Editor’s Note

My first journalism job in New Hampshire (about a quarter century ago) was as editor of a little weekly paper called The Bow Times.

I was a newlywed at the time, so my romantic instincts were perhaps a little addled, but to me it sure seemed like a great valentine’s day gift when I bought my wife a star from the international star registry.

Is it just me or does it seem like there’s an ever-growing list of topics you can’t discuss without people withdrawing from one another into opposing camps? Differences are good, but like a bottle of salad dressing, it’s better when you shake things up.

There’s one thing certain about the Christmas season: it’s a time that we go all out.

Some people are tone deaf. Others are color blind. I suffer from a more serious malady.

It’s always puzzled me how a state like New Hampshire can assimilate so many outsiders and flatlanders and still retain its character and its quirks.

I think people probably imagine that if they were “discovered” by broadway or hollywood and given a starring role to play they would be able to act without a lot of coaching or training. How hard can it be to pretend to be someone else for a while?

Most stores are designed to sell us something. They locate on main drags with iconic logos created by high-powered ad firms. store colors are chosen by experts, music plays to a beat that encourages hunting and gathering, aisles are carefully mapped for monetary feng shui.

With Curiosity Rover probing the dust of mars and three million personal computers helping seti@home scan the stars for celestial radio signals, any day now we could discover life somewhere else in the cosmos. but as of July 1, 2013, as far as we know, Earth is where it’s at.

Author Bill Bryson, who I met when he lived in Hanover, told me he accepted the title “travel writer” mostly as a convenience for bookstore shelves. He did write about rides in the family car and hiking the A.T. but he also summed up pretty much the entire known universe in his “A Short History of Nearly Everything.”