On Saturday night I went to a potluck at my friend Deb’s house. She loves Mardi Gras and almost never misses it but this year, for various reasons, she couldn’t get down to New Orleans. So she threw a party instead. Everyone was greeted at the door and bedecked with the famous beads of the […]
Magazine
Town Meeting Tips
Make a Name for Yourself Some old-timers like to tell new residents not to speak at their first or (gulp) even first five Town Meetings. Nonsense, says Susan Clark. But picking your speaking spots is important. “There’s a trust that needs to develop,” she says. “If you just go in there and say, This is […]
We asked freelance writer and tea blogger Katrina Avila Munichiello to take a break from developing her new tea anthology to share her five favorite New England tea spots. She says that choosing just five was daunting, but her list of the best tea houses in New England includes “something for everyone.” 1. Clipper Merchant […]
AUDIO: Captain Richard Phillips Andrea Phillips Interview The first December snow has come to Underhill, Vermont, and that makes Richard Phillips happy. “My kind of weather,” the 54-year-old Merchant Marine captain says. It’s been only eight months since Somali pirates took him from the helm of the Maersk Alabama, the American container ship they seized […]
Early Spring | Mary’s Farm
At this time of year, when the ice is disappearing from the ponds and some fields are greening up, patches of snow or ice stay along the edges of shaded roads and in the north corners of fields. They’re a shock of white in a spring landscape. Sometimes, if it’s a warm day, I think […]
Divorcing Harriet
Harriet has been acting up lately. I wish I knew what triggers these rough patches. She turned one year old two weeks ago and I felt that she had finally become a dog, a well-mannered dog, an adult I could trust. She had been so good for so long, I was telling everyone we had […]
J. D. Salinger on the Road
I live in Cornish, New Hampshire, just up a dirt road from J. D. Salinger. Every year dozens of tourists and students, mostly guys, come up Dingleton Hill looking for J. D. Salinger’s home. It’s hard to imagine what they think they’ll find in an 90-year-old man who wants to be left alone. When I […]
Winter’s Fire
Farmer Jay has been clearing logs from around the edges of the big field to the southeast of my house. He’s gone back into the cordwood business, he tells me, after a brief hiatus. He did not say why but I assume the favorable price of cordwood might have something to do with it. Cordwood […]
Robert B. Parker 2003 Interview
Yankee Classic from October 2003 Robert B. Parker has set novels in Los Angeles, in Ireland, in the Wild West, and in the capitals of Europe. But the setting he always returns to is greater Boston, home to his best known character, the wisecracking, Shakespeare-quoting, gun-toting private eye named Spenser, who first appeared 30 years […]
Yankee Classic from September 1996 Down in the southwestern corner of New England, where Connecticut resembles a funnel draining toward New York, dour commuters on the Metro-North train suddenly smile when they see Travis D. Ford in his blue conductor’s uniform. The day instantly seems a bit more promising, the rat race a little less […]
VIDEO: Jon Olsen
Photographer Jon Olsen finds exquisite peace in New England’s snow-covered landscapes — Vermont barns, New Hampshire hills, Maine coast. “There’s something very soothing about that,” says Olsen. “The world is still.” See more of his work: jonolsenphotography.com
SLIDE SHOW: Quebec City
Quebec City, Canada, is celebrated for its beauty, its history, and its Old World charm. Take this photo tour of the vibrant city on the St. Lawrence, where a unique culture has flourished for more than 400 years just north of New England. Read more: Weekend: Quebec City Get Our FREE Yankee Best New England […]