Archives: June 2011

Silents Night

It’s the next best thing to time travel – composer/performer Jeff Rapsis can take you back to the silent film era and make you feel like you’re living it. Buster Keaton, Lillian Gish, Charlie Chaplin – they’re all there. Rapsis re-creates those times in select theaters with nights of big-screen silent films and his old-time musical accompaniment. Before long, you’ll…

Doin’ That Old Soft Shoe

If you want to know the power of a well-timed compliment, listen up. Once when I was in seventh grade my social studies teacher put on a record of “West Side Story” and had the class divide up into Sharks and Jets. Then she had us take turns improvising some dance moves. I have no idea what the point was…

“Seaside Gem”

The Fuller Gardens rose bushes – 2,000 of them – come into bloom in June.It was, it seems, a matter of getting joy from other people’s enjoyment.When Alvan and Viola Fuller, back in the 1930s, designed gardens for their seaside summer estate in North Hampton, they placed a sizeable garden in front of the house, next to the road, so…

Born to be Mild

Our on-the-scene correspondent rode in to the Weirs atop a metal machine that throbbed with the power of two horses and 49 screaming CCs. By the time he rode out again he had made new friends, learned important lessons and lost nothing but his dignity.

“Why would someone ride a bright red moped to Laconia Motorcycle Week?” you ask. You would not be alone. In fact, many people (police officers, outlaw bikers, mental health professionals) asked me the same thing. It’s not because I had some great appreciation for Austrian motorized push-peddle transportation from the 1970s. It’s because Motorcycle  Week, the one-time symbol of machismo…

Squam Brewing LLC

Squam Brewing is one of the smallest breweries in the country. It’s owned and operated by John Glidden, who has spent his entire life in Holderness, N.H. Glidden explains that the name was chosen “partly for my close association with the lake and partly for the name recognition for both locals and tourists who enjoy the Lakes Region.” He currently…

Summer Sojourn

Lupines, pancakes, mountains and more.Spikes of blue (and occasionally pink, white and yellow) lupines paint dooryards, meadows and roadsides all over this hilltop town during their annual Fields of Lupine Festival.Saturday MorningBlue sky showed through the upper windows of our cathedral-ceilinged Dream Cottage at Sugar Hill Inn, a good omen for a day amid flowers and mountain scenery. We looked…