Yankee

The Man Who Invented Nostalgia

If necessity is the mother of invention, what gives birth to reinvention? Is it dire necessity? A quest for perfection? Or a deeply personal conviction? Whatever the case, scrapping something back to its beginnings and re-creating it is a monumental task. Don’t ask me how, at the age of 43, Wallace Nutting had the energy […]

Magazine

YOU’LL NEED:

· 12 horizontal vintage postcards · hexagonal (6-sided) clip lampshade frame, 5″ top diameter x 8″ bottom diameter x 6″ height · 1/4 yard pressure-sensitive styrene (translucent backing used in the lighting industry) · color marker · clothespins · scissors · 2′ length 5/8-inch cotton/rayon grosgrain ribbon (at least 40% cotton) · 1′ length 3/8-inch […]

Magazine

Follow These Steps

1. Tape 2 postcards to a sheet of paper, making sure there’s no space between top and bottom card. Continue with the rest of the cards, for a total of 6 panels, 2 cards per panel. Photocopy each set of cards. (Paper copies let more light through and save your postcards, too.) 2. Make a […]

Magazine

Knowledge & Wisdom: How to Build a Sand Castle

The Right Stuff First you need good sand. (For the Hampton competition, Grady trucks in 300 tons of it.) To find out what you’re working with, head to the water’s edge, pick up a handful of sand, and form a ball. “If you can hold it sideways between your thumb and middle finger and it […]

History

New England By the Numbers | Amusement Parks

73 years the Frantzis family has owned Quassy Amusement Park in Middlebury, CTGet Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! Email(Required) Subscribe 35 mph: top speed of the 80-year-old Yankee Cannonball, oldest roller coaster in the U.S., now at Canobie Lake Park 177,408 cookies devoured each year by reindeer at Santa’s Village in Jefferson, […]

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P. T. Barnum, The Showman | Only in New England

Get Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! Email(Required) Subscribe The first thing of note P. T. Barnum accomplished was getting thrown in jail. As a young newspaper editor, he accused merchant Seth Seelye–a prominent citizen of Barnum’s own hometown of Bethel, Connecticut–of usury and spent two months locked up for libel. Upon his […]

Yankee

Seasons of Triumph, Season of Disaster | Book Review

This past decade was a triumphant era for New England sports fans. Their professional baseball, football, and basketball teams brought six championship trophies home for a celebratory Boston duck boat ride, a now-traditional tour of the city in World War II-vintage amphibious vehicles. Two of those parades took place in a mere eight months between […]

Magazine

First Light: The Art of the Sail

As Robbie Doyle likes to say, he didn’t open a sail loft in Marblehead because the area needed another sailmaker. In 1982, the centuries-old tradition along Massachusetts’ North Shore was still quietly humming along; when Doyle started his company, 10 lofts operated in and around Marblehead. Doyle opened a sail loft because he thought he […]

Magazine

How The Story Happened: Judith Gaines

Judith Gaines moved to Lubec, Maine, because she “loved being part of a fishing community.” A longtime foodie, she joined six chefs aboard a lobster boat (“After the Catch”). “They were surprised at how labor-intensive lobstering is,” she says. “We all learned what makes lobster so expensive.”

Magazine

How The Story Happened: Richard Schultz

“This was my ‘endless summer,’” says photographer Richard Schultz of his assignment to travel our northeast shore in search of memorable people and landscapes (“Maine CoastaI Odyssey”). “Maine is one of the most beautiful places on earth. There are only a handful of such divine places.”

Magazine

Inside Yankee: Finding Summer

We wait so patiently, don’t we? We find all sorts of ways to enjoy winter–snow sports, cozy inns, reading by the fire, bragging about snow tires and wood piles–because we either do that or be miserable, or join the snowbirds. So we wait. And spring comes. Café tables appear like welcome blossoms; we put away […]

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