepper.

PHOTO BY KENDAL J. BUSH

By Loon Chocolate

More Local Treats Bavarian Chocolate Haus

2483 White Mountain Hwy., North Conway bavarianchocolatehaus.com

L.A. Burdick Chocolates

47 Main St., Walpole / burdickchocolate.com

Enna Chocolate

152 Front St., Exeter / ennachocolate.com

Ava Marie Chocolates

43 Grove St., Peterborough / avamariechocolates.com

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 23

603 INFORMER / IN GOOD TASTE

Sips

Pictured here and on the opposite page is CJ Lundergan at Steadfast Spirits Distilling Co. in Concord.

Spirit of Community Taste the shine at Steadfast in Concord

BY MICHAEL HAUPTLY-PIERCE / PHOTOS BY RICK BROUSSARD

CJ

Lundergan has an intense yet calm demeanor. Calm, considering he, along with his wife Lori, is running Steadfast Spirits Distilling Co. while raising two kids under 3. Oh, and CJ is also a full-time firefighter in Windham. Sleep is overrated. But who needs sleep when you have moonshine?

Moonshine, or “shine,” used to be defined as an illicit (i.e., untaxed) product often distilled at night under the shine of the moon. More recently, it has come to define

24

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

the legally made spirits produced using traditional methodology. “I only want to do traditional American-style products,” says CJ. “American whiskey, to me, is a cornbased, pot-distilled, single-run product.”

What this means is that it cannot be reproduced in an industrial setting, and that it requires human hands and small vessels, time and attention. Shine evolved independent of the Industrial Revolution, and most efforts to gain efficiencies seem to generate an equal loss in the art of making whiskey.

But one cannot live on shine alone!

Here comes trouble. Trouble’s Moonshine, a brand under the Steadfast umbrella, is a line of flavored shine products with a ton of seasonal variety. “The Trouble’s Moonshine line is a way of taking whiskey into the mainstream,” says CJ. “It lets us stretch our legs.” There are two styles of Trouble — a “liquor-style” spirit at 72 proof, including toasted marshmallow and peanut butter.

These come in tall bottles and are great for mixing. And then there are the “old school” mixes like apple pie but also strawberry and blueberry lemonade. These come in 750-ml Mason jars at 54 proof and are great with seltzer (to adjust the duration of the evening, if you dig). Peanut butter is the most popular, and can be paired with the chocolate version or almost any fruited variety for a PB&J in a glass.

Lori told me they were enjoying “flipping the lid on moonshine in a way that impacts community, and building on the model of craft, which started with fun and libation.”

As a firefighting family, community was a high priority when they were planning the company. CJ was walking into his home in Derry when an idea hit him — let’s open a distillery! When he pitched the idea to Lori, she didn’t say, “You’re an idiot,” and he knew he was onto something.

Building a community at the tasting room was easy, as the service model was very much in line with craft breweries, with the exception being they can only serve quarter-ounce samples. But the samples were consumed, and people brought their friends, or bought their friends bottles, and the word got out that tucked into this quiet industrial park two minutes from the capitol building is a distillery worth a visit.

“Building this organic community, building this thing — people really enjoy what we’re doing. We have become a part of this cool thing,” says CJ. The sense of community extends both ways as well, and it is not unusual to see the Lundergans tag out as they juggle raising the kids (Charlee Ann, 2 1/2, and Taylor James, 4 months) in the distillery with actually running the distillery. Since they signed their

lease in August 2018, the family has grown up at the Hall Street location.

The first three years were focused on what are called “white spirits,” meaning no aging in toasted wood barrels — hence, no color.

The process was simple but time-tested: Do it the way it was done in the woods.

Ferment off-grain, because it is cleaner. Use a single pot still, with an oversized line to a doubler, which is a sort of secondary still

that leaves more flavor than a second run through the original still would leave. Serve it fresh and unaged.

But as their fourth year begins, the “brown spirits” are reaching maturation, and I was lucky enough to get a stealthy dram of their first offering before it was offered to the drinking masses. Steadfast’s traditional American bourbon is a smooth spirit. Oftentimes young whiskey can have a

characteristic I can only describe as “splintery,” sort of the smell of freshly split wood as opposed to an old barrel. This liquid was not at all splintery. It opened with some brown sugar notes, followed by a nice bite from the generous addition of rye in the grain bill (which was 60% corn). The vanilla from the first-use American white oak barrels came in next, and lingered with the residual sweetness from the caramel barley malt. The finish goes on for days. I suggest a single ice cube or a splash of water to open it up a bit. These handsome bottles hit the tasting room in mid-December. There were limited quantities, but if you missed out, keep an eye out for the next new (old) thing.

Steadfast has three products in 55 state liquor stores, with a fourth one soon to follow, so you can find them anywhere in the state. But, as a PSA from a professional, visit the tasting room, chat with Lori and CJ, or with a stranger seated nearby, have a flight, buy a bottle from the folks who made it, and become a part of the growing Steadfast community.

Until we meet again, at a bar or in my backyard, keep your glass full! NH

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603 INFORMER / OUT & ABOUT

Top Chefs in the 603 PHOTOS BY VINNY MARINO OF ETHOS & ABLE CREATIVE

O

n November 7, Chef Chris Viaud, who competed on season 18 of “Top Chef,” welcomed three fellow contestants to his restaurant (Greenleaf Restaurant in Milford) for a special dinner sponsored by Goslings. A portion of the ticket proceeds benefited the New Hampshire Food Bank. During the meal, each chef presented a course and cocktail, all utilizing Goslings rum. Joining Viaud in the kitchen were chefs Jamie Tran of The Black Sheep in Las Vegas, Byron Gomez of 7908 in Aspen, and Nelson German of alaMar and Sobre Mesa in Oakland, California.



1

 1







1 The “Camp Daiquiri,” made with Goslings Black Seal 151, Goslings Family Reserve Old Rum, Campari, lime and Demerara was served with Nelson German’s curry lobster dish. 2 Nelson German’s curry lobster with squid ink bean purée, Inca peppers, beech mushrooms and mofongo 3 Guests chat with Byron Gomez and enjoy the meal. 4 The Greenleaf staff and the four “Top Chef” contestants are joined by Malcolm Gosling Jr. (second from right) 5 Byron Gomez (left) and Chris Viaud 6 From left: Chefs Nelson German, Byron Gomez, Chris Viaud and Jamie Tran

26

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

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603 Informer

“Thirty percent of American adults do not drink alcohol and they want to have the same experience as anyone who chooses to drink. It’s about respecting that choice.”

— Jesse Hawkins, Founder of The Mocktail Project

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

Blips 32 Politics 34 What Do You Know? 36 First Person 38

Shaken, Stirred, Alcohol-Free New Hampshire Mocktail Month returns for its second year in January, at restaurants across the Granite State

BY BILL BURKE / PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN DRY

A

perfectly crafted cocktail can often enhance a celebration.

Yet there are occasions when an alcohol-free option — prepared creatively with fresh, exotic ingredients — can be a smart choice. Why should consumers be denied a beautifully crafted beverage just because they have reasons not to consume alcohol?

A tasty solution: Mocktail Month In an ongoing partnership with Brown-Forman spirits, The Mocktail Project, Old Forester Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky and the New Hampshire Liquor Commission are bringing back for a second year the monthlong event aimed to help create a safer, more inclusive drinking culture.

The Mocktail Project founder Jesse Hawkins says mocktails are about creating choice and inclusion in America’s drinking cultural atmosphere.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 29

603 INFORMER / MOCKTAIL MONTH During the month of January, more than two dozen restaurants throughout New Hampshire will feature specialty alcohol-free libations known as mocktails on their menus. In Manchester, the list of participating restaurants and bars includes 815 Cocktails & Provisions, CJ’s Great West Grill, Masa Sushi & Hibachi Grill, and Shaskeen Pub and Restaurant.

The man behind the Mocktail Project In 2017, Jesse Hawkins launched The Mocktail Project — a grassroots movement designed to create a safer, stigma-free drinking culture.

The organization works to empower bars and restaurants to create inclusive environments through activities, sponsorships and missions like New Hampshire’s Mocktail Week. At the same time, The Mocktail Project gives back financially to provide recovery tools and resources to people in the hospitality industry.

Hawkins says he made the personal decision to become alcohol-free five years ago.

Soon after, he began to pursue his passion of creating a safer and more inclusive drinking culture based on his own personal struggle as a 25-year-old navigating his way through early sobriety.

“I never believed I could walk back into a bar or restaurant and not have a drink,” Hawkins says. “I’m a Kentucky boy — home of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and the Kentucky Derby. These are things you associate with having a drink in your hand.”

However, it was through the Bluegrass State’s native spirit that Hawkins learned his grassroots project had achieved a level of notoriety and success.

“About six months into it, the Kentucky Distillers Association approached me and asked if I’d like to come on board and help with the social responsibility side of things.”

Since then, Hawkins has led a widespread campaign that brought him to all of the

lower 48 states, including New Hampshire, where he served mocktails at the annual Distiller’s Showcase of Premium Spirits in Manchester.

“I helped to create the first mocktail pop-up bar at the Distiller’s Showcase. That was really my first introduction to New Hampshire and the New England states,” says Hawkins.

“The demand for healthy, specialty mocktails is growing and it’s important consumers have those alcohol-free options available to them,” he adds. “It’s amazing how much support The Mocktail Project has received in New Hampshire. Working with NHLC and Old Forester to launch Mocktail Month is a great example of how a more inclusive, stigma-free drinking culture can be embraced.”

For more information on New Hampshire Mocktail Month and the participating restaurants, visit liquorandwineoutlets.com/responsibility. NH

Try these tasty mocktails at home or at one of these participating restaurants

Virgin Mai Tai

Not Your Mother’s Sangria

Forest in the Meadow

• House spiced orange juice • Pineapple juice • Splash of cranberry juice

• Add 2 ounces cran-apple juice, 1 ounce orange juice, 1 ounce pineapple juice and ice to shaker • Squeeze lime and lemon wedges into shaker • Strain into a glass with fresh ice and 1 ounce club soda

• Shake maple syrup, orange spritz and splash of water, and pour into a glass • Add orange soda, a splash of cola and an orange slice

• Garnish with an orange and cherry

Served up at: Masa Sushi & Hibachi Grill in Manchester and TOMO Hibachi & Sushi in Salem

• Garnish with a slice of orange

Served up at: The Shanty in Portsmouth

Honey Cider Old Fashion Mocktail • Chilled cider • Honey Simple Syrup • Dash of bitters

Merry Christmas, Johnny Rose

• Served on the rocks

Served up at: May Kelly’s Cottage in North Conway

• 1 ounce Seedlip Spice • 1⁄2 ounce raspberry syrup • 1/4 ounce rosemary honey • 1/4 ounce lemon

• Shake and strain into a flute • Top with Q Mixers Club Soda • Garnish with rosemary sprig

Served up at: Rooftop at The Envio in Portsmouth

30

Served up at: The Barn at Bull Meadow in Concord

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

Time to Rise from “Cocktail Illiteracy” A new book from the founder of Tamworth Distilling tells how

BY RICK BROUSSARD

A

slow piano plays ominously as a voice declares in stentorian tones: “The Manhattan, the negroni, the martini, the old fashioned. These are the classic cocktails that every American of drinking age should know how to make, yet, sadly, millions of Americans do not.”

The video is an online trailer for a new book of cocktail recipes, but it plays like a tongue-in-cheek public service ad to raise awareness of the growing plight of “cocktail illiteracy.” It’s just another example of the unique blend of smart-aleck marketing and top-shelf distilling that has made little, historic Tamworth into one of the most cosmopolitan villages in North America — ever since it was chosen as the site of Tamworth Distilling by founder and “spirit savant” Steven Grasse.

But it also points out a verity of modern American life, where packaged and premixed drinks tend to fill in for cocktail aficionados when there isn’t a professional mixologist nearby.

“It’s hard to believe, but it’s true,” continues the video voice. “Millions of Americans of legal drinking age do not know the difference between sweet and dry vermouth. They have no idea how to muddle. Millions of Americans are cocktail

illiterate, but luckily, help is on the way.”

That “help” is “The Cocktail Workshop: An Essential Guide to Classic Drinks and How to Make Them Your Own.” The book is a deep dive into 20 classic drinks that make up what Grasse calls “the foundation of cocktail creation” and provides tips on delicious variations for DIY bartenders.

The same pandemic that had families dig out their old jigsaw puzzles and learn how to make sourdough starter led to a record increase in at-home bartending. So many amateur mixologists set loose in home bars inevitably led to the consumption of lots of terrible-if-sincere attempts at recreating favorite drinks from favorite real bars.

While this was not an existential threat to our democracy or a harbinger of End Times for Grasse — an entrepreneur equally influenced by punk rock and New England transcendentalism — it was a gauntlet thrown down, a challenge requiring a positive response.

And anyone who has visited Grasse’s bespoke Shangri-la of food and drink in Tamworth, including Tamworth Distilling and his Art in the Age Café, knows that once you get him started, cool things happen.

Grasse is known for creating some of the most outrageous booze brands of the

21st century: Hendrick’s Gin, Sailor Jerry Rum, Art in the Age Craft Spirits. He is the part-owner and creative mastermind behind Narragansett beer, and his agency, Quaker City Mercantile, has brought similar success to beer icons Pilsner Urquell, Guinness, and, most recently, Miller High Life.

Tamworth Distilling & Mercantile opened in 2015 as a hands-on expression of his desire to control the potent realm of liquid spirits, and it gained international press and awards within its first year.

Grasse is also the author of “Colonial Spirits: A Toast to Our Drunken History,” “The Good Reverend’s Guide to Infused Spirits,” and his peculiar (and probably personal) excoriation of one of America’s principal forebears in “Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined the World.”

He lives and works in Philadelphia but keeps a close eye on the doings of his Tamworth enclave.

The Cocktail Workshop features cocktail recipes from Lee Noble, lead mixologist at Tamworth Distilling’s Philadelphia sister store Art in the Age. It is designed to help amateur bartenders and seasoned industry pros alike to ramp up their skills with in-depth instruction spanning not only cocktail-making fundamentals but also high-level extras such as creating at-home orgeat syrup (hinted at playing a role in the assassination of Napoleon), kombucha, aquafaba, and more.

“We feel that ‘The Cocktail Workshop’ is a necessary guide for anyone who has ever built cocktails at home,” says Grasse.

“We’ve worked together with Lee to showcase the proper methodology for crafting truly impressive cocktails without expert training. Personally, I’m very proud to finally launch the book, because I think it fits into a broader conversation about the average imbiber taking cocktail edification into their own hands.” NH “The Cocktail Workshop: An Essential Guide to Classic Drinks and How to Make Them Your Own” by Steven Grasse and Adam Erace. Available online for $27.50 from Running Press runningpress.com. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 31

603 INFORMER / IN THE NEWS

Blips

Monitoring appearances of the 603 on the media radar since 2006

Lost in the Woods With Lisa Gardner

BY CASEY McDERMOTT

Novelist Lisa Gardner

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

dangerous enough, I needed things like grizzly bears, and we don’t have them.”

Still, Gardner assures us she relied on plenty of sources closer to home for help making the missing hiker mystery at the heart of “One

Step Too Far” feel more realistic. Her book research included conversations with retired New Hampshire Fish and Game officers about conducting wilderness searches, plus interviews with state troopers and the Carroll

COURTESY PHOTOS

Like a lot of people drawn to the Mount Washington Valley, Lisa Gardner is an avid hiker. But for this New York Times bestselling novelist, dubbed “one of the masters when it comes to crime fiction” by the Associated Press, escaping into the wilderness of northern New Hampshire is an essential (and eerie) source of inspiration.

“Part of my writing process is roaming all of these mountains, you know, brainstorming how to get away with murder,” she says, with a laugh.

Gardner’s latest novel, “One Step Too Far,” out on January 18, centers on just such an ominous, mountainous mystery. It’s a followup to her 2021 thriller “Before She Disappeared,” starring the same imperfect heroine and self-made sleuth, Frankie Elkins. The new book finds Elkins on the hunt for a missing person deep in the woods of Wyoming.

(Think something like the literary equivalent of “Mare of Easttown” meets “Unsolved Mysteries” meets “Yellowstone.”)

