New Hampshire Magazine January-February 2021

N E W H A M P S H I R E M AG A Z I N E

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jan/feb 2021 4 8 t hings f r o m new hampshire hockey c ar whiz ri c h b en o i t

Fast Food • Winter Fun • UFOs Liberty • The Shaggs • Leftovers a n d m o re . . .

Live Free.

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Jan/Feb 2021

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Unhibernate This Winter. This is no time for sitting around. It’s time to get out and explore. In Maine, a fresh blanket of snow is a welcome invitation to bundle up and head out. With over 14,000 miles of snowmobile trails and plenty of wide-open spaces, Maine is the perfect place to make the most of the season.

V I S I TM AI N E .CO M

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nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

New Hampshire Magazine® is published by McLean Communications, Inc., 150 Dow St., Manchester, NH 03101, (603) 624-1442. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any mistakes in advertisements or editorial. Statements/opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect or represent those of this publication or its officers. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this publication, McLean Communications, LLC.: New Hampshire Magazine disclaims all responsibility for omissions and errors. New Hampshire Magazine is published monthly, with the exception of February and April. USPS permit number 022-604. Periodical postage paid at Manchester 03103-9651. Postmaster send address changes to: New Hampshire Magazine, P.O. Box 433273, Palm Coast, FL 32143 Printed in New Hampshire

Contents from top left: courtesy and by kendal j. bush; inset colckwise from top left: courtesy, by p.t. sullivan, art by rebecca green, by susan laughlin and courtesy

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First Things 4 Editor’s Note 6 Contributors Page 8 Feedback

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603 Navigator

Jan/Feb 2021

66

603 Informer

603 Living

12 Travel

valentine’s day escapes

by Bill Burke

Features 38 Transcript

Meet Kait Bailey, tow-truck driver and roadside rescuer.

by David Mendelsohn

40 Hockey Ties and Tragedy Passion for local hockey runs deep in New Hampshire and among the legends is this catastrophe in Berlin.

by Brion O’Connor

50 You’re Welcome

Libraries. Thanksgiving. Mega Millions.

Fast Food. Summer vacation. “Let it Go.” American Rock ‘n’ Roll. America.

What do all of those things have in common? Simple. They exist because of New Hampshire. Find out why the country owes the Granite State a big thank-you for these items and 40 more (did we mention Donald Trump?).

compiled by the New Hampshire Magazine staff and special guests

66 Rich Rebuilds

Come for the laughs, stay to learn how to service your own Tesla.

by Lisa Rogak photos by Kendal J. Bush

14 Top Events

72 Review

outdoor winter fun

Sy Montgomery’s “Becoming a good creature”

by Emily Heidt

16 Our Town Meredith

by Barbara Coles

26 Community reporter lenie

92 Health

28 Blips

by Karen A. Jamrog

by Rick Broussard

by Casey McDermott

95 Local Dish

24 Sips

30 Artisan

recipe by Barbara Michelson

by Michael Hauptly-Pierce

by Susan Laughlin

by Barbara Radcliffe Rogers

20 Food & Drink

craft cocktails at home with j.m. Hirsch

local drink news & recipes

strength training for better heart health

by Rick Broussard

nh in the news

homemade bagels

Nancy Morgan Fabric art

31 Politics

is nh returning to red?

by James Pindell

32 What Do You Know? riding the mud turtle

by Marshall Hudson

34 First Person

96 Ayuh

by Christopher Locke

by Bill Burke

guerrilla donuts

ON THE COVER Would America be America without New Hampshire? Find out in “You’re Welcome” starting on page 60. Cover illustration by John R. Goodwin

american, idle

Volume 35, Number 1 ISSN 1560-4949 nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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EDITOR’S NOTE

The easiest topic for a good January 2021 Editor’s Notes would be to tell 2020, “So long, and don’t let the door hit you where the Good Lord split you.” But was 2020 really so bad we can’t say anything nice?

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nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

ne thing I’ve realized with age is that you should always thank your teachers — even those whose classes you’d hoped to avoid. And if nothing else, the past year has been a master class on how the world really is a lot smaller than we like to think. That’s an important perspective as we try to figure out global crises that are equally invisible as COVID-19 and unconcerned with boundary lines and border walls, like what’s going on with the climate, or the economic forces that send refugees caravaning in search of sanctuary.

Perhaps the hardest lesson for our country has been how lack of trust in our institutions impacts how we respond to calls for action or civility. And if anyone wants to point to the other side of the partisan divide as the source for our lack of trust, I have a 2020 mirror I’d like to hold up for your gaze.

Here are just a few things 2020 taught us: We can do things we never thought we could and have resources that we only discover when we need them. This knowledge could come in handy in the future. Maybe sooner than we expect.

Neighborhoods are full of neighbors.

We’ve hopefully gotten to know a few of them last year, or at least learned to recognize them while out walking and biking.

The “frontlines” of a global crisis can be right downtown at the hospital or just down the street at your grocery store or biggest revelation of all, right in front of you as you wash your hands, keep your distance and cover your mouth. The frontlines were never really that far away. In fact, if we’re taking responsibility for our own actions and willing to sacrifice for the common good, we are all frontline workers.

The toughest lesson of 2020 is one that we all learn eventually, but that was driven home with special poignancy in a pan-

demic that targeted the elderly and infirm.

The daily death count ticking higher on every news channel reminds us that people close to us are not going to be there forever.

Sometimes not even until next year. This is a lesson we should hold close.

But the contrary lesson is that, in spite of death and peril, we have to keep moving.

Like life itself, civilization isn’t static. It either grows or it dies, and there are human costs to bear with every choice we make.

Maybe we haven’t completely learned this lesson. Maybe we never will.

During the Blitz in Great Britain in WWII, Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis delivered a lecture on “Learning in War Time,” in which he offered three mental exercises to help young scholars continue in their studies in spite of the apocalyptic death and destruction all around. His recommendations were to exercise self-control in place of the excitements of the war, faith in exchange for frustration and sobriety (or clarity of focus) in place of fear.

The ideal conditions for us to pursue the good life are never completely in place and yet we persevere. That’s self-control. No one ever has time to finish the tasks of life, so we must face all our uncertain futures with faith.

Finally, no one will escape death only, perhaps, extend our time on Earth, so we must accept the human condition with clear eyes.

I’ll add one more exercise that could be helpful: counting your blessings. We live in a remarkable state that has been spared much of the worst of the pandemic.

To that end, and to lighten things up a bit here at the start of 2021, we’ve counted a few of the many blessings that NH has given the world in our cover story. No need to say thanks. You’re already welcome.

photo by p.t. sullivan

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FOREVER IS JUST BEGINNING

Contributors Freelance writer and journalist Brion O’Connor (pictured above at Fenway Park during the 2010 NHL Winter Classic), who wrote “Hockey Ties” and “Winter Fun” in “You’re Welcome,” is a graduate of Manchester Central High School, where he played soccer and hockey, and the University of New Hampshire, where his extracurricular activities should remain a secret. He lives on Boston’s North Shore in a little cottage that he shares with his wife of 26 years, two daughters, two cats with serious attitude problems, a wonderfully goofy rescue hound named Hobey, and far too many bicycles, soccer cleats and hockey skates. His work has appeared in many publications, including Men’s Journal, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Bicycling, Men’s Fitness, Boston Magazine and numerous in-flight magazines.

for Jan/Feb 2021

Christopher Locke wrote “First Person.” His work has appeared in The Sun, North American Review, Atticus Review and many more.

Author Lisa Rogak wrote “Rich Rebuilds.” Her books have been mentioned in numerous national publications.

Learn more at lisarogak.com.

New Hampshire Magazine contributing editor Bill Burke wrote this month's “Ayuh” and “Navigator.” He also wrote sections of “You're Welcome.”

Frequent New Hampshire Magazine contributor Kendal J. Bush took the photos for “Rich Rebuilds.” Learn more at kendaljbush.com.

Longtime former New Hampshire Magazine managing editor and current contributing editor Barbara Coles wrote this month's “Living.”

Our regular “What Do You Know?” writer Marshall Hudson is a land surveyor, farmer and New Hampshire history buff.

About | Behind the Scenes at New Hampshire Magazine From left: Josh Auger, New Hampshire Magazine sales representative; Erica Auciello Murphy, director of communications and community relations for the Common Man; and Nancy Mellitt from the New Hampshire Food Bank Thanks to New England’s Tap House Grille for providing the meals on National Nurses Day and again on Veterans Day.

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nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

This past spring, as we grappled with the new reality of life during the COVID-19 pandemic, we wanted to share our gratitude for the hard and often-thankless work nurses provide our community. At the time, we were also working on our Excellence in Nursing Awards issue, and National Nurses Day (May 6) was just a few weeks away — this inspired the beginning of the Meals of Thanks program. With the generous support of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, New England’s Tap House Grille of Hooksett was able to prepare and deliver almost 1,000 meals to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Manchester, Catholic Medical Center and Elliot Hospital on National Nurses Day. Recently, we got the Meals of Thanks band back together again. To do our small part to show our deep appreciation for veterans, the Tap House team served lunch outside of the Manchester VA Medical Center on Veterans Day. Then, on November 24, to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Common Man Family of Restaurants provided more than 700 meals to the New Hampshire Food Bank and an additional delivery of 40 meals to The Way Home. All of this was made possible by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care’s sponsorship.

courtesy photos

Good Things Are Cooking

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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

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

Cherished Gifts

[Regarding the December issue Gift Guide] Two of my best Christmas gifts came from my sister. When our first child was born, money was tight. I loved the Hallmark Baby’s First Christmas ornament but couldn’t afford it. My sister (with whom we never swapped Christmas gifts) surprised me with it even though I never talked about it beforehand. My second-best gift also came from the same sister. Several Christmases ago, she gave me a small bottle of white pebbles. Everyone in the family couldn’t figure out why I was so excited! I knew immediately that the pebbles were from the driveways at the New Jersey shore we visited every summer as children. I still cherish both gifts from an amazing sister!

Linda Hunt Groveton

Vigorous Pumping

[Regarding “What Do You Know?” December 2020] My wife and I were married in the Newington Meetinghouse in 1968. We had my family’s Baptist minister officiate and my best man’s mother, the Episcopal church organist, play the bellows-powered organ.

Just watching her vigorous pumping of the bellows with her thighs to get a sound out of the antique box was worth the price of admission. It was a sunny June day, which was fortunate as there is no anteroom; it was out of the car and direct to the altar. The bride did not use the horse mounting rock arriving or leaving.

Dale Caswell Canterbury Editor’s Note: Writer Marshall Hudson passed your note along to us to enjoy and share with our readers. Thanks for the vivid imagery.

Typo Turnabout

It would seem we are even now, for as I found the typo in the printed article, I missed my own typo in my reply that was printed in this month’s [December] issue.

“Thoroughly” is “throughly,” a perfectly good word, just spelled improperly and therefore a very different meaning.

Touché, sir, I am red-cheeked, well played by one and all. Perhaps like a new game, we’ll see who spots this typo!

Dan Deloge Canterbury

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nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

emails, snail mail, facebook, tweets

Editor’s Note: According the dictionary.com, “throughly” (a real word) can be defined as “thoroughly,” or “completely; without reserve.” The two words both appear in the Bible, where the distinction appears to be the point of action being from without (thoroughly) or within (throughly). So one can go over something thoroughly, but one must internally examine something “throughly.” In that case, I think we can say your original word (and our decision to leave it unchanged) are grammatically correct, although some have opined that the only reason that the word “throughly” is still in use is due to how commonly “thoroughly” is misspelled.

More Literary Justice

In reply to Art Pease’s letter criticizing Marshall Hudson’s use of “top” to refer to northern New Hampshire: Art! Art! Art! It’s “whoever wrote,” not “whomever” — and you’re right, illiteracy is a slippery slope!

Mary Sullivan Londonderry

Brave New Store

My wife and I have just opened an old-fashioned country store in Grafton, New Hampshire. We are stocking our shelves with as many locally produced products as possible, and we’ve been able to make many great connections with all kinds of local producers, from raw honey and coffee to wreaths and knitted winter wear. Let me know if you’d be interested in writing an article about us, and I’d be happy to send pictures of our store. Thanks and have a great week!

Mark & Carole Brobst Grafton Editor’s Note: Congratulations and best wishes. It’s not an easy time to open a store of any kind, so we salute your entrepreneurial spirit and will certainly check things out next time we’re up in Grafton.

Rude Awakening?

Thank you for the great articles in New Hampshire Magazine. This feedback is in reference to the October 2020 article, “Political Slumber” by James Pindell.

One question: Is a complete reversal of the New Hampshire Statehouse and Executive Council considered boring?

Sue Homola Hollis Editor’s Note: We posed your question

to James Pindell and he said that’s what happens when you make election predictions weeks in advance (he has to file his stories about six weeks prior to the first of the month that appears on the issue). But we might add that New Hampshire is famous for surprising people and confounding their expectations during our elections. See Pindell’s “Politics” on page 30 in this issue for a better response to your note.

Blowing in the Wind

Marshall Hudson’s whimsical description of the Groton wind farm as a line of dancing ladies in our November issue “What Do You Know?” column did not sit well with many opponents of the project who sent a few notes to correct figures cited in his piece. While Hudson was not attempting a policy story and, while all the figures he used (some disputed below) came from official literature, we’re happy to run this list of disputes to the information presented.

Although the new figures all came with official source citations, we have not attempted to verify them or vet them with any who have opposing views. We simply publish them to close the loop until we can do a longer story on the use of renewable energy in New Hampshire sometime in 2021.

• Groton Wind does not produce an average of 48 megawatts as the article states.

It produces an average of 12 megawatts.

• Groton Wind does not produce enough power to power 20,000 New Hampshire homes. The average daily production is enough for 12,000 and all of the limited power goes to Massachusetts.

• The article references coal plants as though they were still a big part of our grid. They are not.

• The article references an obscure wildlife impact study while ignoring volumes of info on the New Hampshire SEC site, which mention huge impacts on wildlife.

• New Hampshire is the No. 1 lowest state in the US for emissions generated per megawatt hour, one quarter of the US average and about half that of California.

Need a good reason for spotting the Newt?

Spot four newts like the one above (but much smaller) 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, send answers plus your name and mailing address to:

Spot the Newt c/o New Hampshire Magazine 150 Dow St., Manchester, NH 03101 Email them to newt@nhmagazine.com or fax them to (603) 624-1310.

This month’s lucky newt spotter will win a $50 gift certificate to shop the vast local inventory of NH Made, the state’s premier boosters of Granite State products, including locally purveyed gifts, services, food and drink. The mission of NH Made is to strengthen New Hampshire’s state economy by increasing awareness and demand for NewHampshiremade products and services, and to provide support programs local businesses need to grow. Along with a roster of members from every nook and cranny of the state, an extensive online shopping site and annual directory of members and products, NH Made has recently opened its headquarters and shop in downtown Portsmouth at 28 Deer St., and all products and services can be explored at nhmade.com.

New Hampshire Magazine has been a proud member of NH Made for more than two decades.

December’s “Spot the Newt” winner is Barry Bean of Litchfield.

December issue newts were on pages 4, 24, 29 and 87.

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nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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The Meals of Thanks program, sponsored by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, began with more than 900 meals prepared by New England’s Tap House Grille on National Nurses Day in May, and continued in 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. 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.

“In a year like 2020, it’s even more important to find ways to support our community, friends and neighbors. We’re proud to sponsor the Meals of Thanks program and make a positive impact on the lives of Granite Staters.”

– William Brewster, MD FACP CHIE, VP Harvard Pilgrim Health Care – NH Market Sponsor:

Advertisers:

TOP LEFT AND MIDDLE PHOTOS BY KENDAL J. BUSH

603 Navigator “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

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nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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Top Events 14 Our Town 16 Food & Drink 20 Sips 24

Get a Room

Spice up a weekend with a superlative getaway for two

by Bill burke

I

n the prepandemic times, getting stuck in a room with your love for an extended period was an attractive proposition. It still can be — you’ll just need to find the right spot. Think creature comforts, romantic settings and breathtaking views. Get Mother Nature to cooperate and find yourself snowed in at one of these charming spots for a steamy midwinter (or Valentine’s Day) affair to remember.

 Best View: The heart of The Glen House in Gorham is the expansive great room just off the lobby. A towering stone fireplace creates a welcoming yet intimate space with views of the Whites just outside a wall of massive windows reaching up to cathedral ceilings. Score yourself a west-facing room and you’ll wake up in the shadow of The Presidential Range and a network of nearby trails.

 Stoke the Fires: The Inn at Thorn Hill & Spa in Jackson Village provides a classic, comfortable, French-country feel with a fireplace in every room of the main lodge, and in each of the private cottages — which pair perfectly with a two-person Jacuzzi (also in every room and cottage).

Light up one of the gas fireplaces and the bone-chilling grip of a Granite State winter will never seem further away.

Turn up the heat: Commit. The elopement package includes, among other things, champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries, a 6-inch wedding cake topper, bouquet and corsage, and a justice of the peace just to make it all legal. theglenhouse.com

Turn up the heat: Book one of the many spa experiences in the Honeymoon Bridge room, and share your indulgence in this private couples’ haven. innatthornhill.com

 Most Romantic: The Sugar Hill Inn, known for its original art and stylish guest rooms and cottages, is an alluring spot to indulge, relax and immerse yourself in a classic boutique country inn. Pro tip: Arrive hungry, because the table is yours for the evening. Enjoy white linen, candlelight, a cozy fireplace and spectacular views in the award-winning dining room.

Turn up the heat: Call ahead and add chocolates, flowers, champagne, wine and cheese, and fresh flowers to your accommodations. sugarhillinn.com

 Playtime: Pack your sense of humor and try on a new identity at Adventure Suites in North Conway. Cupid’s Corner, one of 19 creatively themed suites, provides amorous guests with a heart-shaped, kingsize canopy bed, a two-person jetted tub and a distinctly burlesque vibe.

Turn up the heat: Order up the Proposal Perfection package. You bring the ring and the (fingers crossed) soon-to-be betrothed; they provide the chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne in the Victorian lobby with rose petals scattered throughout.

An incognito photographer will capture the moment. adventuresuites.com nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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603 NAVIGATOR / top events

Jan/Feb Picks

photo by victor cap

Winter Activities

Get out of the house and snowshoe through the mountains this winter.

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nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

Guided Snowshoeing Tours

Saturdays throughout January and February, Intervale

Spend a few hours of your morning with a relaxing guided snowshoeing walk along the East Branch and Saco rivers. Learn about the trees and wildlife, and search for animal tracks while brushing up on basic snowshoeing technique and bushwacking skills. crosscountryskinh.com

Ice Castle

The ice castle in North Woodstock is an unforgettable winter creation that brings fairy tales to life. The structure is built entirely by hand using hundreds of thousands of icicles “grown” by professional artists. The castle includes LED-lit sculptures, frozen thrones, carved ice tunnels, slides and fountains.

Opening and closing dates depend on the weather. icecastles.com

@carma2112

Open January to March, North Woodstock

photo courtesy

It’s easy to sit indoors by a cozy fire, but if you’re feeling a little too warm and hankering for some socially distanced outdoor adventure, look no further. In these frigid months, grab a warm coat and mittens, and head out to experience the Granite State in winter.

17th Annual Ice Harvest & Outdoor Winter Fun February 20, Tamworth Village

photo by david j. murray/cleareyephoto.com

Do you secretly want to recreate the opening scene in “Frozen” featuring ice harvesters at work? Set yourself back in the 1800s and try your hand at the Annual Ice Harvest and Outdoor Winter Fun. Make sure to meet the farm animals, enjoy the live music, watch an ice-carving demonstration and much more. remickmuseum.org

Mt. Washington Valley Ice Fest February 5-7, North Conway

This annual weekend festival features three full days of demos, clinics and more.

Seasoned climbers can try advanced tours like the one-day Mt. Washington ascent, while newbies can opt for classes like ice climbing 101. mwv-icefest.com

Ice Skating at Strawbery Banke’s Puddle Dock Pond Winter, Portsmouth

The entire family will enjoy skating at Labrie Family Skate at Puddle Dock Pond, a seasonal outdoor ice-skating rink at the heart of the 10-acre living history museum. Bring your skates or rent your own, and don’t forget your mask. strawberybanke.org

1. NH Sanctioned & Jackson Invitational Snow Sculpting Competition, Jackson

NH Sanctioned & Jackson Invitational Snow Sculpting Competition

4. Mt. Washington Valley Ice Fest, North Conway

January 28-31, Jackson

Sculptors from around the Northeast transform cylinders of snow into works of art for this annual contest. Watch the artisans at work and don’t forget to take pictures because these sculptures won’t last long. jacksonnh.com

2. Ice Castle, North Woodstock 3. Guided Snowshoeing Tours, Intervale

1 2 34 5

5. Ice Harvest & Outdoor Winter Fun, Tamworth 6. Ice Skating at Strawbery Banke’s Puddle Dock Pond, Portsmouth

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603 NAVIGATOR / our town

Bob houses on the ice in Meredith

Magical Meredith

Summer isn’t the only time to visit the lake town

By Barbara Radcliffe Rogers / Photos by stillman rogers

W

hen we think of centers for winter sports in New Hampshire, North Conway may come to mind first, but Meredith has as fair a claim.

Wrapping around Lake Winnipesaukee’s long Meredith Bay and incorporating more than a dozen islands and islets, the town is plentifully endowed with ice — and ways to play on it.

The most apparent to midwinter visitors is ice fishing. A village of colorful little bob houses appears in the bay as soon as the ice is thick enough, and weekends bring a block party atmosphere as people gather to fish and socialize. Each February (the weekend of February 13-14 this year), the Meredith Rotary Club sponsors one of the region’s biggest winter events, the Great Meredith Rotary Ice Fishing Derby. But anyone can enjoy the sport, with ice-fishing tackle, bait and advice from AJ’s Bait & Tackle. NH 16

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

Fish and Game offers free ice fishing classes throughout the state.

The previous weekend, February 5-7, the snow is shoveled off enough of Lake Winnipesaukee to create seven ice rinks for the annual New England Pond Hockey Classic.

Last year, it drew 77 teams to play hockey the way it began, when it was a hometown sport.

Childs and Prescott parks in Meredith have ice-skating rinks, and the beach near the boat ramp on Lake Waukewan is a favorite local skating spot.

While Winnipesaukee gets all the attention from tourists, the commercial center of Meredith actually lies on a narrow strip of land between two lakes: Meredith Bay on Winnipesaukee and Lake Waukewan. Come back in the summer to find a low-key beach here with free parking. Waukewan Highlands Community Park has trails for cross-country skiing

and snowshoeing, as does Hamlin Recreation and Conservation Area in Meredith Center, if you want outdoor fun off-ice.

The idiosyncrasies of Meredith’s boundaries give it a pie-slice wedge into Squam Lake and even bits of the shoreline of Second Neck, in Moultonborough. It also includes Bear Island, the second-largest unbridged in the lake, accessed only by boat. Its name, I learned from an article by Marshall Hudson in this magazine about a year ago, relates to an unfriendly encounter between a team of surveyors and some hungry bears in 1772.

It was this article that satisfied my curiosity about St. John’s on-the-Lake, one of the most interesting of New Hampshire’s many summer chapels. Like many of these seasonal churches, St. John’s is built of stone, but unlike the others, its shingled bell tower dwarfs the rest of the building. This tall, square tower has nearly as large a footprint as the single-story stone building and is topped by a roofed observation deck.

The best time to buy Christmas décor is after the holidays. Find next year’s decorations at the Annalee Outlet Store.

The 60-foot bell tower is built around an 1898 observation tower at the island’s highest point, incorporating its upper platform and roof. Nondenominational services are held here during the summer, with non-island worshipers arriving by boat.

Another church, the First Free Will Baptist

Church, was built about 1802 and remodeled in 1848 into a good example of a mid-19th century rural Greek Revival architecture. On the National Register of Historic Places, it now houses the Meredith Historical Society Museum and is filled with reminders of past winter sports and industries. Wooden skis,

rawhide webbed snowshoes, strap-on ice skates, a sleigh, and a variety of sleds are well displayed, along with an exhibit and implements used in harvesting ice from the lake (including an old-fashioned chest icebox).

Displays highlight other 19th-century rural and farm activities, with photos, equipment and tools to illustrate them.

Also run by the Meredith Historical Society, the Main Street Museum houses displays of antiques and artifacts that range from period clothing to World War II items, arranged in changing themed exhibits.

