See vegetable growing chart If you’re ready to think about a vegetable garden, remember this — it’s better to be proud of a small garden than to be frustrated by a big one! One of the common errors for beginners is planting too much too soon and way more than anybody could eat or want. […]
If you’ve ever survived a serious encounter with mosquitoes or blackflies, you know that the experience can wreak havoc with your sanity. (One June, one old-time Mainer explained to me that “a lotta people go nuts because of the blackflies. You wouldn’t be the first.”) The only people who might understand fly-ridden angst better than […]
If you’re trying to date your house, you may be able to find a clue in its plastering job. Although it’s difficult to determine the age of plaster itself, you can come up with an approximate date by examining the lath behind the plaster. The earliest lath was hand-split with a hatchet, resulting in an […]
Lindsay Mac is proof that when you have a song in your heart, you just can’t help but sing it. Trained as a cellist from an early age, she turned her back on the conservatories to walk the path of the singer-songwriter. But where most would trade in their classical instrument for a six-string, Lindsay […]
Read an excerpt from Donald Hall’s book. “At fourteen I decided to spend my life writing poetry, which is what I have done.” Those are the first words of Donald Hall‘s charming and harrowing memoir, Unpacking the Boxes (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $24). It’s two books, really. One is about the shy boy from Hamden, Connecticut, […]
This May, an extraordinary traveling art exhibit will begin its six-month celebration of Lake Champlain, the lake that Samuel de Champlain first explored 400 years ago. The exhibit–39 pieces of art, most of them paintings–was created by contemporary artists living and working in Vermont. I had the good fortune of seeing the collection come together […]
A tree is an investment into the future, so it’s important to give every tree you plant the best chance of thriving. Choosing the right tree for your location and needs is the first step. But once you get the tree home, how do you ensure that it will be around to shade your children […]
Get out in the garden, even if you’ve never been there before, with these tips for gardeners — including a vegetable growing chart, and helpful hints for growing tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, beans, lettuce, carrots, and radishes. There’s more — an online seed swap, how to plant a tree, and planning your organic lawn care.
Quirky Portland siren Emilia Dahlin is back this month with Rattle Them Bones, a brand new album that has her up to her old tricks. Emilia takes to music the way trendy shoppers take to flea markets, picking through the discarded past and assembling a genre-bending ensemble that is both vintage and entirely new. What […]
The art of appropriation, the practice of using someone else’s work as an element of your own, has a long, distinguished history in modern art. It’s a game artists sometimes play to tweak the art establishment and get noticed. Back in 1917, for example, Marcel Duchamp, the father of conceptual art, submitted a porcelain urinal […]
If you’ve never had your portrait painted, you should. It is one of life’s enduring pleasures. I sat for a student at the old Portland School of Art back in the 1970s and, looking at the portrait today, I can still recall – and feel – how relaxing and soothing it was to have the […]
Yankee Classic from January/February 2005 It is early evening, and in the basement of Saint Joseph the Worker Roman Catholic Church on Maquan Street in Hanson, Massachusetts, a small group of people sits around a table, discussing their cancers. Phyllis, a fragile-looking woman in her forties, is a newcomer to the group. Her lymphoma has […]