Of course, we know what you’re thinking: Why set the new book in Wyoming, not New Hampshire? Gardner can explain: “With all due respect to Mount Washington, which is

County Sheriff’s Department. Little Angels Service Dogs, a Bartlett nonprofit that trains pups for all kinds of important roles, also informed one character: a search and rescue dog named Daisy.

And if this new book isn’t enough, fans of Gardner’s work can also look forward to a forthcoming television adaptation of her first Frankie Elkins novel, starring Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank. Swank will also serve as an executive producer on the project, debuting at a date still to be determined.

While Gardner says we’ll need to stay tuned for more specifics on the new show, she says she couldn’t have asked for a better film partner to bring Frankie Elkins — a recovering alcoholic who relies on a flip phone, a good ear, and an obsession with finding the truth at the heart of otherwise-abandoned cold cases — to life.

“She’s very approachable,” Gardner says of Swank, “which is Frankie’s big skill set.”

Whether on the page or screen, Gardner hopes people can turn to Frankie’s stories for an escape from a world that tells us technology trumps intuition, that steers us away from the paths others might be too scared to take, that says ordinary people can’t do extraordinary things every once in a while — you know, not unlike what you’d want from a good hike. NH

join us. ♦

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There’s no disguising greatness.

COURTESY PHOTO

One Seacoast favorite got a nice shout-out, in passing at least, in a recent Atlantic story about the legacy of Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”

“Whether he is sampling burgers or enchiladas or barbecue or pizza or pho,” Megan Garber observed, “or the pig’s head at Vida Cantina in Portsmouth, New Hampshire ... his reaction to whatever he eats will be praise.”

In case you missed it, we recommend catching up on a pair of recent New York Times profiles of two elite athletes with New Hampshire connections: runner Ben True, who lives in Hanover, and skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who grew up in Lyme. The Times’ story on True focuses on his training regimen, while the piece on Shiffrin details how she’s “on pace to break every prominent Alpine record” yet “has never had a rival that has consistently challenged or exceeded her” — until now.

Help us reveal this year’s best.

Vote by January 14 at www.bobawardsnh.com.

Sponsored by BIA of NH, United Healthcare and MFI Productions.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 33

603 INFORMER / POLITICS

What’s in a Label?

Choices abound for Republican trail guides

BY JAMES PINDELL / ILLUSTRATION BY PETER NOONAN

A

s political insiders know, being a member of the New Hampshire Republican Party doesn’t mean one particular thing. It’s something of an umbrella group for at least five distinct types. There are libertarian Republicans (think Rand Paul and the Free Staters). There are establishment Republicans (think the Sununus and Greggs and those who backed John Kasich or Jeb Bush for president in 2016). There are social conservatives for whom state Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut and Ted Cruz are leaders. And there are the Trumpers — the brash populists for whom the only actual leader, even locally, is the namesake.

Few Republicans fit neatly into a single box.

Many establishment Republicans not only voted twice for Donald Trump for president but defend him. In this way, our multifaceted Republican Party is really no different from any other state party around New England or even the country.

What is different from the rest of the country and even from New Hampshire’s recent history, is what is going on with the state’s Democrats.

Being a New Hampshire Democrat today 34

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

means being a centrist, cautious Jeanne Shaheen version. If one doesn’t subscribe to that version, there is no political hope or future unless they simply fall in line. There is no evidence to the contrary.

And this is a state that brought us campaign finance reformer Granny D, where a legacy of environmental activism dates back 40 years, and that was among the first to pass a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. It’s the state that gave birth to the liberal movement of Howard Dean and most recently voted to help Bernie Sanders win the last two New Hampshire presidential primaries.

Sanders, apparently, represents what our Democratic primary voters want when they turn out in big numbers but not whom they vote for in any other election in the state.

Consider this: Progressives have not won a major election in the state since Mark Fernald won the Democratic nomination in 2002, now two decades ago.

Yes, one can make an argument that Carol Shea-Porter’s win for Congress in 2006 was another example, though that race had a lot more complicating factors and Shea-Porter notably endorsed Hillary Clinton and Joe

Biden in the last two presidential primaries.

So, whether it be Paul McEachern’s challenge to John Lynch in 2004, the lack of any liberal running for Senate in 2008, or the series of liberal challenges for governor against a Shaheen clone for governor in 2012, 2016, 2018 and 2020, progressives have nothing to show for themselves.

The frustrating thing for non-Shaheen Democrats is that three things are true: 1. Poll after poll shows a solid base of true progressives in the state. 2. This group shows where the party momentum is nationally. 3. There is more money in the political system than ever, allowing for liberal groups like Rights and Democracy to exist and organize.

And yet, progressives are not players in the same way that any of the types of New Hampshire Republicans listed above are in shaping state politics and their own party.

One glimmer of hope for this group: While Democrats largely bemoan the Republican-led redistricting process for congressional and statehouse districts there is a silver lining for progressives. The state’s 2nd Congressional District, currently held by Democrat Annie Kuster, is on track to change from a swing district into the third most Democratic in all of New England.

It means that Republicans may never stand a chance there again. It could also mean that the only election that matters is a primary where a progressive would be structurally advantaged.

It could be a huge gift to the state’s liberals. NH

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603 INFORMER / WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

President’s Day Pop Quiz How well do you know New Hampshire?

BY MARSHALL HUDSON

“R

emove everything from the top of your desk except for a properly sharpened No. 2 pencil.” If those words don’t strike terror into your heart, then you didn’t have Mrs. Smith for 10th grade New Hampshire history and civics class.

Although her class was terrifying, she was an effective teacher, and to this day my brain is still full of New Hampshire facts that will come in handy if I’m ever selected as a contestant on a New Hampshire game show.

I attended 10th grade during the dark ages before computers and calculators were invented. That meant you had to memorize things as you couldn’t just look them up on the phone in your pocket.

Mrs. Smith had been teaching since the dinosaurs roamed the earth and her reputation for surprise quizzes preceded her.

My mother and aunts and uncles had had Mrs. Smith for this very same class. “Pay attention to the nuance details and always take a guess” was the forewarning advice they had given me. Mrs. Smith scored her quizzes based on the number of correct answers and therefore an incorrect answer

36

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

wouldn’t count against you. A wild, stabin-the-dark guess not only didn’t hurt your score when wrong, but you might actually get lucky and hit on a correct answer.

“In recognition of President’s Day this month, this quiz will examine how well you know New Hampshire and your presidential history,” Mrs. Smith said as she laid a sheet of paper face down on each desk. “This will be a closed book exam and there will be no talking.” “Write only your last name and today’s date in the upper right-hand corner. You will have 10 minutes to complete the quiz. You may begin.” I flipped the paper over and read, “How many N.H. towns, cities or unincorporated townships share the same name as a U.S. president? List as many as you can on the lines provided below.”

Suffering succotash. To ace this quiz, I’d have to be able to think of every single city and town in the state and then cross reference them against every single president, all in 10 minutes without any source material.

“I’m doomed,” I thought, as my mouth went dry and everywhere else stared sweating. I

glanced up at Susie Smartypants who was scribbling away furiously as though this was easy and there were hundreds of names to be quickly written down. “Keep your eyes on your own paper, Mr. Hudson,” Mrs. Smith said menacingly.

Washington and Lincoln were obvious choices for presidents in the month of February, and I remembered that the Kancamagus Highway runs from Lincoln to Conway. So, I nailed down Lincoln right away. And isn’t there a town named Washington with the nice lake over in the next county? Got two! And isn’t there an iconic covered bridge up in Jackson? Or is it in Jefferson? Doesn’t matter, I’ve scored two more.

In the 4th grade, I’d had to memorize the Gettysburg Address, the state capitals, and all of the presidents in order. I’m running through the list in my head now and clicking them off ... Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren ... hold on ... didn’t they build a big power production dam across the Fifteen-Mile-

including her, had thought of. The best answer is between six and 18 depending on how you interpret the question. Or 19 if you can prevail on the argument that the question isn’t worded specifically enough to exclude fictional U.S. presidents. Yes, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to take a wild guess and you always have to pay attention to the nuance details. NH

Presidential Picture Pop Quiz Below are the six U.S. presidents whose name would have appeared as answers to Marshall Hudson’s pop quiz, plus three more he missed. Fill in the blanks and see how well you would do in Mrs. Smith’s class. Get bonus points for knowing the order in which they were president. We filled in the first to get you started.

Send answers to editor@nhmagazine.com and you might win a bobblehead of your favorite president.

same 4th grade class as I had and had also memorized the presidents in order.

Knowing that the correct answers would all have to be U.S. presidents and that wrong answers would not count against her, she simply reverberated the entire list of presidents onto her paper and therefore got credit for the Franklin, Warren, Chester and Grant. Names that no one,

R ENTER TO WIN!

Falls section of the Connecticut River up in Monroe? So then, Monroe would count.

Wahoo, I’m up to five now and straining my brain to think of any more. Madison also sounds vaguely familiar. Isn’t there a big Madison Boulder up in the White Mountains somewhere? Maybe the Madison Boulder is in the town of Madison and then that would count. Remembering the advice that it doesn’t hurt to take a guess, I write down Madison for number six just as Mrs. Smith orders, “Pencils down, pass your papers to the front.”

How many did you get? Most of the class had between two and four, a few had listed five. I was leading the pack with my tentative six and feeling pretty smug until Mrs. Smith encouraged us to examine the question more closely. The question did specifically make mention of unincorporated townships. Atkinson and Gilmanton Academy Grant, the Second College Grant, Low and Burbank’s Grant, Pinkham’s Grant, Green’s Grant, Bean’s Grant, Cutt’s Grant and Dix Grant all share the same last name as President Ulysses S. Grant, so you’d have to add eight more onto the answer list. Nuts.

The question did not specify that it must be the president’s last name, only that they share an identical name, so would not Franklin, N.H., and Franklin Pierce, Warren, N.H., and Warren G. Harding, Chester, N.H., and Chester A. Arthur also count as correct answers? Mrs. Smith thought so, and that brought the total up to 17. My smugness had vanished as my count of six was starting to look inadequate. Nestled between Gorham and Jackson on Route 16 is the tiny metropolis known as Martin’s Location. A perhaps generous interpretation of the first name rule could mean that maybe we include President Martin Van Buren on the answer list as well.

“Any others?” Mrs. Smith asked. Billy Brave suggested Adams, but Mrs. Smith told him he was in the wrong state and lost. “Bartlett?” suggested Teresa with no H, as opposed to Theresa with an H, who was keeping her head down to avoid being called on. This guess earned the dreaded Mrs. Smith scowl. Josiah Bartlett is a fictional U.S. president on the “West Wing” TV show, but his name comes from a New Hampshire statesman who signed the Declaration of Independence. Bartlett was never an actual U.S. president, but he did play one on TV. Mrs. Smith didn’t like that answer and scowled some more.

Susie Smartypants had been in the

: George Washington, 1st President

: George Washington, 1st President

: George Washington, 1st President

: George Washington, 1st President

: George Washington, 1st President

: George Washington, 1st President

: George Washington, 1st President

: George Washington, 1st President

: George Washington, 1st President

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 37

603 INFORMER / FIRST PERSON

Exploring My

Primal Anger

Hate your old food processor or dot matrix printer?

Rage Cage NH is where obsolete appliances die by sledgehammer and bowling ball. Really.

BY DARREN GARNICK / PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALLEGRA BOVERMAN

W

hen I was a kid, I used to strap “Star Wars” figures to my skateboard and shove them down my hilly street when no there was no oncoming traffic. I harbored no hostile feelings toward Chewbacca or C-3PO, but every busted nose or tar-scraped limb from their forced Knievel-like stunts brought me pure joy.

Fast forward to current day, when I regularly toss glass into the dumpster at my town’s recycling center and enjoy 38

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

listening to tomato sauce jars shatter into a zillion pieces. Yes, my asymptote line for entertainment is pretty low.

So imagine my delight when I discovered the relatively new Rage Cage NH, a “smash room” where you suit up in protective gear and destroy household furnishings, appliances and office equipment with baseball bats and sledgehammers until either the novelty wears off or you are out of breath. Located in downtown Nashua in a former Rent-A-Center, which sold the

Batter up! Breaking beer bottles with an aluminum bat is far more satisfying than dropping them off at the recycling center. Rage Cage NH includes cleanup in all their smash room packages.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 39

603 INFORMER / FIRST PERSON latest big-screen TVs and computers, the irony is delicious.

The Rage Cage is an unintentional metaphor for the ever-shrinking life cycle of consumer electronics. Indeed, the day I visited, owner Tedd Cherry was accepting a massive shipment of presumably broken flat-screen TVs. These giant TVs were stacked up like Pringles potato chips on nearly every open space on the carpet — and one of them would soon face my wrath.

After a decade working as an insurance agent (“People can be so nasty,” he says), Cherry had all the motivation he needed to open his unorthodox venue in February 2021. For a business themed around anger, his timing couldn’t have been better. There has always been road rage and holiday parking rage, of course, but the pandemic has ushered in new extremes of stress and anger that surface seemingly everywhere.

A prime example would be the conversations on my town’s Facebook page, which typically begin with innocuous questions about missing kittens or plumber recommendations and often end with an invitation to “GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM!” Cherry does cater to angry clientele — if you text him a pic of an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, he will plaster their images on the appliances you’ll destroy — but he exudes the opposite vibe himself. Cherry cheerfully shuttles “fresh” broken VCRs and computer printers into the smash room like he’s handing out Halloween candy. And he giddily shows off the bubble machine in the paint splatter room with the enthusiasm of a kindergarten teacher.

“Our customers are people who want to let themselves go, enjoy the moment, and have fun. We don’t have a lot of Karens in here,” he says. “Most people come here happy and leave happier.”

Visit nhmagazine.com to watch a video of the mild-mannered author mightily throwing a bowling ball at a flat-screen TV.

40

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

The Rage Cage is housed in a former Rent-A-Center, where brand-new flat-screen TVs couldn’t have possibly imagined their inglorious destiny. Below: Baseball bats are the favored tool of destruction.

I certainly fit that demographic.

Although I admittedly can flash a bad temper, and have unhealthily clung to a few grudges in my life, I was pretty upbeat when Cherry handed me a crowbar and baseball bat. And I felt not a smidgen of resentment toward the ceramic pitcher or crystal vase he propped up on the sacrificial welding table.

As noted earlier, I think smashing glass is fun, but it doesn’t induce an adrenaline rush. It was only when Cherry offered me a 12-pound bowling ball as my “weapon” that I smiled like Wile E. Coyote. Before I walked into the Rage Cage, I never had any fantasies about breaking a TV with a bowling ball. The idea had never even occurred to me. The only thing that could have made the opportunity more

appealing would be if I could have dropped an anvil on the TV. Unfortunately, Cherry does not have any anvils in stock.

Spoiler Alert: Throwing a bowling ball at a flat-screen TV is anticlimactic.

The first time I heaved the ball at the TV was a direct hit, but the glass only cracked slightly and defiantly deflected the ball off its chest like a soccer player. Two more solid hits didn’t inflict any serious damage, failing even to knock it to the floor. I felt like I was playing a rigged carnival game. I would imagine that the bowling ball would have embedded deep inside an old boxy cathode ray tube (CRT) TV, but the EPA has strict guidelines on the disposal of these relics.

Far more satisfying was the impact of a sledgehammer on an office printer. Unlike my pathetic efforts at destroying the TV, the printer instantly succumbed to my senseless aggression.

CRUNCH! WHACK! BLAM! Every overhead swing brought more damage, more convincing sound effects, and more muscle fatigue.

“It’s a workout,” says Cherry. “If you don’t come out sweating, you didn’t do it right.”

After the November 2021 closure of the Total Breakdown smash room in Somersworth, the Rage Cage is believed to be the only appliance-crushing space left in the Granite State. Cherry wants to broaden his business focus and also become a performance venue for local artists and musicians.

I don’t think I am angry enough to become a weekly smash room customer, but I would absolutely love to return with my co-workers on a future corporate team-building outing. Who doesn’t want to see the meek guy from accounting let loose on a retired washer and dryer? Give a co-worker a crowbar or croquet mallet and their hidden personality traits inevitably step forward.

“We get a lot of doctors, nurses and firefighters coming in as a group. A lot of therapists are also recommending us to their clients,” Cherry says. “It’s much better to release your stress in here than out there.” NH

Learn more Top: Rage Cage NH owner Tedd Cherry provides a safe space for customers to channel their pent-up aggression.

Middle and bottom: The author compares the destructive power of a bowling ball vs. a sledgehammer.

