Editor’s Note

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.

Former Parenting NH editor Melanie Hitchcock reflects on friend and colleague Bill Burke, who passed away suddenly in October.

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.