To add to — or create — your own history museum, stroll up Main Street to Once New Vintage Wares & Salvage, a warren of rooms filled with an eye-boggling miscellany; farther along Main Street, at Waukewan Antiques, you’ll find country pine furniture, and treasures ranging from old wooden kitchen utensils to vintage vinyl. Or go retro and buy a pair of bent-wood snowshoes and head for the trails.

Other shopping possibilities in Meredith are more contemporary in style. The nine shops in Mill Falls Inn & Marketplace range from rustic furniture and art-to-wear to fine arts and Winnipesaukee-themed clothing

You’ll find everything from vintage snowshoes to vinyl at Waukewan Antiques. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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STORIES ABOUT THE NATURAL WORLD AND HOW WE USE IT

and souvenirs. Along with clothing (think hand-painted silks), Adornments & Lady of the Lake carries designer jewelry and smart accessories.

Nahamsha Gifts is known for cheeky T-shirt designs, such as their “wicked smaaht” shirts. At Cozy Cabin Rustics, locally made furniture in cedar, pine and birch is designed to fit in a lake cottage setting. After a quarter-century in Meredith, Innisfree Bookshop is a local institution, with a book-loving staff to offer suggestions.

To appreciate the range and depth of local artists’ and craftspeople’ talents, walk up the street to the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen gallery. Works in glass, wool, wood, silver, iron, paper, precious stones, ceramics, silk and nearly every other medium create a kaleidoscope of colors and designs.

One local artist’s work is known the world over. When the family chicken farm wasn’t producing a living, Annalee Thorndyke put her art talents to work designing and making the felt dolls whose winning grins made everyone smile — and want to own one. They soon became collector’s items and, although Annalee died in 2002, her legacy lives on in Meredith’s Annalee Outlet Store.

Whatever you choose to do in Meredith, there’s always a place to eat nearby. Three restaurants in the locally owned Common Man group — Lakehouse Grille, Lago and Camp are within sight of the lake, and Hart’s Turkey Farm is just up the hill. Or for lunch, chose crêpes with an international flair at 48 Main Cafe & Crêperie. NH

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Just in time for your stay-at-home New Year’s Eve, a NH food and drink guru offers a fun and easy guide to home bartending

By Rick Broussard

C

ocktails at a high-end bar are a bit like New Year’s Eve fireworks: spectacular and pleasing, but best handled by someone with the proper tools and knowhow. Here in New Hampshire, though, we know how to stage fine fireworks displays in our own backyards (even if we aren’t 100% clear on the laws involved). But making your own cocktails?

Somewhere after the Cuba Libre or the good ol’ G&T, we lose confidence.

One Granite State cuisine expert wants to make do-it-yourself cocktail mixing as fearless an endeavor as running down to Seabrook to load up on bottle rockets and Roman candles.

“I just wanted to help people, and myself, make craft-quality cocktails at home,” says J.M. Hirsch, the editorial writer of Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street and a longtime culinary explorer.

To that end, Hirsch has created “Shake Strain Done,” a detailed guide to demystify the process of cocktail making. It’s the kind of book that you’ll want to leave out on your bar: elegant and engaging with an art deco motif and lots of fascinating charts on flavor profiles and useful techniques. But, best of all, it’s filled with dozens of enticing recipes begging for your personal experimentation. In spite of gaudy names like “Snowy London Stroll,” “Minted Peach Pie” and “Peruvian

“Shake Strain Done” is beautifully illustrated in color throughout with artwork by Lika Kvirikashvili.

Orange Grove,” these craft-cocktail recipes require only pantry staples and your basic household liquor cabinet booze to make (though you should be sure you still have some Angostura bitters left in that old bottle you inherited).

“Not everyone has 30 gins to choose from, or 30 days to infuse bourbon with lemongrass,” says Hirsch. And while puzzling over some of the techniques used by his favorite bars around the world, he realized that many things can be made simple. Like a speed infusion: “You can get the same effect as a 30-day infusion in about two minutes with a blender. Take a flavorful ingredient, chop it up, let it soak for a minute or two, and you have an amazing infused liquor.”

And feel free to experiment on your own, says Hirsch. “Most high-level mixologists are unafraid. I’ve tried to learn from them, and learn that sense of adventure when it comes to flavor.”

To help embolden you, Hirsch has taken on the terminology of the mixologist.

“The language they use is so incomprehensible, it was really important for me to use a language that we can ‘taste.’” To accomplish this, he narrowed the complex flavors that can be found in a gimlet glass to 11 characteristics, like fruity, herbal, spicy, refreshing or just plain old “strong” and, like a periodic table of elements, allows the home cocktail alchemist free rein to play with them, after first showing some examples of how they work together.

“It also helps you explore other cocktails that you might not have considered trying,” says Hirsch. “When you see that a tequila drink you like is refreshing, sweet and sour, and then see a whiskey cocktail described in similar terms, you have an open door to explore something new.”

And the point of simplifying is not to eliminate the charming bric-a-brac of the typical home bar, but to finally know how to use it. To that end, “Shake Strain Done” includes a chapter titled “The Basic Bar” that lists the essential bottles, tools, garnishes and extras you’ll want to have around for moments of inspiration. Hirsch recommends you ignore the “dayglow red” Maraschino cherries at the grocery store

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Here are a couple of options from the “Rum” section of the recipes. The “Liquid Crystal” formulaton is the author’s pick for an impressive New Year’s Eve toast.

(“they don’t belong anywhere near a cocktail!”) and instead splurge on some real syrup-soaked Italian cherries like the dark-red Luxardo brand. And some tips are pretty basic, if not well known.

“My absolute favorite and stupid-simple suggestion is salt,” says Hirsch. “Most of us think that’s what we put on the rim of a lousy Margarita, but that’s the worst way to use salt. As soon as your lips touch your glass, you’ve blown your taste buds.” Hirsch suggests you use a tiny dropper of salt solution to explore the power of this famous flavor enhancer, or just throw in 6 to 10 grains of kosher salt and see how it completely transforms the flavor of a cocktail.

The gallery of drink recipes in the book is classified in sections under the primary active ingredient (from brandy to whiskey and wine) though some, like the contemplatively titled “Golden Vesper” (flavor profile: strong), allow you to mix a little vodka with your gin.

A favorite bar tool of his to recommend to amateur barkeeps is a cloth Lewis bag for crushing ice and a wooden mallet (though, he notes, you can achieve the same effect with a plastic ziplock and 22

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

a rolling pin). Not only is crushing ice great therapy, he says, it’s also a chance to experiment with yet another unconsidered aspect of cocktail crafting.

“The most common error is too much ice,” he says. “Liquor has flavor compounds that need some degree of dilution to fully appreciate the flavors at play.

Local Liquor for Your Homemade Cocktails One-stop shop While we look forward to once again visiting the beautiful tasting room at Tamworth Distilling, the next best thing is ordering spirits for curbside pickup. The online order form offers their many excellent spirits, including the Art in the Age series, plus all the fixings for a great cocktail — bitters, tonic water, ginger beer, club soda and the Common Man’s bloody mary mix.

The website also has an entire page dedicated to recipes that feature Tamworth ingredients, which is categorized by the type of spirit. Check it out at tamworthdistilling.com.

Age your own bourbon Smoky Quartz Distillery in Seabrook, the veteran-owned producer of Solid Granite vodka, Granite Coast rum and Granite Coast añejo barrel-aged rum, offers a gift pack that allows bourbon enthusiasts to craft their own aged spirit right at home.

The package includes a Smoky Quartz-branded two-liter oak barrel — American oak with a No. 3 char — and two bottles of its Granite Lightning Moonshine. Pour both bottles of the moonshine into the barrel, set it aside — maybe kill the time with a few sips of Owner/Distiller Kevin Kurland’s award-winning V5 Bourbon — and six weeks later, you’ve got your own barrel-aged bourbon.

“The magic is in the barrel,” Kurland says. “Ninety percent of whiskey’s flavor comes from the aging process in the barrel. That’s where you get the color, flavor and aromas.”

The final product tastes similar to the Smoky Quartz V5 Bourbon — a high-corn whiskey with notes of vanilla and spice and caramel on the backside. ($100)

This is why you always add a few drops of water to a high-proof whiskey to open it up a little bit.” But a little water can go a long way, and the amount desired for most cocktails is actually pretty low. “Just enough ice chills and dilutes just enough.

Add too much and you kill those flavors.”

The exception being when you are shaking and straining, where the dilution ends when the drink is strained.

“I will often use just one tiny ice cube,” says Hirsch. “Sometimes I will leave it in my drink a while, then fish it out and throw it away.” Large ice cubes have become trendy in fancy bars and they look impressive, but there’s science behind the trend. “The larger the ice cube, the slower it melts,” he says.

Like any hobby, things tend to get out of control over time so, for some, “Shake Strain Done” will serve as a way to rediscover the joys of simplicity. Hirsh counts himself among this group. “I have two liquor cabinets and seven drawers of tools,” confesses Hirsch. “But that’s just because I’m a geek.”

So what is a DIY cocktail maker to do on New Year’s Eve when serving a date or a small, socially distanced group of revelers? Hirsch has a suggestion from among his trove of delights.

“What everyone wants is a little sparkling wine,” says Hirsch. “So I would go with the Liquid Crystal. It’s a sparkling wine cocktail but with more nuance than you’d expect.”

And more punch. The sparkling wine is mixed with ginger liqueur, fennel seeds and 21/2 ounces of white rum.

The book had already gone into a second printing by the time this story was being written, and Hirsch is taking his DIY show on the road (so to speak, in this age of Zoom and masking). He’s offering classes via the Milk Street online programming (177milkstreet.com), and planning his next field trips to find the exotic flavors (and spirits) of the world, capture them and bring them home to share. NH

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Sips

Local beverage news and reviews by Michael Hauptly-Pierce, cofounder of Lithermans Limited Brewery

If heading to your local brewery is out, here are four beers you can enjoy at home

A

s a person whose day job necessitates driving 600-800 miles a week, interacting with and making deliveries to actual, breathing humans, I have a different role and a different perspective than most on the reality show currently playing.

I spend significant time in restaurants and, although I go out to eat and drink less than I did before things changed, I still go out.

But in a rare moment of enlightenment, or at least a partial escape from total self-absorption, I remembered that some folks are staying home, so I decided to do some reviews from my living room. I want to thank my musical partner in crime Mark for volunteering to drink five beers in one sitting. But know that we are trained professionals, and this exercise is far too

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dangerous to attempt without appropriate supervision. Hiccup.

To say that New Hampshire has a vibrant brewing scene would be an understatement. With 93 breweries currently operating, and over a dozen being planning, New Hampshire has more breweries per capita than almost any other state in the union. My Virgil through the seven circles of cerveza was Margaret Bingel, manager of award-winning Bert’s Better Beers in Hooksett, daughter of the the world-famous Bert, and an old friend of mine. Let us begin our descent into the suds. For the record, no IPAs were harmed in the making of this column.

Our journey begins with a recent entrant into the marketplace, Wildbloom Beer in Henniker. Wildbloom is the brainchild of

Devin Bush, who is also the head brewer at Henniker Brewing. Devin cut his teeth at the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom, learning to brew before he was old enough to drink in the US. He worked on yeast ester (aroma compounds) production with William Grant during the formulation of a very famous gin, and eventually ended up in Henniker.

Truth be told, I am a huge Devin fanboi, and I am very excited that he was able to open what is called a tenant brewery at Henniker Brewing, essentially leasing space for his own equipment to manufacture his beer. The beer I sampled is a saison called Forage. Saisons are a difficult style to define, as examples are widely varied, but traditionally the style originated in the region where France and Belgium meet, and most of the commonalities come from a specific yeast strain. This beer had notes of clove and slight smoke from the Belgian yeast,

courtesy photos

Tasting From the Couch

Mitzi the cat is the mascot of 603 Brewery’s line of imperial stouts.

All That Jazz by Henniker Brewing Company and Crosstown Beezness by To Share Brewing and Ancient Fire Mead and Cider

the malt was grown in Penacook at Morrill Farm and malted by Valley Malt in Maine, the hops were grown at The Hop Yard in Gorham, Maine, and the beer is delicious. Pale yet flavorful, 5.8% ABV and very repeatable.

Next, we tried Crosstown Beezness, a

collaboration between To Share Brewing and Ancient Fire Mead and Cider, both located in Manchester. This is what is called a braggot, which is a mead/beer hybrid. The base style is a Belgian dubbel, which is traditionally a fairly dark, slightly sweet beer originally brewed by Trappist monks. This iteration is a little more high-test than many historical examples at 8.6%, but there is no alcohol burn — just malty, roasty tastiness with a hint of honey in what is called the retronasal — when you exhale through your nose after swallowing.

Aaron and Jenny run To Share about six blocks from my house, and they have a very cool spot for those inclined to commute and commune. Having collaborated with Ancient Fire owners Jason and Margot myself, I can assure you that they are as fun as their social media presence would suggest.

All That Jazz from Henniker Brewing Company is a dark lager, an unassuming and under-brewed style. Aside from being a sucker for a musically named beer, I am also a sucker for dark lagers. We don’t get many imported from Europe into the state, and they are not a big sexy beer that flies off the shelf, so local brewers don’t make

many either. This beer was inspired by Czech dark lagers, which are often softer and less astringent than German dark lagers such as Schwartzbier. Hints of caramel and chocolate flash and give way to a subtle spiciness and a whiff of toast. Gloriously simple.

I remember meeting Mitzi the cat at Londonderry’s 603 Brewery years ago, at the old location when it was still small. She was aloof but attentive, in the way of cats, and I got in a few choice scritches before she wandered off to guard the grain. The Mitz is 603’s line of imperial stouts. This year’s variants included maple bourbon barrel aged and black/ raspberry, but I opted for tiramisu.

At 11.9%, this is a giant beer. Dark, roasty, sweet, malty and a bit warming on the way down. Hovering at the edge of too sweet, it was a perfect beer with which to end a jam session.

I have enjoyed watching 603 grow from a tiny brewery in the land of NOCO (north of Concord) to a growing presence in a shabby industrial park to a premier destination for food and beer (their relatively new Beer Hall).

Tamsin and the crew are doing it right, and I am glad to have them in my state.

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

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25

603 Informer “The two best interview subjects are people under 10 and people over 70 for the same reason.

They say the first thing that comes to mind.” — Art Linkletter

Reporter Lenie in Portsmouth’s Market Square

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Photo by P.T. Sullivan

Blips 28 Politics 30 Artisan 31 What Do You Know? 32 First Person 34 Transcript 38

Big Little Booster

Reporter Lenie supports business and spreads joy

by Rick broussard

T

he pandemic has been hard for everyone, forcing families to stay home so long they get on each other’s nerves while closing down the restaurants and shops that they know and love, sometimes before they have a chance to patronize them once more. That just seemed unacceptable to Briana Spechulli and her 4-year-old daughter Lenie Rose. While others lay low, waiting for it to blow over, they had an idea of how they could help.

Lenie had done a little modeling and knew how to charm a camera.

There was an old microphone somewhere around the house, and nowadays just about everyone knows how to shoot and upload video to Instagram, so they got busy. The Spechullis grew up in and around Portsmouth, and Briana had friends who owned local shops. She made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Lenie would do an upbeat “report” in front of their establishment, which they would upload to social media and, hopefully, draw a little positive attention to the business and its efforts to stay afloat.

Their first assignment was a stand-up report outside Lenie’s favorite smoothie bar, The Juicery on Hanover Street. Other favorite spots, like G. Willikers Toy Shop in Market Square, were soon added to the “Reporter Lenie” Instagram page, and Lenie got more comfortable on the job with each new task. Within a couple of months, the tiny talking head was getting requests from all over the Seacoast, and Lenie had done about 20 reports by the weekend after Thanksgiving.

“We’ve met some new people and gone to some new restaurants and places we might not have gone,” says Briana, who was proud, though not surprised, to see her daughter (who was just turning 5) speak up to adults and take ownership of the role. “She’s an old soul.

Some of the things she says are so profound and mature. She really connects with people.”

The video reports each get hundreds of views and they can all be found on Instagram by searching @reporterlenie. Anyone wanting to get the Reporter Lenie treatment for their own business can DM Briana, who manages the page.

There’s no charge for the service, though Lenie got a free chocolate Santa pop from Kilwins on Congress Street, and her tacos were comped when she did a report for the Taco Cat food truck in Kittery.

Her motivations are pure — and pretty basic.

“I want to spread kindness,” says Reporter Lenie. “And I want people to spread kindness.” NH nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

27

603 informer / in the news

Blips

Julie Seven Sage

A Fresh Take

A young scientist invents a mask that works for everyone By casey McDermott Julie Seven Sage is perhaps one of New Hampshire’s most prolific up-and-coming scientists.

She designed a water filtration and distillation device that caught the attention of 3M, and several of her experiments have been selected to take flight on NASA vessels. She’s been recognized by the National Science Foundation. She also maintains

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her own YouTube channel, 7 Sage Labs, which churns out a mix of interviews, news reports, product reviews and the occasional piece of policy commentary.

Most recently, she’s earned a spot as a semifinalist in the XPRIZE Next-Gen Mask Challenge, a global competition “to reimagine protective face masks” that comes with a million-dollar prize

and the backing of the National Association of Manufacturers, among other industry leaders.

By the way, did we mention she’s just 16 years old?

“There’s not been a time when I wasn’t interested in science,” says Sage, a junior at Nashua High School North. “Science is just really cool to me.”

Suffice it to say, Sage is pretty cool herself — not least because she channels so much of her passion for science into unlocking its potential to bring people together or solve pressing problems.

Her latest invention, for the XPRIZE mask competition, seeks to help solve one of the great challenges of the COVID-19 era: to make a mask that’s appealing to anyone, even those who might otherwise be skeptical of the benefits of mask use. Sage set out to make a mask that’s as inclusive as possible.

Among other design features, the front of the mask is transparent, to allow others to read the lips and facial expressions of the wearer. The bottom of the mask can be extended to cover a long beard, she says, and the straps of the mask can be customized depending on the needs of the individual wearing it. For example, Sage says she wanted to make it easier for women who wear hijabs or other face coverings, or those who have weak cartilage in their ears to find a style that works for them. She also hopes to allow people to use any kind of filter insert, avoiding the hassle and expense associated with some other masks that require a certain material.

“People shouldn’t have to adapt to masks to make sure they’re safe, the masks should adapt to people, because we’re all different, we have so many different things, and that’s the beauty of being human,” Sage says. “We all deserve the same protection.”

As of press time on this issue, it wasn’t yet clear how far Sage’s design would advance in the XPRIZE competition.

But no matter what happens, she isn’t showing any signs of slowing down her scientific pursuits anytime soon.

“It’s great to get the recognition and everything like that, but I don’t

courtesy photo

Monitoring appearances of the 603 on the media radar since 2006

One of the major features of Sage’s design is a transparent front, which reveals facial expressions.

necessarily need that to keep going,” she says, “because I find it more important to help people and make people’s lives better.”

As for what the future holds for Sage, she’s leaving her path open. She’s wanted to be an astrophysicist since she was 6 (“space is so beautiful and mysterious”) but has more recently felt pulled toward science communication or business.

No matter where she ends up, her goal is the same: to help others find all the fun, joy and beauty that she’s always found in science, and to help the scientific field “become a more inclusive and kind space” for all. NH

courtesy image

Celebrating resilience: New Hampshire’s poet laureate Alexandria Peary’s prose appeared on the pages of The New York Times as part of a special holiday season feature on gratitude. (Loyal “Blips” readers might recall we took note several months ago when the Gray Lady spotlighted Portsmouth poet Tammi Truax too.) We’d encourage you to read Peary’s full entry, but this observation in particular resonated after months of pandemic life: “The stone walls that are everywhere in New Hampshire, echoes of the resilient people who tackled the rocks of difficulty before us, rolled up their sleeves, and survived.”

Cheers to good food: Jon Buatti, also known as Manchester’s “Bearded Baker” and the proprietor of a shop of a similar name, recently earned a spot on the Food Network’s latest edition of its “Holiday Baking Championship.” But baked goods aren’t his only specialty: Buatti, per his Food Network profile, “is also known for making his specialty Moscow Mule around the holidays.” We’ll be cheers-ing to his success, on-screen and off.

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29

603 informer / politics

Color Commentary Is the state returning to Republican roots?

by James Pindell / illustration by peter noonan

F

or nearly two decades, everyone knew the direction New Hampshire politics was headed. But after the 2020 elections, this longtime conventional wisdom might prove wrong.

Since 1996, New Hampshire has become more and more of a Democratic state. For a century, it was Republican-dominated.

At the moment, it is a swing state. But the trendline has long been clear: Eventually, the state would be solidly Democratic just like the rest of New England. The 2020 elections suggest otherwise. New Hampshire may actually remain a swing state for a long time, if not actually tilt back toward the Republicans.

This might seem like a crazy statement.

Yes, Democrat Joe Biden did just beat Republican Donald Trump in the state by seven points, a healthy win. Yes, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen defeated Bryant “Corky” Messner by 16 points. And, yes, both Democratic members of Congress did win reelection.

But on the state level, the story was all about the Republicans. Gov. Chris Sununu was reelected by a margin that’s simply not

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been seen in a long time. The state House of Representatives and the state Senate both flipped to Republican control — the only state in the country where that happened.

The implications going forward are huge.

A decade ago, Republicans were basically in charge of redistricting, allowing them to rewrite the lines to give themselves the biggest partisan advantage they could. There was a backstop though: Democrat John Lynch was governor at the time, and he influenced the process even though there was a Republican-led House and Senate.

But there is now a Republican governor in town along with a Republican legislature.

Beyond the implications for Concord, no one can stop them from ensuring that one of the pair of US House seats becomes solidly Republican. They just need to adjust the lines a little.

Looking ahead to some of the biggest races in the state, there are major Republican candidates willing to step up and run while Biden is president. Traditionally, such races are better for the party out of power, meaning the Republicans.

In 2022, Sununu could well decide to

run for the US Senate against first-term Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat. If he does, all indications are that former US senator Kelly Ayotte wants to be governor. By 2026, it seems more likely than not that Republicans could have both Senate seats, one of the US House seats, the governor’s office, and control both the Statehouse and state Senate.

Yeah, you would have to squint to see a Democrat. It would be a dramatic throwback to 1992 when Democrats only had a single member of Congress to show for their efforts — even if the Democrat running for president wins the state in 2024.

Why is this happening? In the 1990s and 2000s, the Republican Party became a party of the South and West, embracing a number of social conservative issues that aren’t in line with the Live Free or Die state. But now the Republican Party is largely a white, old, rich and rural party, which describes New Hampshire’s demographics in 2020.

New Hampshire was basically founded on the guiding principle that it was not Massachusetts. Politically, it appears like it will remain that way for a long time as well, no matter how it looked even a few years ago. NH

603 informer / artisan

Iconic New England — In Fabric Rendering streetscapes and seacapes with charm and thread

By Susan Laughlin

T

here is just something about printed fabric that is beguiling. Quilters have long used the colors and patterns of cotton percales to create dynamic imagery in two-dimensional design and, more recently, translating shapes and colors into a simplified depiction of reality.

Nancy Morgan of Portsmouth has been exploring the latter with her own techniques. Even though sewing machines have been computerized for the home quilter, she continues to use her 40-year-old Pfaff to create a legacy of images of iconic Portsmouth streets, idyllic schooners and quiet waterfronts created just with fabric and thread.

A collection of her hometown work can be seen at Nancy Morgan Art on State Street.

The gallery is also Morgan’s working studio. Visitors are invited to see how the work is accomplished. In short, she first creates a basic quilt with a plain-colored cotton, quilting it with a free-motion technique by simply using the darning setting on her Pfaff. This is her canvas.

The image itself starts on the back of the quilt with a freehand drawing. Fabric pieces are placed on the front and are stitched securely from the back. Each swath becomes an element of the design as layers of differing colors and prints are added to build the illusion of depth. As with any avid quilter, she has a nice selection on hand to choose from, but one of Morgan’s favorite fabrics is tulle.

As a former ballet dancer, she has sewn many a costume skirt with very fine airy netting. Now she generally uses a black or gray tulle to suggest shadows and create dimension with single or more layers. Other details are usually added with machine top-stitching.

As seen in the image here, tulle was added to give the impression of shadows on the snow, while the naked limbs of the trees are expertly stitched from the top.

The newest twist in her imagery includes monochrome renderings of mourning statuary, much like you would see in a cemetery.

Morgan finds them peaceful ... and they are, with a limited palette and solemn pose. She

Above: “Trinity Church” Below: “Red Rose” Prices range from $250 to $4,000 for completed pieces framed under glass for dust-free preservation.

even rendered the statue of Martin Luther King Jr. in shades of gray. Other monochrome images are colorful closeups of rose blossoms. They are all a careful calibration of shape, tone and the subtle use of tulle to adjust value.