Rage Cage NH is located at 10 West Hollis St. in downtown Nashua. Rates start at $30 for a half-hour session. For more information on smash room packages, visit ragecagenh.com. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 41

603 INFORMER / TRANSCRIPT

Timekeeper Photo and interview by David Mendelsohn Clocks. They signal the beginning and inform us of an end. They meter all things in-between and bid us a fair warning that time never loiters. Meet Phil D’Avanza, the man who repairs and regulates those extraordinary time machines that sit atop town halls, steeples and mill towers. Antique weights, gears and springs, aging cables, weary bells and slowing pendulums; all inevitably and ironically succumbing to time itself. D’Avanza is the conductor who must bring cadence to all these sections and coax them back into a polished, well-oiled orchestra. It gets complex. D’Avanza is the man of the hour.

Parts were not manufactured then with the concept of interI have no formal clock-making training except for the two changeability like today. Screw-thread standardization did years I spent working as an apprentice. My tool-and-die about 1915. background and training have provided the skills I require. not take place until A tower clock is a clock in a steeple or tower with one or My occupation is unique because it requires the skills of more faces that are detached from the actual mechanism. dozen a many different trades. I believe there are about The hands are turned by driveshafts and can be several or so individuals in the country that do tower clock levels above the mechanism. restoration as a full-time job.

Tower clocks are similar to grandfather clocks. Clocks with This work also includes clock faces and hands. One needs three weights chime every 15 minutes, strike the hours and to be able to work on staging or from a large man-lift. tell time. Clocks with two weights tell time and strike the The typical repair is for worn bronze bushings and the hours. Clocks with one weight only tell time. pivots of the gear shafts that turn in the bushings and get During Colonial times, many towns had a clock donated scored. The clock needs to be disassembled, cleaned, and by a significant benefactor. Only rich folks could afford a the shafts trued up in the lathe, and the bushings repaired watch or even a clock in their home. or replaced.

The townspeople installed the clock in the tallest existing Replacement parts need to be fabricated. Some parts are structure — usually a church with an existing bell. cast or bronze of castings, and I have raw castings made iron at a foundry and machine the casting in my shop.

Back then, there was no separation of church and state.

Used old parts can sometimes be reworked to fit another same model of clock. Parts from two clocks of the same model are not usually interchangeable.

Check out clock towers where the cemetery is behind the steeple and you find that almost all have no clock face — because dead people do not need to know the time!

Time After Time

The first “clock-tower” was the Tower of the Winds built in 50 B.C. It elevated four sundials and a vane to provide time and wind direction to the citizens of Athens. More “modern” clocks in unheated New England steeples experience temperatures of -20 degrees in winter to 100 degrees in summer. This causes the clock to slow down a bit as the oil thickens in winter, and speed up in summer as the oil thins. The clock winder generally makes a slight adjustment to the length of the pendulum as part of his weekly winding. Most tower clocks are wound weekly with both hands using a large crank. There is a weight for each train or function that includes the timekeeping, the hour striking and quarter-hour chime (not many clocks have this function). The average weight for timekeeping is 250 pounds, and hourly bell striking is 750 pounds.

Contact D’Avanza at davanzaclocks.com or phil@davanzaclocks.com. Credits: Thanks to Chris Way for his knowledge and guidance in the ways of the clock, and Doug Cummings for invaluable photo assistance in a very cramped tower.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 43

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

2022

T N E D N E INDEP

E D I U G L O SCHO DING YOUR GUIDE TO FIN

ON FOR YOUR CHILD THE BEST EDUCATI

So, you’re considering an independent school for your child. Good call.

Now more than ever it’s essential that students be prepared for change, equipped for lifelong learning and eager to embrace the challenges of life. They need a sense of independence that is guided by the experience of mentors and guarded by a great institution of learning.

Ask parents why they chose an independent school for their children and the list of reasons is long: great teachers, smaller classes, more personal attention, a welcoming atmosphere, and the chance to explore new opportunities both in and out of the classroom.

Independent schools are where many of our best academic professionals can be found, and, after all, how successful or well prepared could any of us be without the right teachers and advisors to show us the proverbial path? These men and women are there not simply to teach the correct answers but to impart the ability to ask the right questions. Talented educators and academic professionals provide the tools we need — parents and children alike — to make wise choices for ourselves.

INDEPENDENT SCHOOL GUIDE

Independent Schools 101 Before you can find the right place for your child, it’s important to understand what an independent school is. Though types and styles of schools are varied, the basic principle applies to each — “They are a particular kind of nonprofit private school, distinguished by having a freestanding board of trustees that is solely responsible for the school and by being independently funded, primarily by tuition.”

This is the definition supplied by the Association of Independent Schools in New England, a helpful resource for prospective students and their families.

With more than 2,000 independent private schools throughout the country, which range from pre-K through high school, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by choice. Within the New England Association of Schools alone, there’ are a number of options, from small elementary schools to large boarding schools. So how to find the right one?

Before you begin your research, you and your family should create two lists: First, write down the particular school features you want for your child, and then outline your child or children’s specific needs and interests.

From there, you can request a copy of a school’s mission statement — all schools affiliated with the Association of Independent Schools in New England have such a statement, which can help you narrow your search.

When starting the search for an independent school, it can be hard to know what to ask. The following list is a place to start, and can help you identify important questions you’ll need to answer before choosing a school.

PROGRAM OF THE SCHOOL ■ Does the school’s program suit your child’s academic needs?

■ Does the academic program have the breadth and depth to challenge the range of students admitted?

■ How are the most able students challenged?

■ What is unique about the academic program?

■ If this is a denominational school, how is that reflected in the program?

■ What does the school offer in co-curricular areas such as athletics, dramatics and community activities?

■ Does the overall program of the school include learning experiences of residential life (when applicable)?

■ Are there programs for exceptional children? Learning disabled children? Those with physical or emotional handicaps?

STUDENTS ■ What kind of students does the school seek, and with what results?

■ I s a student profile available, including racial and ethnic characteristics, percentage of students receiving financial aid and geographical distribution (especially for residential schools)?

■ If the school has a denominational affiliation, what percentage of students are from that denomination? What other denominations are represented?

■A re there examples of students participating in schoolsponsored volunteer community projects?

■W here do students go following graduation or completion of the program? How does the school stay in touch with them?

PARENTS ■ What degree of involvement is expected of parents in school activities and other supporting roles? Involvement with sports? Academic support? Advising? Participation in clubs or functions?

QUALITY OF LIFE ■ Is the atmosphere that of a “tight ship” or is it informal?

>>

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 45

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

■ If this is a residential school, then what is residential life like?

■A re students required to participate in some form of organized athletics?

Dramatic projections? Other schoolwide activities?

■W hat is the student attrition rate? What are the reasons?

■ What is the school’s policy on substance abuse? Alcohol use? Smoking?

■ What types of infractions are considered serious and what disciplinary procedures are used?

■ How do the personal and educational guidance and advisory systems work?

PROFESSIONAL STAFF ■ What is the typical class size, particularly in English, foreign languages, mathematics and science?

■W hat is the individual teacher load, including numbers of students as well as preparation and other duties?

■ I n what professional organizations do individual faculty members participate?

PHYSICAL PLANT ■ Is the physical plant — including classrooms, library, laboratories and physical education facilities — adequate for and compatible with the mission of the school?

■ Is the plant well maintained and does it show signs of people caring about the physical environment? (Include dorms and individual rooms if this is a residential school.)

■ Is the food service area clean and are certificates of appropriate health and sanitary inspections displayed?

FINANCIAL BASE ■ What is the annual tuition?

■ What percentage of the per-student operating cost of the school does the tuition meet?

■ If tuition doesn’t meet all costs, how is the balance made up?

■ What is the school’s tuition refund policy?

■ I s there a tuition insurance plan?

■ What is the amount and purpose of the endowment?

■D oes the school have an annual giving program?

■ I n the operating budget, what are the percentages and categories of expenses?

(This may indicate some school priorities.)

■ F or what purposes are annual funds requested and expended?

■W ho is asked to participate in annual giving?

GOVERNANCE AND ADMINISTRATION ■ Is the school separately incorporated, not for profit, proprietary, a member of a school system such as a diocesan system or affiliated with a parish or parishes?

■W ho establishes policy for the school?

■ Who is the chief administrative officer of the school? What is his or her background and experience? How long has she or he been at this school?

■W ith what education-oriented associations is the school affiliated?

■B y whom is the school accredited?

Source: Association of Independent Schools in New England – aisne.org

46

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

INDEPENDENT SCHOOL GUIDE

Frequently Asked Questions Are all independent schools the same?

How diverse are independent schools?

Within the Association of Independent Schools in New England membership, there is an extraordinary range of schools, from small elementary schools to big boarding schools, and everything in between. While most schools are coed, a number are single-sex. Many schools have a particular religious affiliation or follow a particular educational philosophy. Some schools define themselves as traditional in their approach; others see themselves as progressive. There is much more variety within the world of independent schools than there is in public schools, because public schools must all follow the same standards and prepare for the same standardized tests.

AISNE member schools report an average of 18% students of color and an average of 25% of students receiving financial aid. Few suburban public schools could claim to be as racially and socioeconomically diverse. So the independent school down the street may well be more reflective of the diversity of the “real world” than your public school.

What does it mean to be accredited?

An AISNE-accredited school has undergone a rigorous and thorough process that includes the creation of a self-study document that describes current practice and establishes a set of priorities for future action in all areas of the school, such as curriculum, staffing, admissions, finance, governance, health and safety. After completing the selfstudy, the school hosts a team of teachers and administrators from other independent schools who visit the school for three days and prepare a comprehensive report that includes both commendations and recommendations for future action.

Schools are expected to address the recommendations over the next few years. There are interim reports and an interim visit scheduled during the 10-year cycle to monitor progress.

What’s involved in applying to an independent school?

There are a number of steps to follow, including doing your homework to pick the schools that will be a good match, visiting the schools, filling out an application, filling out financial aid forms, arranging for any required testing, and arranging to have your current school send records and evaluations. Remember that the admission professionals at our schools are there to help you every step of the way.

What does parent involvement look like?

You will be treated as a full partner in the education of your child. That means regular communication via different media, early notification whenever there is a concern, face-to-face meetings with teachers and administrators as needed, and an acknowledgment that you know more about your child than anyone else. Independent schools want you to be active participants in the community, to actively engage in the life of the school. Every school will have a wealth of volunteer opportunities, from chaperoning to fundraising to helping the school get greener. You will always be welcome at school.

What’s the importance of class size?

Many of our independent schools have low student-teacher ratios. This is designed because having fewer students allows the teachers to: 1) get to know each student in depth 2) be able to closely monitor the student’s progress, and 3) have the time to help when a student has difficulty.

Do you have to have a low income to receive financial aid? Do schools have much financial aid to give out?

“No” and “It depends.” Financial aid is based on your need and many families with above-average family incomes are surprised to find that they do qualify for some support. The amount of available aid varies from school to school. The average AISNE school provides financial aid to 25% of its families and the average grant is about $20,000 (note that this includes boarding schools with higher costs). If you know that you will need financial aid, be sure to ask about it when you visit schools.

Source: Association of Independent Schools in New England – aisne.org

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 47

INDEPENDENT SCHOOL PROFILES

The Best Private School in New Hampshire is Right Here in Nashua World Academy is a progressive, NEASC accredited, independent school for students from infant through grade eight. Our cutting edge 55,000-squarefoot campus is located on six beautiful acres and serves nearly 500 families with a team of more than 75 highly credentialed teachers. Our mission is to prepare our students for personal success in the rapidly changing global future through a transformative 21st-century education, a whole child focus and family engagement.

Nashua, NH 03062 • (603) 888-1982 • worldacademynh.com

Fostering the Absorbent Mind Newport Montessori School is now accepting 2022-2023 enrollment applications for the following grade levels and classrooms: junior classroom (sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students), upper elementary (third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students), lower elementary (first- and second-grade students) and primary classrooms (pre-kindergarten and kindergarten). The Newport Montessori School is located at 96 Pine St., Newport, New Hampshire. For more information about NMS or to request an enrollment packet, please call us.

Newport, NH 03773 • (603) 863-2243 • newportmontessori.org

Igniting Potential Learning Skills Academy offers a comprehensive, coeducational school experience, grades three to 12, providing tutorials in the basic skills of literacy and mathematics, while facilitating higher order thinking skills through our theme-based content area instruction. We provide pragmatic language instruction within a meaningful social context. Adventure-based learning — designed to improve communication, increase a sense of community and build leadership qualities for success — is an integral part of our program. LSA is approved to grant diplomas upon completion.

Rye, NH 03870 • (603) 964-4903 • learningskillsacademy.org

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Monday-Friday | 7 a.m.-6 p.m. • Call (603) 621-9011 for more information • northendmontessori.com

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 49

INDEPENDENT SCHOOL PROFILES

Welcome to Cardinal Country!

Bishop Guertin High School is an independent, private high school in the educational tradition of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. True to its mission of whole-person formation, BG is a community where every student is known, valued and treasured. With more than 20 AP courses, 35 sports programs and extensive extracurriculars, as well as a 100% graduation and college acceptance rate, our graduates leave Bishop Guertin prepared, confident and ready to transform the world.

Contact the Office of Admission at admit@bghs.org today!

Nashua, NH 03060 • (603) 889-4107 • bghs.org

Preparing Children for a Changing World Shaker Road School (SRS) is a family-focused community dedicated to developing the whole child. SRS provides an individually oriented, academically rigorous curriculum for students from infants through ninth grade. By combining academics with programs to foster self-worth and respect for others, SRS prepares each child to contribute positively to a rapidly changing world. SRS resides on a 63-acre campus and offers an extensive athletics program, fine and performing arts instruction, and diverse travel opportunities.

Concord, NH 03301 • (603) 224-0161 • shakerroadschool.org

Full-time tuition from $225/week.

Before & after school care included.

North End Montessori School is located in a 24,000-square-foot newly renovated building in the heart of the historic North End of Manchester across the street from the Currier Museum of Art. Our facility offers amenities such as a large outdoor playground, indoor gymnasium, theater stage and lighting and commercial culinary kitchen.

698 Beech St., Manchester NH 03104

We offer a strong academic curriculum that emphasizes independence, freedom within limits, responsibility for the environment and a deep compassion for the individual.

Monday-Friday | 7 a.m.-6 p.m. • Call (603) 621-9011 for more information • northendmontessori.com

50

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Dublin School, where joy is earned.

Our school is located on 500 acres with world class trails for Nordic skiing, running and mountain biking, two lakes for crew and sailing, ski hill, writer’s cabin, observatory, art gallery, robotics lab, dance studio, theater, maker space, outing club and more ...

Our students are curious, intelligent, engaging, kind, funny, willing, open-minded, thoughtful, collaborative, competitive, creative individuals who love to learn and try new things.

Dublin, NH 03444 • (603) 563-7075 • dublinschool.org

Awareness • Resilience • Engagement We educate our students to seek truth and fulfill their highest potential, to impart meaningful purpose to their lives, and to contribute courageously to the positive development of the world.

• Bus routes available — east, west, south • Over $3M financial aid each year • Coed day (preK-grade 12) and boarding (grades 9-12) • Students attend from over 15 countries Visit us! highmowing.org/visit

Wilton, NH 03086 • (603) 654-2391 • highmowing.org

INDEPENDENT SCHOOL

ASSOCIATIONS AND RESOURCES

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS IN NH The NAIS Private School Review provides free, detailed profiles of USA private day schools and their surrounding communities.

NAIS Private School Review privateschoolreview.com privateschoolreview.com/new-hampshire ASSOCIATION OF INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS IN NEW ENGLAND (AISNE) With an ongoing commitment to equity and inclusion, AISNE shapes the educational landscape for independent schools through leadership, education, service and strategic advocacy.

(617) 329-1483 • aisne.org

NEW ENGLAND ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES A voluntary membership organization of public and independent schools and colleges with a mission of assessing and promoting the quality of education through the accreditation of its members.

(781) 425-7700 • neasc.org NH ASSOCIATION FOR GIFTED EDUCATION Offering resources for gifted children and promoting gifted education in the state of NH.

NH FIRST LEGO LEAGUE Introducing young people, ages 9 to 14, to the fun and excitement of science and technology.

