Editor’s Note

On a sunny day in late August, Lady Sara Richard and I met at a café in Nashua to talk about death.

The storms that pummeled New England in July disrupted the lives of thousands of Vermonters as rising waters damaged or destroyed homes and businesses. In New Hampshire, flash floods washed out roads and prompted evacuations in some southern towns.

In June, I started reporting to work on the fourth floor of the Waumbec Commercial Center, a 450,000-square-foot building that was once part of the largest textile manufacturing operation in the world.

I got to meet my replacement the other day. He hadn’t been hired yet, but there’s not a lot of objectivity in such an encounter so no one was seeking my approval. Still, for what it’s worth, I approve. Mike Cote seems tailor made for the job.

Our postmodern age is fun if you enjoy watching language change before your eyes. I’m an editor, so my job is to be a stickler, but as Gen. John Stark’s life made clear, you’ve got to pick your battles. Which brings us to my point of contention: our famous state motto

Don’t hate me, but I was originally not that fond of the Old Man of the Mountain. I’m from out of state (ain’t we all?). Maybe that stony visage was just less endearing to someone whose formative outdoor experiences were not bracketed by drives past it.

The top doctor in the world, according to the education company Embibe, is a professor of orthopedics and medical director for The Dartmouth Institute. Surgeon Dr. William A. Abdu leads a top 10 list they recently released.

This coming March, I’ll have worked as editor of this magazine (or a precursor of it) for 30 years. So, 2023 will be an auspicious year for me, but even more so for the state celebrated in these pages: New Hampshire is turning 400.

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.