Editor’s Note

Kurt Vonnegut once opined, “I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine.” Asked for the earliest sign of civilization, Margaret Mead pointed to an ancient human femur, broken and healed.

Imagine enjoying life in New Hampshire, along with countless others like you, when suddenly you, your friends and everyone around you grows pale, turns yellow, then bursts into garish colors, dessicates and drops onto the ground.

“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” said the newspaper editor, Maxwell Scott, in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” Those words took on new meaning for me as this issue, with a focus on UFOs, came into existence.

August is the sidekick of summer — at least here in New Hampshire where June can’t make up its mind and July’s fireworks and patriotic parades loudly declare that vacation time is here. Hot, holiday-free August gets little respect.

Our Best of New Hampshire issue is a snapshot of a moving target. The great Granite State is a dynamic place with lots of players competing for attention. For something even more consistently out-of-this-world amazing, just look up.

The “Chautauqua” movement began just a few decades after the Civil War with a goal of bringing people from different walks of life together for fun and enrichment. Our Best of NH Party began two decades ago with similar goals.

I once walked in an early version of what’s now known as the metaverse via an online app called Second Life. It included a whole digital world and a downscaled version of real life. It even featured a virtual “New Hampshire.”

From Ernest Harold Baynes’ beloved birds and buffalo to Clark’s famous bears to North Conway’s Spunky the Frog, animals have been movers and shakers of our history and culture for as long as we’ve been a state.

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