(603) 666-3907 • firstlegoleague.org YOUNG INVENTORS’ PROGRAM The Young Inventors’ Program inspires the next generation of STEM leaders by fueling excitement for innovation. The Academy’s mission is to fuel the spark of genius by exciting today’s youth in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

(603) 862-3401 • fuelthespark.org

Bedford • nhage.org

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 51

INDEPENDENT SCHOOL LISTINGS SCHOOL

(see our profile on page... A)

List consists of members of the Independent School Association of Northern New England and advertisers.

TYPE

GRADES

STUDENTS

SCHOOL

TYPE

GRADES

STUDENTS

Acton Academy NH 791 N. Main St., Laconia, NH 03246 actonacademynh.org • (603) 609-0535

Day

K-8 Co-ed

Mount Zion Christian Schools 132 Titus Ave., Manchester, NH 03103 mountzionnh.org • (603) 606-7930

Day

Pre-K-12 Co-ed

The Beech Hill School 20 Beech Hill Rd., Hopkinton, NH 03229 thebeechhillschool.org • (603) 715-5129

Day

5-8 Co-ed

Namasté Montessori 535 Mast Rd., Goffstown, NH 03045 namastemontessori.net • (603) 627-3503

Day

Pre-K-4 Co-ed

Bishop Brady High School 25 Columbus Ave., Concord, NH 03301 bishopbrady.edu • (603) 224-7418

Day

9-12 Co-ed

New Hampton School 70 Main St., New Hampton, NH 03256 newhampton.org • (603) 677-3400

Bishop Guertin High School s 194 Lund Rd., Nashua, NH 03060 bghs.org • (603) 889-4107

Day

9-12 Co-ed

Brewster Academy 80 Academy Dr., Wolfeboro, NH 03894 brewsteracademy.org • (603) 569-1600

Boarding 9-12 Co-ed

Cardigan Mountain School 62 Alumni Dr., Canaan, NH 03741 cardigan.org • (603) 523-4321

Boarding/Day 6-9 Male

Community School Day 1164 Bunker Hill Rd., South Tamworth, NH 03883 communityschoolnh.net • (603) 323-7000

6-12 Co-ed

Boarding

9-Post Graduate Co-ed

Nashua Catholic Regional Junior High School Day 6 Bartlett Ave., Nashua, NH 03064 ncrjhs.org • (603) 882-7011 Newport Montessori q 96 Pine St., PO Box 1006, Newport, NH 03773 newportmontessori.org • (603) 863-2243

Day

Pre-K-8 Co-ed

North End Montessori rs Day 698 Beech St., PO Box 1006, Manchester, NH 03104 northendmontessori.com • (603) 621-9011

Pre-K-8 Co-ed

The Oliverian School 28 Becket Dr., Pike, NH 03780 oliverianschool.org • (888) 922-5565

Boarding 9-12 Co-ed

Boarding/ Day

The Cornerstone School 146 High St., Stratham, NH 03885 cornerstoneschool.org • (603) 772-4349

Day

T-8 Co-ed

Phillips Exeter Academy 20 Main St., Exeter, NH 03833 exeter.edu • (603) 772-4311

Day

K-8 Co-ed

Pinkerton Academy 5 Pinkerton St., Derry, NH 03038 pinkertonacademy.org • (603) 437-5200

Day

Crossroads Academy 95 Dartmouth College Hwy., Lyme, NH 03768 crossroadsacademy.org • (603) 795-3111

Day

6-12 Co-ed

Portsmouth Christian Academy 20 Seaborne Dr., Dover, NH 03820 pcaschool.org • (603) 742-3617

Day

The Derryfield School 2108 River Rd., Manchester, NH 03104 derryfield.org • (603) 669-4524 Dublin School t 18 Lehmann Way, Dublin, NH 03444 dublinschool.org • (603) 563-8584

Boarding/Day 9-12 Co-ed

The Founders Academy 5 Perimeter Rd., Manchester, NH 03103 thefoundersacademy.org • (603) 952-4705

Day

Hampshire Country School 28 Patey Circle, Rindge, NH 03461 hampshirecountryschool.org • (603) 899-3325

Boarding 3-12 Male

Hampstead Academy 320 East Rd., Hampstead, NH 03841 hampsteadacademy.org • (603) 329-4406

Day

Heronfield Academy 356 Exeter Rd., Hampton Falls, NH 03844 heronfield.org • (603) 772-9093

Day

High Mowing School t Pine Hill Campus t 222 Isaac Frye Hwy., Wilton, NH 03086 highmowing.org • (603) 654-2391

6-12 Co-ed

Pre-K-8

Co-ed

6-8 Co-ed

Boarding/Day 9-12 Co-ed Day Pre-K-8 Co-ed

Hollis Montessori School 9 S. Merrimack Rd., Hollis, NH 03049 hollismontessori.org • (603) 400-1515

Day

Pre-K-9 Co-ed

Proctor Academy 204 Main St., Andover, NH 03216 proctornet.com • (603) 735-6000

Southern NH Montessori Academy 1E Commons Dr., #28, Londonderry, NH 03053 snhma.org • (603) 818-8613

Day

St. Catherine’s 206 North St., Manchester, NH 03104 scsnh.com • (603) 622-1711

Day

Pre-K-6

St. Christopher School 20 Cushing Ave., Nashua, NH 03064 stchrisschoolnh.org • (603) 882-7442

Day

Pre-K-6 Co-ed

Pre-K-8 Co-ed

52

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

Infants-9 Co-ed

T-8 Co-ed

Co-ed

Boarding 9-12 Co-ed

Tilton School 30 School St., Tilton, NH 03276 tiltonschool.org • (603) 286-4342

Boarding

Boarding 6-12 Co-ed

The White Mountain School 371 West Farm Rd., Bethlehem, NH 03574 whitemountain.org • (603) 444-0513

Day

K-8 Co-ed

St. Paul’s School 325 Pleasant St., Concord, NH 03301 sps.edu • (603) 229-4600

Boarding

Monadnock Waldorf School 424 Old Walpole Rd., Keene, NH 03431 monadnockwaldorfschool.org • (603) 357-8663

Boarding/ 9-12 Co-ed Day

Day

Kimball Union Academy 7 Campus Center Dr., Meriden, NH 03770 kua.org • (603) 469-2000

3-12 Co-ed

Pre-K-12 Co-ed

Shaker Road School s 95 Shaker Rd., Concord, NH 03301 shakerroadschool.org • (603) 224-0161

Waterville Valley Academy PO Box 186, Waterville Valley, NH 03215 wvbbts.org • (603) 236-4811

Day

9-12 Co-ed

Day

Boarding 9-12 Co-ed

Learning Skills Academy q 1247 Washington Rd., Rye, NH 03870 http://learningskillsacademy.org • (603) 964-4903

9-Post Graduate Co-ed

Sant Bani School 19 Ashram Rd., Sanbornton, NH 03269 santbani.org • (603) 934-4240

Holderness School 33 Chapel Ln., Holderness, NH 03245 holderness.org • (603) 536-1257

9-Post Graduate Co-ed

7-8 Co-ed

Wolfeboro School 93 Camp School Rd., Wolfeboro, NH 03894 wolfeboro.org • (603) 569-3451 World Academy q 138 Spit Brook Rd., Nashua, NH 03062 worldacademynh.com • (603) 888-1982

9-Post Graduate Co-ed

Boarding/Day 9-Post Graduate Co-ed

Summer Boarding

6-12

Co-ed

Day

6 weeks-8

Co-ed

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54

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

DEEP IN THE WOODS ON A

DIE-HARD BIKING FANS GETOFF THE BEATEN PATH. WAYOFF.

By Jay Atkinson Photography by Joe Klementovich

From left: Bob Lesmerises, Lenny and Chris Pierce

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 55

ere and there, batches of snow floated dreamily from a metallic sky, moving slowly and spaced far apart, drifting down as if each flake was being lowered on a string. Gently, they came to rest among the branches of the pine trees, on the tip of my nose, and on the notebook spread open on my knee, melting into the story.

I was seated on a loaf-shaped boulder, high up on a biking trail called Wild and Wooley in Franconia. After 50 minutes of effort, mostly climbing but often descending into little ravines like a life-size game of Chutes and Ladders, I dismounted my bike, lifted it out of the single-track, and rested it against a tree.

There was no wind — not a sound coming from the snow-padded hillside.

Just that cold, dry smell of winter. It was so quiet, I could hear my pencil scratching across the page.

An hour earlier, and a mile south of my current position, I’d broken away from my companions and gone off alone.

Immediately, I felt more at home, dropping down the early slope as I curved off between the trees. This was a surprise, because I was with two of my closest friends, Tanya and Chris Pierce, and photographer Joe Klementovich, who I’ve spent many happy hours alongside, exploring the wilderness.

But it had been a year since the world closed up shop, a prolonged hiatus where each of us was left to reckon with himself.

As I reached the bottom of the hill, turned right, and skirted the old airstrip, I finally tuned in to the bike, the convolutions of the trail, and the forest pressing in from both sides. It was good country, and I was seeing it for the first time.

Over the previous months, I’d gotten more comfortable being alone, the portion of my solo adventures rising from approximately 65% to 90%. As I moved across the landscape and one season was eclipsed by the next, I started to feel crowded if a deer showed up among the trees. During this period, I’d specialized in open water swims, mountain bike rides along the rim of the Merrimack Valley, snowshoe treks that stretched into the chilly dusk, and hourlong skates across the frozen ponds of my youth, the only sound the clack of my stick as I ragged the puck.

The deeper into the woods I got, with

H

56

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

the trailhead or shoreline or parking lot receding into the far distance, the more content I became.

Story author Jay Atkison is ready to get into some single-track riding out in the forests and hills of Franconia.

Up on Wild and Wooley, I pondered all

this, scribbling in my notebook. Thirty feet above me, there was a slight disturbance in the atmosphere, a wrinkle in the stillness, and I glanced up at a bird of prey sailing just above the trees. The bird’s silhouette, nearly three feet from wingtip to wingtip, glided overhead and then veered away.

I drank from my water bottle and moved my feet, shivering a bit, the sweat from my exertion pooling in my boots. Then I stood up, put one foot on the boulder, resting the notebook on my thigh, as I wrote: The situation we’ve found ourselves in lends itself to contemplation, and the wilderness is a place that allows you to do just that. It offers no opinions, no clear path forward, just a space that doesn’t care what you do or who you are. It’s a blank slate, and I’d been drawing on it for a year now, mapping out my inner geography, everything that seemed worth doing and all the untraveled vistas I still wanted to see.

Early that morning, I’d driven north

on Route 93, passing through the chokepoint of Franconia Notch at 8 a.m., which seemed like a late start given my predilections. That mile-long stretch of territory has its own ecosystem, and I marveled as the temperature on my console dropped from 27 degrees to 14 in under a minute.

Off to my left, impenetrable banks of fog poured over the ridge, hanging halfway down into the notch.

More village than town, Franconia is just over 65 square miles, with its population barely exceeding 1,000. Every summer when I was a kid, our family went camping on the eastern slope of the White Mountains, but my Dad loved the Flume and Franconia Notch State Park and we explored the area thoroughly. From my mid-teens into my 30s, I spent a lot of time on the bone-chilling lifts at Cannon Mountain, skiing down the steep, icy slopes with my high school buddies. And when the rocky profile of the Old Man of the Mountain collapsed on May 3, 2003, a portion of my childhood was buried in the rubble.

As I turned off Route 93, I had a good view of Cannon’s northern slope. Just a few

tiny skiers, high up on the narrow trails, were weaving their way downhill. A short while later, I arrived at the parking lot adjacent to the old airstrip on Route 116.

Only a handful of vehicles occupied the lot.

Across the road at the Franconia Inn, a trio of cross-country skiers snapped into their bindings and went poling along the trail that paralleled Route 116.

Chris Pierce and his wife Tanya and their dog Lenny arrived five minutes later, pulling alongside my vehicle on the passenger side. Piercey rolled down his window. “Let’s do this,” he said, grinning.

Joe Klementovich eased into the spot to my left. I got out of my vehicle and we shook gloved hands. “It’s been a while,” Joe said.

In the 15 minutes it took to arrange our gear, pull the bikes out and mount up, another dozen cars had arrived and an expanding troupe of cross-country skiers were populating the snowy lawn of the inn. Already I felt uneasy, turning away from the crowd and heading across the snowed-in airstrip behind Piercey, who was leading.

I was in familiar territory as we crossed 100 yards of open ground, the darkened tree line looming up ahead. Over several years, Piercey and I had participated in the Old Man of the Mountain Rugby Tournament, held each June on the grassy airstrip.

We’d had some memorable experiences on that pitch, and won a lot of matches.

But it had been two years since I’d rid-

den a fat bike — having borrowed Piercey’s spare — and it was slow going in the loose, shin-deep snow.

Ahead of me, Joe caught his front tire in the deep snow and was flung onto the ground. He’s an experienced mountain rescue volunteer, and an accomplished paddler, ice and rock climber, skier and mountain biker. When we reached the tree line and turned southward onto the border trail — an 18-inch depression in the snow — Joe got tossed from the bike again when his tire slipped out of the groove. It was an inauspicious start.

I knew Piercey was out on his fat bike two or three days a week, exploring a variety of trails in New Boston and Goffstown.

Having recovered from a hand injury early

in the season, Tanya was also biking pretty often. We rolled along between the clusters of birch, their slender trunks so close to the single-track that our handlebars barely fit between them.

Piercey surged ahead, climbing a narrow, barely discernible trail misnamed EZ Rider. Our of my line of sight, he’d been joined by Bob Lesmerises, the lean, grizzled proprietor of the White Mountain Bike Shop, located in an old barn next to the Franconia Inn. A biking acquaintance of Piercey’s, “Big Ring Bob” is an expert rider, guide, and raconteur, sharing his colorful experiences while maintaining an uphill spin rate that would have discouraged Lance Armstrong.

From 30 yards back, I could hear Bob nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 57

Fat tires and warm boots are required for a good day of biking in the snow.

58

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

and Piercey jawing about the steep terrain, and the “Oh, wow, man” of cranking uphill, dodging the trees that seemed to jump into their path.

Ever rising, the trail was doglegging right and left, and then shifting downward into gulleys that had me putting my foot down every 10 or 15 yards. Descending one of these drop-offs on the trail, my right handlebar clipped one of the birch trees and I went flying off to the left, crashing hard on my shoulder and hip.

When I got up and dusted myself off, I saw that the trail rose for another 75 yards or so, curling off through the trees. With no flat place to get a head start on this section, I was forced to “hike a bike,” trudging through the soft snow alongside the trail, pushing the unwieldy fat bike uphill.

At the top of the rise, there was a depression in the terrain, then it rose again in a northwesterly direction, the snow humped up on either side. I got maybe three revolutions into my spin and caught the loose snow and fell a second time.

Chest heaving, I righted myself and the bike, unclipped the straps of my pack and took out my water bottle. Savoring a long, cold drink, I turned my bike around, facing back downhill. Above me, I could hear the voices of my friends, their chatter fading into the distance.

Tightening my pack straps and straddling the bike, I made ready to descend the hill. The empty woods in front of me were inviting — I had the strong desire to be alone with my thoughts, exploring this new country.

Just before I set off, Piercey came over the rise and pulled up beside me. He lifted his chin in my direction, and I told him I was going to turn back and practice on the lower trails.

“Nah,” he said, leaning on his handlebars.

Piercey and I have undertaken dozens of adventures over the past several years — from northern California to Montana and across the Northeast — rugby tournaments, winter paddling trips, two-day mountain bike rides, pond hockey, remote fly fishing and the annual DIY Backcountry Triathlon in Rumney, New Hampshire.

We’ve pulled off some daring feats, and have dozens more in the planning stages.

A ruggedly built fellow, Chris Pierce is the most reliable, level-headed guy I know, and I always feel better when he’s along for the trip.

Bob Lesmerises, who provided everyone with great stories about the local trails, leads the way.

Now he stood a few feet away, gazing at me. “C’mon, dude,” he said. “Ride with us.”

“I’m gonna do what I wanna do, like always,” I said, mounting the bike. “I’ll catch you later though.”

Piercey turned his bike around and I set off, dodging trees like a slalom racer, my center of gravity pushed far back on the saddle, feeling light and balanced on the frame of the bike.

An hour later, I was perched in that remote spot up on Wild and Wooley and starting to get cold. Putting down my pencil, I shifted sideways on the frozen boulder, blowing warm air into the heel of

my right-hand glove.

