All posts in the ‘ New Hampshire ’ Category

Let’s go back, about 110 years, to a meeting, say in a small New Hampshire town. I’m conducting it, and I’ll now introduce our special guest. Mrs. Snodgrass Uppington, President of the Kearsarge Association Opposed to Further Extension of Suffrage for Women. Oh, wait, just one moment. There’s a march going on in the street. It’s so noisy. I’ll have to close the windows. Excuse me just a second, before Mrs. Uppington takes the dais. Mrs. Uppington? A …Read More

Facebook friends have posted about how they’re dreaming of dancing. Yes. Memories of contra-dances crowd into my head, too. The first memory, from twenty years ago. Shaky and bewildered from a recent divorce, I’ve forced myself out of the house and over to the UU church in a nearby town. Dudley Laufman is the dance caller. I know no one in the hall. But soon I’m swept up in the “Paul Jones,” an easy circle dance. “Dudley dances” get …Read More

According to an Internet meme I’ve seen lately: “You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy local, which is sort of the same thing.” This morning, in Concord, NH, I felt that not only could I buy happiness, I could simply absorb it by walking around the weekly Farmers’ Market. What a scene! Moms and dads with strollers, babies in backpacks, kids getting their faces painted, dogs socializing with people and with other dogs, live music.   There was a …Read More

I was saddened to hear this week of the death of my friend and tenth-grade English teacher, Jim Swain. Jim’s roots were in Connecticut, but he was a world citizen; his work as a Methodist minister and literature teacher took him across the globe. When I was at Woodstock School, in northern India, Jim and his wife, Doris (his high school sweetheart), were the dorm supervisors for the high school boys. They were still in their twenties. Woodstock boys were famous for high jinks (according …Read More

It’s Veteran’s Day. Ninety-seven years ago, shortly after 5:00 AM, Paris time, French, British, and German delegations signed an agreement to have the shooting of the Great War stop at 11:00 AM. On this day of the year,  I experience a sense of time warp, a feeling of being transported back to a moment in history. The savage noise of the guns is–for a little while, anyway–replaced by an enormous sacred silence. The two world wars form a big …Read More

Robert Frost wrote, “Nobody was ever meant, to remember or invent, what he did with every cent,” but my grandfather obviously disagreed. He tracked his expenses–to all appearances every nickel–in a slim little book with an oxblood red leather cover. His record-keeping started in June, 1910, when he was looking forward to his wedding in October. The first item entered (for $50) was  “Ring.” In September, he listed several things that would furnish the couple’s new residence–chairs (one Morris, one …Read More

We’ve just had the umpteenth snowfall of the season, and I hear the scrape of my neighbor’s shovel and the rumble of snow plows going by. On Facebook, there are dozens of pictures of snow banks, snow plows, snow forts, snow angels made by little kids. Sifting through old family photographs, I come across similar photographs taken in January, 1919, in Franklin, NH. New-fallen snow there, too, and children in snowsuits. Like this pic of my dad shortly …Read More

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” So goes the first line of L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel, The Go-Between. In New Hampshire, you can often take a day trip to that foreign country and do things the way they do them there. You can dance traditional square and contra dances on the scuffed wooden floors of grange buildings or squirm through lectures in the back-breaking pews of village meeting houses. On Sunday, I played …Read More

As I’ve mentioned, my mother conquered the personal computer in her sixties, when few in her age group dared get close to such a terrifying machine. What if they hit the wrong button and it blew up? But my mother wanted to learn. It must be said that learning was the family religion. Once I joked to my mom, “Well, if I’m so smart, why aren’t I rich?” She looked utterly shocked. “But think how much you’ve learned!” …Read More

“What a curious human quirk,” say gemologists Fred and Charlotte Ward, “to credit tiny jewels born deep in the earth with supernatural powers.” Especially when it comes to emeralds. Perhaps, say the Wards, we are bewitched by emeralds because green is the “most restful color on the visual spectrum, the hue most available to the human eye.” In theaters and tv and radio studios, there’s often a “green room” where performers calm their nerves before making an appearance. …Read More