Morgan’s State Street gallery has been open for four years, offering visitors a taste of New England with scenes they can take home. Popular images are of lighthouses, fishing boats and even North Church on Congress Street. Her work is in private collections across the US. Morgan recently sold a large fabric rendering of the Oceanic Hotel on Star Island as part of a fundraiser. It is now available as a signed print on her website. She is happy to share her unique techniques and has written two books, “The Fabric of Bow Street,” a step-by-step guide to one specific image, and “Shades of Tulle,” which fully explains the use of tulle. NH

Find It

Nancy Morgan Art

238 State St., Portsmouth (603) 427-8611 / nancymorganart.com facebook.com/Nancy-Morgan-Art nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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photo courtesy of nh state archives, photographer unknown

603 informer / what do you know?

Riding the Mud Turtle A local legend lies beneath the water

by Marshall Hudson

T

he New Hampshire Mud Turtle is so elusive that few people can honestly claim to have seen it. Its home is in the muddy bottom of the Connecticut River beneath 3 or 4 fathoms of water. It hasn’t been up to the surface in decades.

But I’ve seen it. I not only saw the Mud Turtle, I rode it.

The Mud Turtle resides in the southwesternmost corner of New Hampshire at the singular pinpoint where New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts collide. At that solitary point, a granite bound exists, curiously named the “Mud Turtle Monument” in a US Supreme Court decision. The odd nickname comes from the pyramid-shaped top of the 12-foot-tall granite monument that sank out of sight when accumulating river mud and silt buried it. As the river waters rose around the granite bound’s up-thrust snout, someone thought it had

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a turtlelike appearance, and the unusual moniker for the tristate boundary marker was born.

The point now marked by the sunken Mud Turtle monument was first determined on April 6, 1741, by surveyor Richard Hazen, who was tasked with running the state line bounding Massachusetts with New Hampshire and Vermont. Hazen and his survey party blazed the line, setting stakes, marking trees, and erecting piles of stones at certain prominent points. Despite conflicting surveys in 1825 and 1827, Hazen’s line stood as the legal boundary because neither of the later surveys was acceptable to all the states involved. But all three states had concerns about the accuracy of Hazen’s work.

To address the conflicts between the surveys, in 1891 the legislative bodies of the three states authorized the appointment of a boundary commission to resolve the

The now-sunken tristate monument known as the Mud Turtle

discrepancies between the 1825 and 1827 surveys and Hazen’s work of 1741. A group of surveyors under the direction of Professor Elihu Quimby of Dartmouth College was assigned the task. Quimby decided to run the state line from the established and accepted northwest corner of Massachusetts eastward, back toward the Connecticut River to where Hazen had marked the corner a century and a half earlier.

Quimby’s survey confirmed the location of the tristate corner and, in 1895, the point was marked with a 2-foot-square, 12-foottall granite pyramid, sunk in a bed of rubble masonry 8 feet below river bottom. The initials of the three states were engraved on three sides of the monument. On the fourth side, the date 1895 was engraved. The monument was placed at the low-water mark on the west side of the Connecticut River defining the exact spot where New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts converge.

Because of the difficulty in observing the Mud Turtle

photo courtesy of nh state archives, photographer unknown

Since it was difficult to see the original Mud Turtle monument, a granite reference bound was placed near the tristate corner.

photo courtesy of mr. & mrs. ernest murray

bound, measurements for the submerged monument’s exact location were then recorded on a polished brown granite reference bound, set above the floodplain, some 582 feet west of the actual tristate corner.

The New Hampshire Legislature appropriated funds in 1900 for a photographer traveling with a horse and buckboard to take pictures of all the state line bounds along the New Hampshire/Massachusetts border.

In the course of his work, the photographer took pictures of both the Mud Turtle monument and the reference bound located westerly of the submerged true corner. Whereas only a few photographs of the Mud Turtle bound exist, the polished granite reference marker is a popular spot for photographers,

perambulators, history buffs and surveyors, and many pictures of it exist.

In 1905, the timber crib dam at Turners Falls, Massachusetts, was replaced with a concrete dam, and the elevation of the dam was raised, which extended the impoundment upriver. By 1915, flashboards had been added onto the top of the dam further raising the water level and extending the artificial impoundment up to the confluence with the Ashuelot River in Hinsdale. These dam modifications resulted in sinking the Mud Turtle deeper and deeper below the surface of the water.

The Mud Turtle monument found recognition and fame in 1933-36 when the US Supreme Court settled the long-running

The Mud Turtle as it was last seen in 1969 when (L-R) Willis Parker, Paul Murray and Ernest Murray dug it up during a river drawdown.

border dispute between New Hampshire and Vermont. Conflicting claims had cast legal doubts as to precisely where the state boundary line was located at the Connecticut River.

The Supreme Court determined that New Hampshire owned the river as far westward as the low-water line on the Vermont side.

The court decreed that a survey should be made with boundary markers placed along this westerly low-water line. The required survey would start at the Mud Turtle monument and proceed northerly. By citing “Mud Turtle” in the Supreme Court documents, the nickname was written into law and became more than just a local legend.

In 1969, the Mud Turtle made a rare appearance briefly when the Turners Falls Dam underwent some construction repairs.

Upriver dams held back-river flows, and the plug at the Turners Falls dam was pulled, releasing the impounded water and draining the mighty Connecticut River down to a shallow muddy stream.

My family had a dairy farm in Hinsdale in 1969 with a pasture along the banks of the river. Fenced on three sides, the fourth side was the river and was left unfenced to provide drinking water for the cows. Normally the cows never strayed far out into the river, but with the river suddenly drained, the herd had walked down the dry riverbed and were scattered across three states. While rounding up the strays, we saw three men on the Vermont side digging a hole in the muddy river bottom. Working from the measurements on the reference bound, they had located the Mud Turtle, which hadn’t been seen in six decades.

I took a turn climbing down into the hole, and straddled the slippery top of the tristate monument. Astride the Mud Turtle, my left leg was in New Hampshire, my right in Vermont and my hands in Massachusetts.

Not only had I seen and ridden the elusive Mud Turtle, but I had also been in three states at the same time. With bragging rights firmly established, we gathered up the escaped cows and drove them back into New Hampshire.

A few months later, the construction repairs at the dam were completed. The floodgates were closed, upstream water was released, and the water level rose. The Mud Turtle returned to its hiding place beneath the bottom of the river, where presumably it remains to this day, anchoring the three states together and wondering when it will see the surface again. NH nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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photo by natasha breen

603 informer / first person

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nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

Guerrilla Donuts Adventures in unsanctioned baking

By Christopher Locke

T

Life, for some years, was hard. Not unmanageable, just ... hard.

And then there was the food. My mom’s Irish, so that’s already strike one. But she had to be extra frugal when she did her once-aweek shopping at Market Basket in Stratham.

She had to design everything she bought to last until next Sunday’s trip, which meant seven precise dinners for five people and not much money left over for anything else.

Sometimes, we enjoyed an unexpected bounty, like the time my mom had a friend leave a bag of frozen Kentucky Fried Chicken outside the restaurant near the dumpster for her; that night, we all feasted unabated, floating the high seas of a luxurious food coma. Other weeks, my mom might have a little extra cash and would buy a package of cookies.

Yet having sweets in the house created a whole new torturous dynamic because they were for After. Dinner. Only. On school days, we all abided by a singular rule: No Eating the Food Without Asking. Asking really meant no. And breaking the rule was

courtesy photo

eenagers are hungry. Always have been. I don’t care if they’re sequestered in their rooms perfecting a TikTok hip wiggle, or sweating the fact that B-Dog left them “on open” on Instagram, these peeps gotta eat. It never ends. Even when I was a member of this narcissistic glamour tribe way back when, I was always starving. Problem was, I didn’t have much food to fill the hole.

Now, before you run off and tweet a message of ersatz compassion (#thinkingofyou!), please know I wasn’t squalored into some back alley or collecting rainwater in discarded jugs. I grew up in Exeter. Lived in a house.

I had a mom. She worked hard, but raising four kids on her own was exhausting and not exactly in line with those infomercials we watched late at night that promised vacation homes and a driveway full of sports cars.

We heated bathwater on the woodstove.

And the wood itself was delivered to us in frozen green piles that had to be defrosted next to the stove; we were all careful when traipsing into the living room in dry socks.

This photo was taken in the same house where the donuts were first made and became legend.

From left to right: Older brother Brian, younger brother Josh, the author Chris and youngest sibling Liz nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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603 informer / first person suicide: My mom might have been a little woman, but she sure could pack a punch. So to have those cookies staring us in the face at 2:30 on a Tuesday was maddening. At age 13, I could eat an entire bag of Hostess powdered donuts and lose 3 pounds. My older brother Brian lifted weights and believed in Lou Feriggno, so he was in a similar predicament.

My younger brother Josh was 8 and baby sister Liz was 6, so I didn’t really think about them at all.

To top it off, we lived in the boonies and there wasn’t a store for miles. The situation was untenable; I had to figure out a way to obtain contraband snacks without getting us all killed.

So I signed up for cooking classes in high school. I learned about béchamel, pastry and nonleavened cakes. I made stroganoffs and roast turkey soups and orange-glazed baked

hams. And I always brought the leftovers home. Not only that, I pocketed the recipes.

This, as it turned out, proved genius.

Because even though my mom watched over the food like a nervous prison guard and knew if we liberated even a single strawberry wafer from its crinkly cellophane wrapper, she didn’t think twice about the bags of flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, Crisco, and little cans of spices sitting unmolested deep in the cabinet.

After school, I began this routine: I’d sift dry ingredients in one bowl and beat my eggs and sugar in another. I’d test the oil with little flecks of dough until it seemed sufficiently hot. I’d carve out some donuts with coffee mugs and use an old shrimp cocktail glass to plop out the center, and then drop them into the sizzling fat. I’d flip them once. Carefully removing each with a metal spatula, I’d drop

Handmade Donuts

Makes 8-10 donuts. What? No dozen?! I know, I know.

But life isn’t always perfect.

2 cups all-purpose flour

Dash nutmeg

½ cup white sugar

2½ tablespoons melted butter

1 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ cup whole milk

¼ teaspoon ground coriander

1-2 quarts oil for frying

2 teaspoons cinnamon Sift together the dry ingredients in large bowl and set it aside. In smaller bowl, beat egg and milk, and then slowly drizzle in melted butter. Some of the butter will harden a bit — that’s OK, no biggie.

With a fork, fold the wet ingredients into the dry, and blend and mix gently with a fork until it all comes together into a ball.

Roll the ball out onto clean, lightly floured surface to about ½-inch thick. Cut out donut shapes with a donut cutter or biscuit cutter or, if you’re feeling adventurous, with a coffee mug. Use a shot glass or any kind of cup that’s about 1-2 inches wide to cut out the center.

Heat oil in deep, thick-bottomed pan until it reaches 375 degrees F on a candy thermometer or, like me, wing it and drop little bits of dough in the oil until they bubble and turn golden brown.

Carefully lower a donut into the oil with a metal spatula. Fry until the donuts float and then flip, about 3ish minutes total. Drain on paper towels.

While still warm, place them in paper bag with ½ cup white sugar, 2 teaspoons cinnamon and a dash each of allspice and nutmeg. Shake very gently so they don’t break, but do get them covered in sugar and spices. Take out the donuts and stack them into victorious pile. When done, fry the little dough centers into tiny donut balls.

Enjoy, and don’t tell your mom.

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nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

them one at a time in a paper bag and shake with nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon and sugar.

I’d then stack them on a plate like a great, victorious pile. Because in fact, it was.

Next week it’d be apple fritters. After that, streusel coffee cake. Brian, to his credit, always did the dishes. Zero evidence of our crime.

My mom would then come home from work at 6. She’d have her one sanctioned cocktail, make spaghetti and meat sauce, and we’d get through an entire meal without having to explain why someone ate a Keebler Elfwich.

“How was your day?” my mom would ask.

And we’d shrug, noncommittal: half guilty, half relieved.

Things got better. My mom remarried and her grip loosened in the kitchen. We had ample hot water and better firewood. Dinner became something we looked forward to as our stepdad was a hell of a cook from Kentucky.

Cookies gave way to pastries, pastries to pies.

Before moving out for good, I think I actually gained a couple of pounds.

Nowadays, I’ll find my two daughters in the kitchen making things like bananamango smoothies or juicing an armload of kale. “Hey, who’s up for donuts,” I’ll say. And they’ll stop. “Like the kind you used to make when little?” one will ask. And before I can even say yes, they’re already cleaning off the counter and getting out one bowl for the dry ingredients, one for the wet. NH

Finally, a chance to vote on something important.

Christopher Locke was born in Laconia. His essays have appeared in The Sun, North American Review, Parents, The Rumpus, Poets & Writers, Islands, Atticus Review and elsewhere. He won the 2018 Black River Chapbook Competition from Black Lawrence Press for his collection of speculative fiction, “25 Trumbulls Road.” He lives in the Adirondacks and can be reached at chrisplocke@hotmail.com.

Honoring This Year’s Business Greats.

Vote for your favorites by January 15 at www.bobawardsnh.com.

Sponsored by Business and Industry Association of NH

2021

DESIGN magazine

AWARDS

Join us for a virtual awards ceremony saluting New Hampshire’s best residential architects, designers and builders.

Winners will be revealed live!

January 20, 2021 • 5:30–7:00 p.m.

Registration is free:

photo by natasha breen

Go to www.nhhomemagazine.com/design-awards/ Sponsors of the 2021 New Hampshire Home Design Awards:

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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603 informer / transcript

Rescue Ranger Photo and interview by David Mendelsohn It’s foggy out and well past your bedtime. Heading home, the engine starts making this odd, chattering sound. Then, bang, no power and a silent drift off to the shoulder and the dirt. Cars fly past your door at Mach 5, inches from your body. You make the call. Meet Kait Bailey of Bailey’s Towing in Merrimack.

She’s the one who pulled up behind you with all those flashing lights on her rolling roadblock. She’s the one who reassured you as she wrestled chains, hooks and levers. She’s the one who got you safely out of there. You’ll deal with the car tomorrow. Right now, you’re home, intact and grateful.

Towing has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Being picked up or dropped off in a tow truck to school or basketball practice was the norm for me and my two older siblings.

Towing is sometimes a lot more than a job — it’s more of a lifestyle.

There were plenty of times growing up my dad missed out on family events or our basketball or baseball games.

I know he just barely saw my brother get his diploma before having to leave on a police call.

We joke that we have banker’s hours, but it’s the hours of the ATM machine.

We always used to argue about who got to go on tows with my dad growing up.

As I got older, I would still enjoy helping my dad and going on tows with him, but I really didn’t start doing it on my own until about two years ago.

We have a great group of part-time drivers on our team — that helps with the 24/7 schedule.

According to statistics, a tow driver is killed every six days on the roadway nationally.

From the moment you pull your truck over to the side of the roadway, you have to constantly be watching your back. With cars buzzing by at 65+, you can feel yourself moving from their draft.

My dad (who has been doing this for 40 years) has experienced actually helping remove the victim from the wreckage when he first started the business.

I honestly have not experienced anything too bad yet at the scene. I’ve seen plenty of fatals come back to the shop, and am on the phone with the surviving family the next day.

Distracted driving has become a huge problem as technology in vehicles and phones progresses. A lot of these new cars practically come with full-size computer screens right on the dashboard to pull your eyes off the road.

There have been occasions when we recovered cars down embankments, across brooks. We’ve pulled cars out of houses, and even had to take a boat across a river to get to a car that landed on an island.

The fine art of pulling vehicles out of bad spots and towing them home found its origin story in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when a driver named Ernest Holmes Sr. ran his Ford Model T into the Chickamauga Creek. After it took eight men a full day to get “Tin Lizzie” back on the road, Holmes went back to his own garage and with a couple of friends devised what is now considered the first tow-truck prototype — a simple 1913 Cadillac chassis with a metal-tube framework, plus pulley mechanisms and steel wires with hooks. Chattanooga is now the home of the International Towing Museum (internationaltowingmuseum.org), and the “Wall of the Fallen” memorial that honors those who died while trying to rescue fellow drivers from tough places. Here’s hoping you never need them, but find Bailey’s Towing and Auto Body at baileysautobodynh.com. They have shops in Merrimack and Amherst.

Thanks to Trooper Andrew Sheffer for keeping us safe during the shoot, Cynthia Sapier for her unwavering photo assistance, Brian Beard for operating the second truck, and Jim Bailey of Bailey’s Towing and Auto Body for making all of this happen.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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Berlin’s tragic goaltender

&hockey’s ties

that bınd he raw, driving rain turned to a thick slurry of wet snow as our boxy yellow school bus lurched northward from Manchester to Berlin. We were just into the first weeks of our 197475 season as Manchester Central High’s Little Green hockey team, making our biennial pilgrimage to the Paper City.

Berlin, the defending state champion, was a tough matchup anytime. The team was a juggernaut, and had been for years. Having to play the mighty Mountaineers after a few practices and scrimmages was an onerous task. To have to travel three hours just to get to Berlin seemed downright unfair.

Guided by Hall of Fame coach Albie Brodeur, and benefiting from the influx of Notre Dame players who came on board when the parochial high school closed in 1972 (after claiming one last state title, 3-2, over Manchester Memorial), Berlin won the 1974 state championship with a 26-6-0 record. For the 1974-75 season, the Mountaineers were simply reloading, on their way to a 24-4-0 mark and another state crown.

Fortunately, I knew little about Berlin’s hockey superiority, being the proverbial new kid on the block. I grew up in northeastern New Jersey before moving to Manchester as a 16-year-old in the summer of 1974. Berlin was a mystery.

As our bus rattled along the two-lane road, I preoccupied myself with a history class reading assignment, primarily because our assistant coach, Mr. Connolly, was my history teacher. Our head coach, Mr. Finnegan, was a young, bearded firebrand who was relentlessly optimistic at the start of the season. I always gravitated to coaches like that.

By Brion O’Connor / Photos courtesy of Berlin & Coös County Historical Society

←

A politically incorrect advertisement in The Berlin Reporter promoting a January 15, 1921, game between the St. Patrick’s of Sherbrooke, Québec, and the Berlin Hockey Team. The Berlin squad was made up of all-stars selected from the four teams in the city’s mill league, organized by Downing Potter “DP” Brown. The Pleasant Street rink, which hosted the game, was built by the Brown Company. .com | July 2020 nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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*

Central High Hockey 1975

The 1974-75 Manchester Central Little Green hockey team was short on wins but long on characters, including the author (circled in red), a junior transfer from New Jersey. Notable players included Peter Telge (back row, third from left), former New Hampshire state tennis champion (1977) and current owner of Milly’s Tavern and Stark Brewing Company and Distillery, and Kevin Fitzgerald (front row, third from left), today a commercial litigation lawyer with Nixon Peabody in Manchester.

Two hours into our journey, I sidled up to Coach Finnegan and asked, in typical kid fashion, “How much longer before we get to Berlin?”

“Oh, you’ll know when we’re close,” quipped my coach, laughing. “You’ll smell it before you see it.”

Puzzled by his response, I inquired further. He told me about Berlin’s leading industry, the paper and pulp mills, and the unique, pungent odor they produced. He was right. The distinctive bouquet of Berlin hit me like a blindside body check well beyond the city limits.

“In Berlin, they call that the smell of

money,” said Coach Finnegan with a grin.

I had been tabbed as the starting goaltender for the early season tilt, and my teammates wasted no time in warning me that I was walking into a shooting gallery.

“Don’t worry,” said Coach Finnegan.

“No matter what happens, it won’t be as bad as what happened to that poor kid a few years back.”

“What poor kid?” I asked.

“The goalie, from Notre Dame,” said my coach. “The rink’s roof collapsed at his end of the ice, and buried him. He was all by himself. Killed him.”

Coach Finnegan left it at that.

The idea of a goaltender being buried under tons of snow and steel and wood shook me to my core. His name was Norman Norman Boucher

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Boucher, and he was only 15.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

ven though hockey goaltender is generally considered one of the toughest (and loneliest) positions in sports, for some strange reason the goal crease has always been my “safe spot,” my sanctuary. I’m not sure why.

Maybe because it has a certain eye of the hurricane quality to it, where all the action is swirling around you. It’s like a giant funnel, where the play is designed to come right at the net behind the goalie. And there was a certain attraction of being the one player that could almost singlehandedly prevent another team from winning by preventing them from scoring.

For whatever reason, I just felt comfortable setting up between the pipes. The idea of a goaltender being buried under tons of snow and steel and wood shook me to my core. His name was Norman Boucher, and he was only 15. His death must have been horrifying, despite my coach’s almost casual comment. It was as if that sanctuary had been violated.

For that catastrophe to happen in Berlin, of all places, it must have felt as if the hockey gods had turned against their own. Because the game is inextricably woven through Berlin’s tapestry, and much of New Hampshire’s tapestry. For me, Boucher’s death was a poignant reminder of the ties that bind an incredibly tight-knit hockey community.

obart Amore “Hobey” Baker and the black ice of the ponds near St. Paul’s School in Concord get most of the credit for planting the seeds of New Hampshire hockey in the early 1900s. That’s understandable, given Baker’s preternatural talents and subsequent legend forged by his brilliant play at St. Paul’s and Princeton, and his premature death (college hockey’s best player is annually recognized with the Hobey Baker Award).

But it was Berlin that set the game’s roots deep in the state’s North Country during Baker’s star turn in Concord. The game immigrated to New England and this rugged mill city on the backs of laborers who streamed over the border from Québec and the Maritimes.

“The concept of the game came down from Canada, and a rough form of the game was played on local ponds and rivers by 1903,” says Walter Nadeau, a retired Berlin police captain and amateur historian. “I’m guessing that the locals may not have had a copy of the written rules.

“The first formal, decent hockey rink was built in 1913, and used extensively,” says Nadeau. “As far as I know, from 1903 to 1918, many informal games were played among teenagers and young adults.”

Hockey captivated Berlin’s predominantly French Canadien locals, and quickly became the community’s lifeblood. The earliest known account of local high school students playing the game was published in the Berlin Independent on December 4, 1903.

“The game is not like a baseball or a football game,” stated the Independent. “It is equally good to watch, but it is not one at which you can cheer, the playing is to [sic] rapid and incessant, and the most the spectators can do is give a sharp yell when anything sensational happens.”

According to the New Hampshire Legends of Hockey, “organized” hockey arrived in Berlin a few years later with the creation of amateur mill teams (offered by business owners to distract employees from desultory working conditions and low wages).

Downing Potter “D.P.” Brown, a former Williams College hockey player and owner of the Brown Company, helped establish the Mill League, with games played on an outdoor rink at the city’s baseball park. In 1920, Father Alpheri Lauziere formed the “Canadiens,” who played against Maine’s top teams from French Canadien enclaves like Lewiston and Waterville.

Berlin Hockey Team 1925

Top: The First Berlin High School hockey team of 1921-22, coached by Downing Potter “DP” Brown. Middle: In the early 1920s, Brown and his company bankrolled the Berlin Athletic Association, which sponsored hockey and baseball teams. This photo from 1925 shows the team that was the forerunner of the famed Berlin Maroons. Bottom: This 1926 Canadiens team formed by Monsignor Alpheri Lauziere, a member of the New Hampshire Hall of Fame, was Berlin’s city league champion. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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The 1947 Notre Dame High School Rams, coached by former Berlin Maroon star Barney “The Rocket” Laroche (back row, far left), won the inaugural New Hampshire high school championship by a score of 2-0 over Concord High School. It was the first of 16 consecutive titles for the parochial school, which closed in 1972.

“Most of the players were first- and second-generation French Canadien,” says Nadeau. “Hockey became a big part of the Berlin culture. The games brought people together.”

Starting in 1923, a succession of local squads — the Berlin Athletic Association and the Berlin Hockey Club — became regional powers, often making the long trek south to play at Boston Arena. In 1937, the fabled Berlin Maroons were formed and won three New England AAU championships by 1951. Nicknamed the “Flying Frenchmen,” the Maroons were crowned National Amateur Hockey Association champions in 1954, 1967 and 1968.

The city also became a force in high school hockey, beginning in the 1940s. The Notre Dame Rams, coached by Albert “Barney” LaRoche (a Maroon star known as “The Rocket”), won the first 16 NHIAA state championships, from 1947 to 1962. Over the 44

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next seven years, the public Mountaineers won six titles, and the Rams captured title No. 17 in 1965. In all, Berlin schools won the first 23 state hockey titles, before Hanover High broke the stranglehold in 1970 (defeating Berlin High in the final).