The woods were silent except for the occasional creaking of a birch tree, or a packet of snow sliding off one of the pines onto the ground. Scratching away at my notebook, I caught a glimpse of color, and then some movement, just uphill from my position. A fit-looking woman on a florescent green bike, her face obscured by her balaclava and helmet, floated down the trail, hovering in a downhill position about 15 feet away.

It was like running into someone on a deserted planet, and I felt like a character in one of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s stories.

The woman gestured toward me. “Are you nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 59

Tanya and Chris Pierce head back to the parking lot to regroup and explore a bit more of the Franconia trail system.

Bundled up in wool blankets, riders enjoy the old-fashioned way of exploring Franconia in winter — in a horsedrawn sleigh.

60

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

all right?” she asked.

I raised my pencil, smiling at her.

“Yeah — I’m writing.”

She nodded, gliding past me in tight quarters.

“You’re probably gonna run into three guys, a petite blonde woman, and a dog in an orange vest named Lenny Kravitz,” I said. “Tell ’em you saw me.”

The other cyclist laughed. “I will,” she said.

Packing away my notebook, I climbed into the saddle, my front tire pointed downhill. After my early struggles, I wound in and out of the trees, leaning slightly right and left to control the frame of the bike and keeping my hands still. My desire to pull away from the group, at least temporarily, had allowed me to find my rhythm, digging the Zen of the trail rather than fighting it.

In the trees up ahead, I saw a flash of blue and heard Piercey’s loud monkey cry — a signature greeting across our long friendship — “OOOOH-Ooo-oo-Ah AH AH-OOO-Oo!” My head jerked that way, and my front tire slipped out of the track and I was dumped out of the saddle onto the ground.

Righting myself and the bike, I brushed off the snow, gazing down the trail. Piercey came into view, a broad smile on his face.

“We came to hang out with you,” he said,

gesturing at the woods behind him. “Ride with us.”

I glanced upward at the treetops swaying overhead. “I’m riding this section twice, getting the hang of it,” I said. “Go ahead.

I’ll catch up soon.”

Piercey looked straight at me. “No,” he said. “Come with us.”

“Don’t make it a battle of wills,” I said, raising my eyebrows.

Piercey rocked his head back. “I’ll see ya,” he said.

Soon I was rolling over flat ground on a trail marked “Birch.” Then I detoured to the left, going uphill on some double-track called Middle Earth, climbing for a while, then returning swiftly with a hard right onto Wild and Wooley and another long climb. Twenty-five minutes later, I cruised back down with little conscious thought, meeting up with Joe and Piercey and Tanya on the edge of the airstrip.

“All right?” Piercey asked me.

“Yeah. I’m good.”

More skiers and bikers were milling about and a large white-and-black horse was pulling a sleigh along the furrowed snow of the airstrip. We decided to load up the bikes, jumping in our vehicles and following Joe north on Route 116, hanging a right onto Main Street, and leaving the cars a half-mile from Fox Hill Park.

Wide and flat at the start, the Gale River trail ran alongside the bank as we headed east, the river gurgling at our feet.

The smooth double-track wound along the Gale for a mile or so, then narrowed and began to climb, weaving back and forth, eventually turning into a side hill trail that divided Fox Hill into its upper and lower half.

It had been overcast all morning, but now the sun broke through, lighting the ice crystals clinging to the upper branches, the bright thread of the river shining between the trees. After another half-mile, we were cranking straight uphill. My legs felt encased in cement, my breath coming in short, stabbing gasps as I pushed downward with my forefoot on each revolution, grinding along.

“At-kin-son!” shouted Piercey. “Do it!”

At the next junction, Piercey turned left to explore the Boundary trail and as I began following Tanya downslope, he called out, “Feather the brakes. But don’t feather them too much.”

I started off, the air whistling through

Getting Started Tips for Beginner Fat Bike Riders 1. Rent gear the first time. Many of New

Hampshire’s ski areas and local bike shops offer rentals of fat bikes and safety gear, with rentals starting around $40 a day. Try it before you buy it.

2. Choose your day. The weather will play a big role in your experience. If it’s too cold or windy, you’ll be miserable.

3. The ideal trail is hard-packed snow.

Small patches of ice are OK — but treat any ice longer than the length of the bike with respect.

4. Trails are rated for difficulty. Choose easy or moderate trails when you’re just starting out, especially if you have no mountain biking experience. Start with short trails.

5. Dress appropriately. Wear warm winter boots and gloves or mitts with enough dexterity so you can change gears. You still need to wear a helmet, so a thin hat or a headband is a good idea. Padded shorts with leg warmers under an outer shell would certainly make the ride more comfortable.

6. Bring water or a drink to stay hydrated — in a thermos if it’s really cold, so it doesn’t freeze.

7. Don’t forget energy bars and snacks.

Working hard on the bike, you’ll use a lot of calories. You don’t want to burn out far from the trailhead.

8. The better physical shape you’re in,

the more enjoyable the fat bike experience will be. Know your limits.

9. Share the trail. Many fat tire trails are

shared with cross-country skiers, hikers and snowshoers. Stay out of the ski tracks and be prepared to pull over for others.

For more great fat bike tips, visit fatbikeplanet.com. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 61

Yanya, Jay and Chris on a short and fast cruise from the parking lot to the trailhead that will take the group along the Gale River.

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After the ride, Tanya enjoys the warm fire and cold beer at Iron Furnace Brewing.

the apertures in my helmet. “I like the downhills,” I yelled over my shoulder.

Thirty or 40 yards behind Tanya, I skittered over patches of loose snow, riding the contour downhill. Now everything was in sync — sky, terrain, and trail.

In the parking lot, Piercey hailed me.

“All good?” he said.

“Let’s eat,” I said.

Soon we reconvened a mile down the road at Iron Furnace Brewing. We were seated at an outdoor fire pit, and Piercey began adding wood to the fire, despite a sign that said only employees were allowed to do it. Soon a young fellow in a wool beanie came over with an armload of wood.

“Am I breaking the rules?” said Piercey, winking at me.

The kid laughed. “No. It’s all right,” he said, making a tent-like structure with the wood he was carrying.

“You favor the teepee style?” Piercey asked. “I sometimes prefer the log cabin arrangement.”

One of the brewery’s owners, Tim Clough, is a friend of Joe’s. A local fellow and sporting enthusiast, Clough said that he and three of his local buddies made their dream come true when Iron Furnace Brewing opened in 2017.

Tanya ordered a New England IPA called

“237 Miles,” asking Clough how they chose the name. He said that one of his partners who grew up in Franconia now lives “237 miles away, in Connecticut.”

After sitting by the fire for a half-hour, we moved to a large, shed-like structure in the rear of the building. Tables were spaced far apart, and metal heat lamps threw a little warmth on each one. In a lively discussion, Piercey was adamant that “fully supported ascents” of Everest, etc., are not the same as getting to the summit under your own power.

“You drove to get here,” said Joe, winking at me. “You should have walked.”

I was starting to feel cold and getting antsy with so many people around. Piercey had gone outside to check on Lenny, and I said goodbye to Tanya and Joe and headed for my vehicle. Piercey was nowhere in sight, and I started up my car, hoping he wouldn’t think I’d take off without trying to say goodbye.

Suddenly, Piercey appeared at my window like a character in a TV show. I couldn’t help laughing.

“Hey, taking off?” he said.

“Yeah. I was looking for you.”

Piercey stuck his gloved hand through the open window. “It was a good day,” he said.

In Ernest Hemingway’s 1935 masterpiece “Green Hills of Africa,” he wrote, “I had loved country all my life; the country was always better than the people. I could only care about people a very few at a time.”

As I cruised along Main Street, I turned up a Willie Nelson song that came over the radio, grinning in spite of myself. For I realized that, for me, Piercey and Tanya and Joe will always be counted among those very few. NH

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Colonial Bicycle Company (603) 319-1688 / Portsmouth colonialbicycle.com

Papa Wheelies

(603) 427-2060 / Portsmouth papa-wheelies.com nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 63

By Rick Broussard

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

—St. Francis of Assisi 64

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

“I am the drum, you are the drum, and we are the drum.

Because the whole world revolves in rhythm, and rhythm is the soul of life, for everything that we do in life is in rhythm.”

— Babatunde Olatunji

T

H E W O R L D T O DAY seems critically poised between two opposing destinies. Optimists picture one of unlimited human progress, driven by science breakthroughs for cheap energy, abundant food production, and the elimination of disease and even aging. Pessimists imagine a future of global comeuppance as our excesses of consumption and pollution spark environmental catastrophes and rouse deep-seated rivalries until we descend into a new Dark Age. Either view can be a call to purposeful action or to dour resignation, but there is a third approach to our global destiny that sees, in the tragic and comic waves of events, an inspiration to create something entirely new.

This approach applies the simple grace of song, dance, poetry and art to give life meaning and joy, to elevate humanity, and perhaps even save it from the forces of death, doom and destruction.

Indeed, even the Dark Ages themselves are remembered for breakout appearances of some of the world’s greatest works of art, like the Book of Kells in Europe as well as the lustrous beauties of the Byzantine Empire and the beginnings of the Golden Age of Islam in the Middle East.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 65

PHOTOS BY KENDAL J. BUSH

But the Renaissance era of art and music that followed the Middle Ages never really ended and that hopeful surge of human achievement, civilization and creativity extends all the way to New Hampshire’s contemporary galleries, theaters and music halls.

A

S E D I T O R of this magazine for about 30 years, I have more than passing familiarity with arts in the Granite State, so it was as a personal search for some hopeful news that I sought one of the original leaders of an artistic movement for positivity, peace and understanding. known as “world music.”

Norman Boucher I’ve known of Randy Armstrong for almost as long as I’ve lived in New Hampshire. I’ve reported on his successes and

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reviewed samples from his vast catalog from time to time, so it almost came a surprise to realize that we had never met.

Armstrong was a bit giddy upon my arrival at his home deep in the hills of Barrington. Just moments before, he had received notice of the birth of a new grandchild. “They told me I’m a randfather!” he says with a huge smile. Armstrong smiles a lot and projects warmth and positivity as he shows me around his home that doubles as a recording studio and triples as a place to keep and display his hundreds of musical instruments from around the world. He can play them all: sitars, ouds, wooden flutes, exotic drums like djembes, and an array of kalimbas and mbiras rustically crafted from boxes or gourds with toned keys to be played with thumb or forefinger.

The furniture in his well-appointed parlor has been pushed aside to host a half-dozen marimbas, like large wooden xylophones in various keys, custom made for him in South Africa. Armstrong says he was compelled to order them after watching Bishop Desmond Tutu break into dancing when a marimba band with a similar set played during a visit to that nation years before.

Armstrong cites many such inspirations, but it’s curious to hear that one of his heroes of global awareness was a distant relative most famous for setting foot on the moon: Neil Armstrong. “We’re both Scottish, from the same clan,” he says. The experience — shared with all us Earthlings — of the Apollo crew looking back on the Earth as a blue marble floating on the black velvet of space, transformed his thinking. It was 1969,

just a year after the assassination of Martin Luther King while the Vietnam War still raged. He was an aspiring rock star who had begun listening to international touring artists like Babatunde Olatunji, sharing the wisdom, rhythms and cultures of Africa, and his mind opened to the possibilities of a wider world of music.

“I went out and bought my first sitar and djembe,” he says, “and then I got my first record contract. I was in my early 20s.”

That contract with Philo Records gave his new band, Do’a, featuring partner, friend and flutist Ken LaRoche, the kind of legitimacy that attracted serious music reviews.

Jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie endorsed their first album, “Light Upon Light,” as “one of the important contributions to the future of music.”

Surrounded by a world of instruments, Randy Armstrong demonstrates a couple of his favorites: a 1948 Gibson L7 Archtop guitar (above left) and a handmade Radha Krishna Sharma sitar from Kolkata, India (above).

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 67

Four more albums with Do’a followed, expanding into and shaping the trends of world fusion and new age music that were suddenly finding their own bins in music stores. The band’s “Companions of the Crimson Coloured Ark” even came with a mission statement:

“It is our hope that the music produced on this album will contribute in some small way to the cessation of human suffering, and to the realization of the unity of the human race and the need for the elimination of all forms of prejudice.”

Performing as Do’a World Music Ensemble, the band’s last album, “World Dance,” made it into the top 10 on the Billboard New Age Music Chart.

Armstrong’s next band project, “Unu Mondo” (Esperanto for “one world”), furthered a musical partnership with composer and bassist Volker Nahrmann that continues to this day. In 1999, Armstrong was commissioned to score and record the original soundtrack for a four-part PBS series, “Dinner on the Diner,” that was filmed in South Africa, Spain, Scotland and Southeast Asia.

He says the gig required some stretching of even his eclectic instrumental skills to perform the music of Thailand, weaving traditions from China, India and Cambodia.

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A

L O N G W I T H his global travels and intersections, Armstrong has been busy much closer to home, teaching sitar and tabla to students at Phillips Exeter Academy and graduate courses at Plymouth State University. A long-time friendship with Genevieve Aichele, founder of the New Hampshire Theatre Project, blossomed into “World Tales,” a theatre, storytelling and music production designed to provide cross-cultural experiences to young people.

“Gen is such a deep thinker and passionate human being. We’ve been friends and collaborators for about 30 years now,” he says. The efforts resulted in two “World Tales” albums and an award-winning residency partnership that, along with so many projects, is on hiatus as a result of the pandemic.

While serving on the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts for nine years, Armstrong’s mantra was, “We must infuse the state with arts from younger people.”

The consistent focus bore fruit, he says, “and those people are leaders now.” And many are also collaborators with Armstrong, like Sarah Duclos, a Seacoast dancer and choreographer who uses dance to tell stories of community, and West African drummer Theo Martey of Manchester (by way of Ghana).

Armstrong was leading a workshop on African drumming at the Boys and Girls Club when Martey showed up at one of the classes and sat in. Armstrong quickly realized that he was outmatched. “I never considered myself an African drumming

master, although I can play,” he says. Soon a deep friendship began. “I’m godfather of his children,” says Armstrong. Now Martey directs his Akwaaba Ensemble, performing for events and teaching African drumming and culture to New Hampshire schoolkids.

He’s in Armstrong’s latest band, Beyond Borders, whose eponymous 2015 record was nominated as Best World Album at the ZMR Music Awards.

B

E YO N D B O R D E R S may be Armstrong’s most ambitious undertaking. He describes it as a magnum opus reflecting four decades of touring, recording and performing. It features his partner Nahrmann and about 20 other exemplary musicians on a recording filled with tributes to heroes of cross-cultural musical innovation, including Dizzy Gillespie, Ravi Shankar and George Harrison.

The new band’s performances this year have been limited by Covid, but tickets are already selling for a show at the Historic Music Hall in Portsmouth in April.

In short, “Beyond Borders” is yet another work aimed at fulfilling Armstrong’s longago published goal of creating music that will “contribute in some small way to the cessation of human suffering, and to the realization of the unity of the human race.”

His intent since those early days of Do’a has been constant, and Armstrong’s confidence in the power of music to do just that has not swayed.

Theo Martey with friends — for more about his traditional dancing and drumming, visit akwaabaensemble.com.

ARTIST OF CHANGE: THEO MARTEY

“Music has a different power.

It moves in people a different way than science or politics.

It unites us physically as well as mentally.”

PHOTOS BY BRETT WALKER

THEO MARTEY BEGAN PERFORMING AT AGE 6.

By 17, he was working with the most acclaimed performance ensembles in his native Ghana, West Africa, and earning a reputation as an engaging dancer, drummer and choreographer. In 2002, he created the Akwaaba Ensemble, and has since dazzled concert audiences throughout the Northeast, Mexico and Canada.

Along with many other appearances, he has performed with the Manchester Choral Society for their Zulu Mass and Christmas Tapestry project, and with the New Hampshire Theatre Project for the “Dreaming Again” production. He's collaborated with Randy Armstrong on numerous projects, including the latest “Beyond Borders” album and global peace initiative.

But his influence may be most powerful in his school workshops and residencies. “Young people are open. It sticks with them for a very long time,” says Martey. “Over the years, I’m feeling all the power of music to bind and bring people together,” he says. “Politics has a more divisionary angle with decisions on cutting funding and such because music and politics doesn’t tally. Music makes people feel like they are all together.”

