Editor’s Note

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

Bill’s big, buoyant heart held so much joy that it’s difficult to comprehend how it could have failed him

Tom Waits, no ray of sunlight, wrote and sang of November: “November’s cold chain / Made of wet boots and rain / And shiny black ravens / On chimney smoke lanes / November seems odd / You’re my firing squad.”

A decade or so ago, I built a stage in my backyard. My kids were all performers of some sort and we had a couple of annual musical parties each year. Plus, I guess I had a lot more time on my hands back then.

I was 23 when I saw them, like three glass lenses examining the edge of a high cloud. Then something started to fall from them, tiny dark spots fluttering hundreds of feet until I could tell what they were: leaves.

A robin’s song is a bit like a cantor’s prayer, sung solemnly but brimming with joy. I know this because of an app on my phone that has finally allowed me to figure out what some of that summer bird chatter is about.

Take the politics out of the past COVID year and just look at how the people and businesses in our state have behaved and you might feel a glow of pride and a sense that New Hampshire really is the best.

Most years, around this time, the magazine office looks like a warehouse filled with supplies for our annual Best of NH Party, held each June for the past 19 years. For our 20th year, we’re shaking things up.

It felt a little anticlimactic when, after standing in a cold line outside Concord’s Steeplegate Mall for a half-hour and then winding around a Space-Mountain-length indoor queue for an hour, I got my shot.