After the Maroons’ national title in 1967, and the complete mastery of high school hockey by Berlin schools for the preceding two decades, the city was dubbed “Hockey Town USA.” A sign celebrating the new moniker was posted on Route 16 at the city line, and a banner, featuring two enormous goalie sticks and the words “Welcome to Hockey Town USA” on a giant puck, was erected by Green Square.

“Besides the Notre Dame Arena, the recreation department maintains seven skating rinks,” says Nadeau. “Back in the day, many fathers maintained rinks in their backyard.

Hockey was as much a part of the fabric of the community as meat pie.”

eanwhile, the St. Jean (de Baptiste) Maple Leafs introduced organized hockey to Manchester in the late 1930s, hosting games at the Kelly Street church grounds through the early 1960s. In 1958, the Manchester Beavers descended on the Dorrs Pond Rink, and the Tam-OShanters and Alpine Club teams launched four years later. When the John F. Kennedy Memorial Coliseum, built beside Gill Stadium, opened for the winter of 1964, hockey moved indoors.

In the fall of 1966, the Manchester Blackhawks began competing, and played in the New England Hockey League through 1970.

The Manchester Monarchs then played four seasons in the Can-Am League (the recent Los Angeles Kings farm team took the same name as an ode to the original Monarchs). Following the 1973-74 season,

photo courtesy of the berlin daily sun

however, post-scholastic amateur hockey in Manchester came to an abrupt halt. The Blackhawks returned in the late 1970s for a brief encore, competing against the Concord Budmen and the Maroons, but soon shuttered operations.

The Queen City was hockey heaven for me, a teenager who first fell head over heels with the sport playing street hockey in northeast New Jersey, where none of the schools had hockey teams and the natural-ice skating rinks prohibited the game due to liability concerns. The New York Rangers, and later the Islanders, gave us a taste of top-flight hockey, but the opportunities to play, on ice, were few and far between.

All that changed with my clan relocated to Manchester. I thought JFK Coliseum was an absolute gem, despite its shortage of locker rooms, and the University of New Hampshire’s Snively Arena, where we played a preseason game, was nothing short of palatial.

ike Berlin, my Manchester Central team had a distinct French Canadien flavor, but it was far from a cohesive unit. In fact, we resembled the old cultural brawls between the French Canadiens and the Irish who fought for jobs in the city’s mills along the Merrimack River. While our team was dominated by names like Montminy, Bellemare, Allard, Carrier, Ouimette, Bernier, Boucher, Petrin, Lemaire, Pelletier, LeBlanc and Metevier, we also had our share of players from different neighborhoods. Kids with names like Fitzgerald, North, Telge, Weise, Davidson, Soares, O’Brien and me, O’Connor.

The irony is that while I was considered an outsider, I’m half French Canadien. My mom’s maiden name is Paré, and her father — my beloved grandpère — was my greatest sports influence during my formative years (and the reason I’m a lifelong Red Sox fan, despite growing up a stone’s throw from New York City). My mom was raised on the predominantly French West Side of

“Back in the day, many fathers maintained rinks in their backyard.

Hockey was as much a part of the fabric of the community as meat pie.”

— Walter Nadeau, retired Berlin police captain and amateur historian

In 1967, the Berlin Recreation Department, at the urging of Councilman Robert Olivier, erected this banner declaring the city as “Hockey Town USA.” nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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One of historian Walter Nadeau’s favorite photos, this image was taken after the Berlin Maroons won the National Amateur Hockey Association Championships in Lewiston, Maine, on April 4, 1954. Monsignor Alpheri Lauziere (rear left) helped form Berlin’s Canadiens hockey club in 1920. The coach was Leo Vaillancourt (front row, second from right). The young man over Vaillancourt’s right shoulder with his mouth wide open is Richard Boucher, one of the founders of New Hampshire Legends of Hockey.

Manchester, which is why we moved to New Hampshire after my father lost his battle with cancer in the summer of 1971.

I was accustomed to a robust cultural mix, growing up in a diverse community in New Jersey. My sports of choice — baseball, then basketball, soccer and hockey — all brought me into contact with dozens of ethnicities.

At Manchester Central, my soccer teammates often joked that we were like the United Nations, with Greeks, Columbians, Bolivians, Ecuadorians, French Canadiens,

and even one wonderfully talented young man from Haiti named Daniel Lascaze. But we blended beautifully on the field, winning the city championship my first season.

Our Little Green hockey team produced no such alchemy. One hockey teammate, whom I met early on in homeroom, warned me: “This team is two cliques. The French kids, and everyone else. And their parents are nuts.”

That was a particularly delicate scenario for me, as the other two goalies were Gilles

The Queen City was hockey heaven for me, a teenager who first fell head over heels with the sport playing street hockey in northeast New Jersey, where none of the schools had hockey teams and the natural-ice skating rinks prohibited the game due to liability concerns.

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Ouimette and Mark Lemaire. Gilles understood. Mark? Not so much. Probably because I was “third man in,” which is one goalie too many on most hockey teams.

Gilles, a sophomore, started the season before as a freshman, so I knew he was talented. To his credit, we got along famously, even though Gilles’ father made his own opinions about who should be playing perfectly clear, spitting invective from the stands. There’s a brotherhood among goalies, simply called “The Goalies Union.” We’re tethered by the position’s unique challenges, and the unmistakable pressures we shoulder.

That’s why I felt a kinship with Norman Boucher, the sophomore goaltender for Notre Dame High’s junior varsity who was crushed to death under a pile twisted metal and splintered wood on February 26, 1969.

Goalies are solitary figures. Typically, we’re alone, confined to our “crease,” often left to our own devices. We’re members of the team, but not always fully part of it.

Yet goalies typically take immense pride in their loner status. It’s what draws us to each other. Boucher’s untimely end resonated with me in a way other players couldn’t understand. But it would be decades before I learned the whole story.

In 2014, The Berlin Daily Sun ran this frontpage on the 45th anniversary of the Notre Dame Arena roof collapse of 1969.

hose who knew and loved Norman are still haunted by the devastating and tragic events of that night,” Karen Boucher Wheeler, a niece of Boucher’s who was only a year old at the time, told Steve Enman of The Berlin Daily Sun on the 50th anniversary of her uncle’s death.

That night, Boucher was on the ice with his junior varsity teammates, preparing for

a scrimmage against their crosstown rivals.

The fact that a city of almost 20,000 (in 1969) could field two high school varsity hockey teams and two JV teams was a testament to the sport’s popularity. The Notre Dame Arena, built in 1947, was Berlin’s only enclosed rink (and the second indoor rink in the state, after Dartmouth College). Like most buildings on that fateful day, its roof was sporting a thick blanket of heavy snow.

The snow had started falling on February

24, and during the next five days the skies deposited more than 5 feet of the white stuff over the region. Romeo Tremblay, Notre Dame’s varsity hockey coach, and members of his team shoveled portions of the arena roof, but large drifts remained on either end of the building.

Early Wednesday evening on February 26, after chatting with coaches and teammates by the benches, Boucher skated back to his net to take a few more shots. Al nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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The dominant 1966-67 Berlin High Mountaineers. After claiming the 1967 New Hampshire state title, beating Concord High, 5-0, this team went on to become New England champions, defeating St. Dominic of Maine, 3-2 in overtime, with Legends of Hockey inductee Roger Letourneau scoring the game-winner. The Mountaineers would defeat Concord again the next year to repeat as state champions, but lose in the New England finals. Berlin High was coached by Marcel Morency (back row, far right).

Cayouette, a Notre Dame student and varsity hockey player, was setting up the public address system.

“At 5:25, as I pushed the button on the PA microphone, I heard an eerie sound, like the crunch of a chip, the cracking of wood, and then a loud ‘whoosh’ of air as the roof suddenly and quickly collapsed on the ice,” Cayouette told the Daily Sun. “I couldn’t see the Notre Dame players and fans on the south end of the arena due to the debris.”

Another student recalled that the roof fell like a massive swinging door, narrowly missing the players at the blue line.

“I looked up and saw sparks, with flying lights and cables snapping and the roof began to swing down in my direction,” Peter Noel, another goalie, told the Daily Sun. “Instinct and/or adrenalin somehow made me skate from in front of the net to behind it, with a thought to get down to the ice and hug the boards” Noel shut his eyes, and a morbid silence descended over the arena.

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“I opened my eyes to see that the roof had fallen in around me, and to my left I saw Bob Bertin struggling to move,” said Noel.

“I couldn’t see anything in the area where Norm had been, only debris.”

Bertin and another Notre Dame JV player, Dan Blais, were severely injured.

“There was absolutely no time to react. I must have been knocked out because the next thing I know I am awake, laying amongst the beams and snow and unable to move anything but my legs,” Blais told the Daily Sun. “I prayed, because there was nothing else I could do — I couldn’t even talk. It was like I was in a bubble, and if I had been 1 or 2 feet to the left or right when the roof fell in, I would not be alive to tell this story.”

Boucher was crushed underneath one of the roof ’s large girders. The late Omer Morin, one of the referees that night, found Boucher buried by rubble, unconscious, and immediately started cutting off his pads. A local doctor, though, couldn’t find the young goalie’s pulse, and told Morin (a

next-door neighbor of the Boucher family) not to rush.

“That’s something I’ll never forget. I’ll never, never forget that,” said Morin in the 2010 documentary “At the River’s Edge: An Oral History of Berlin, New Hampshire.”

“And I knew the family. They were neighbors, like I say. The kid never made it. That was a real tragedy in town. A real tragedy.”

The arena was rebuilt, under the direction of Monsignor Alpheri Lauziere, and eventually reopened. A plaque honoring Boucher was installed in the lobby. ith the my coach’s sobering-but-abbreviated tale of Norman Boucher fresh on my mind, I took to the ice at Notre Dame Arena that December night in 1974. If I was distracted, I don’t remember. I looked to the rafters, and thought everything looked structurally sound

(not that I would have known if it wasn’t).

But those thoughts quickly gave way to concerns about the red-and-white-clad Mountaineers, who looked intimidating even during warm-ups.

For a period, we skated toe-to-toe with the defending state champs, down only 1-0 after 20 minutes. Moments into the second period, I made one of the few truly memorable saves of my high school “career,” flashing my right skate to foil a point-blank bid. I thought maybe we had a chance. Then my luck, and the luck of the Little Green, ran out.

The Mountaineers put at least four more pucks behind me by the end of the period.

My night was done. Gilles came in to finish the game, and played valiantly. But the game was lost. We slowly shuffled out of the rink to our bus, knowing we had a long ride to lick our wounds. I don’t recall seeing Boucher’s plaque.

Curling up on my bus seat, I felt a strange sense of relief. I would play again. There would be more games. Norman Boucher never had that opportunity. His future was taken from him in the cruelest way imaginable.

As fate would have it, my senior year was the last time that Berlin would rule the roost of New Hampshire school boy hockey (we gave the Mountaineers a great game that season during the Queen City Tournament, dropping an excruciating 4-3 decision). The year after I graduated, Central made it to the state semifinals, only to lose in heartbreaking fashion to Bishop Guertin of Nashua. But by 1980, the Little Green would be state champions, and defended that title in 1981. They were only the third team in state history to repeat, and the first that didn’t hail from Berlin. ad the hockey gods and Old Man Winter not conspired against Norman Boucher more than a half century ago, he would now be 67, not much older than me. I sometimes wonder if he would recognize his city, and his game, today.

The proud city of Berlin, which once hosted two championship-caliber hockey teams, barely has enough players to field a full squad. The city has been hit hard economically — the main pulp mill closed in 2006 — and as the jobs left, residents followed. Berlin’s population now hovers close to 9,000, less than half the number from

the city’s heyday of the 1930s. As a result, the once-mighty Mountaineers formed a co-operative team with neighboring Gorham, and dropped to Division 3 simply to remain competitive (in 2016, the co-op team won the state’s D-3 crown, the city’s first hockey championship in 40 years).

Likewise, my old school, one of the state’s largest, just a few short years after its last state championship in 2014, has had to join forces with rival Manchester West to continue offering offer a varsity program (coincidentally, my Central team played in the first high school match at the “new” West Side Arena in 1974, against West).

It’s an odd juxtaposition, seeing longtime opponents joining hands to play the game they love. But it’s becoming more of a necessity, as cities like Manchester lose affluent residents to surrounding suburbs.

By comparison, Bedford, which didn’t even have a high school when I attended Central, fielded three hockey teams — varsity, junior varsity, and a practice squad — last season. There is strength in those numbers. The Bulldogs are a powerhouse, winning or sharing the state title in four of the past five years.

This is the reality of the current hockey landscape. It is no longer the blue-collar, ethnic sport that thrived in Berlin. Hockey is still a great game, capable of teaching invaluable life lessons. But many of those lessons are being overshadowed by money. The game requires a significant investment, in terms of both expense and time. (In the early 1970s, I was able to buy all my own goalie gear — high-quality gear — with my paper route proceeds. Today, that’s impossible.)

Steve Bellemore, president of the nonprofit Manchester Regional Youth Hockey Association, says the sport is still popular, with close to 500 boys and girls playing in the program. The cost, though, runs close to $3,000, equipment not included.

“We try to be a top program that has a place for everyone. We try to make it so everyone has a place to play. That was the dream of our forefathers, and that’s our goal,” says Bellemore.

“So many of these programs are about the almighty dollar, and it gets a little cutthroat,” he says. “I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have to cut kids every year, but we try to find a place for those kids.”

For-profit “select” programs are even more expensive, and expect six-month commitments (or longer), preventing kids from playing for their high school teams

while promoting sports specialization and fueling unrealistic dreams of collegiate careers.

They succeed, in part, because too many parents have lost their minds. Conversely, the three-month high school season is a quaint dinosaur. Much like me, I suppose.

Playing multiple sports throughout the year was always special for me. The variety kept things interesting, and kept my love for each sport strong. Those love affairs lasted a long time — I continued to play soccer and hockey well into my 50s, before my hips finally gave out.

Hockey is still a great game, capable of teaching invaluable life lessons.

But many of those lessons are being overshadowed by money.

I treasure my memories of those winter days playing for the Little Green, and my own insignificant place in New Hampshire’s colorful hockey history. Norman Boucher was robbed of those memories more than 50 years ago, but his plaque still graces the Notre Dame Arena lobby. Rink manager Joe Accardi, who played for Berlin High his senior year (1977-78) after a stint with the Junior Maroons, said he wouldn’t even think of moving it.

“Hockey’s been a big part of my life, and my children’s life. We all played hockey,” says Accardi. “His death is something that we all remember. It’s part of the history of the arena. It’s big for a lot of us, especially guys our age. That plaque will always be there.”

I’m glad Norman Boucher is remembered, and remembered fondly. He deserves that much. NH Brion O’Connor, Manchester Central Class of 1976, still coaches hockey goaltenders. His career peaked in 1982 when he backstopped Sigma Beta to a nail-biting 4-3 victory over Congreve for the University of New Hampshire campus intramural championship. He flunked his statistics mid-term the next day, but the goalie stick commemorating that title hangs in his garage to this day. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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When the US economy first matured and started producing a middle class, it was centered in dirty, crowded cities. Citizens with expendable income soon took advantage of the new age of rapid transport (such as the Concord Coach, made right here) and discovered the simple joys of time spent at a grand hotel in the wilderness.

The Granite State had lots of wilderness and plenty of entrepreneurs eager to entertain the rich city folks. Artists captured our White Mountains, making them so famous that American tourism — as we know it today — took root right here.

reasons for the world to be grateful to the good ol' Granite State.

Liberty's Catchphrase

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The Vacation Destination

"Yeah, yeah. Live Free or Die yada yada." That's what Gen. John Stark would most likely say about how his famous reunion toast has become the catchphrase for anyone wanting to do dumb stuff. What happened to good old "Hold my beer"? Anyway, it was great deeds, not grand words that Stark respected, and few have had more deeds to discuss — they could fill a book (find one here: allthingsliberty.com). But liberty, not as a misty ideal but as a birthright to be claimed, demands action.

Maybe even rebellion and revolt. Or at least we hold the line on seatbelt and helmet laws. And thanks, Free State Project, for moving in to let us know that, as far as liberty lovers go, New Hampshire is still a hot ticket. Now, where's the legal weed?

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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Leftovers

Be grateful for Tupperware, because without the hearty “burp” of those plastic lids, our meal remnants would still be drying out in the icebox. Even if Tupperware itself wasn’t invented in New Hampshire, Earl Tupper was, so you’re welcome for that infamous drawer in your kitchen where mismatched lids and containers go to die.

Devil Horns

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he music is numbingly loud, heads are banging, the guitarist just finished a face-melting solo, and you’re in the midst of the furious storm wondering, “What should I do with my hands?” Thanks to Ronnie James Dio, born Ronald James Padavona in Portsmouth, you’ve got options. You do what any self-respecting metalhead would do: You throw the devil horns.

The devil horns — an instruction manual: For best results, queue up “The Mob Rules.” Now, hold your pointer finger and pinky out, fold your middle and ring fingers over and put your thumb over them. Hold it high and shout something like, “Woo.” Then thank Ronnie James Dio for popularizing this now-ubiquitous salute.

As metal lore goes, Dio popularized the gesture when he replaced Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath. Wanting to connect with the audience, he came up with something taught to him by his Italian grandmother, a superstitious move called the “Malocchio.” Dio explained over the years that the sign is made to ward off the “evil eye” rather than as a salute to Beelzebub.

Dio first came into heavy metal prominence with Sabbath, and over the years spent time fronting bands like Elf, Rainbow, Heaven & Hell and his many solo efforts. Through it all fans could expect a throaty, “Look out!” from the New Hampshire-born singer and plenty of opportunity to throw the devil horns.

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illustration by joshcookart.com

NO.

3

Getting in Trouble for Being Late To Work

Without the American* alarm clock, invented by Concord’s Levi Hutchins in 1787, you wouldn’t be late to work, because the concept wouldn’t exist.

Think about it. Your boss can’t get mad at you for not showing up at 9 a.m. on the dot if you have no way of waking up precisely when you need to. That’s just science. Thanks, Levi. *Really, we should redirect our ire to one Leonardo Da Vinci (and also some 15th-century Germans) for first creating the idea at all.

Compiled by the New Hampshire Magazine staff and our fine group of contributing writers

lowercase everything

P

oet E.E. Cummings, who summered every year on his beloved family farm in Madison and ultimately died here in 1962, popularized idiosyncratic free-verse poetry with a casual-at-best

attitude toward punctuation, launching a million sophomore explora-

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tions into the joys of liberation from the strictures of the “Harbrace College Handbook.” “No one else has ever made avant-garde, experimental poems so attractive to the general reader,” wrote critic and fellow poet Randall Jarrell. Cummings’ own name was eventually given the “lc” treatment on book covers and in press stories as a kind of trademark, though every indication is that this was a publicity ploy of his publishers, not a personal election to decap himself. Cummings once wrote to his mother, “I wouldn’t give an inch of New Hampshire for all the rest of New England.”

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NO.

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That Song You Can’t Get Out of Your Head

You know the song a certain Disney princess sang on a tundra that’s been stuck in your head for the last seven years? You can thank University of New Hampshire graduate Jennifer Lee, who wrote and directed Disney’s Oscar-winner “Frozen” in 2013 (plus the more recent “Frozen II”). Though she didn’t actually write the song itself, it’s because of her filmmaking that we just can’t

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Elite Conspiracy Theories

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

8 Thanksgiving, White Weddings and Mary’s Little Lamb

N

ewport is the home of a 19th-century cross between Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey. Sarah Josepha Hale changed the country’s culture with her powerful influence on domestic fashion and taste. She was the first female magazine editor, heading the pre-Civil War era’s most successful women’s publication Godey’s Lady’s Book, where she wrote about women’s fashion (her coverage of Queen Victoria’s white wedding gown helped set white dresses as the norm), women’s duties and the importance of women’s education. She also wrote editorials promoting the idea of establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday, which ultimately inspired President Abraham Lincoln to formally establish Thanksgiving Day in 1863.

Our “Mother of Thanksgiving” also provided instructions for celebrating the new holiday, including a description of a New England Thanksgiving dinner, the blueprint we still use today. We could go on and on (or just endlessly recite “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” which she wrote).

Dan Brown created Tom Hanks’ career. Just kidding, but the insane popularity of his books did launch the appeal of dark conspiracies out of the tin-hat basement-dweller range to serious intellectual circles. The No. 1 bestselling author has written numerous books about early Christian history, secret societies, the ire of Cardinals in Rome, cryptography and the weird stuff on our dollar bills. You can also credit Brown for prompting modern, secular America to look deeper into the fraught relationship between science and religion.

10 French Fries The first potato in North America was planted in the common field of Derry (then Nutfield) in 1719, starting the lowly tuber on its path to becoming America’s favorite “vegetable” in all its many delicious, fat-saturated variants.

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photo courtesy cannon mountain resort

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Winter Fun

ith New Hampshire residing in the New World, we won’t pretend we’re the birthplace of winter recreation. We’ll happily confer that title to Scandinavia. But when it comes to North America, the Granite State lays claim to an impressive list of “firsts” that redefined how we embrace the “cruel season.”

Let’s start with ice. No, not cars pinballing along frozen backroads.

The remarkably smooth black ice of the ponds alongside St. Paul’s School in Concord gave rise to our first American hockey superstar, Hobey Baker, shortly after the turn of the 20th century. A Pennsylvania native, Baker blossomed at St. Paul’s. Following a sensational career at Princeton, Baker was a marquee amateur star playing in New York City. His legend garnered him a spot in the Hockey Hall of Fame’s inaugural 1945 class (and the only American), despite dying at 26 in an airplane crash at the close of World War I. (See hockey story on page 40.)

On the slopes, Berlin was home to the nation’s first ski club. The Nansen Ski Club, established by Norwegian immigrants in 1882, was named after Norway’s legendary Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen. The refurbished Nansen Ski Jump, first built in 1936, still stands in nearby Milan.

At the crossroads of Route 117 and Lovers Lane Road in Sugar Hill,

a historical marker denotes the location of the country’s first ski school.

“In 1929, on the slopes of the hill to the east, Austrian-born Sig Buchmayr established the first organized ski school in the United States. Sponsored by Peckett’s on Sugar Hill, one of the earliest resorts to promote the joys of winter vacationing in the snow, the school provided an initial impetus to the ski sport America knows today.” The nation followed suit.

Austrian Hannes Schneider brought his renowned Arlberg technique to northern New Hampshire.

Along with disciples like Benno Rybizka, he taught at Black Mountain in Jackson on trails cut by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Nearby North Conway, home to Mount Cranmore, became a mecca for ski instruction.

On January 11, 1931, the first Boston & Maine snow train pulled out of the Commonwealth’s capital en route to Warner, carrying 197 members of the AMC, Dartmouth Outing Club and Harvard Mountaineering Club. That winter, the railroad ran a dozen trains northward, introducing thousands to skiing (and après-ski hijinks).

Since getting skiers up the hill is as important as getting them to the hill, we must point out that New Hampshire introduced New England’s first

chairlift in 1937 on Rowe Mountain in Gilford, just a year after chairlifts were invented in Idaho. The next year, 1938, two new intriguing ski lifts came to Cannon Mountain in Franconia and Mount Cranmore in North Conway. Though not the nation’s original tram, the Cannon Tramway was the first built to carry skiers to trails (the same year, Cannon hired the nation’s first professional ski patrollers).

Cranmore, in addition to giving the world the wacky Skimobile lift in 1938, also introduced ski grooming equipment in 1940.

New Hampshire is also the birthplace of “extreme” skiing. It’s not debatable. The title was secured on April 16, 1939, when Austrian Anton “Toni” Matt went sailing over the headwall of Mount Washington’s monstrous Tuckerman Ravine during the famed American Inferno ski race.

“Going over the lip is a terrifying experience,” Matt told Skiing magazine in 1964. “I was coming into the sudden dropoff at 40, 45 miles an hour. That’s not at all like coming in from a dead standstill. It’s more like

jumping into a 600-foot-deep hole from a speeding car.”

Matt hit speeds estimated at 80 miles an hour, finishing a full minute faster than the second-place finisher, Olympian Dick Durrance. Speaking of races, the first modern downhill race in the United States was believed to have taken place on a Mount Moosilaukee carriage road in the mid-1920s, won by Charlie Proctor (a member of the 1928 Olympic team).

Finally, the internal-combustion crowd can also celebrate New Hampshire’s contribution to cold-weather fun. In 1917, Ossipee’s Virgil D. White received a patent for an attachment converting a Model T into a “Snowmobile” (White copyrighted the name).