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 69

M

ANY OF ARMSTRONG'S personal beliefs find root in the Bahá’í Faith, the practice of which he learned from the musicians, Seals & Crofts (who hit it big with their feel-good record “Summer Breeze” in 1972). Dash Crofts sang on Armstrong’s tribute to Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” that appears on the first Unu Mondo album, “Hand in Hand.”

Bahá’í, established in Persia in 1863, maintains a remarkably contemporary set of values including the essential value of all religions, a harmony of religion and science, gender equality, and the elimination of every prejudice, abolition of extremes of poverty and wealth and human rights for all human beings. While numbers of Bahá’í Faith members are small compared to Christianity, it has spread to all corners of the globe and places of worship are not hard to find.

There’s even one in Dublin, New Hampshire, situated in the Historic Dublin Inn, where the Abdu’l-Bahá, eldest son of the founder, once visited and spoke.

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It’s now something of a shrine to the faithful.

“The arts are a kind of sacrament for the Bahá’í,” Armstrong explains, and Abdu’l-Bahá described music as “the ladder of the soul.” Found in Abdu’l-Bahá’s writings in this:

“The art of music must be brought to the highest stage of development, for this is one of the most wonderful arts and in this glorious age of the Lord of Unity it is highly essential to gain its mastery.”

For a consummate musician like Randy Armstrong, the appeal is clear. His talent, mastery and spiritual quest converge, enabling him to share the sources of his inspiration with millions through his recordings and performances.

As I prepared to leave, Armstrong apologized and pulled his phone from a pocket.

He said it had been buzzing while we spoke and he had an idea of why. He turned the phone to share with me his first look at a photo: a perfect baby girl with pink skin and a look of sublime wisdom and peace on her face.

“Her name is Una,” said the proud “randfather.”

I didn’t ask at the time, but I looked up the meaning of the name when I got back to my laptop. For Scots like Armstrong, the word “una” or “oona” means “lamb.”

In Spanish it means “number one.” In Latin it means “unique.” All fine portents for a precious new human being.

I

PONDERED ALL OF THIS on my way home from Barrington.

The faithful of my own Christian faith sometimes are far less enthusiastic than Bahá’í about the unity of religions and as art as a positive spiritual influence beyond hymns, icons and stained glass. But from the vaulting lines and detailed crafting of the Gothic cathedral to the classic works

PHOTOS BY CORA PARADISO

“Most music and art come from some very deep and organic thing that happens within a culture, influenced by the great revelations of holy thinkers,” he says. A beneficial influence results, he says, “until humankind gets in there and screws it up, and that’s where we get all the conflicts.”

But what art and music have begun, art and music can complete, he says. We just have to appreciate how far we’ve come. “If you look at all these prophets and amazing leaders of religion and science, they all point to the same place.” It’s a place of unity where all are respected and no one is left out, he says, and we have to remember to keep reaching for it and believe it’s within our grasp.

At its worst, the conflict between actors on the world stage results in a kind of hell that we simply call “isolation.” The more that storytelling becomes the tool of those forces of division, the more that music and design and rhyme are molded to tease us apart, the more isolated we become.

At its best, the art we create and enjoy stimulates an awareness of the essential unity and potential greatness of humanity that overcomes the deceptions of our fight-or-flight-focused senses. In the greater scheme of things, there is hope for us all, he says, if we can still create and believe. “Even my drummer who is an atheist, I know he believes in something.”

A scene from “Shelter,” a production by Sarah Duclos’ Neoteric Dance Collaborative for Haven in Portsmouth

ARTIST OF CHANGE: SARAH DUCLOS

“I get excited for projects where I learn something from my community and use that as a conversation starter. Artists are good at starting conversations.”

“HI, MY NAME IS SARAH AND I AM A RECOVERING DANCE SNOB,” writes Sarah Duclos on her blog. Once a student of ballet and dance in a conservatory setting, she says, “Ballet, rightly so, comes from history of aristocracy, with dancers on stage and audience in seats, a hierarchic form of art.” But a transformative experience with a visionary choreographer during her tween years changed everything. “Liz Lurman was in Portsmouth and I got to dance with her. It was the first time I’d ever seen how dance could tell the story of a community: history, industry, first accounts — a docu-drama kind of dance.” She set out to discover what dancers can do when embedded in communities, eventually working with Randy Armstrong and other local artists to stage “Shelter.” This multimedia performance, staged in 2018 as part of the One Billion Rising events, raised awareness and funds for the work of Haven, which provides shelter for women escaping violence.

PHOTOS BY MATT LAVIGNE

Learn more about Sarah Duclos and upcoming events at neotericdance.org.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 71

“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

Other artists come to mind for their statements that seem to demand a change in the hearts and minds of their audiences.

Bob Marley’s peaceful militancy, touring a war-torn world on behalf of “One Love” is an example. The transcendental ordinariness of Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town” (detailed beautifully by P.J. O’Rourke in our November issue) is a Zen knock upside the head that still draws a crowd to every local theater that stages it. Picasso’s monumental painting Guernica, depicting the bombing of the Basque town whose name it bears, has a way of conveying the horror of battle that transcends that of even the best wartime photography. Millions have grooved to the sweet sounds of Marley, pondered the funeral scene of “Our Town,” and contemplated the terrors of Guernica through the lens of art.

But is the world a better place for it all?

A year after John Lennon sang (and Yoko Ono screeched) through their recording 72

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The more than 300 instruments collected by Randy Armstrong during his tours and travels have all but filled his Beauty Hill Studios (seen here) and home in Barrington.

PHOTOS BY KENDAL J. BUSH

of Renaissance devotional art to today’s more-emotional praise and worship under dramatic lighting on the evangelical stage — all express the sacramental nature of art and draw the faithful into fellowship.

I’m still optimistic by nature. I can’t help but feel confident that no matter what new horror is waiting around the bend — even after a couple of years of intense horribleness — it’s all going to be OK in the end. The problem with such optimism is that it’s not clear there is an “end.” After all, our troubled world just keeps spinning, no matter what messes we humans have gotten ourselves into or out of.

The Beatles — supreme bards of my generation of baby boomers — had a bright idea about it (and so many other things) and wrote a song titled, appropriately, “The End.” It was the last song they recorded as a foursome and each of them perform an instrumental solo in it (including Ringo’s only-ever drum solo), but what most fans remember best is the haunting, instructive, ultimate line:

of “Give Peace a Chance” in 1969, the war in Vietnam did end. Of course, history suggests that end was more the result of the ever-practical Richard Nixon knowing that the success of his new presidency hinged on fulfilling his campaign promise to draw the conflict to a close — no matter what awful final images the departure would leave on the retinas of history.

But would Nixon have found it “practical” to end such a struggle at great political cost if not for the array of multicolor, sometimes absurd, often objectionable but always entertaining acts of art that kept the war at the center of our conversations in ways that challenged the “official” story?

And, for all the concern for world peace and harmony, what if we are setting our sights a bit too close to home? Recent revelations about those odd moving lights in the sky that sometimes dazzle, baffle (and maybe even guide) the citizens of Earth have forced both scientists and politicians to

think bigger about our place in the universe and our role in the cosmic drama of creation.

S

O C O N S I D E R T H I S F A C T. When Carl Sagan, one of the most famous popularizers of science of the 20th century, was heading a committee charged with creating a “cosmic greeting card” to accompany the Voyager space flights through our planetary system and beyond, they chose the most reliable medium imaginable at the time (or now). It was a set of gold-plated copper discs — essentially 12-inch, 33 1/3 rpm record albums — containing digitized facts of science and sounds of Earth. Among the offerings prepared for the trip was a range of human voices and a recorded greeting from Kurt Waldheim, then-secretary general of the United Nations.

All of that was able to fit on one side of the two-disc package. In a letter to musicologist Alan Lomax — whose work discovering the native, authentic music of people

outside of the star-making entertainment world is credited with helping to birth the world music movement — Sagan wrote: “The other three sides are devoted entirely to music — music representative of all of humanity and music which represents the best of humanity.”

Sagan asked Lomax to serve on the final music selection committee, noting the same albums of music would be published and shared to provide listeners a chance to “imagine how we want to be represented to the Cosmos.” (Sagan capitalized the word.)

“In addition, it may be for many people a first exposure to some of the diversity and quality of human music.”

The Voyager flights are still out there, currently more than 14 billion miles from the sun carrying their bundles of 44-year-old technology and their payload of music and news from our tiny blue planet. But there’s no rush and no ETA for Voyager as it plods through infinite space at about 40,000 mph.

“Under its protective cover the flight record will have a probably lifetime of a billion years,” wrote Sagan. “It is unlikely that many other artifacts of humanity will survive for so prodigious a period of time.”

So, there’s indeed a chance, however slight, that these records of Earth will be found in some distant eon and discover a new audience among the stars, but what will those alien “ears” think of us? The science and facts on one side of the golden discs might be seen as too primitive (or dangerous) to be of much interest, but what of the other three musical sides? How might extraterrestrial beings react or, in the reaches of infinite time, respond?

“Who knows?” is a fair answer. The poetry of reggae prophet Bob Marley puts a more positive spin on the matter with words that also constitute a simple statement about the power of all art in its purest form. “One good thing about music,” sang Marley.

“When it hits you, you feel no pain.” NH

Experience Randy Armstrong January 21

ETC Integrated Arts Conference Building Community Through the Arts Randy Armstrong, workshop leader Plymouth State University – The Common Man Inn For registration and info: campus.plymouth.edu/etc/integrated-arts-conference April 9

“Beyond Borders” With Randy Armstrong & Volker Nahrmann in Concert The Historic Theater at The Music Hall Portsmouth, 8 p.m.

Info: randyarmstrong.com / Tickets: themusichall.org ENTER TO WIN IT! Send a note with your own favorite song of peace to editor@ nhmagazine.com and be entered to win a copy of “Beyond Borders.”

Note: See Randy Armstrong demonstrate the mbira in the online version of this story at nhmagazine.com. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 73

From left: Aaron Djohan and Irene Ireeuw

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BIG CHANGES

Little Indonesia

IN

BY BRION O'CONNOR PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALLEGRA BOVERMAN

Outsiders may see the Granite State as rather homogeneous, a place where the concept of diversity is more theoretical than real. Until they look a little closer.

From the French Canadian and Scandinavian enclaves in Berlin, to the Irish, French Canadian and Greek neighborhoods that flourished in Manchester, New Hampshire’s history is deeply rooted in the story of immigrants. While we pride ourselves in our long-held and cherished notions of rugged individualism, the truth is our state is one of communities, an authentic melting pot of ethnicities.

Raude Raychel understands. A native of Jakarta, Indonesia, Raychel came to the United States as a 10-year-old in 1997, along with her father, Chris Schramm, a Pentecostal minister. After arriving in Los Angeles and taking his family on a cross-country bus tour to New Jersey, Schramm eventually settled in Dover, New Hampshire, where he established the Indonesian Pentecostal Church in his new hometown.

“We were on Dover Street,” says Raychel.

“We had a three-bedroom house that became a six- or seven-bedroom house.

We actually started the church in the home. We would have gatherings right in the home, because everything was so new to us, and we actually had less than 50 people.”

Over the next two decades, the Dover/ Somersworth/Rochester area proved to be fertile ground for Schramm and other immigrants from Indonesia. From a church with modest beginnings, Schramm and his daughter witnessed the size of the Indonesian population swell both locally and statewide.

“We saw that this community was growing, from 50 people to 1,000 to 3,000, to now 5,000,” says Raychel, who recently became a United States citizen.

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Today, Raychel, a 35-year-old mother of two teenagers, is concerned whether her son and daughter will retain their appreciation of Indonesian culture, and their appreciation of Indonesian customs and traditions. As president of Indonesian Community Connect Inc. in Somersworth, she is uniquely positioned to make sure the culture of her homeland is not only preserved but also celebrated.

“Understanding the value of your culture is very important — it’s a matter of, how are you going to turn it over? A lot of Indonesian families decided to stay here, and raise their families here, and for them, the next generation, not everyone has adapted to the culture,” Raychel says.

“This comes from my experience of working in the school district, seeing a lot of Indonesian kids in that school, and seeing that disconnect,” she says. “They want to be part of their Indonesian community, but they’re not proud of it. That’s when I say, ‘Let’s educate more.’ Not only do we have to educate the non-Indonesians, but we also have to educate the new generations now, and let them be proud of it. If you don’t educate them, if they know nothing about it, how can they be proud of it? How can they carry on? How can they take over this later?”

The answers, she says, are being provided in part by the Indonesian Community Connect, or ICC. The nonprofit organization grew out of Schramm’s original work.

However, recognizing that Indonesian immigrants might adhere to any number of religious beliefs — including Christian, Muslin, Hindu and Buddhist — the ICC was established as a community-based entity that could serve everyone.

“Everything that we’re doing here right now is another example of trying to follow my dad. As a pastor, he was really the point of contact pretty much for every type of resource that was needed,” says Raychel.

“He really helped a lot of [those in the Indonesian] community here, opening up our home to them, for new people coming in here,” she says. “He then helped them connect to the agencies to find work. Once they got a job, he would actually bring them to work. And then he would pick them up. He’d do that until they were doing good enough to buy their own car and be on their own. His heart was really about serving the whole community.”

Schramm’s Indonesian Pentecostal

From left: Ellie Humphreys, of Franklin, Massachusetts, a University of New Hampshire student who works at Little Indonesia in marketing and communications; Raude Raychel, president of Indonesian Community Connect Inc. of Dover; Raychel’s son Aaron Djohan, 15; Irene Ireeuw of Boston, who helps at Little Indonesia; and Ellen Panjatan of Somersworth

Church, says Raychel, “started as a religious organization, but the point was really to create a hub for all of the community. That’s why the Little Indonesian project, the ICC, was established by a group of handpicked people that have the heart and the passion to really serve the community here.”

And that community has grown, she adds. “In the past few years before that, we were still active in creating a lot of Indonesian food bazaars, which is just another way for us to celebrate our culture, and our traditions. But then it becomes a place where all

communities are enjoying and celebrating at the same time.”

The ICC got a big boost in 2019, when Mahendra Siregar, Indonesia’s ambassador for the United States (and now Indonesia’s vice minister of foreign affairs), visited Somersworth, and put his substantial political weight behind the project.

“He met with the government of Somersworth, and he said, ‘This must happen.

Let’s start this,’” says Raychel. “So, in 2019, we got together and created our team.

Then in 2021, we were grateful enough that

we’re able to launch the Little Indonesia Project, phase one.”

Based in downtown Somersworth, in a rented space on High Street, the ICC Cultural Center officially opened in May with great fanfare. Iwan Freddy Susanto, vice ambassador from the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Washington, D.C., Somersworth Mayor Dana Hilliard, New Hampshire State Sen. David Watters, and representatives of U.S. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, and U.S. Rep. Christopher Pappas all attended.

In every sense, the Cultural Center is the physical realization of the ICC mission, serving as a multifaceted clearinghouse for a variety of resources. The diversity of the center’s offerings reflects the diversity of its community. It features a food pantry, which partners with GATHER, a local food donation distributor, to help roughly 150 local families, a gift shop, community support services, and community resources including health care (such as Covid-19 information), immigration, workforce, law enforcement, educational, nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 77

translation, and interpretation services.

“We really need to help the Indonesian community, and really need to bridge that gap with businesses, with the government, and be the voice for the community, in any way that we can,” says Raychel. “At the same time, we want to celebrate the culture with the communities here. We know that the appreciation will be deeper when we educate the community about what the Indonesian culture is all about.”

Those efforts led to the creation of the ICC’s Little Indonesia Project, a fourphase, long-term vision to establish a more robust Indonesian community in southeastern New Hampshire. The project, which is the first of its kind in North America, is currently in its first phase, using the ICC’s temporary office space — the Little Indonesia Cultural Center — to promote events, programs, business partnerships and the like. The events, including a marketplace and night market, have been well received by the community, exceeding Raychel’s lofty expectations.

The extraordinary success of the Cultur 78

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

al Center’s initial offerings can be attributed to the sheer numbers of Indonesians living in the immediate proximity, and the fact that the targeted initiatives have struck a chord with that population. Armaya Doremi, a Boston resident who helped emcee the Cultural Center’s grand opening in May, says Somersworth was a perfect place for Little Indonesia. Raychel agrees.

“I think that’s because 17% of the total population is Indonesian,” she says, noting that roughly 2,000 Indonesians call the city of 12,000 home. “Percentage-wise, our population here is the biggest in all of the United States.”

