For another easy dessert, hollow out the bottoms of your poached pears and fill them with vanilla ice cream or mascarpone cheese. But poached pears’ silky texture and light sweetness aren’t just for after dinner. Here are some suggestions for light and delectable fare: Slice poached pears and place them alongside fresh ricotta cheese and […]
Although New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Washington now supply the bulk of the country’s commercial crop, the Concord grape did indeed get its start in Concord, Massachusetts. Gold-leaf artisan, horticulturalist, and Concord resident Ephraim Wales Bull (1806-1895) spent years working with 22,000 seedlings before finding a vine worth keeping — a derivative of a wild […]
Joan and Tim Porta have literally made a career of interior decorating. They travel to several gift shows a year to purchase items for three shops they run in conjunction with Migis. Much of the ambience they create in their guest rooms originates on these buying trips. Joan’s specialty is the lodge look. Her advice […]
In an 1840s mill in Maine, Dana Bourgeois and eight fellow craftsmen work in a shop cutting, sanding, and gluing spruce and rosewood. It’s loving work from which eight acoustic guitars are made each week. Their handcrafted instruments are treasured by serious guitarists around the world, including professional musicians Ricky Skaggs, Steve Earle, Marshall Crenshaw, […]
The jazz drummer rides it, the marching band member crashes it, and the concert percussionist rolls it. What is it? A cymbal. In 1623, Avedis Zildjian created a secret alloy for making cymbals. When his family immigrated to America, they set up shop in the Boston area. Today, the oldest continuous family-run company in the […]
When Skip Healy was a child, he often visited the grounds of Rhode Island’s Varnum House Museum (with its extensive military and naval history collection) to sit on a stone bench and play his fife. Today, he’s the curator and runs a fife- and flute-making shop in the carriage house. “Fifes and pipes are the […]
In 1999, a brother-and-sister team and their spouses set out to create a made-in-the-USA ukulele for a reasonable price. The result? The Fluke, a small triangular four-stringed guitar-like ukulele ($189-$435). The first 10,000 of these colorful instruments were built in Dale and Phyllis Webb’s basement; now they’re using a refurbished gas station as a production […]
You don’t expect to find Caribbean music in New England, let alone a crafter of Caribbean instruments. But that’s exactly what we’ve discovered in Eric Rollnick. Eric has been creating pans (melodic instruments made from steel drums, hammered out of 55-gallon barrels) since 1992, after extensive travel and study in Trinidad and Tobago. The pans […]
Lynne Lewandowski wasn’t thinking of the therapeutic benefits of harp music when she first started building this medieval instrument — she just wanted to try making one. That was 32 years ago. Today, Lynne’s harps, crafted to order of cherrywood and gut strings, are renowned among early-music performers. The shapes are a synthesis of replica […]
20 percentage of Vermont’s trees that are sugar maples — explaining in part the golden-orange and red hues of the state’s foliage season 107 number of years that Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut — oldest burger joint in America — has been cooking hamburgers 2 Babe Ruth’s favorite room at the Cranmore Mountain Lodge […]
Would you cull the deer population to reduce the threat of Lyme disease? Having suffered the ravages of Lyme for 12 years and nearly losing my son to same, my opinion is a strong yes. We need more, but it’s a start. Pamela Swift, R.N., Palm Harbor, FLGet Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations […]
Lyme Watch I think Edie Clark’s piece on the Lyme disease epidemic is one of the finest things she has ever written (“Trouble in Paradise,” July/August). Last year, I, too, had Lyme disease, for the first time at age 74, after working in an abandoned bee balm bed in Maine. Fortunately, I had what might […]