And on December 4, 1959, Canadian inventor Joseph Armand Bombardier delivered a Ski-Doo snow machine (known as the Ski-Dog) — the first in the United States — to Timberland Machines in Lancaster. The bright yellow Ski-Dog is still on display at the New Hampshire Snowmobile Museum in Allenstown.

— by Brion O’Connor

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Classic Sculpture with a Message

A

ugustus Saint-Gaudens moved to Cornish, New Hampshire, in 1885 and brought his artistic inspiration and sculptural skills along with him. He gave a lively, naturalistic style to his public art, and is considered one of America’s most accomplished sculptors of the 19th century. Over 100 of his works are exhibited in the galleries and on the grounds at SaintGaudens National Park, including a reproduction of his sculpture titled “Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial.” This was the first civic monument to pay homage to the heroism of African American soldiers. Saint-Gaudens carefully created the facial features of each soldier to clearly distinguish them as individuals.

Fast Food as We Know It

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13 Cyberspace

The term “cyberspace” was first coined by a Danish arts group to describe the operating theatre of the mind in its creative mode, but it was adopted and popularized by science fiction writers like William Gibson, who is credited with applying it to his visions of an information ecosystem that could be navigated and harvested by hackers. Great idea for fiction, but it was computer games that actually made the electronic environment into a playground for the mind.

Computer games were invented right here by engineer Ralph Baer who, while working for Sanders Associates Inc. in Nashua, created the first video game test units in 1967. He went on to create the basic digital moves and challenges that evolved into “Pac Man” and eventually into the massive multiplayer online games that many now choose to occupy the majority of their free time.

t doesn’t take much imagination to call the Golden Arches one of the most familiar symbols on the planet. You’d be hard-pressed to leave the US and not stumble across at least one McDonald’s. Who can definitively say whether or not their place of birth — Manchester, New Hampshire — contributed to their success, but perhaps some good old-fashioned New England pragmatism helped Richard and Maurice McDonald create a business that has served billions (billions, with a “b”) of burgers worldwide. The brothers were responsible for more than a megasuccessful restaurant — for better or worse, they helped bring about what we now call “fast food,” thanks to their invention of the “Speedee Service System.” With a reduced staff, paper wrappers swapped for plates, no silverware, fewer menu choices and a kitchen-turnedassembly line, the brothers created an entirely new way of selling food. Should you want to thank them in person (or at least one of them), Richard is interred in the Mount Calvary Cemetery in Manchester, where his niche is marked with — what else? — the Golden Arches.

courtesy photo

NO.

No. 15 Books for the People

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More than three centuries ago, New Hampshire set the national library trend. Established in January 1717, our State Library is the first state library in the country.

Literary enthusiasts rested for a while (about 100 years or so), but then two things happened in relatively quick succession — first, the town of Dublin created the original free library. The Dublin Juvenile Library was supported by voluntary contributions, not membership fees. A decade later, in 1833, the Peterborough Town Library was founded, becoming the first library in the US funded by public taxes.

photos courtesy nasa

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The GOP

There is some dispute about the birthplace of the Republican Party, but there are a few facts everyone agrees on. Fact number 1: The political meeting where the name “Republican” was adopted was in Exeter some 159 days before any other potential claimant to any other birthplace location. Fact number 2: New Hampshire’s story involves not just moral outrage on the slavery question, but also deep personal animus involving two towering figures of New Hampshire politics. In other words, there was great incentive to create something new, and quickly.

After New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, entered the White House in 1853, one of the first orders of business was kicking three-term former congressman (and fellow Granite Stater) Amos Tuck out of the Democratic Party. Pierce backed pro-slavery moves like the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Tuck was an abolitionist.

Tuck began talking to prominent politicians in and around Exeter about founding a new party and, as the story goes, held a meeting in town with a dozen others at the Squamscott Hotel on October 12, 1853. Soon, Republican Party meetings were popping up all over the country and, in seven short years, the first Republican president, Abe Lincoln, was elected. He was the first of 19 Republican presidents extending to Donald Trump, which is more than any other party in the nation’s history.

— by James Pindell

Citizen Spaceflight

Alan Shepard may have had the Right Stuff, but to Granite Staters, he was just one of us — an everyman in space. This reputation was burnished in 1971 when he smuggled a golf club and ball along for his moon landing, and became the first (and only, so far as we know) person to drive a golf ball in what could be described as the largest sand trap ever played. Our status as the home of citizen space explorers peaked with the selection of Christa McAuliffe, the tragic but still inspiring figure chosen to be our first “teacher in space,” until her claim to immortality was altered in the explosion that killed her and her crewmates, 73 seconds after liftoff. Blue Origin’s “New Shepard” suborbital commercial vehicle, named for Alan Shepard, is the latest evidence that the Granite State helped open the skies to regular folks. And today, anyone who wants to take a vicarious trip to outer space can visit the space museum of the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord or visit our Statehouse, where, along with bloody Civil War battle flags and portraits of our governors from centuries past, are some fragments of moon rock brought back by Shepard.

So how far did Alan Shepard’s lunar tee-shot travel? Theoretical astrophysicist and writer Ethan Siegel calculated that a good drive could send a golf ball flying in the airless, reduced-gravity environment of the moon for 2.5 miles and stay in the air for 70 seconds.

Shepard’s shot wasn’t perfect, but he was probably correct in his claim the ball traveled more than a mile, demolishing the 515-yard drive record held by Mike Austin, and granting Shepard the unofficial record for making the longest golf drive in human history.

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Instant Millionaires

Back in the ’60s, New Hampshire annoyed the federal government, sparked a national moral scandal (or sensation, depending on the point of view) and caught the attention of the Mob — all because of a horse race.

Or, more specifically, because of betting on a horse race. On September 14, 1964, the Live Free or Die state hosted the first legal modern lottery, the New Hampshire Sweepstakes at Rockingham Park racetrack in Salem.

Today, with scratch tickets available at every convenience store and household names like Powerball and Mega Millions, it’s hard to imagine that such games of chance were once illegal. Without New Hampshire taking the first step (and all the heat, legal and otherwise), it’s possible no other state would have taken the same risk.

And it was a risk. The national media criticism was relentless, and New Hampshire governor John King was inundated with letters decrying the decay of the state’s very character.

The FBI, IRS, FCC and even the US Post Office were against it. The Justice Department told the public they feared racketeers (the Mob) would infiltrate the operation, a not-so-unreasonable stance given the Mob’s penchant for running their own numbers games.

Unlike the racetrack betting of today, the sweepstakes was a fairly simple two-step process: Selected ticketholders were matched with a horse and, if that horse won, they won. Not so simple were the federal government’s numerous restrictions and obstacles, such as the prohibition of advertising, promoting or selling tickets outside of New Hampshire. Clever (or dubious, again depending on what side you were on — federal government or sweepstakes enthusiast) loopholes were exploited, and plenty of tickets were sold to both Granite Staters and people from away, despite a few arrests by the FBI. In the end, at $3 a ticket, New Hampshire made a total of $5.7 million, more than enough money to begin smoothing over moral objections and legal obstacles, clearing the way to the lottery as we know it today.

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19 You’re Welcome for our alien overlords

W

ashington state can take credit for inspiring the term “flying saucer” after a strange incident in its skies, and New Mexico gets a lot of press for being a dangerous place for UFOs to tour — at least in 1947 — but extraterrestrials didn’t start taking an interest in human beings personally until they found New Hampshire.

Apparently, the early 1960s was a time for earthlings to understand our place in the universe, and our off-planet instructors chose Lincoln and Exeter for their first two lessons.

The rest of the country was mere fly-over territory for extraterrestrials until 1961. Over the midnight of September 10 and 11 of that year, somewhere around Lincoln, a UFO touched down on New Hampshire soil. The inhabitants whisked Betty and Barney Hill aboard their spaceship to experiment on them, making the two locals the first alien abductees of modern times. Their story set all the tropes for alien abductions going forward, in fiction and real life. You can draw a direct line from the Hills to Randy Quaid in “Independence Day.” And those beings from another world liked what they found in the Granite State so much that they returned on another September night four years later (and only 13 miles from where the Hills lived in Portsmouth) for an incident at Exeter that came to be known as, well, the Incident at Exeter, when a cluster of red lights and a massive flying object scared teenagers and law enforcement alike before inspiring the annual Exeter UFO Festival.

After those two incidents in the 1960s, UFO accounts and visitation claims increased as aliens buzzed about the country to see if it had more of what New Hampshire had to offer. There wouldn’t be another increase in sightings until the 1990s when the number skyrocketed into the exosphere in parallel with the advent of a show called “The X-Files.”

These days, we have more UFO hotspots than WiFi hotspots in the country, and even the Department of Defense has come clean about the existence of UFOs, declassifying three Navy videos in 2020 that prove the skies are full of weird. But the extraterrestrials didn’t forget us in the Granite State after they went national. According to the National UFO Reporting Center, some 150 UFOs were reported in the past two years above the Live Free or Die state.

Basically, we look to the skies a lot more, thanks to New Hampshire, which may be a good thing if we’re being prepped for the big intergalactic reveal in 2021. We’ll be as ready as you can be.

— by J.W. Ocker

Comedy Triumvirate n e w h a m ps h i r e’s

(There must be something funny in the Manchester drinking water.)

A da m S a n d l e r , who grew up in Manchester and graduated from Manchester Central, has become a huge star over the years, thanks to a string of comedies from “Happy Gilmore” to the recent “Hubie Halloween.”

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, his films have grossed billions worldwide, he's been to Cannes, and he even drew Oscar buzz in 2019 for his jaw-droppingly impressive — if not funny at all — turn in “Uncut Gems.” Without Stan and Judy's kid, we wouldn't have Opera Man, the “Water Boy” or “The Hanukkah Song.” Or an excuse to keep wearing cargo shorts and hoodies year-round well into our 50s.

seth meyers:

One-time Bedford resident and Manchester West grad Meyers, host of “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” spent years writing for “Saturday Night Live” and gifted the world with dozens of memorable sketches, characters and lines (“I can see Russia from my house”) before taking the helm of the late-night juggernaut.

Da n Ay k r oy d o n A da m S a n d l e r : “He gave young men a

confidence to be funny and to be bold and to go out there in the world and make a mark with compassion and with heart. If you look at his movies, they’re full of heart and compassion and very, very funny. He keeps his friends working and everyone who works with him loves the experience. He’s truly one of the world’s comic giants.”

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illustration by john r. goodwin

sa r a s i lv e r m a n :

Sarah Silverman, also from Bedford, has a credit list a mile long, including writing and performing on “Saturday Night Live,” and creating and starring in “The Sarah Silverman Show.”

Never one to shy away from taboo subjects, she cemented her spot in (ironically) Disney history by voicing Vanellope von Schweetz in “Wreck-It Ralph” and “Ralph Breaks the Internet.”

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American

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Rock ‘n’ Roll was invented in the USA, but it was quickly adopted everywhere, most notably in Great Britain where an “invasion” was staged in an attempt at payback against the whole American Revolution thing. With bands like the Beatles, the Stones, and Freddy and the Dreamers assaulting our shores and airwaves, what’s a young, spunky country to do? Many acts tried to reclaim America’s rock preeminence until, after meeting at a barn nightclub in Sunapee, hometown rockers Steven Tyler and Joe Perry had a thought. The first concert by Aerosmith took place in a tiny school gym in Mendon, Massachusetts, because Perry’s mom knew someone at the school and helped set it up. Tyler even formally christened the bad-boy band by swiping a Nipmuc Regional High School T-shirt from a locker room to wear on stage for the show. Thus was born a legend.

photo courtesy ed malhoit

Aerosmith’s first show, at Nipmuc Regional High, 1970

Walk by the Fremont town hall on a Saturday

night in the late ’60s, and a seemingly random cacophony of sounds may have come tumbling out across Route 107, smashing into the old Spaulding and Frost Cooperage across the street, causing a jagged harmonic pileup.

This was the music of The Shaggs.

Described as “better than the Beatles,” a quote attributed alternately to either Rolling Stone scribe Lester Bangs or legendary eccentric Frank Zappa, and referred to as the grandmothers of punk, the core of The Shaggs (Dot, Betty and Helen Wiggin) was formed in Fremont in 1968 at the insistence of their father.

It was, by loose definition, music. It had guitars, a

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drummer who seemed to be marching to her own beat, and a singer who touched on topics such as Halloween, parents and their pet cat named Foot Foot. It was not, in the traditional sense, good. Yet 50 years after the release of The Shaggs’ “Philosophy of the World,” fans and admirers continue to flock to the sound.

Whether that’s attributable to an odd affection for the innocence of the Wiggin family band or to the sheer audacity of their effort, the quirky sonic experiment has continued to amass new fans, prompt live performances, and inspire a stage play. The story of this garage band/proto-punk/freeform jazz/girl group has even been optioned for a film.

And while The Shaggs were certainly not punk in the traditional sense, they represented that same independent DIY spirit. You’re welcome, Ramones and Sex Pistols.

courtesy photo

22 A Band Better Than the Beatles

The Joke That Launched a Presidency

NO.

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Mall Cop

tech

If there was one thing that ensured the elevation of the lowly mall cop to a source of cultural relevance, it was the introduction of Dean Kamen’s Segway people mover. It’s fitting that the Happy Madison production company created

by Manchester-boy-cum-mogul Adam Sandler was the brain trust behind the unlikely hits “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2,” both starring Kevin James and the usual gang of Sandler pals, and featuring the Segway as prop-comedy gold. The Segway plant in New Hampshire may have closed, but there’s still talk, and even a petition circulating, regarding the possibility of a “Paul Blart 3” being green-lighted by Happy Madison this year.

illustration by john r. goodwin

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Arnold Schwarzenegger and Paintball

Ahnold, as he has come to be known, was an aspiring bodybuilder-turned-actor in the 1970s, but his bulbous body-type and extreme accent (and his unspellable name) worked against him until an arty bodybuilding documentary (and book) titled “Pumping Iron” boosted his image and made him into a folk hero. That film and book were largely the creation of local filmmakers George Butler and Charles Gaines. They teamed up a few years later to invent the game of paintball by staging a game of “capture the flag” in the woods with some friends using paint guns designed for marking cattle.

I never thought a joke I wrote in my pajamas could end the world.

Nobody cares about monologue writers. No one. We are to comedy what kickers are to football; the game can’t start without us, and you can nail a million in a row without anyone batting an eye. It’s the one you miss that people remember.

Jimmy Fallon told exactly 4,245 jokes I wrote for “Late Night” and “The Tonight Show” — most doing quite well. But it’s the one I missed that everyone remembers. And it wasn’t even told by Jimmy.

In 2011, Seth Meyers [of Bedford, you may recall from page 57] was the featured performer at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. That night, I watched from home in Queens with my then-fiancée when Seth said: “Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republican. Which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke.” We then watched as the camera turned to a fuming dinner guest: Donald Trump.

Despite click-baity books by pundits pushing their own theories, the rumor persists Trump decided then and there he would run for president in 2016. Well … I am the person who wrote that joke. So, in the words of President John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs Invasion: “Ma bad, y’all!”

A couple days later, I was sitting in my office at Fallon when I received a surprising and somewhat urgent visit from Seth. He relayed The Donald was furious — demanding to know who “defamed” him — wanting “names.” For a long time, it was funny. Then one night, as my pregnant wife slept in the next room …

Donald Trump won. Immediately, they started. Texts, emails — each observing that I may have indeed ended civilization.

One friend even nicknamed me “Forrest Trump.” For a while, I tried to talk myself out of it — saying there’s no way a simple joke could drive someone to run for president. But given what we now know about this man … would it really surprise you?

Believe me, I tried everything. During my time running the Fallon monologue in the Dawn of Trump, I scratched, clawed, grasped at any idea that could be The Joke To Undo The Joke. Gotta stop Trump.

Gotta get us all off the hook.

It became an obsession.

And eventually, it quite literally broke my brain. Then came a day when — as I beat myself up for my Fallon run ending and marriage ailing — my well-meaning psychiatrist said: “What else you gonna blame yourself for?

Trump?

So in 2020, I awakened each day — apart from my ex-wife — and stared directly into the apocalypse. And when Joe Biden won … I cried. Not because I was happy — because I was sad; the people with whom I’d worked so hard to celebrate were no longer in my life. And we’re not out of the woods yet; the vaccine could fail and everything shut back down. What if my joke still ends the world? But then, think of all the things from which I spared you! The Lakers will never pass the Celtics. No more “Real Housewives.” I assume “Baby Shark” is reserved only for Hell. But if there’s one lesson I can bestow, it is to be careful — for a person who can’t take a joke could damn near take us down with them.

— by Jon Rineman Jr.

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Writer: 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Wait. Where is Corey Lewandowski?

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The Singer-Songwriter Pantheon:

Tom Rush was born in Portsmouth and grew up, he likes to tell his audiences, at “Hogwarts” (actually Concord’s Gothic campus of St. Paul’s School where his father taught). His 1968 hit, “No Regrets,” is still a folk standard, and Rolling Stone magazine credited him with “ushering in the era of the singer-songwriter.” With his mellow growl, good looks and curious guitar stylings, Rush made hits out of a number of songs by other young singer/ songwriters of the 1960s and ’70s, helping to launch the careers of Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and James Taylor, among others. Rush now lives in Vermont and, when asked the reason for the move, he drawled, “I just couldn’t take another New Hampsha wintah.”

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Modern Makeup

C

osmetics industry pioneers Charles and Joseph Revson were born in Massachusetts but were raised in Manchester in the early 1900s, where their father worked as a cigar roller at a local factory. The Revsons founded Revlon, now a multinational cosmetics company, using pigments instead of dyes in their makeup products — a unique manufacturing process at the time. Six years after its founding, the company was worth multimillions.

No Judgement Fitness

Gyms have always been the sanctuary of lunks, but no one knew what to call them until Planet Fitness popularized the term. Lunk, which originally meant a brawny, good-looking guy, has become a fittingly monosyllabic description of the “pick-things-up-and-put-themdown” school of fitness. Hampton-based Planet Fitness pioneered the concept of the No Judgement Zone with bountiful banks of equipment, meaning you (almost) never have to wait in line for the one good elliptical machine. More importantly, it’s the type of place where you don’t need designer fitness gear to fit in. And that extra “e” that appears in their “no judgEment” motto? Well, AP Style may object, but we’re learning not to be so judgemental.

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Balloons with Ears When scientist Michael Faraday invented the modern rubber balloon in 1824, it was to further his experiments with noble gases at the Royal Institution in London. It was more than 100 years before rubber researcher Neil Tillotson figured out how to make affordable latex balloons in different shapes.

His cat-head balloons led to new designs, including the invention of latex gloves, and he founded the Tillotson Rubber Company in 1931 to manufacture them.

Tillotson bought and moved to The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel in Dixville Notch in 1954, where he created a polling location for the tiny town and arranged for himself to be the first voter in every American presidential primary and election for 40 years until his death at age 102.

Number

NO.

32 A Baseball Icon

30 E The Quicker Picker-Upper They might not have been as absorbent or colorful as a fourpack of Bounty, but an invention

by William Corbin in 1922 got the whole concept of convenient cleanups rolling. Actually, the brown “Nibroc” (his name backward) paper towels he developed were folded into metal cabinets that could be mounted where needed, but this product of the Brown Company in Berlin soon became one of the most recognizable paper products in the country, and Corbin went on to become the mayor of Berlin.

baseball photo courtesy ap wirepress

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ven nonsports fans know the name Jackie Robinson, the now-legendary player who broke the race barrier in major league baseball as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Today, his is the only number retired across all of baseball, meaning no player can claim it, with one exception — each year on Jackie Robinson Day (April 15, the anniversary of his first game), all players wear 42 as a sign of respect and remembrance.

Like most famous moments in history, there’s more to the story. A year before Robinson became the first Black player in the majors, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey assigned Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe to a new farm team, the Nashua Dodgers, making Nashua the first modern city to host an integrated professional baseball team.

No one named any days after Campanella and Newcombe, though both went on to successful big-league careers. Newcombe was the first pitcher to win Rookie of the Year, Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Awards, something no one accomplished again until Justin Verlander in 2011. Newcombe was also the first Black pitcher to start a World Series game, and the first to win 20 games in a single season. Campanella, a Hall of Fame catcher, played for the Dodgers from 1948-1957, until a car accident tragically left him paralyzed.

Without Campanella and Newcombe helping to pave the way, would Robinson have gotten his shot at the majors? Who can say for sure, but regardless, these two unsung players deserve to be remembered not only as talented athletes, but also for their role in fighting racial injustice.

The Road Less Traveled:

Four-time Pulitzer prize-winner Robert Frost, born in California, is one of the most-quoted writers since Shakespeare and therefore belongs to the world, but his most famous works were mostly penned here in New Hampshire during the years he was still trying to learn how to farm. His first Pulitzer was awarded for his 1924 book “New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes” which, ironically, was published after the poet had moved across the river to Vermont.

No.

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The Divine Female: Christian Science was “discovered” by

Mary Baker Eddy, who was born atop a hill in Bow where faithful Christian Scientists still make visits to honor the founder of their church. With all due respect to the Shakers’ Mother Ann and Ellen White’s leadership of the Seventh-day Adventists (both churches having numerous ties to New Hampshire as well), and the Japanese faith Tenrikyo, no other major modern religion can boast of being founded by a woman.

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34 Camo Chic: Now it’s popular on everything from baby bibs to lingerie, but military

camouflage was a hard sell when it was first developed by New Hampshire’s Abbott Thayer.

Thayer, a naturalist and artist who helped found the Dublin Arts Colony in the 19th century, wrote a book examining the abilities of animals to conceal themselves in their native habitats. His concepts became more relevant when the world erupted into war in 1914.

Early in the conflict, the French military found Thayer’s book and instituted programs for disguising facilities and equipment based on his work, and soon a US camouflage unit was established for the war effort (commanded by a son of fellow New Hampshire artist Saint-Gaudens). In the years between the two world wars, European surrealist artists found inspiration in the visual disruptions and mimicry of camouflage, although Pablo Picasso maintained that the “dazzle camo,” developed by Thayer for the Navy, was in fact borrowed from his own cubist movement.

35 Life After Holden

World-famous reclusive (and now deceased) author J.D. Salinger and New Hampshire are forever tied. His ability to hide from a fawning (and, frankly, obsessive) public was aided by the fact that he fit like a pea in a pod with the Yankee folk that surrounded and sheltered him in tiny Cornish. It would probably be wrong to mention that, without this mystique of his seclusion, Salinger’s fame might have receded. Would Mark David Chapman still have channeled an evil Holden Caulfield on that fateful night outside the Dakota in Manhattan where Chapman, carrying a tattered copy of “Catcher,” fired five shots into the back of John Lennon?

We’ll take no blame for that, but the eventual, inevitable flood of the writings from the vault of J.D. Salinger that were allegedly holed up in a safe in the wall of his Cornish home will, like all information, eventually be disclosed, only to be published, sell some millions of copies, then disappear into the flux of the World Wide Web. For that, you’re welcome in advance.

“And I’d build me a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life.”

— Holden Caulfield in “Catcher in the Rye.” Salinger reportedly bought the Cornish home and land with the money he made on “Catcher,” which was published two years before he moved in on January 1, 1953.

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36

The Library of Congress in

Washington, DC, was built from more than 30,000 tons of New Hampshire granite. So were Boston’s Quincy Market and countless other monuments and landmark structures throughout the world. You’re welcome, but, as the bumper sticker reads, “Don’t Take NH for Granite.”

The

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As the legend goes, Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook at Harvard. Where better to formulate the app that changed everything? But there’s plenty of evidence that the seed of the concept was planted in Zuck’s high school years (2000 to 2002) here in New Hampshire at Phillips Exeter Academy. The common student photo/address book for the school was informally known as “The Facebook,” and was a big part of the culture of bonding between peers, checking out who is hot or not, and keeping tabs on whereabouts of old friends and new kids. If that all sounds familiar, consider the fact that, during Zuckerberg’s senior year, the student council voted to have the school’s IT department put the contents of the directory online with the URL student.exeter.edu/facebook.

courtesy photo

NO.

Is “Our Town” the most staged play in America? We’re going to go with, well, probably not, but it’s definitely up there (top 10?). Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play, based famously (at least in New Hampshire) on Peterborough, remains incredibly popular at community and professional theaters all across the country. Certainly some thanks is due to Peterborough’s charming nature for serving as Wilder’s inspiration, but it’s the MacDowell Colony that gave him the space and support to write his enduring play.