The current Cultural Center, though considered temporary, gives Little Indonesia outstanding exposure. “Right now, for phase one, we have great visibility with this location,” says Raychel.

“It’s right at the entrance of the downtown,” she adds. “People see it, and can explore the Cultural Center. They love how we created a new place. Everybody in the community is very excited.”

The accomplishments and recognition

achieved during the initial phase have generated a great deal of enthusiasm for the next step. That second phase calls for a permanent location for the Cultural Center (preferably including neighboring park land), and will include a museum of Indonesia with artifacts, artwork and traditional and ceremonial clothing, an expanded shopping center and food hall, a community center, ICC headquarters and a function hall. Phase three calls for an urban park development, ideally adjacent to the Cultural Center’s permanent home.

“Our hope is that the urban park, with the welcoming gate, will serve as an attraction,” says Raychel. “We want to highlight this is one of New Hampshire’s top destinations. That phase will also include a stage for outdoor performances, and an Indonesian island garden.”

The “welcoming gateway” design, unveiled in May, was fashioned by Alfred Byun, a Korean-American designer from Boston, who says he felt a personal connection to the project.

“I’m honored to be a part of this project,

Opposite page top: Volunteer Roy Godlieb leads the Indonesian Traditional Interactive Line Dancing called Tobelo, which originated in Ambon, Maluku, in the eastern part of Indonesia.

Following his lead are volunteer Eke Toar of Dover and Irene Ireeuw (from Papua, Indonesia), a board member and administrator at the Cultural Center, along with other participants and visitors.

PHOTOS BY KENDAL J. BUSH

Above: Ellen Yohanes, a volunteer of the ICC, models some Indonesian fashion accessories.

At left: Items from the ICC store display the colorful patterns and designs of Indonesia.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 79

which is at its core a celebration of people and culture,” says Byun, design director for ICC’s Little Indonesia Committee.

Byun’s wife is from Jakarta, and he adds that they’re a part of Boston’s Indonesian community.

“Growing up second-generation Korean-American has defined much of my upbringing and search for cultural identity, particularly in my youth,” he says. “I've grown to love that part about me and realize that being immersed in the myriad influences and cultures, whether Korean, American or Indonesian, has always helped me connect with others in a more meaningful way. This translates to my professional work, where I’m able to combine passion for spatial design with an understanding of human behavior and the cultural context of each project.”

Byun also notes that the ongoing pandemic “has shown us that a ‘place’ 80

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

only comes to life from the people who engage and experience it,” he says.

“So many of our places, despite their beauty and great design, have been dormant for the past year and half,” he says.

“Many people have not had a chance to travel, visit, and experience new culture that is typically experienced through visiting a new place.”

As an example, Byun points out that not many people know that Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world after China, India and United States, and consists of more than 17,000 islands.

“The Indonesia Cultural Center will showcase not only the richness of its culture and heritage, but it will serve as a beacon for the Indonesian community — a place where people can be proud of, feel celebrated, and, more importantly, can share a part of their culture with others,” says Byun.

“We hope that the very first Little Indonesia project becomes a platform and a truly unique and special place for the celebration of Indonesian culture in America, and, just as importantly, will continue to grow with the community in which it lives,” he says.

Another member of the Little Indonesia design team, Alicia Kosasih, a native of Jakarta who is an interior architectural designer in Boston, echoed Byun’s belief that there are many distinct cultural assets from Indonesia that aren’t well known among the general public.

“Our country is unique in a sense as the largest archipelago-centric country in the world, it provides a natural geographic barrier that results in a collection of incredibly rich and diverse culture between the islands, each with its own expression of beauty through culinary, visual and performing art forms,” says Kosasih. “In

traditional house portal DURING FESTIVAL

gate studies

Sulawesi Kalimantan LIGHT POST FLAGS/BANNERS (example patterns shown for concept only)

Little Indonesia

Little Indonesia

City of Somersworth

City of Somersworth

KALIMANTAN

Little Little BATIK SIDEWALK GRAPHICS Indonesia Indonesia (locations TBD) SULAWESI

SUMATRA

City of Somersworth

JAVA

City of Somersworth

Papua

Little Indonesia

BALI

City of Somersworth

Custom Printed Post Flags/Banners can represent the richness and diversity within Indonesia, and celebrate the islands and regions. They bring vibrancy to the street, and can educate passers-by on the patterns and textures of Indonesia.

They can provide opportunity for sponsorship, and showcase special events for the city throughout the year.

18” x 48” (approximate size, TBD) custom printed flags ICC Inc.

MASTERPLAN DESIGN PROPOSAL

53

COURTESY IMAGES

LITTLE INDONESIA

Little Indonesia

Little Indonesia

City of Somersworth

City of Somersworth

MALUKU

PAPUA

THE MASTERPLAN: For phases two and three of the Little Indonesia site design proposal, the top gateway illustrations take cues from diverse forms of Indonesian traditional home buildings. The options offer contemporary ways of preserving the country’s rich architectural pedagogy as a grand welcoming gesture to Little Indonesia.

Above: Custom printed post flags and banners will represent the richness and diversity within Indonesia, and celebrate the islands and regions.

At left: Sidewalks, playgrounds and picnic areas will be painted various batik patterns and add color to pedestrian areas. Batik patterns represent the different regions of Indonesia from east to west.

URBAN PARK GRAPHICS SIDEWALKS are painted various batik patterns and add color to pedestrian

crosswalk areas. Batik patterns can represent Indonesia, from East to West regions.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 81

“This project is built by the community. When you build this project for the community, it will last from one generation to the other.

So, not only do you introduce your culture, you’re opening the door of opportunity.

You’re preparing your next generation to actually take over."

— Raude Raychel

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

COURTESY PHOTO

There are too many to name in this colorful crew, but the front row, from left, is Raude Raychel, Eke Toar, Calvin Sumual, NH State Sen. David Watters, Somersworth City Councilor-at-large Crystal Paradis, NH State Rep. Wendy Chase, Detty Katsubi (in Indonesian traditional costume), Mayor Dana Hilliard, Kensin Oroh and Luis Kampisboy.

my professional practice, I continue to be inspired by my own local heritage, and always try to find opportunities and insert some modern interpretations of Indonesian cultural forms whenever possible.”

Like Raychel and Byun, Kosasih says her vision is “to make Indonesia Cultural Center a civic hub for the local community as well — a place to gather, share thoughts and provide larger social and economic benefits.”

For Kosasih, it’s about much more than aesthetics. “As a designer, I believe a space can only be considered successful if it goes beyond as a visual statement of standing as a pretty-looking building,” she says. “It needs to have a greater impact beyond that.

Our hope is to have the Indonesia Cultural Center located at Somersworth as the hub between the Indonesian community in the state and the larger public.”

The initial time frame for the first three phases, says Raychel, has been accelerated only because of the tremendous support the ICC has received to date.

“We’re looking to get into phase two in 2023, and into phase three hopefully in the next three to five years,” she says. “We are really moving on a very fast pace right now.”

Still, Raychel says that she and the ICC advisory committee are taking a measured approach to ensure that they don’t take on too much too soon. “We want to make sure we’re very solid without foundation here,” she says. “We’re really taking the time to

connect with so many different businesses to take part in the Little Indonesia movement.”

Local businesses, especially those with immediate Indonesian connections, have responded. And thanks to the diversity of the programs provided by the ICC, business owners have a broad selection of causes to support.

“We have so many different layers that you can participate in,” she says. “You could be helping our annual budgeting for operations to make sure that the Cultural Center runs. Or you can support what we’re doing right now to connect people with community and businesses. The workforce demand right now is crazy.”

Finally, phase four of the Little Indonesia Project will focus on business development, and creating a business district that accentuates Indonesian enterprises. That means actively recruiting Indonesians, and Indonesian business interests, to the area. However, involving local businesses through every phase of the project is crucial, says Raychel.

“Connecting with businesses is so important for us to move forward,” she says.

“There are so many different layers. We want to make sure that we’re ready here.

Because the second that we opened that door with Indonesia, with investors coming in, Indonesian businesses in the United States can actually relocate or branch out at this Little Indonesia location.”

Regardless of which aspect of the project that participants choose to support, Little

Indonesia will always focus first on its constituents, says its president.

“This project is built by the community,” says Raychel. “When you build this project for the community, it will last from one generation to the other. So not only do you introduce your culture, you’re opening the door of opportunity. You’re preparing your next generation to actually take over. And for them to take over, they need to understand what Indonesian culture is all about.”

Tricia Sumarijanto, vice chair of Little Indonesia’s advisory board, who lived in the state from 2009 to 2019, when she moved back to Jakarta, sees the Cultural Center as a tie that binds her community.

“As an Indonesian abroad, I believe we love to connect with our culture and community, and ICC is a place that can help everyone to feel ‘home,’” says Sumarijanto.

“I also believe it’s very important to the Indonesian parents, to help their children living abroad to understand their own culture, which is always be part of them and will shape them to be global citizens.”

No doubt, Chris Schramm, who passed away last year after returning to Java, would be proud of his adopted community in New Hampshire. NH

Find out more Indonesian Community Connect Inc. 156 High St., Somersworth info@indonesianconnect.org (603) 841-7031, indonesianconnect.org

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 83

603 Living “A picnic is a state of mind and can be made anywhere.”

PHOTOS CPOURTESY SEACOAST PICNIC CO./JENN BAKOS PHOTOGRAPHY

— Unknown

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

Health 94 Ayuh 96

Hibernate in Style Indoor picnics are a cozy way to relax or celebrate a special day regardless of weather

BY EMILY HEIDT

W

hen you think of winter in New Hampshire, you may think of cruising the slopes of Bretton Woods, snowshoeing through Franconia Notch State Park (or your own backyard) and ice skating at Strawbery Banke, but it’s also the time of year when snow and chilly temperatures keep you inside by the fire with a good book and project or two. This season, you can practice the Danish art of hygge (hoo-ga), defined as creating a feeling of cozy contentment and well-being, by setting up a Pinterest-worthy indoor picnic. Do it yourself or you can hire Emily Huxtable of Seacoast Picnic Co. in Portsmouth or Tanya Tobin of Boho Pop-Up Picnic in Bedford to do it for you. (Hint: Think a movie night in your home or a private studio complete with twinkly lights, popcorn and other savory treats.)

Dream up your own perfect picnic experience with personal details like handwritten notes, flowers, a charcuterie board or boho tent, and let Emily or Tanya do the rest.

The best part? They will put it together and take it down for you too.

STARBOARD PACKAGE > Above and at left: This experience by Seacoast Picnic Co. is all about luxury and the memories. It includes a handcrafted table, chic umbrella, gold flatware, lovely table settings, Spindrift water and a graze box by Palette, like the Cheer graze box, pictured here.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 85

PHOTO COURTESY BOHO POP-UP PICNIC

603 LIVING / INDOOR PICNICS

PORT PACKAGE > This package includes all of the beautiful elements of Seacoast Picnic Co.’s Starboard Package, but you bring your own food and enjoy the ambiance. Would you like to add a balloon arch? Birthday cake? Flower crowns? Unique color theme? Emily Huxtable can help you add custom elements.

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

PHOTO COURTESY SEACOAST PICNIC CO./JENN BAKIS PHOTOGRAPHY

PHOTO CPOURTESY SEACOAST PICNIC CO.

LOVE IS SWEET > Treat someone you love to a Valentine’s Day pop-up picnic celebration at home filled with details like a box of chocolates, deck of cards, bluetooth record table and custom message written on a chalkboard easel.

PHOTO COURTESY SEACOAST PICNIC CO./PHOTO BY EMILY HEIDT

PICTURE PERFECT > Looking to include a few personal touches to your picnic? Flowers like these from Wild Valentine in Portsmouth make a great addition to any Seacoast Picnic Co. spread.

PHOTO COURTESY BOHO POP-UP PICNIC

INDOOR EASE > Comfort meets chic at The Valentine Room in Dover, an elegant studio space where Seacoast Picnic Co. will take the party inside.

WINTER WONDERLAND > Grab your friends and host a relaxing evening by the fire. While you need to provide the food, Boho Pop-Up Picnic will provide everything you need, like espresso martini candy boxes, winter table décor, pillows and blankets, candles and seltzer.

Find It Seacoast Picnic Co. / Portsmouth / seacoastpicnic.com Boho Pop-Up Picnic / Bedford / bohopopuppicnic.com

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 87

ASK THE EXPERTS :

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

GUIDE TO RETIREMENT LIVING

ASK THE

Experts Whether or not to move into a retirement community — or which one to choose — are big decisions. But with the right advice, this significant life change doesn’t have to feel daunting. The following experts from top New Hampshire communities can help guide you along your way as you plan a wonderful new future.

MEET THE RETIREMENT EXPERTS:

Cathleen Toomey

Dina Finos

DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS TAYLOR COMMUNITY TAYLORCOMMUNITY.ORG

Tammy Stevens

Shannon Lynch

VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING RIVERWOODS MANCHESTER RIVERWOODSGROUP.ORG

Maria Byrne

Kristin Mattheson

Judy Franseen

Rob Memmolo

DIRECTOR OF SALES THE BALDWIN THEBALDWINNH.ORG

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SENIOR LIVING SALES ADVISOR SILVERSTONE LIVING SILVERSTONELIVING.ORG

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS TAYLOR COMMUNITY TAYLORCOMMUNITY.ORG

VICE PRESIDENT SALES AND MARKETING SILVERSTONE LIVING SILVERSTONELIVING.ORG

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SUMMIT BY MORRISON THEMORRISONCOMMUNITIES.ORG

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR BEDFORD FALLS BEDFORDFALLSSENIORLIVING.COM

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GUIDE TO RETIREMENT LIVING

RiverWoods RIVERWOODSGROUP.ORG

port or nursing care. These are provided in the same community for a fraction of the market rate, and you are cared for by people who know you.

Taking the time to learn about CCRCs is an important step before you finalize your plans for a possible retirement move. More and more people are understanding the value of a CCRC, as we are generally living much longer, and have higher long-term care costs than we anticipated. A CCRC is a smart decision now and for the future.

Q Q

Q

What are some of the key benefits to living in your communities?

A

At RiverWoods, our residents often comment they wish they’d made the move sooner because life really is better in community. In addition to the services and amenities offered at every level, residents benefit from increased social opportunities. Research shows the importance of good relationships time and time again. With locations in Exeter, Manchester and Durham, there are a variety of options to choose from, and the RiverWoods Group is the largest family of CCRCs in northern New England.

What are some of the additional benefits?

A

Most people think of downsizing to a condo, or to an over 55 community. While downsizing is good, and enables you to free yourself from home maintenance, I personally think moving to a CCRC is a much smarter move. You have the opportunity to live in a community and enjoy home maintenance, but you get a huge added benefit of having your future long-term care settled. Additionally, with the insurance component of a CCRC, it can be financially beneficial to choose this option, and have a solid plan for the future.

— Cathleen Toomey, Vice President of Marketing, The RiverWoods Group, with locations in Exeter, Manchester and Durham

What’s the most important thing to know about your communities?

A

RiverWoods are not-for-profit Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs), which means we are an insurance product. You move while you are still independent and able to live safely on your own (age 62 or better). As an independent resident, you enjoy meals, housekeeping services, social and fitness opportunities, complimentary transportation, planned outings and even home maintenance.

All of this means more time to do what you enjoy and get the benefit of meeting new friends. As a resident, if your health needs ever change, you have access to enhanced levels of health care like assisted living, memory sup-

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 89

ASK THE EXPERTS :

Summit by Morrison

Q

Q

What’s the most important thing to know about your community?

Summit by Morrison, an integral part of The Morrison Communities, is a warm and welcoming community providing several levels of senior living at its finest. One of the key factors our residents tell us they value most is that as a part of The Morrison Communities, our residents have access to an array of medical care services within our two campuses allowing for a continuum of care when and if needed.

• Facility: Do you feel good when you walk into the building and tour the area where you will be living?

• Warmth: Is the staff welcoming, polite, respectful? Do they seem to be enjoying their work?

Don’t hesitate to ask questions and expect to get answers.

Then go with your heart!

Q

What key things should someone research when considering a move to a retirement community?

Choosing a retirement community is one of the most important decisions we will make. Do your homework by researching a variety of communities.

Some of the factors to consider are: • Location: Is it the right distance to the people you care about?

• Environment: Do you feel most comfortable in a country setting or do you prefer a bustling city setting?

