Honorary Editors

Much of the content of this issue was tossed and rethought this spring as we pulled the stories together.

Magazines like ours tend to plan a year in advance and tend not to factor in global pandemics, but we’re figuring it all out as we go. Hope you are too.

One happy coincidence is that we were already planning a feature story to honor the state’s most excellent nurses this month. The decision three years ago to add nursing to the professions we honor seemed inspired at the time. Now it seems prescient as we’ve all been given a tutorial on the sacrifices and challenges these valiant healthcare workers face without much notice beyond the hospital walls. Read the profiles we’ve collected, and get just a glimpse of the journey required to rise to the top of a career that runs on humility and self-sacrifice.

We’ve also realized how dependent we are upon others we take for granted, like the scientists and activists and concerned citizens who have worked to keep our state’s biggest estuary, the Great Bay, from being overwhelmed by the growing Seacoast communities that bound it. Read all about it here.

And, finally, we’re increasingly aware of how dependent we are upon the many small businesses of the state, shops, restaurants, pubs and attractions that both constitute and sustain so much of what we refer to as the state’s “culture.” It’s a word that is sometimes used to describe the active ingredients in yogurt or beneficial bacteria in our guts that keeps us healthy. The recreational culture of our towns and communities is just as important for the gut health of New Hampshire. Our role has long been to cultivate this culture by discovering, sampling it and sharing it between regions and communities of interest. The coronavirus lockdown has struck this culture in much the way that a strong dose of antibiotics will often delete the good bacteria along with the dangerous, so now more than ever, our cultural infusions are needed.

This brings up something important happening next month: our annual Best of NH issue. The votes from our readers’ poll have been in for a while, and winners have been notified. We plan to run that list in our July issue — with a caution to check the status of each destination as the business sector emerges from its induced coma. We also include a robust list of picks by me and the other editors here, gleaned from a year of research and experience, to round out the readers’ picks. Here’s where you come in.

I’m inviting our most attentive readers (like you) and a variety of other friends, local personalities and celebrities to submit the 2020 Editor Picks for our July issue.

The broad categories we cover are Food and Drink, Shops and Services, Fun and Adventure, and Arts and Culture. Visit bestofnh.com for examples of previous years’ picks, and then come up with your own nominations along with a brief write-up explaining why they merit being singled out. Then send it to me at editor@nhmagazine.com along with your name, hometown and contact info. We’ll consider everything submitted and narrow the winners down to what we can fit into the issue. The deadline comes fast (June 5), but we will feature many that don’t make it into print online.

In truth, our readers have always served as honorary editors. Great story ideas frequently appear in my email, and letters we publish add missed details and all too often offer corrections to facts or (gulp) grammar that appeared in a previous issue. It’s sometimes embarrassing, but it’s mostly just good to know you’re paying attention.

So, get busy improving our state’s gut health. Our Best of NH issue isn’t going to edit itself.