In 1907, inspired by her husband and composer Edward MacDowell, Marian Nevins MacDowell founded the nowworld-renowned artists’ retreat in Peterborough, the first and largest of its kind.

“MacDowell makes a place in the world for artists, because art makes the world a better place,” states the retreat’s mission.

And it has, no doubt about it, lived up to its mission, helping to bring great works like “Our Town” and countless others to life. Collectively, MacDowell artists have received nine Academy Awards, 31 Tony Awards, 93 Pulitzer Prizes, 33 National Book Awards, eight National Medal of Arts awards, 17 Grammy Awards and much more. Awards, of course, are not the only measure of success — creating a piece of art, be it a book, painting, symphony, sculpture or movie — is a huge achievement on its own. Without the MacDowell Colony, thousands of artists may not have had the resources to realize their dreams. The fact that a place like MacDowell exists to give them the means to do so is what truly makes the world a better, brighter place.

Thorton Wilder on the cover of TIME Magazine, January 12, 1953

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The Original Land Conservationists

Before the National Park Service was getting all the glory for preserving natural wonders, New Hampshire was already on board with the idea that destroying nature (albeit on a somewhat smaller scale) was not such a great idea. In February 1901, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests was formed, the first such society in the US. The group of nine conservationists came together after witnessing the dire toll industrial

acquired land to be preserved and maintained as a national forest, leading to the creation of the White Mountain National Forest — and much more.

According to the Forest History Society, “To date, nearly 20 million acres of forestland have been protected by the Weeks Act, land that provides habitat for hundreds of plants and animals, recreation space for millions of visitors, and economic opportunities for countless local communities.”

innovation was taking on the White Mountains region — hills were stripped of trees, and streams were clogged with sawdust and silt.

The society sought the support of Massachusetts congressman John W. Weeks, and in 1911, the eponymous Weeks Act was passed, allowing the federal government to buy private land if the purchase was deemed necessary to protect rivers, watersheds and headwaters. It also allowed the

Stephen King 2.0

The poisoned apple doesn’t fall far from the haunted tree. While the sprawling cosmic mythos of Stephen King has transformed his home state of Maine into the backlot of the horror industry, next-door New Hampshire gets only slim pickings from Mr. King.

But his son and fellow horror writer Joe Hill chose

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the Granite State seacoast for his home and even set his dark fantasy “Horns” and pandemic-themed “Fireman” novels in New Hampshire, citing many local landmarks. Inspired by his parents’ work ethic (his mom, Tabitha King, is also a celebrated novelist), Hill reportedly began writing for two hours a day,

courtesy photos

even on weekends, at the age of 8, preparing himself to discover and illuminate new worlds shrouded beneath the long, dark shadow of his famous father.

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

Want to win this signed first addition of this book? Send a letter to Rick Broussard at editor@nhmagazine.com and you'll be entered to win it.

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“Our Town”

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NO.

America, Abolition and Abraham Lincoln

T

hrough the years in my various conversations with people, more often than not, the topic of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary comes up. This is understandable, mainly because of the publicity it generates nationally every four years. But there are many other “firsts” to talk about, including New Hampshire being the first state to declare separation from the crown in 1776, and, in turn, the first to adopt a written constitution anywhere in the world, resulting in the creation of a free and independent government. New Hampshire also has the distinction of having the first senator, John P. Hale of Dover, to call for the abolition of slavery on the US Senate floor.

One of my favorites, though, is this: The first time Abraham Lincoln was publicly introduced as the “next president of the United States” was in Manchester on March 1, 1860.

Lincoln was in the state mostly to visit with his son Robert, a student at Phillips Exeter Academy. While here, Lincoln decided to accept several speaking engagements — the first was in Concord that morning. When he spoke that night in Manchester, Frederick Smyth, chairman of the City Republican Club, former Manchester mayor, city clerk and future governor, made that famous introduction before more than a thousand people gathered at the Smyth’s Block auditorium on Elm Street.

As it happened, the national press was also on hand to witness the event. They were always in New Hampshire this time of year to cover state politics. Because New Hampshire was the first state in the country to hold its elections — each March on Town Meeting day — the Granite State was considered an early bellwether of national political trends. After Lincoln had given his now-famous Cooper Union speech in New York a few days earlier, he had suddenly become a hot political news item.

After Lincoln’s Manchester speech, he retired to the City Hotel at the corner of Lowell and Elm streets where he told Smyth the introduction had “taken him by surprise,” and that he had never been introduced like that before. New York senator William H. Seward would be nominated for president, Lincoln said.

Three months later in May, at the Republican convention in Chicago, Smyth’s prediction came true when Lincoln won the nomination as a dark horse candidate on the third ballot, and the presidency that November.

Once again, one can say a US president, Abraham Lincoln, got his start on the road to the White House here in New Hampshire.

— by New Hampshire Secretary of State William M. Gardner

43 A Murder Story “To Die For”

The sad tale of the murder of Gregg Smart by young associates of his wife Pamela Smart produced some of the most riveting television since the Watergate hearings. That’s in part because it was the first such trial in the US where cameras were allowed in the court room, but also because of the salacious nature of the allegations: A young teacher (actually a media coordinator) has an affair with a student who shares her love for heavy metal music and agrees to help execute her husband. The story was immortalized in fictional form by New Hampshire’s famous writer and memoirist Joyce Maynard, and made into a film starring Nicole Kidman as Pame (her preferred spelling). It was also an early example of the split-screen effect that was beginning to take hold in American media, where people could see the same set of facts and draw two entirely different conclusions (e.g., the OJ Simpson trials and the Fox News/CNN coverage of current events). And for those who believe Pame, who is serving a life sentence in New York, there’s a new hope with the recent story suggesting that Smart’s prosecuting attorney Paul Maggiotto once failed to reveal exculpatory evidence in a trial he argued prior to moving to New Hampshire.

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44 The Global Economy

At the end of World War II, with the global economy in battle-ravaged tatters, a gathering of delegates from all 44 Allied nations was arranged to set a course for the future of the new world order, establishing the International Monetary Fund and encouraging open international markets. The US dollar became the backing for all the world’s currencies. The meeting took place at the Mount Washington Hotel and was named for the town in which it stands: Bretton Woods. This October, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva gave a speech saying that now, with global governments having swiftly blown $12 trillion on pandemic mitigations, “We face a new Bretton Woods ‘moment.’”

illustration by john goodwin

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The Civil War

Franklin Pierce was not our country’s worst president, but because of his feckless leadership on the issue of slavery, we had to endure our country’s “War Between the States.” His successor, James Buchanan Jr., a prominent Democrat with foreign policy experience and a states’ rights platform, is often given the “worst president” dunce cap, but in many ways, he just continued the course that Pierce had set. Like Pierce, Buchanan opposed the abolitionist movement and helped set the stage for the violent uprisings in Kansas that sparked John Brown’s countrywide rally for weapons and funds to lead a slave rebellion (watch Showtime’s “The Good Lord Bird” and be amazed). Pierce’s acts of Southern conciliation and his prochoice view of the enslavement of his fellow human beings put him on the wrong side of history. When history starts to slide on its wrong side, it can take an act of God to set it right, and some see our secular saint and 16th president Abraham Lincoln as the divine anointing that, through blood, fire and angelic rhetoric, was able to reverse the course that Pierce had set for America.

Marvelous

Unıverse

illustration courtesy nickelodeon

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With all due respect to DC’s Batman and Superman, at least some credit for the multimedia juggernaut that is the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe should go to four turtles and a rat.

The “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” comic was created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird of Dover in the early ’80s.

After their first self-published issue sold out, the pizza-loving, anthropomorphic turtles and their rat leader, Splinter, exploded into the general public’s awareness, becoming a huge and decades-spanning pop culture icon on the small and big screens (not to mention endless lines of merchandise). No kid growing up in the ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, and likely even today was unfamiliar with the crime-fighting foursome named for the masters of the Italian Renaissance.

We don’t even have to name them here, you all know. That’s actually pretty remarkable given that the entire concept is, well, really weird.

Talking turtles. Who fight crime, live in a sewer and have a thing for

surfer phrases. It’s not surprising that characters like Batman and Superman found widespread success outside of comic book fans. One may be an alien, but it’s not exactly unusual for people to idolize strong, handsome, male do-gooders (though Batman might fall a bit on the gray middle of the morality spectrum). It’s a whole different thing for the world to embrace the strangeness of TMNT. And that acceptance (and resulting piles of money) potentially helped lay the groundwork for Marvel’s unprecedented success with its multiphased, overarching story that spans movies, TV, streaming services and comics.

There’s Captain America and Iron Man, sure, but there’s also a cynical talking raccoon and tree creature from space, a dude that’s a god and also kind of a planet, various Norse gods, an android/ AI being and many more characters that fall into the “that’s pretty weird” category. So raise a slice to the turtles (and Eastman and Laird) in thanks.

Independent Film: No, not “On Golden Pond.” That trademark Lakes Region film was from Hollywood

and came a year later. The film that many credit with creating the indy auteur mystique (that has now spread to online streaming services) was John Sayles’ “Return of the Secaucus Seven,” filmed in and around Conway over 25 days in 1979 and starring lots of local landmarks and talent (including Emmy-winner Gordon Clapp who still performs with the Peterborough Players). “Secaucus Seven” is often compared to “The Big Chill” as a boomer classic, but it was also the director’s first movie, so manage expectations. After immortalizing New Hampshire, Sayles went on to earn Oscar noms while eschewing studio control and became known as the Godfather of American Independent Film.

Below: Bode Miller on the cover of TIME Magazine, January 23, 2006

The Bode Miller Effect: “Live Free or Die” must

courtesy photo

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have translated to “Ski Like a Madman” in the mind of young Bode Miller when he was being raised like a feral ski bum in his parents’ hippie home in the woods of Franconia. Yet, somehow, that “technique (and medals) be damned” attitude made him an Olympic and World Championship gold medalist, a two-time overall World Cup champion in 2005 and 2008, and the most successful male American alpine ski racer of all time before he retired in 2017. Like watching a bumblebee fly, experts still don’t quite understand how Miller increased his speed by flailing and making corrections on his way downhill.

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The Soothing Sound of Velcro

The Manchester home office of Velcro International supplies everyone from shoemakers to NASA with its useful hook-and-eye closures, but for a dose of brutalist ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) just look up “the soothing sound of Velcro” on YouTube. There’s even a 10-hour loop of the unforgettable pop and frizzle that is Velcro's auditory trademark, which might provide an suitable replacement for nonstop holiday music in households celebrating Festivus. NH

YO U’R E

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rebuilds

Rich

Rich Benoit at his Electrified Garage

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From left: Bryan Maynard, Chad Hrencecin and Peter Stich take some downtime at the Electrified Garage in Seabrook.

W

atch any video that Rich Benoit uploads to his Rich Rebuilds channel on YouTube, and it doesn’t take long to notice his humor. Snarky, tongue-in-cheek, and punctuated by fast-paced graphics and visual blandishments to accompany the information he provides.

In other words, come for the laughs, stay to learn how to convert a Mini Cooper from gas to electric or how to service your own Tesla. Even people who never change their own oil won’t miss an episode.

As the channel closes in on 900,000 subscribers, Benoit’s talents have not gone unnoticed by media around the world, from Vice and “The Joe Rogan Show” to The Boston Globe and Car and Driver. A longtime resident of Salem, Massachusetts, he opened The Electrified Garage — devoted solely to electric vehicles — in Seabrook, New Hampshire, in the summer of 2019 with his two partners Chris Salvo and Chad

Hrencecin. Another branch launched in Florida in late 2020 with the ultimate aim to expand throughout the country.

All this is the direct result of the time he reluctantly climbed behind the wheel of a Tesla Model S back in 2014. A fan of muscle cars since before he could walk, and a devoted gearhead since before he could drive, the extreme power — and quiet — of the electric car made him shift gears in just 15 minutes. “I wanted one, and I wanted it now,” he says.

But as a father of three holding down a full-time job at an IT help desk, the high five-figure price tag was well beyond his

By Lisa Rogak / Photos by Kendal J. Bush nhmagazine.com | July 2020 nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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Benoit and Maynard check out the underside of a customer’s car.

Another threat came from Tesla drivers who felt the company and its CEO Elon Musk could do no wrong.

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reach. Like any true Yankee, he’s an inveterate hoarder and cheapskate, and after bringing several salvage vehicles back from the dead, he figured he’d do the same when he bought a 2012 Model S flood car. Throw in a bag of rice, just like with a cellphone, and it’d be good as new.

Benoit named the car Dolores after a scrappy female protagonist in “Westworld,” and got to work, removing bolts, corroded battery terminals, and the occasional dead fish — it had been submerged in saltwater during Superstorm Sandy — cataloguing each piece before tucking it into a Baggie.

“I was that annoying kid who was always asking ‘But why?’” he admits. After taking apart VCRs and fake Rolex watches his father brought back from business trips, he moved on to cars. When he was 11, he took apart the wiring assembly in his mom’s Geo Metro, and after putting it

back together, he figured out how to shift into reverse.

He applied his childhood lessons to Dolores, and made good progress until he needed parts for the car. At the time, Tesla’s policy was to stonewall owners who wanted to work on their own cars, and refused to sell him any parts, or provide him with service manuals for that matter. Massachusetts had a Right to Repair law that obligated auto manufacturers to help consumers who worked on their own cars, but the law specifically applied to dealerships. Tesla didn’t have to cooperate since they only sold their cars online.

Undaunted, Benoit turned to online forums for advice on where to get parts and for help with his problems. He also posted his own solutions with videos, which quickly attracted viewers who appreciated his straightforward advice laced with wicked humor.

Benoit and Hrencecin work on a 2020 Tesla Model Y. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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Above: A 2019 Tesla Model 3 in the process of getting an alignment Below: Benoit’s Electrified Garage logo looks good reflected upon a Tesla hood.

Others soon started asking him for help, so he began posting his forum videos simultaneously to a YouTube channel he created.

In his early videos, he deliberately remained off camera. “I wasn’t intentionally trying to hide who I was, though I was uncomfortable being in front of the camera, and thought the focus should be on the car in any case,” he explains.

One day, he posted a video on the forum where his hand accidentally came into view, and all hell broke loose: The racist comments — and rebuttals — flooded in. Moderators deleted the negative posts as soon as they came in, but the controversy attracted more viewers to his YouTube channel.

Around this time, he received a check for a hundred bucks from YouTube for advertising revenue. He soon stopped posting videos on the forum and switched exclusively to YouTube.

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less roadblocks when it came to finding parts. He had a Facebook page for buying, selling and trading Tesla parts that wasn’t yielding much, when he realized he could solve a lot of problems if he had another Tesla that was broken in all the ways Dolores wasn’t. He found a wrecked Model S that he christened Slim Shady and spent the next six months playing Dr. Frankenstein.

The first time he drove Dolores was no less powerful than his first ride in a Tesla, but in a whole different way. “I did this,” he says, “not a bunch of engineers.”

Podcasts and blogs devoted to Teslas and other electric vehicles interviewed him, as well as general automotive sites and mainstream news outlets. Benoit was the first to accomplish something that the naysayers had long said was impossible.

Another thing stood out: the color of his skin. After all, African American automotive YouTubers are few and far between. With his increased visibility, the

racist comments still arrived, but he dealt with it by pinning the worst ones to the top of the comment section, just like in medieval times when warlords would cut off an enemy’s head and stick it on a post at the entrance to the village as a warning to others. According to Benoit, this reduced racist comments by about 80%.

Another threat came from Tesla drivers who felt the company and its CEO Elon Musk could do no wrong. When Benoit criticized the company for not selling parts to owners, rabid fans — dubbed the Musketeers — flooded his page with negative comments, accusing him of polluting the Earth or stealing money from the company because he fixed his own car. As was the case with racist comments, he pinned the most egregious comments to the top and tried to let it slide off his back. After all, big life changes were in store.

His income from YouTube ads and

sponsors had increased, and he had solved his parts issue by buying a few more salvaged Teslas for parts and selling the ones he didn’t need. The Electrified Garage was about to launch in Seabrook, so he quit his job in the spring of 2019 and didn’t look back.

However, working on Teslas started to bore him. Even though Benoit had built the channel and his brand by catering to EV enthusiasts, something had to give. He was also tired of dealing with the Musketeers and other critics.

Last summer, he announced on his channel that he was going to start rebuilding gas cars in addition to EVs. A boatload of viewers unsubscribed, but the number of new fans more than made up for it. Besides making hundreds of thousands of people laugh and learn about how to work on cars, Benoit’s efforts have garnered real change, both at the company and government level.

A revised Right to Repair law in Massachusetts was passed in November 2020, compelling Tesla to provide owners with tools, parts and technical information to fix their own cars.

Benoit often calls upon several New Hampshire businesses for help; he gets his salvage vehicles from Argo, a salvage dealer in Raymond, and TMS Diesel in Weare is helping with his newly acquired 2009 GMC Sierra Duramax. And he has no regrets nor plans to change as his audience continues to grow.

“People like me because I’m goofy and quirky, and because they can learn something while watching one of my videos,” he says. “I’m an Everyman, not an engineer. I break stuff all the time and make tons of mistakes. There are a bunch of new Tesla rebuild channels with people who are younger than me, smarter than me, and better-looking than me, and I’m okay with that. I feel proud of what I started.” NH

Benoit stands next to a 2008 Tesla roadster, the first model the company produced, as a cardboard Elon Musk looks on. For more information, visit electrifiedgarage.com. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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603 Living “Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem.” — A.A. Milne

With beautiful, whimsical illustrations

by Rebecca Green, Sy Montgomery’s “Becoming a Good Creature” is both a joy to read and to look at.

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Health 92 Local Dish 95 Ayuh 96

Telling Their

Stories

In the quiet New Hampshire town of Hancock, there lives a woman who has been described as “part Emily Dickinson, part Indiana Jones.” For sure, Sy Montgomery’s adventures could fill a book, and they have, many of them. Her latest contains a message for the times.

By Barbara Coles Art by rebecca green

Question: Why was Sy Montgomery suspended by a rope high above an Amazon River tributary that was teeming with piranhas?

The answer: She was looking for a pink dolphin.

Of course.

To say the least, Montgomery has not lived your average life.

From her home base in Hancock, the naturalist and adventurer has traveled the world in a quest for understanding the planet’s animals and what they can teach us. “School is not the only place to find a teacher,” she says.

That quest has taken her through Africa, India, Peru, Mongolia, New Guinea and more. In her travels, she has been hunted by a swimming tiger, embraced by an octopus, nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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603 living / Sy Montgomery undressed by an orangutan, chased by an angry gorilla and pursued by pirates.

She survived being bitten by a vampire bat, contracting dengue fever, handling a wild tarantula, and nearly getting kidnapped twice in two different countries. And then there was the time she worked in a pit crawling with 18,000 snakes.

In northern Thailand, a tribal shaman once foretold her future by looking at the pattern of blue veins on her wrists. He said that her wrists “were the luckiest wrists he had ever seen.” Indeed.

If all this seems like great grist for a book, it is. She has written 30 of them for both adults and children. Make that 31.

This past fall, “Becoming a Good Creature” was released. It’s an adaptation of her New York Times bestselling 2018 memoir “How to Be a Good Creature” and written for all animal lovers, especially children age 4-7.

Beautifully illustrated by Rebecca Green, it traces her incredible journeys on six of the seven continents and imparts the lessons she learned along the way.

“Find Common Ground” is one of the lessons taught to her by Octavia, the octopus. “Octavia had eight arms, three hearts, no bones,” it reads. “She lived in the water, I live on land. What could we possibly have in common? We both liked to play!”

From an interaction with a white-coated weasel, she learned forgiveness. From her quest to see an emu-like cassowary in Australia, to wait patiently. Facing a charging gorilla in Africa, respect others. Harder to learn, don’t be afraid when encountering tigers and lions.

In the book, Montgomery writes: “To all the creatures who have been my teachers, wild and tame, named and unnamed, animal and human: Thank you for showing me a world more surprising, more alive, and far more glorious than I could have ever imagined.”

That glorious world of animals first stirred her interest when she was a little girl and had a pet lizard, turtles, fish and a green parakeet. But it became a fascination when Molly, a Scottish terrier puppy, came into her life.

Montgomery says she soon found Molly had special powers. She could see in the dark. She could smell and hear things people could not. “I wanted to be like her,” she says. “I imagined what it would be like if I could live somewhere in the woods with her and learn dog secrets.”

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Next, I went to Africa to meet gorillas. I hiked in the mountains there for a

I traveled to Australia again—this time to meet a different bird. The cassowary, like the emu, is a tall bird who runs instead of flies. I was eager to meet one and spent a week trekking through their rainforest home.

An hour before I had to leave, I went one more time to say goodbye to the beautiful, empty jungle.

A cassowary stepped out from the trees before me.

He was close enough for me to see his eyelashes!

I was so glad that I had waited.

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But I didn’t run. I crouched low and looked at the ground, as if bowing before a

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603 living / Sy Montgomery

The little girls next door moved away. Our pig grew old. Our dog grew old. It felt like everything was ending.

Then one day I got a phone call from our veterinarian. He told me that a neighbor’s border collie had just had pups. They were all valuable dogs,

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with grew All b W

“Becoming a Good Creature” is a kid-friendly adaptation of Sy Montgomery’s “How to Be a Good Creature.” Both are illustrated by Rebecca Green, and are available at local bookstores and online.

Her experience with Molly would open the door to the secrets of others in the animal kingdom. Lizards could re-grow their tails, she discovered. Crickets could sing by fiddling their legs against their wings. Lightning bugs could glow in the dark.

But she would go on to discover secrets even more amazing. After college and a stint in the work world, she went to Australia, eventually moving into a tent in the outback. There, she studied emus, the ancient, ostrich-like birds that she says have “legs on which they can run at 40 miles per hour” that are “strong enough to sever fencing wire with a single kick.”

She studied them in the same way that Jane Goodall had studied the chimpanzees, observing from afar and recording what they did all day. And then, as they got used to her, gradually moving closer and closer.

Montgomery found that emus were smart, and even had a sense of humor. She tells of a time when three emus teased a dog on a chain, coming to just where they knew the HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT hmhbooks.com dog couldn’t reach. They “then leapt in the air, kicking their legs, flinging their necks — and the dog went wild. Then they ran off to a safe distance, flopped onto the ground, and preened themselves — apparently well-satisfied with the success of their prank.”

Though Montgomery says there were no major scientific breakthroughs to report on her emu study, the tall-as-a-man creatures gave her the gift of allowing her into their lives. She says, “Most people know animals in only one of a very few ways: we take animals into our homes as pets. We take them into our bodies as food. Most people never get to really know wild animals on the animals’ terms.”

You can trace her journeys from the outback onward with the celebrated books she has written and recorded, several of them translated into other languages. The “Soul of an Octopus” is one that’s gotten a lot of attention. In the book, a finalist for the National Book Awards in 2015 and another New York Times bestseller, Montgomery shows that octopuses are not alien sea monsters, but intelligent, sensitive, even playful creatures.

And at home in Hancock, where she lives in a 150-year-old farmhouse with her husband Howard Mansfield, also a celebrated writer, inspiration for another beloved book came from a pig named Christopher Hogwood, who lived on their farm. “The Good Good Pig,” an international bestseller, tells the tale of smart,

with important work to do, herding sheep, cows, and pigs when they grew up. All the babies already had farm families waiting for them.

All but one—one puppy had a blind eye.

Would I take him?

has scuba-dived with octopuses in the Pacific, swum with piranhas, electric eels, and dolphins in the Amazon, worked in a pit crawling with 18,000 snakes in Manitoba, and handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana—all to research thirty books. She is a National Book Award finalist and has also been honored with a Sibert Medal. She lives in Hancock, New Hampshire, with her husband, Howard Mansfield, and their border collie, Thurber. Visit her online at symontgomery.com and on Twitter @SyTheAuthor.

is an illustrator of many children’s and middle grade books, including The Unicorn in the Barn, Iqbal and His Ingenious Idea, Madame Saqui, and From Far Away.

She is also the author and illustrator of How to Make Friends with a Ghost. This is her second collaboration with Sy Montgomery, their first being How to Be a Good Creature. She resides with her husband and their lovely animals, Mori and Junie B. You can find more of her work at rebeccagreenillustration.com or on Instagram @rebeccagreenillustration.

Jacket illustrations © 2020 by Rebecca Green / Jacket design by Jessica Handelman Author and illustrator photo by Carla Schooler Lafontaine

$17.99/Higher in Canada ISBN 978-0-358-25210-8

soulful pig who becomes a village celebrity, then gains national fame. Montgomery calls him a “great Buddha master” who has taught her and others many life lessons.