A

THEBALDWINNH.ORG When should a person or couple start researching communities like The Baldwin?

A

The sooner the better! One of the most common things we hear from residents at our sister community is “I wish I had moved in sooner.” Don’t wait until you think you need health care. Move in while you’re still young and healthy enough to take full advantage of everything the community offers. The average age of people who have already made a deposit on their new home at The Baldwin is 74. With a plan in place, they now have time to plan for a stress-free move and they’ll be ready — and young enough — to fully enjoy The Baldwin lifestyle when we open in summer 2023.

QR CODE TO BLOG: Eight important advantages of a CCRC or Life Plan Community.

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THEMORRISONCOMMUNITIES.ORG

A

The Baldwin

Q

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

GUIDE TO RETIREMENT LIVING

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

What are some key benefits of living in your community?

At Summit by Morrison, our residents experience a safe and carefree environment where focus can be on living the kind of life you chose without the hassle of day-to-day maintenance of a house and property. A social life lies just outside your door when and if you wish to participate. Summit is an environment where you will feel respected and valued. We value each of our residents, and welcome their feedback and opinions to help make Summit the very best living experience possible.

A

— Shannon Lynch, Executive Director, Summit by Morrison

Q

What’s something unique about your community?

A

The Baldwin is unique in many ways. One major difference is that we offer a choice of contracts so residents can choose the arrangement that best meets their needs and goals. We will also have a flexible system of healthcare delivery that empowers residents to make choices about how and where they’ll receive any care they need. The Baldwin won’t shuttle residents through predetermined levels of care the way some communities do.

Our intergenerational location is another big advantage. Rather than being sequestered with people their own age, our walkable location in Woodmont Commons and public spaces built into The Baldwin mean residents will interact with people of all ages daily. Plus, we’ll have partnerships with area schools, the University of New Hampshire, and other organizations that will make volunteer and mentorship opportunities available — both for residents and for students who have an interest in working in health care or senior living. As with our sister community, residents at The Baldwin will also have a voice and partner with management to shape the community.

— Maria Byrne, Director of Sales, The Baldwin

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GUIDE TO RETIREMENT LIVING

Taylor Community

Q

TAYLORCOMMUNITY.ORG

barber services, game rooms, and more in our beautifully appointed buildings. And when it comes to mealtimes — our residents have the choice to decide whether to stay at home or enjoy a delicious chef-prepared meal in one of our beautiful dining rooms or join an evening of al fresco dining under the Pavilion. — Dina Finos, Director of Admissions, Taylor Community

What’s the most important thing to know about your community?

Q

A

As the only nonprofit Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) in the Lakes Region, Taylor Community provides residents with myriad opportunities on our stunning three campuses, all the while providing easy access to everything the beautiful Lakes Region has to offer. Taylor is unique in that it was established in 1907, and our success over the years has allowed us to expand from our original Laconia location to two additional campus locations in Wolfeboro. Our most recent growth in Wolfeboro allows us to further enhance the many offerings we have for our residents. We take great pride in being a premiere CCRC, also called a Life Plan or Life Care Community. In turn, we ensure that no matter what part of the continuum a resident resides on that they have access to cultural experiences, resident life programming, trips, numerous and varied wellness programs, resident-led groups, and incredible dining options. When you come to live at Taylor, you are not just moving into a stunning cottage or apartment, you’re moving to a community that is filled with like-minded people who are excited to get to know you and welcome you home. — Tammy Stevens, Director of Admissions, Taylor Community

What are some of the key benefits to living in your community?

A

Living at Taylor has many benefits, but the most valued component of living in a continuing care retirement community is the peace of mind it brings for the future. It is essential to have a plan in place for future care, and at Taylor, you remain in control of these important decisions, which will define your quality of life down the road.

Plus, our resident-centered philosophy means that you also benefit from maintenance-free, worry-free living while having access to a full calendar of social, physical and cultural activities. With Independent Living at Taylor, you’ll find spacious, private cottages and apartments steps away from our many fantastic amenities. All independent living residents have access to our on-campus fitness centers and warm water pool, movie theater, lounges, libraries, salon/

Q

What’s your No. 1 tip for the moving process?

Q

A

When planning your move, the best advice that I can give is to start the downsizing process early, and it’s OK to accept help from the professionals. We hold seminars throughout the year, which provide numerous tips and tricks on how to make the downsizing process easier, so I’d highly suggest attending a seminar to learn about the best way to start. While moving can be an overwhelming process, we have found that it becomes less daunting when you have an idea of where to begin “right-sizing” and outside resources that can help throughout the process.

— Dina Finos, Director of Admissions, Taylor Community

When should someone start researching retirement communities?

A

One of the things I emphasize to anyone who is considering a retirement community is to begin looking early – it’s never too soon to begin the process. In fact, many residents living at Taylor have said that they wished they’d moved even sooner than they did. There are a lot of factors that go into making a final decision on where to retire, and at Taylor we want to ensure that you are completely comfortable with before making such a big move. It’s important you drive process, whether you want to move quickly or farther down the road. It’s incredibly important for us to build relationships with everyone that is looking at Taylor, from the first phone call to your decision to make our community your next home. We’re here to support you as you make this important choice, no matter how long you need to take, and always happy to answer any questions you may have. — Tammy Stevens, Director of Admissions, Taylor Community

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 91

ASK THE EXPERTS :

Silverstone Living

Q

Q

SILVERSTONELIVING.ORG good weather because we have restaurants, hair salons, a theater, fitness center, library, coffee shop, etc., all on site.

— Kristin Mattheson

What’s the most important thing to know about your community?

A

The most important thing to know about our community is that we have been a premier Life Plan Community in Southern New Hampshire for over 123 years. It all began with an endowment from philanthropist John M. Hunt, who felt the desire to assist the underserved in the community in the late 1800s, and his spirit is what has led this community for more than a century. — Judy Franseen

Q

When should someone start researching retirement communities?

What are some of the key benefits to living in your community?

A

Think of all the things you would like to give up; painting the house, mowing the lawn, the dreaded shoveling of the snow, menu planning, routine housekeeping — we’ve got you! You have as much privacy as you desire while still being able to find friends just a short walk away if you want. Residents are equally as active in the winter months as they are in

Bedford Falls

Q

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

GUIDE TO RETIREMENT LIVING

People should think about a retirement community while they are healthy and before they “need” it.

Retirement Communities are not “one size fit all.” They are all going to have a different feel to them. Just like moving into your first home, it needs to feel right when you visit. Planning and visiting before you need to make a decision are important, and learning your options for a secure future should start now so that you fully take advantage of all the events and opportunities offered by this exciting and fulfilling lifestyle. – Judy Franseen — Kristin Mattheson, senior living sales advisor, and Judy Franseen, vice president sales and marketing, Silverstone Living

BEDFORDFALLSSENIORLIVING.COM

What’s the most important thing to know about your community?

A

A

As a Benchmark Assisted Living and Mind & Memory Care community, the health and safety of our residents and associates is always our top priority. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, we have taken a proactive approach to protect the physical, mental and emotional health of our residents and associates.

Benchmark was one of the first senior living providers in New England to mandate the vaccine for all of our associates. When the pandemic began, we were one of the first to begin limiting, restricting, and screening visitors and associates at our community and did so before the state of New Hampshire required it. During its height, we also temporarily suspended all new move-ins.

Today, with support from our informed team of experts and associates, our residents continue their normal routines and confidently connect with others.

Together, our new and existing residents are experiencing all we have to offer and staying active in community life.

Q

What are some of the key benefits to living in your community?

Q

A

At Bedford Falls, our residents can age well and stay a step ahead with personalized care plans tailored to their needs, on-site supportive healthcare services and quality connections and experiences. If and when their needs change, residents and their families have peace of mind knowing we offer 24/7 personal care as well as services like medication and continence management, mechanical lifts and two-person assists.

Of all the amenities that you offer, what do you consider the best?

A

While we offer many beautiful common spaces to extend our residents’ homes, such as a pampering spa, an inviting pub where we host social hours and a state-of-the-art demonstration kitchen, our best “amenity” is our people. We have been proud to receive many local and state “Best of” awards, which are a testament to our associates’ commitment to our mission of elevating human connection.

— Rob Memmolo, CDAL, Executive Director, Bedford Falls, a Benchmark Assisted Living and Mind & Memory Care community

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

When it’s your heart, experience matters First hospital in New England to implant WATCHMAN™ after its FDA approval First community hospital in New Hampshire to offer TAVR (transcatheter aortic valve replacement) First community hospital in New Hampshire to offer TCAR (transcarotid artery revascularization)

Learn how we put your heart health first at CountOnCMC.org

MANCHESTER BERLIN COLEBROOK

DERRY LANCASTER NASHUA

PETERBOROUGH PLYMOUTH WOLFEBORO

603.669.0413

603 LIVING / HEALTH Weight loss that often accompanies exercise can also improve cholesterol levels. When lifestyle changes aren’t enough, medication can be prescribed to help get cholesterol under control.

MYTH: All fats are bad.

FACT: Many of us have been led to believe that fat is the enemy. While it’s true that it is best to avoid saturated and trans fats such as butter, unsaturated fats, found in foods such as olive oil, avocados, most nuts, and fish such as salmon, are considered beneficial.

“Time is of the essence” during a heart attack or stroke, so when in doubt, get it checked out.

Vikas Veeranna, M.D., F.A.C.C.

“Fats are essential for the body,” says Vikas Veeranna, M.D., F.A.C.C., a cardiologist at Catholic Medical Center’s New England Heart & Vascular Institute. “They are a major source of energy and help us to absorb nutrients and vitamins.” Unlike saturated and trans fat that can clog arteries and raise LDL or “bad” cholesterol, unsaturated fats can raise HDL or “good” cholesterol, reduce inflammation and lower the overall risk of heart disease. “It’s the kind of fat that matters,” Veeranna says.

Myths vs. Facts

Myths and misconceptions about heart disease persist — get the facts straight on your heart health

BY KAREN A. JAMROG / ILLUSTRATION BY MADELINE McMAHON

H

eart health gets a lot of attention, as well it should. Heart disease, a term that refers to a range of conditions that affect the heart or blood vessels, is the leading cause of death in adults in the U.S., causing about one in four deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yet myths and misconceptions about heart disease continue. How’s your hearthealth IQ? Read on to get the facts about one of your body’s most vital organs.

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New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

MYTH: High cholesterol is due solely to a bad diet.

FACT: What you eat does indeed affect the cholesterol in your body, which influences your risk of heart disease and heart attack, but factors such as age, genetics and obesity can also contribute to cholesterol levels. Cholesterol numbers can often be improved through lifestyle changes such as eating better, not smoking, limiting alcohol consumption and getting sufficient exercise, which can boost HDL or “good” cholesterol.

MYTH: To keep my heart healthy, I need to get lots of high-intensity exercise.

FACT: Keeping your heart in shape does not require that you run for miles every day or push your body to the limit. Instead, the average healthy adult needs to get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity, 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity, or a combination of the two each week. “Moderate” means the movement speeds up your heart rate and makes you breathe harder than normal, but not so hard that you can’t speak in full sentences.

In addition to getting aerobic exercise, strength training for all major muscle groups at least two times per week is also recommended. Strengthening exercises might include body weight, dumbbells or resistance tubes, for example.

If you can’t devote big chunks of time to exercise, try to get five minutes of movement several times a day. “Maybe [it’s] just

variety of ways, some quite subtle. Most often, Dourdoufis says, people having a heart attack experience pressure or tightness in the chest, and many have jaw, neck, arm or back discomfort or pain.

Women’s symptoms can be even less recognizable as signs of a heart attack, Veeranna says, and might include nausea or lightheadedness. “Time is of the essence” during a heart attack or stroke, he notes, so when in doubt, get it checked out.

Aspirin updates Many news outlets this past fall reported a change in recommendations for the routine daily use of low-dose or baby aspirin to reduce the risk of a first heart attack or stroke in adults. The updated recommendations, which confused many patients, stemmed from concerns about internal bleeding that can result from regular use of aspirin. While the potential harm of taking daily aspirin might not be worth it for some individuals, the benefits outweigh the risks in individuals with a certain health profile.

For example, “patients who have coronary disease, who are seeing a physician for management of coronary disease, who have stents, who have had heart attacks or stroke absolutely need to stay on their aspirin therapy without interruption,” stresses Peter Dourdoufis, D.O., F.A.C.C., cardiologist and chief of cardiovascular services at Portsmouth Regional Hospital. Ask your doctor what is best for you. a couple of laps around the house or your driveway,” Veeranna says. “That adds up if done on a regular basis.” The mantra to live by, he says, is “move more, sit less.”

MYTH: High blood pressure occurs mostly in workaholics or people who are always stressed.

FACT: Emotional or work-related stress can elevate blood pressure and contribute to high blood pressure or hypertension, but risk factors also include age, family history, a sedentary lifestyle, being overweight or

obese, and eating unhealthful foods. Dietary sodium is “a major contributing factor to hypertension,” says Peter Dourdoufis, D.O., F.A.C.C., cardiologist and chief of cardiovascular services at Portsmouth Regional Hospital. Caffeine, excessive alcohol, and cigarette smoking can also increase blood pressure.

MYTH: A heart attack is dramatic, like in the movies when a stricken person clutches their chest and falls to the floor.

FACT: Heart attacks reveal themselves in a

MYTH: Heart disease occurs mostly in men.

FACT: Heart disease affects both sexes.

As the leading cause of death in men and women in the U.S., it outranks breast cancer, which many women fear most as a threat to their health. The risk of heart disease increases for everyone with age, particularly for men who are 45 and older and women aged 55 and older, and heart attacks tend to be more deadly in women, with women more likely than men to die following a heart attack. NH For more information about heart health, visit the American Heart Association’s website at heart.org.

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nhmagazine.com | January/February 2022 95

603 LIVING

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend Editor’s note: Our friend and colleague Bill Burke, who passed away in October, wrote this several months ago. It’s the last piece of his we’ll publish in New Hampshire Magazine, and we’re grateful for one more chance to chuckle at his singular sense of humor.

W

e lost power last night, because we live in Sandown, and this is what we do.

It’s fairly predictable this time of year.

Or any time of year. A slight breeze whispers through a stand of white birch at the end of the driveway, and suddenly it’s 1843 and I’m old-timey Yankee folk gnawing on hardtack whilst waiting patiently for them to invent Bruins games.

After 25 years in our southern New Hampshire home, we should be used to it. We’ve weathered two major ice storms, two wicked wind storms and the remnants of Hurricane Irene — each of which left us in the dark for at least five days. Then there are the sundry fallen trees and suicide squirrels who tap dance on the transformer across the street just before going poof in a fatal pink cloud of ozone, plunging us into darkness again. Squirrels are idiots.

This time, though, it was just a Tuesday.

We were due, apparently.

You’d think we’d be tough enough to deal with this by now. I say unto you, however, we are not. We’re a lot better at sighing loudly every few minutes and woe-is-meing the hours away than we are at preparing for this somewhat regular occurrence.

And yes, there are alternatives to sitting in the dark and re-dialing the utility’s outage hotline over and over, such as purchasing a generator. There are two immediate problems with this plan: 1. I’m not really interested in running outside every couple hours to gas it up in the middle of an ice storm.

2. Whole-house, hardwired generators are expensive. By my calculations, one standby generator equals about 1.75 trips to Walt Disney World. A man’s got to have priorities.

So, with a distinct lack of generator in our backyard and the sun dropping below the treeline, we opted to head out

for dinner. Fifteen minutes later, our family of three walked into Fremont Pizzeria, and were seated at the exact table where my wife and I settled on our daughter’s name 19 years ago. (It came down to either Katherine or Extra Cheese.)

Within a few minutes, the tables around us filled with our neighboring townsfolk whose homes were also in the dark. We all huddled together in this oasis of light, checking our phones, and cursing the utility company while Nick slung some amazing food our way.

You’d think this gathering would create a sense of community — an oasis borne of a shared hardship. Only you’d be mistaken.

Granite Staters are a hardy breed who can live without power for quite some time.

It doesn’t mean we won’t grouse about it. Pretty much everyone in the place frowned at their food, knowing that when the bill was paid and the waitstaff tipped out, we’d have to go home to a cold, house-shaped shadow. NH

BY BILL BURKE / ILLUSTRATION BY BRAD FITZPATRICK 96

New Hampshire Magazine | January/February 2022

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