Little Sister wasn’t much of cook, but Big Sister said, “If you host the party at your house, I’ll bring the food with instructions. It’ll be easy.” The plan was to serve ham with premade salads, chips, watermelon and ice cream.

I’m not handy. Luckily, my husband is. When he put new guts in an old lamp (a large ceramic owl) for our daughter, she was amazed. That lamp, from a local antique shop, sat for months in the dark.

A boy and his father went fishing early one sunny morning. From shore, they cast their lines and let them drift in the water. After a while the boy lay back among the grasses, felt the sun on his face, and fell asleep.

A petitioned warrant article to ban nuclear weapons in a small New Hampshire town came up for a vote at town meeting.

In the woods I found an egg, abandoned by feral guinea fowl. “Hatch me,” the egg said. I showed my grown-up daughter, who lives over the garage. She googled incubation. If we’re…

Editor’s note: Our friend and colleague Bill Burke, who passed away in October, wrote this several months ago. It’s the last piece of his we’ll publish in New Hampshire Magazine, and we’re grateful for one more chance to chuckle at his singular sense of humor.

There was a time when the leg lamp in the front window of our southern New Hampshire home acted as a beacon to all passersby: Herein resides a weirdo.

Something peckish this way comes.