What new adventures — with books to follow — might there be, at home in Hancock or in the wider world for a woman The Boston Globe calls “part Emily Dickson, part Indiana Jones”? Think turtles. NH

$17.99/Higher in C

has had many teachers in two legs, others with four, have had fur, feathers, or all had one thing in commo The animals Sy has world travels have taugh understanding in the mo from being patient to find respecting others. Gorilla tigers, and more have all s are no limits to the empa find in one another if onl to connect.

Based on the New York adult memoir, Sy Montgo Green have created this guide for anyone who wi creature in the world.

1770051

Find It

symontgomery.com Learn more about “Becoming a Good Creature,” and discover Sy Montgomery’s many other books. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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Ask the

EXPERTS

New Hampshire Magazine’s Guide to Retirement Living and Senior Living

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As every aspect of life continues to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, New Hampshire’s senior communities have implemented strict safety measures to ensure a secure environment for residents. We reached out to a number of those communities to see how they’ve met the recent challenge.

OUR EXPERTS: Joe Deveau, Executive Director Riverglen House riverglenhouse.com Shannon Lynch, Executive Director Summit by Morrison themorrisoncommunities.org Tammy Stevens, Director of Admissions Taylor Community taylorcommunity.org Paul Harrington, Vice Chair Bowman Place at Olde Bedford Board of Trustees bowmanplace.org Cathleen Toomey, Vice President of Marketing The RiverWoods Group riverwoodsgroup.org Robert Memmolo, Executive Director Bedford Falls benchmarkseniorliving.com Maria Byrne, Director of Sales The Baldwin thebaldwinnh.org Lynda Brislin, R.N. Executive Director Windham Terrace terracecommunities.com

JOE DEVEAU RIVERGLEN HOUSE What were the most successful safety measures your community has implemented in the past few months?

Deveau: “We are closely following CDC guidelines and state regulations. We’ve stepped up our cleaning procedures, focusing on high-touch areas. We also started using electrostatic sprayers so that we can cover more surfaces in a shorter amount of time. Our care staff and other workers are also wearing masks and social distancing whenever possible.”

What alternatives to visitation have been implemented?

Deveau: “We are assisting our residents with technology like Skype and FaceTime.

We also set up outdoor visitation areas while monitoring social distancing practices and wearing masks.”

How do you communicate updates with family members?

Deveau: “We have regular email updates to all families and we send additional updates whenever needed. We’re a smaller community in a close-knit town so most of our staff are on a first name basis with our families and they communicate regularly by phone.”

What kinds of cultural/physical/ enrichment activities are residents taking part in?

Deveau: “We’re participating in more online activities. Virtual museum visits, outdoor musicians are visiting, and lots of virtual music on the big screen.”

How has the staff adapted to necessary safety precautions?

Deveau: “Our staff has handled all of this wonderfully! They are committed to providing a safe environment for all our residents. They wear full PPE when needed,

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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social distance when possible, and have handled everything exceedingly well.”

What would your message be to potential residents who may be concerned about safety?

Deveau: “Our residents’ safety is our primary concern. We have adapted to these changes and we are committed to providing the best possible experience for all of our residents.

The area of Littleton, New Hampshire (northern New Hampshire) has been spared from many COVID-19 concerns and we remain vigilant. Our residents have each other and the social aspects of life at Riverglen far outweigh living at home alone.”

SHANNON LYNCH SUMMIT BY MORRISON What were the most important safety measures your community has implemented in the past few months?

Lynch: “We stay up to date on information by joining the Zoom calls with the NH Department of Public Health and have implemented policies and procedures based on their guidance. Mandatory screening of all staff and visitors, requiring that masks

be worn by staff and all residents when they leave their rooms, and more intensive cleaning are just a few of the safety strategies we have implemented.

“Our focus has been on being proactive rather than reactive. We keep our staff updated on best practices and encourage safe behavior not only at work but outside the workplace. We continually emphasize that a team effort is required to protect residents and that this starts with the individual.”

What alternatives to visitation have been implemented?

Lynch: “We know that opportunities to visit with family and friends are essential to maintaining our residents’ wellbeing.

From the start of COVID-19, we have been able to safely and successfully implement multiple ways for residents to connect with loved ones, including indoor and outdoor visits, along with virtual opportunities, such as FaceTime or Zoom meetings.”

How do you communicate updates with family members?

Lynch: “Communication is vital and must be consistent. Special announcements are sent both by email and direct mail de-

“ We were at the point where the chores, worries and upkeep of our home and property, and our ability to maintain and enjoy that part of our life was waning.We found the best solution for us right here in the North Country!” Joan and David LeBaron

pending on family preference. A monthly activities calendar and newsletter helps keep the residents’ loved ones up to date.

We produce a monthly email newsletter for residents, families and the wider community. Our website includes a special COVID-19 section for important updates.”

What kinds of cultural/physical/ enrichment activities are residents taking part in?

Lynch: “Providing safe socialization opportunities has been crucial. Our Life Enrichment department has done an excellent job of finding creative yet safe activities for residents to engage in. Utilizing proper physical distancing, wearing masks and using appropriate sanitizing protocols, we have been able to live stream numerous events, such as local theatre productions and concerts. We are also adding more activities in smaller groups to accommodate everyone while maintaining appropriate COVID-19 protocols.”

What would your message be to potential residents who may be concerned about safety?

Lynch: “We understand the concerns people have about transitioning to a senior liv-

It’s important to have a plan as you age.

Joan and David found Summit’s spacious independent living apartments and amenities just what they were looking for. Joan notes, “All of the apartments have kitchens and even though Summit provides meals, I like to cook some of our food. Summit is also pet-friendly.

Those factors were attractive to us. The pleasant walking paths, sweeping views, and a location close to town with medical and dental offices just across the road made our decision easy.”

Summit

by Morrison

New Hampshire’s Premier Senior Living Community.

Independent and maintenance-free living Whitefield, NH • themorrisoncommunities.org INDEPENDENT LIVING • ASSISTED LIVING • MEMORY CARE 80

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Call for a virtual tour today!

(603) 837-3500

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ing community during a pandemic; however, we feel the benefits far outweigh the risks. We have direct access to the most up-to-date health and safety guidance issued by the state of New Hampshire. We are able to implement policies and procedures that ensure the wellbeing of our staff and residents while allowing our residents to maintain an excellent quality of life, such as managing indoor visits, providing communal dining in a safe environment, informing residents about safety precautions, and providing opportunities for social engagement while maintaining physical distancing. Should residents feel safer sheltering in place, we provide services that allow this: meal delivery or take out, shopping services, and partnerships with local resources, such as the library for book delivery.”

CATHLEEN TOOMEY THE RIVERWOODS GROUP How is your community coping with the COVID-19 crisis?

Toomey: “The advantage of being a small family of communities is that we are able to share information, staff, resources and wisdom across RiverWoods Exeter, Birch Hill and RiverWoods Durham. Our vice president of quality and clinical leadership has been on weekly calls with the New Hampshire Department of Public Health, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services. We participate regularly in CMS stakeholder engagement and CDC Clinical Outreach and Communication Activity calls and webinars to understand changing protocols and precautions. We also participate in calls with our national industry association Leading Age, regarding COVID-19, which are 3-4 times per month.

As of press time, we are engaged in learning about the various protocols involved in securing and administering the vaccine.

See how the right care can make a world of difference.

Assisted Living Our team offers compassionate care to meet all of our resident’s individual needs.

Independent Living Residents enjoy worry-free living while maintaining their independence. With the proximity to Littleton’s vibrant downtown and Main Street, our residents receive endless opportunities to participate in a wide range of outside events and experiences.

Contact us to learn more!

55 Riverglen Lane, Littleton • (603) 444-8880

www.riverglenhouse.com

“My Mom said she wanted to live at home forever. Her hospital case manager recommended 360 SHS.”

“We closed our campuses to outside visitors in mid-March, and have followed strict guidelines to ensure the safety of residents and staff, including closing communal dining, eliminating large group meetings and activities, as well as ensuring mask wearing and proper social distancing.”

What alternatives to visitation have you implemented?

Toomey: “During the spring and summer months, residents have been able to meet with family outside, socially distanced. We have helped residents connect with loved ones through Zoom sessions as well.”

603-801-1936 www.360-SHS.com

Bedford • Londonderry • Exeter • Concord • Portsmouth nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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How do you communicate updates with family members?

Toomey: “From the beginning, we have been particularly diligent communicating with residents, staff and family members through written and video communications, conducted as often as needed (sometimes three times a week early on) through a special COVID page on our website, and information distributed in residents’ mailboxes.”

What kinds of cultural/physical/ enrichment activities are residents taking part in?

Toomey: “We are slowly bringing back fitness classes, with smaller classes that allow 6 feet apart, as well as resuming committee meetings. We are having socially distanced happy hours, and are doing outdoor events like hiking, bocce, and recently hosted an outdoor walk/run. We had themed dining nights when outdoor dining was possible, and had cocktail hour at the fire pits in some communities. Several floors have done socially distanced birthday gatherings.”

How has the staff adapted to necessary safety precautions?

Toomey: “Our staff has been extremely diligent in washing their hands, wearing their masks, keeping their social circles small, and screening in every day before they come to work.”

What would your message be to potential residents who may be concerned about safety?

Toomey: “We recently did a video on each campus of residents discussing how they felt about living in our communities during the pandemic. Overwhelmingly, residents said they felt safer living here than in their own homes during the pandemic. They had access to all the PPE they needed, and we provided groceries, prescriptions, meals; whatever was needed, in safe manner. Most all of our residents feel they are safer living in a RiverWoods community than they would be in their own home.”

TAMMY STEVENS TAYLOR COMMUNITY What were the most successful safety measures your community has implemented in the past few months?

Stevens: “At Taylor, we have found that successfully protecting our residents and 82

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staff requires us to focus on three key factors — social distancing, mask compliance, and clear communication. We undertook numerous safety protocols, including screening all staff and visitors upon their entrance to campus, limiting staff between buildings and care levels, testing staff regularly, mask and personal protective equipment usage and more. We also started a new shopping and delivery service for our residents, as many did not want to risk exposure by going to stores. What really sets us apart though is our ability to adapt quickly based upon new guidance provided by the state of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire DHHS. Because we can pivot rapidly and implement new protocols and guidelines, it is crucially important for us to communicate all changes directly to residents and staff. We have ramped up our virtual communication to include a televised newscast featuring staff members, a Taylor Messenger newsletter, as well as virtual Resident Town Halls to keep everyone informed. Through these communication strategies, everyone on campus has had immediate access to critical information, which has allowed us to ensure safety and provide our residents with peace of mind.”

What alternatives to visitation have been implemented?

Stevens: “The pandemic has led us to find innovative ways to keep our residents connected with friends and loved ones. When the pandemic was peaking in the spring, both independent and licensed building residents were only able to connect with family members via virtual visits on Zoom, FaceTime and other platforms. And while virtual visits filled some of the void, nothing compared to the amazing moments when residents saw loved ones through drive-by parades and received packages from the parcel and gift drop off. Thankfully, as the state started to loosen restrictions on businesses in-person visits have been allowed per state guidelines and mandates.

However, we recognize that we may need to pivot at any time to tighten restrictions to keep our residents safe. During times when restrictions are loosened, independent living residents can visit with family and friends in the privacy of their own homes or at locations off-campus, we just ask that everyone wear masks, take common-sense precautions and get symptoms checked when arriving on campus. In the licensed buildings we have initiated window and in-person outdoor visits and regulatory restrictive inside visits, which have greatly boosted the morale of

the residents. And, to enhance the window visit experience we’ve constructed two custom heated enclosures so loved ones can comfortably visit residents throughout the months to come.”

How do you communicate updates with family members?

Stevens: “We believe that communicating updates with family members during this time is essential, so we’ve utilized numerous methods to keep loved ones informed. We have continued to communicate via our bimonthly newsletter, Facebook and our website, while also adding daily Messenger and Link Letter email newsletters as needed. And we’ve gotten creative with ways to receive up-to-date information by launching our very own ‘Puff and Fluff’ video newscast featuring staff members that we post to our Facebook page for public viewing. Because family visits in our licensed buildings are limited during this time, we’ve made it a priority to send out weekly email blasts for family members of assisted living, nursing, and memory care residents that include lots of photos and information on social activities happening. The overarching focus of our communication has not only been to provide practical information regarding visits, item drop-offs, guidelines and testing, but also to assure families that all residents are happy and being well-loved and cared for during this difficult time.”

What kinds of cultural/physical/ enrichment activities are residents taking part in?

Stevens: “The pandemic has in no way stopped residents at Taylor from taking part in a multitude of cultural, physical and enrichment activities here on campus.

At the beginning of the pandemic, all in-person activities were stopped but were immediately replaced with a daily Link Letter email blast that included hours of activities, articles, videos and thought-provoking content that residents could enjoy from the safety of their own homes. As restrictions loosened this summer, our newly built outdoor pavilion quickly became the hub for socially distanced activities for our independent living residents on our Laconia campus. Residents enjoyed taking part in shuffleboard and bocce tournaments, exercise classes, outdoor concerts, al fresco dining experiences and numerous other events. We also were able to coordinate private tours around the state, which were a huge hit! And now that we have entered the colder months, we

LIFE IS BETTER IN A RIVERWOODS COMMUNITY

“There’s a level of trust and security I have living here that means even more now.”

“The silver lining is that we are all staying connected — residents and staff.”

“It’s impressive to see the amount of effort the staff puts in to keep us safe.”

RiverWoods Durham Resident Susan

RiverWoods Exeter Resident Pam

Birch Hill Resident Ken

“I'm grateful to be here because there's a real sense of community.”

“RiverWoods has always been ahead of the curve as far as doing the right things.”

“I appreciate the kindness and sense of humor everyone has, no matter what we are going through.”

Birch Hill Resident Peg

RiverWoods Exeter Resident Frank

RiverWoods Durham Resident Shirley

Isn’t it time you took a closer look at RiverWoods?

Our small non-profit family of communities shares a mission to change lives for the better, every day, even in a pandemic. That’s why so many active, independent adults choose the safety and security of a RiverWoods community for their future. Call us to set up a virtual or in-person tour.

A RiverWoods Community

603.658.1586 RiverWoodsExeter.org

603.836.2302 BirchHillRC.org

603.868.6000 RiverWoodsDurham.org

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are still offering a lot of opportunities for residents to stay engaged indoors, it just looks a bit different than previous years.

We’ve gotten creative with utilizing inside spaces by offering socially distanced cornhole tournaments, music programming, exercise classes, daily programming in our theatre — the list is endless. And with live streaming, we’ve been able to showcase a wide range of programs, musicals, movies and operas to all our resident’s homes.

Thanks to our incredible staff, we can adapt and change programming at a moment’s notice as needed. I continue to be amazed by all we are able to do here at Taylor to balance socialization and safety in a thoughtful way.”

How has the staff adapted to necessary safety precautions?

Stevens: “As Taylor staff, we emphasize that residents don’t live where we work — rather we work where they live, so we place great importance on keeping residents safe in their home environment.

All staff have taken every possible safety precaution without hesitation or reservation and will continue to do so throughout the rest of the pandemic. In short, when it comes to the safety of our residents and

each other during this pandemic. At Taylor we are more than a community — we are family, we look out for each other’s safety and wellbeing, and I promise we’ll look out for yours too.”

any related measure staff needs to take, they’re all in.”

What would your message be to potential residents who may be concerned about safety?

Stevens: “Safety during the pandemic is a very real concern and we recognize that, but we want you to know that your safety is of utmost importance at Taylor and always will be. Throughout this difficult year, our residents have continually expressed their appreciation that they’re in an environment where we’re invested in their continued safety. If you’re worried about going to the store and risking exposure, then one of our staff members will go for you, no questions asked — residents’ safety always comes first. We truly are doing everything we can to keep residents safe by testing staff, frequently cleaning all common spaces, wearing masks and remaining socially distanced. And, thankfully, at Taylor safety hasn’t equated to a compromised quality of life, as we’ve still found creative ways to provide our residents with plenty of fun social, cultural and wellness opportunities. It’s been a scary time for all of us, but it’s been a truly incredible experience watching this community come together and support

PAUL HARRINGTON BOWMAN PLACE AT OLDE BEDFORD When does Bowman Place at Olde Bedford plan to open?

Harrington: “Bowman Place will be open to new residents in early spring 2021.”

How will residents be able to connect with friends and loved ones?

Harrington: “We are planning to expedite visitation in multiple ways, depending on the resident’s desired way of communicating. We will offer either assisted media such as FaceTime or Zoom, or safety panel door or window visits to our residents on a regular basis so they always know and can look forward to that next special family interaction. For our memory care residents, we will be especially accommodating of the face-to-face visits that are more appropriate for their cognitive level.”

COMMUNITY

Independence, Freedom, and Peace of Mind

Fill your days with friends, adventures, delicious meals and laughter, & leave behind worries about future security.

A home at Taylor is a home for life. Learn more about our two beautiful Lakes Region locations. Call today!

Retirement Reimagined in Laconia & Wolfeboro NH Taylorcommunity.org / 844-210-1400

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Taylor is a not-for-profit 501 (c)3 continuing care retirement community

Living

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How will you communicate updates with family members?

Harrington: “We will strike a balance between formal weekly communications through email and Zoom as well as one-on-one communications through telephone calls, Zoom, or outdoor meetings to allay fears and issues that are specific to each family. Of paramount importance will be complete transparency as to what is happening and what we are doing about it. Together we can face this challenge and come out as strong as an extended family unit.”

What kinds of cultural/physical/ enrichment activities will residents take part in?

Harrington: “We expect to have all of the typical activities we would have in the absence of COVID-19, just presented in a safe way. One of our signature programs is a professional art class available weekly for all residents. This will still take place, but with the instructor using technology to guide residents rather than being at their elbow. We feel that we will learn a lot about how to best interact while still staying safe, which will serve to reduce more common health issues, such as colds and flu, even after the COVID-19 pandemic is under control.”

What would your message be to potential residents who may be concerned about safety?

Beautiful

Begins Here

B

owman Place Assisted Living Community is not just brand new and beautiful, it is intelligently designed to make every day come alive with possibilities.

• 24-hour personal care services • Spacious studio, one and two-bedroom apartments • Over 25 clubs and programs • Delicious home-cooked meals

Let us take care of the details, while you live your beautiful life.

SPECIAL OFFER: Join the exclusive Charter Member Club and receive more than $1000 worth of amenities when you move in!

24 Old Bedford Road • Bedford, NH 03110

Call (603)714-7003 • bowmanplace.org

Owned and operated by: Senior Living of Bedford, a 501(c)(3) organization

BowmanPlace-201123-ad-NHmag.indd 1

Harrington: “We would like them to know that we are aware that many infections can be brought in by the staff, and so we have taken extra steps in the design of the building, among other initiatives, to help our staff stay safe so that our residents, in turn, can stay safe. For example, we built two showers and changing rooms for our staff so that they can shower before they start their shift if they have been out and about during the day. We will also be doing frequent testing and daily temperature checks to keep issues from entering our building. In addition, all surfaces have been designed to be easy to clean and are the newest available. We will take the health of our residents seriously and will do all we can to be good caregivers.”

11/23/20 2:38 PM

Connecting to what matters That’s the Benchmark Difference.

What are you installing for an air quality system?

Harrington: “Bowman Place’s heating and ventilation systems have been designed to the highest standards for air handling quality. In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, we have upgraded the filtration system to an even more effective level in order

5 Corporate Drive | 603.471.2555 BedfordFallsAssistedLiving.com Assisted Living • Memory Care nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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to prevent transmission of any airborne pathogens.”

What alternatives to visitation have you implemented?

ROBERT MEMMOLO BEDFORD FALLS

Memmolo: “We are offering restricted, socially distanced indoor visitation at our community by appointment in dedicated spaces in both our assisted living and mind and memory care neighborhoods. Visitors are screened and must wear a mask. In addition, we have deployed several tablets, on which our associates are helping residents to stay connected to their loved ones using virtual visits via Zoom and FaceTime. Many family members continue to do window visits too, which are always fun for our community!”

What were the most successful safety measures your community has implemented in the past few months?

Memmolo: “As a Benchmark Senior Living community, the health and safety of our residents and associates is always our top priority. Since COVID-19 began, we have taken a proactive approach. We were one of the first senior living providers to begin limiting, restricting, and screening visitors and associates at our community and did so before the state of New Hampshire required it. We also temporarily suspended all new moveins. We continue to follow strict infection control procedures, including cleaning to the highest standards and deploying advanced air filtration systems. We have also established a global PPE supply and provide our associates with best practices training, closely screen and test our associates and offer regular testing for our residents. We believe that all of these things have been effective in addressing the challenges we face.”

How do you communicate updates with family members?

Memmolo: “Throughout the pandemic, we’ve continued to operate with the highest integrity and transparency, including maintaining high levels of honest communication. We deliver 24/7 written and verbal communication to our residents, their families and our associates. For example, we communicate whenever there is a change or an update at our community, as well as provide regular communication on what we are doing to continue to address

the virus. We also host a Virtual Family Forum meeting every other week for our families, which is an opportunity for us to provide verbal updates and residents and their families to ask questions.”

What kinds of activities are residents taking part in?

Memmolo: “In the spring, we completely redefined our social engagement programs so that we could continue to nurture our residents’ passions and their connections with others. We introduced individualized and small group, physically distanced programs to support our residents’ well-being and to help residents and their families to connect virtually. Our programs are very similar to what they were before COVID-19 began except we are doing them in smaller groups and our assisted living residents wear masks. Fitness programs, creative arts, concerts, cooking experiences, educational opportunities and social engagement programs are offered throughout each day to help keep our residents connected to their interests and goals.”

How has the staff adapted to necessary safety precautions?

Memmolo: “We have a culture of caring,

This Year, Resolve To Worry Less, Live More.

Hunt Community’s Life Care brings real peace of mind that comes from knowing whatever the future may hold, your needs can be met right here within the community you call home.

Call us today

603.821.1200

10 Allds Street, Nashua NH HuntCommunity.org part of the

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family

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in which our associates are hired for heart, trained for skill and are committed to supporting our residents’ physical and emotional wellness. They take the responsibility of protecting our residents seriously as if they were their own family members.

Not only have they adapted well to our safety precautions, but they remain committed to pursuing excellence with quality education in safety, infection control, empathy and relationship-building.”

What would your message be to potential residents who may be concerned about safety?

Memmolo: “We have a Benchmark Coronavirus Advisory Council that continues to help guide our response, so this is a challenge for which we remain prepared.

The council consists of eight esteemed experts in infectious disease, geriatrics, physical and mental health, who represent some of the nation’s leading medical, research and academic institutions. The council is focused on leading-edge thinking that will inform our understanding of the latest medicine and science related to COVID-19, as well as provide advice on ways to enhance the physical and mental health of our residents during these challenging times.

“As the weather grows colder, isolation, accessing care and the usual challenges that winter brings will continue to be a concern for older adults. Our community is here to help with a socially stimulating environment, 24/7 personalized care, healthy meals that are served restaurant-style in our dining room, transportation and more.”

KERRI ELLIOT SILVERSTONE LIVING What kinds of cultural/physical/ enrichment activities are residents taking part in?

Elliot: “Thanks to the Life Enrichment teams at The Huntington at Nashua and Hunt Community, residents are taking part in most (if not all) of the activities they have always enjoyed. Those programs may look different these days, but they are still available. Trips have been offered virtually, fitness classes have been offered outdoors, in small groups or streamed live, musicians are performing outside, and cocktail hour comes door to door! We are finding new ways to do things every day.”

How has the staff adapted to necessary safety precautions?

You don’t just live here.

YOU BELONG HERE. When you choose an Edgewood Senior Solutions community, you’re called a member, rather than a resident, because you’re an integral part of something that’s so much more than just a place to live. There’s a sense of community and shared curiosity. A diverse, enriching culture marked by mutual affection, respect and admiration. And, above all, there’s the knowledge that the community exists to empower the choices you make for the way you want to live.

Discover The Edgewood Difference.

A semi-urban, multi-generational senior living environment coming to Woodmont Commons in Londonderry, NH.

603.413.0835 | TheBaldwinNH.org

A picturesque, 100-acre campus adjoining conservation land and scenic Lake Cochichewick in North Andover, MA.

978.420.4175 | EdgewoodRC.com

Elliot: “Our team at Hunt Community and The Huntington at Nashua has adapted nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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no contamination between apartments or common spaces. The community will also have many ‘touchless’ features for less cross contamination of germs.”

LYNDA BRISLIN TERRACE COMMUNITIES What have been your most successful safety measures or procedures your community has implemented in the past few months?

Brislin: “The single most effective measure that was taken, in my opinion, was early furlough of any nonessential employees.

without skipping a beat. Each team member feels a responsibility for the safety of the overall community, and they take pride in doing their part.”

MARIA BYRNE THE BALDWIN What have been your most successful safety measures or procedures your community has implemented in the past few months?

Byrne: “Since The Baldwin has not yet been built, our safety measures right now are focused on one-on-one appointments and small, safe distanced group events. Reservation appointments are now underway, and we are able to offer safe in-person or online Zoom appointments. Interactive technology also allows us to provide everything you need to make an informed decision with detailed floor plans, a site map, virtual tours and community information online and at the Welcome Center.

“For those just learning about The Baldwin, we have online webinars and limited-attendance, on-site events to help people discover everything this unique community will offer. As things open up, we will resume some in-person events with safety measures in place, but we anticipate that we will also continue offering online events for people who prefer them.”

What kinds of cultural/physical/ enrichment activities are residents taking part in?

Byrne: “The Baldwin Founders — those who have reserved their apartments and are planning to move in — are connecting through interactive online events 88

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and small-group outdoor gatherings.

During the holiday season we offered a wreath-making masterclass. Fresh greenery and decorations were shipped directly to attendees and they all joined a private, online, interactive workshop to create a beautiful wreath while also getting to know their future neighbors. Plus we’re offering online yoga classes designed to enhance brain health.

“Baldwin Founders also have the opportunity to connect with residents at our sister community, Edgewood in North Andover, Massachusetts, via online lectures, presentations and discussions offered by the resident-led Edgewood Lifelong Learning program. Additionally, small outdoor gatherings provide a healthy opportunity for Founders to meet and get to know each other while connecting with nature, which is an added benefit to the wellness experience.”

What would your message be to potential residents who may be concerned about safety?

Byrne: “The Baldwin has been designed with safety and infection control in mind.

The buildings are divided into small segments, each with a private outdoor entrance and elevator. In addition, there’s a gathering space on each floor of the segment. So, in the event of any future infectious outbreak, the buildings allow for small groups of neighbors to be quarantined together with a private outdoor entrance to their building, a common area and private apartments. In addition, each apartment is fully independent, with ventilation directly from the outside, so there is no borrowed air from one household to another, or from the corridor to an apartment. This ventilation design provides fresh air and

“Only staff dedicated to Windham Terrace were allowed in the building to care for the residents, meaning if they worked at another facility, then they could not continue to work in the building. Windham Terrace had nine care associates and two nurses who actually lived within the building for close to 11 weeks.”

What alternatives to visitation have been implemented?

Brislin: “Residents connect with their family and friends through window visits, Zoom meetings and outdoor, socially distant visits within the strict guidelines of the CDC.” How do you communicate updates with family members?

Brislin: “The department heads and I are always available by phone, and/or email.

I also communicate through newsletters and monthly mailings to families. We are a close-knit community and continuously communicate with our residents and their families.”

What would your message be to potential residents who may be concerned about safety?

Brislin: “Windham Terrace has very dedicated and caring staff, along with employee longevity. The entire community takes the necessary precautions both at work and at home to ensure our residents’ safety. All staff is screened at the door daily, don surgical masks and are tested frequently to assure they are as safe as possible. Our life enrichment department holds socially distanced exercise daily, and walks around our lovely grounds. Outdoor musicians frequently entertain with technology that enables our residents to both hear and see the performances from the inside. They also engage the residents through individual-centered appropriate activities daily.”

Best As s

ving Com d Li mu

y nit

e ist

James Folan, Jr.; Lynda Brislin, Windham Terrace Executive Director; and, resident James Folan, Sr.

Why did we choose Windham Terrace Assisted Living?

Location. Laughter. And Lynda.

Senior care in a beautiful setting pleases both residents and their adult children at Windham Terrace – a premier assisted living and memory care community nestled in the quaint town of Windham, New Hampshire. It offers a unique health care advantage over other senior living options.

For years James Folan, Sr. cared for his aging wife at home. But when he needed extra support and care, he didn’t want to burden his children. So his son James, Jr. suggested that his Dad live closer to him at Windham Terrace.

we had found the right place.

During the tour, Executive Director Lynda Brislin, RN, immediately connected with Dad. When she introduced us to her tenured and caring staff, we then KNEW this was the right choice!”

“The moment we entered Windham Terrace and heard residents’ laughter, we felt like

• Studio, 1 & 2 bedroom apts.

• Superb life enrichment programs • Long- and short-term stays • Long-tenured management • Medication Management • 24-Hour Care/Assistance • Chef-prepared dining • Memory Care

Mr. Folan tried a short-term stay, and that quickly turned into home. “Dad is very happy.

He lives in a great apartment, enjoys activities with new friends, and receives the care he needs. Knowing he’s in a superb community gives us peace of mind,” said James, Jr. For James Folan, Sr., “It is all about the feeling of love and tender care at Windham Terrace. I can’t say enough about Lynda and her staff.”

Call Lynda at (603) 437-4600

TerraceCommunities.com Windham Terrace, 3 Church Road, Windham, NH 03087, (603) 437-4600 Wheelock Terrace, 32 Buck Road , Hanover, NH 03755, (603) 643-7290 Woodstock Terrace, 456 Woodstock Road, Woodstock, VT 05091, (802) 457-2228 Valley Terrace, 2820 Christian Street, White River Junction, VT 05001, (802) 280-1910 Equinox Terrace, 324 Equinox Terrace Road, Manchester Center, VT 05255, (802) 362-5141 Scarborough Terrace, 600 Commerce Drive, Scarborough, ME 04074, (207) 885-5568 nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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OP TIO NS NIT S IND (# E PE OF BED ND EN S) TL IVIN PE R SO G UN NA ITS LC ARE ME U MO NIT RY S CA ASS RE IST UN ED I TS RES L PIT IVING EC OR A RE GA N SCH IZED D ED AY BEA ULED TRIPS TRA UT Y LAU /BAR NSPO BER RTA ND T HO RY SE SERVI ION USE RVI CE CE K E ON E -SIT PING SE R ED ON I -SIT NING VICE SE R E M WO RSH EDICA VICE L IP S ERV SERVI CE ICE RSI NG U

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Featured Continuing Care Retirement Communities in New Hampshire

Amenities

CONTINUING CARE RETIREMENT COMMUNITIES

The Baldwin Londonderry, thebaldwinnh.org

Birch Hill A RiverWoods Group Community Manchester, birchhillrc.org

Starting at $180,000

Starting at $208,000

Starting at $3,063

Starting at $2,866

Hunt Community Nashua, huntcommunity.org

Starting at $83,000

Starting at $2,483

The Huntington at Nashua Nashua, thehuntingtonatnashua.org

Starting at $156,000

Starting at $3,110

RiverWoods Durham Durham, riverwoodsdurham.org

RiverWoods Exeter Exeter, riverwoodsrc.org

Taylor Community Laconia, taylorcommunity.org

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Starting at $321,000

Starting at $201,000

Starting at $3,402

Starting at $2,578

Starting at $125,500

nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

Starting at $1,345

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TBD

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NOW RESERVING! This walkable location has farm-to-table cuisine, a fitness and aquatic center, lifelong learning, auditorium, skybridge connection, underground parking, flexible health care delivery, LifeCare contract option and is pet friendly.

• • • • • • • • • •

Innovative Type B flex contract features option to use 70% refundable portion of entrance fee toward health care, or save for asset preservation. All the conveniences of a CCRC, including all levels of care, in one community.

Serene setting adjacent to 600-acre nature preserve, 10 minutes from downtown Manchester.

•

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This is a Life Plan Community with library, fitness center, billiards room, woodworking shop, pool, walking paths, theater, multiuse auditorium, coffee bar and outside rooftop dining.

• • • • • • • •

This Life Plan Community with a Life Care component also includes an indoor pool, exercise center, library, theater, woodworking shop and multiuse auditorium.

• • • • • • • • • •

Opened in 2019, this new community for independent, active adults has a spacious fitness center, variety of open, light-filled homes, multiple dining venues, and is located less than 2 miles from UNH. A state-of-the-art health center opened in 2020, offering person-directed care and featuring unique household model.

• • • • • • • • • •

Nationally accredited; three distinct campuses in one neighborhood, all featuring indoor pools, fitness centers, art studios, resident activities and a variety of dining venues.

Award-winning health center with all levels of care on each campus.

• • • • • • • • • •

With campuses in both Laconia and Wolfeboro, Taylor offers a robust calendar of fitness and wellness activities, special events, concerts and lectures, libraries, a pool, theatre, craft rooms, a new outdoor wellness pavilion, and flexible dining options.

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DA BLE OP TIO RSI NS NG UN ITS IND (# E PE OF BED ND EN S) TL I PE R VI N SO G U NA NIT LC S ARE ME UN MO ITS RY CA ASS RE IST UN ED ITS RES LIV ING PIT EC OR GA ARE N SCH IZED D ED AY BEA ULED TRIPS T UT Y/B RANS LAU A P ND RBER ORTAT HO RY SE SERVI ION USE RVI CE C ON KEEPI E N -SIT E D G SE R ON I -SIT NING VICE WO E MED SERVI CE RSH IC IP S AL SE RVI ERV CE ICE NU

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Featured Retirement Communities in New Hampshire

Amenities

RETIREMENT COMMUNITIES Bedford Falls Bedford, bedfordfallsassistedliving.com

Bowman Place Bedford, bowmanplace.org

$6,000

$6,000 $8,000

$5,000

$5,750$10,790

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Riverglen House Littleton, sonaseniorliving.com/ nh-riverglen/riverglenhouse/floor-plans/

$1,250

$4,065$6,500

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Summit by Morrison Whitefield, summitbymorrison.org

$3,500

Starting at $2,950

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$5,500$9,500

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Wheelock Terrace Hanover, wheelockterrace.com

Windham Terrace Windham, windhamterrace.com

$5,500$10,700

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Offering restaurant-style dining, theater, library and pub, all in the spirit of elevating human connections.

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Offers concierge service, activities and classes, medical assistance, wellness management, utilities are included and there are three meals a day.

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Featuring a country kitchen, library, activities, entertainment, senior center, farmers market, a covered bridge into town, 24/7 LNA, onsite beauty shop, spa room with jetted hot tub, onsite baker, arts and crafts, music and holiday celebrations. Pets are allowed.

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Has a wellness center with fitness classes, auditorium, activity room, full-service salon, lounge and library.

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Featuring a gracious setting with spacious sitting areas, chef prepared meals and compassionate caring staff.

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Has enriching social, cultural and educational activities, comfortable restaurant-style dining, a serene library and a holistic wellness/integrated therapy room. We have happy hour!

AT HOME CARE OPTIONS 360 SHS 360-SHS.com

360 SHS is a complete circle of home care with everything necessary to remain at home forever — dementia care, companionship, housekeeping, transportation, meal preparation, personal care, medication administration, insulin care, wound care, stroke care and end-of-life care.

At Home By Hunt athomebyhunt.org

At Home By Hunt is an innovative Continuing Care program for healthy 62+ adults who want to remain in control of their future long-term care needs while aging in place at home. Onetime membership fees starting at $38,300, with refundability options. Monthly fee range varies.

Want to see your community listed here in our July issue? Contact us today to reserve your spot — (603) 624-1442. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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603 living / health

Reps for Your Heart Pump up your muscles for better heart health

by Karen A. Jamrog / illustration by Victoria Marcelino

A

erobic exercise has long been one of the mainstays for reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. But research in recent years has examined the role that strength training can play in heart health, and it turns out that pumping iron does more than boost biceps and tone thighs. It also fortifies the heart.

For sure, aerobic exercise such as running, walking or biking is an excellent way to help safeguard heart health, but if you want the best approach for cardiovascular fitness, don’t neglect strengthening exercises. Strength training — whether it comes though lifting dumbbells or barbells, using weight machines at a gym, or relying on body weight and gravity to provide resistance à la push-ups — delivers many of the same 92

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benefits that aerobic exercise does: It helps to protect and enhance cardiovascular health, improve mood and sleep, and assist with weight management, for example.

But the increase in muscle mass that comes with strength training conveys special benefits, boosting cardiovascular health in part by changing metabolism, which is the

way the body converts food into energy.

“We see as the muscles grow in size and metabolic capacity, as they improve, they do a better job using blood sugar [or] glucose,” says Jonathan Eddinger, M.D., F.A.C.C., a cardiologist-lipidologist at Catholic Medical Center’s New England Heart and Vascular Institute in Manchester.

“Particularly in a diabetic or prediabetic or somebody who has [risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes], strength training is very, very powerful in terms of improving that metabolism so that the ability to use the sugar is improved.”

Left untreated, elevated blood sugar can damage blood vessels, vital organs and nerves, and raise the risk of heart disease, stroke and a number of dangerous complications. Strength training over time can improve insulin sensitivity and blood glucose levels, and change body composition to one that has less fat and more muscle, which reduces a person’s risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, improves diabetes in those who already have the condition, and lowers blood pressure.

The metabolic changes that occur with strength training also mean you’ll burn more calories even when at rest and be better protected against harmful inflammation in the body. People who are obese, have diabetes, or have multiple risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes “typically have more inflammation than somebody who doesn’t have those conditions,” Eddinger says, “and as you treat those conditions, the inflammation will get better.

If you treat those conditions with exercise, which we think is probably one of the greatest medications — one of the greatest therapies for those conditions — you see not only the condition improve, but the inflammation improve with them.”

And, as it builds muscle mass and stamina, strength training makes the heart more efficient. “If you gain muscle and strength, your heart won’t have to pump as hard, to work as hard, whether you’re working

“If you gain muscle and strength, your heart won’t have to pump as hard, to work as hard, whether you’re working out or walking to your mailbox.”

— Chad Lawrence, A.P.R.N.

Putting your

heart health first First hospital in New England to implant WATCHMAN™ after its FDA approval First hospital in New England to perform a minimally invasive surgery to treat patients with thoracic aortic disease: the Valiant Navion™ System First hospital in northern New England to offer CardioMEMSTM HF System, a treatment for heart failure First community hospital in New Hampshire to offer transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR)

We’ve always put your heart health first and now protecting your heart is more important than ever. Find the care that’s right for you—offering visits online and in person.

MANCHESTER BERLIN COLEBROOK DERRY LANCASTER NASHUA PETERBOROUGH PLYMOUTH WOLFEBORO

603.669.0413

603 living / health

Facing the fear after a cardiac event

It’s no wonder that people who have experienced a cardiac event such as a heart attack are often fearful of overexerting themselves. “People are very apprehensive about any physical activity after a cardiac event,” says Chad Lawrence, A.P.R.N., manager of cardiovascular services and cardiac-pulmonary rehab at Concord Hospital.

“They become afraid to do anything.”

Cardiac rehab, offered at many hospitals, provides expert support and guidance, and helps people regain their confidence so that they can safely exercise and reduce their risk of future heart trouble. “[We try] to slowly get their cardiac stamina and function back to where it was before,” Lawrence says, and help patients recognize the normal sensations that accompany exercise, such as an increased heart rate.

“We give them an appreciation of what all the symptoms in their chest are going to feel like [during workouts],” Lawrence says. “When they show up here, they’re on a heart monitor … on a treadmill or lifting weights or doing resistance training on our various machines, [and] they can experience these symptoms within their chest that are perfectly normal, and gain confidence that way.” out or walking to your mailbox,” says Chad Lawrence, A.P.R.N., manager of cardiovascular services and cardiac-pulmonary rehab at Concord Hospital. “You’ll be able to carry your body and move your body with ease rather than having to struggle under normal circumstances.”

Although studies show that gains in cardiovascular health can be achieved with

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strength training alone, the ideal exercise plan includes aerobic exercise as well as muscle-strengthening activities, so make both types of workouts part of your weekly workout mix. Respected organizations such as the American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association recommend a combination of the two, and research data indicates that “the combination of the two,

both aerobic and strength training, probably have additive benefit,” Eddinger says, so that they provide more health advantages together than they would individually.

Talk to your doctor before beginning a new exercise routine, but as a general rule of thumb, most people who don’t have health limitations should aim to strength train each of the body’s major muscle groups on at least two nonconsecutive days per week, while still including aerobic exercise at least five days a week, depending on the intensity of the activity.

You don’t have to become a bulked-up body builder to reap health gains; moderate resistance training will do the trick. The weight should be light enough that you can perform eight repetitions of the exercise, but heavy enough that you cannot properly perform more than 12 to 15 repetitions.

If you don’t have access to strengthening equipment, use other methods to increase resistance on your muscles such as doing body-weight squats and lunges, or arm curls with soup cans or heavy grocery bags. Your muscles won’t know the difference, but they and your heart will thank you. NH

603 living / local dish

Bake Your Own Bagels

Yields 10 plain and 10 “everything” bagels Considering the difficulty in locating a good bagel anywhere anymore, making your own isn’t such a big deal. The dough-making is separate from the baking, which literally takes 40 minutes from the second you start. It’s true you need fair amount of refrigeration to hold the bagels overnight, but you can cheat on a cool evening by storing them outside in a safe spot.

—Barbara Michelson 7 1/2 cups bread flour, divided 1/4 cup whole-wheat flour 11/2 teaspoons fast-acting yeast, divided* 1 scant tablespoon of salt 1 tablespoon of honey Vegetable oil for sheet pans 1 tablespoon baking soda (for boiling water)

Everything bagel ingredients

recipe By Barbara Michelson photos and text by susan laughlin

T

ry your hand at this brunch staple developed by a former New Yorker. Sprinkle with sesame and poppy seeds or an “everything” mixture for a bagel-shop-like display. Before you get started, note that the dough needs to rest overnight (about 18 hours total) to get the traditional chewy texture.

About the Cookbook Author Barbara Michelson of Nelson began her culinary journey at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, rolled on to a catering trailer on Long Island, and most recently became aide de camp at Mayfair Farm in Harrisville. The farm and catering kitchen are run by her daughter, Sarah Heffron, who relocated to Harrisville after her mother discovered picturesque village life in southern New Hampshire. Michelson’s latest cookbook, “Presque Très Bien: And Getting Better All the Time,” is a collection of recipes that touch on her favorite cuisines (Chinese and Indian), Mayfair Farm treasures, and ideas gleaned from family and friends, both old and new. This volume is really a food lover’s memoir with heartwarming headnotes, while the title is a reference to the grade she received on her Le Cordon Bleu diploma — “almost very good.” Even Amy Klobuchar would be happy to bring a few of these recipes as “hot dishes” to a local gathering, and you will be too.

“Presque Très Bien: And Getting Better All the Time” Barbara Michelson / Hardcover, 356 pages Mayfair Press, $36 / mayfairfarmnh.com

2 tablespoons dried onion 2 tablespoons poppy seeds 2 tablespoons sesame seeds 1 tablespoons dried garlic 1 tablespoon salt

In a large bowl, combine 33/4 cups bread flour, whole-wheat flour, 1 teaspoon yeast and 2½ cups room-temperature water.

Let stand at room temperature until mixture looks light and bubbly, about 2 hours.

In a standing mixer, with the paddle or by hand, beat 3 cups bread flour, remaining ½ teaspoon yeast, salt and honey into the first mixture.

Knead the dough in the mixer using the dough hook or by hand, adding the remaining ¾ cup bread flour as needed to stiffen the dough. Continue to knead until dough is satiny, about 6 minutes by machine or 10 minutes by hand.

Divide dough into 3-ounce pieces and shape into rounds.

Cover with a dish towel and let rest for 20 minutes.

Brush several baking sheets with a light coating of vegetable oil. Shape rounds into bagels by forming a hole with your thumb and rotating the dough around it until dough forms an even ring. Set bagels as you form them on oiled sheets.

Cover baking sheets with plastic wrap. Allow to rest for 20 minutes, then refrigerate overnight.

At baking time, preheat the oven to 500 degrees F, or as high as it goes.

Bring a large, 6-inch or so, deep pot to boil over high heat and add baking soda. Lower heat slightly.

Mix “everything” topping for bagels by combining dried onion, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, dried garlic and salt in a large dish.

In batches, leaving ample room for expansion, boil bagels for 2 minutes on each side, then remove to a wire rack set over a baking sheet. Set first 10 bagels on a baking sheet that has been lightly sprinkled with cornmeal. Bagels won’t expand further, so there is no need to allow much space between them.

Dip remaining bagels, when just drained, into topping mixture (you can just use poppy or sesame seeds, if you prefer), coating both sides, then set on baking sheets. There is no need to sprinkle cornmeal on sheets, although there is no harm in it.

Bake bagels for about 10 minutes, rotating baking sheet, midway through baking.

Take baking sheets from oven, flop bagels and bake an additional 2 minutes.

Cool bagels on a wire rack. *Here’s the rare instance I like fast-acting yeast for the extra pop it gives the bagels when they hit the boiling water. nhmagazine.com | January/February 2021

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American, Idle

Fear and loafing in New Hampshire

I

should probably put my pants back on.

We’ve just wrapped up what’s normally referred to as the most wonderful time of the year — a span wherein I live in a pair of Bruins flannels for a fortnight and subsist mainly on leftovers and beverages that come from bottles with corks in them.

I speak, lovingly, of the Holiday Hermitage — an annual 10-to-14-day retreat into the couch, the hoodie and various cheeses.

It is magical and glorious, I look forward to it all year long, and by the end of it, I’m more Macy’s parade float than man.

Any other year, I’d talk about how it’s a break from the normal — an annual observation wherein I reside couch-side for more time than usual. Then the pandemic came, making all of this very much routine. Instead of a glorious period of self-care/self-destruction, it’s now just called “Tuesday.”

During this period of bacchanalian indulgence, I’m usually reminded of a thought I had in Vegas a few years back: There’s no

way I’m going to survive this. Only I always do. So far. I’m a simple man. Give me a reason to not leave the house, an Xbox remote and carbs aplenty, and I am in heaven.

I shall binge TV shows and watch college hockey games from 1986 because, thanks to the pandemic, it’s all that’s available. Leading up to the hiatus, I’ll renew acquaintances with Brian down at Zorvino Vineyard, about a mile from my house, where (let’s face it) my acquaintance doesn’t really need renewal. There will be a flurry of prep work around the office, and then one day it’ll end.

I will sit, and I shan’t rise again for a time.

One of the great things about my job is that I can save up vacation days and tuck them all nicely between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s a long enough break that I forget how maddening it is to navigate Bridge Street and find parking in the Manchester Millyard. So when American idle season arrives, it’s time to reconnect with the people next to me on said couch.

One of the reasons it’s become such a

jealously guarded sabbatical is because it’s the most uninterrupted span I get with my wife and daughter than at any other stretch throughout the year. This year, our 18-yearold will be home on college break after being away for the first time. When she was in elementary school and even high school, we’d get that entire week to just sit, talk and spend time together. Then, every year, some stupid idiot invents time and the Hermitage ends.

Depending on when the holidays fall, it’s a nearly two-week span of living like I hit the lottery in many ways. Because, if I did come into a massive amount of money allowing me to live every day doing exactly as I wanted, it would look a lot like this annual holiday break: me, the kid, Mrs. Burke and cheeses.

Only this year lacked that feeling of getting away with something, since we’d been rehearsing for it for lo these past nine months. And, unfortunately, I’ve gotten good at it. NH

By bill burke / illustration by brad fitzpatrick 96

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HAPPY

Warm wishes from all of us at New Hampshire Orthopaedic Center.

Physicians: Bryan A. Bean, MD, Eric R. Benson, MD, Daniel P. Bouvier, MD, Peter M. Eyvazzadeh, MD, Andrew T. Garber, MD, Douglas M. Goumas, MD, Robert J. Heaps, MD, Kathleen A. Hogan, MD, Heather C. Killie, MD, Christian M. Klare, MD, Lance R. Macey, MD, Marc J. Michaud, MD, Dinakar S. Murthi, MD, Gregory W. Soghikian, MD, Steve I. Strapko, MD, James C. Vailas, MD, Jinsong Wang, MD, PhD, Matthew W. Wilkening, MD

IF YOU CAN SHOVEL SIX FEET OF SNOW EVERY YEAR, YOU CAN WEAR A MASK TOO. In New Hampshire and Vermont, we are strong to the core. We have the drive and determination to handle nearly any challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic has tested our willpower. But we have what it takes to get through this. Practice physical distancing and wear a mask. It matters. And it works.

Learn how to safely wear a mask at: go.d-h.org/mask

Stay strong. Masks on.

Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital • Cheshire Medical Center • Dartmouth-Hitchcock Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Health Center • New London Hospital Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire (VNH)