Twice in recent months I have been privileged to provide introductory remarks before the public showing of videos about Maine artists I know well – painters Dahlov Ipcar and Alan Magee. The short documentary-style profiles are two of nine in the on-going Maine Masters series sponsored by the Union of Maine Visual Artists. If you […]
Yankee
The Guide and the Allagash
Read more: Wooden and Canvas Canoes This Yankee Classic is from July/August 2001 Gil Gilpatrick lifts the last of the coolers into his varnished cedar canoe and shoves off from the banks of a rutted logging road, down Indian Stream. The stream emerges from a culvert behind him; ahead of him it curves and slips […]
SLIDE SHOW: Winslow Homer works I stand alone on a boulder-strewn shoreline, a rugged symbol of Maine. The waves thrash against the rocks. Get Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! Email(Required) Subscribe They shoot a salty mist onto my face and clothing. The sound is almost deafening. It’s no surprise that they call […]
Massachusetts Dining by the Water
Through some magic of architecture, the dining room at The Red Inn promotes the illusion of floating, like the many boats just outside in Provincetown Harbor–or maybe we were seeing things after our pre-lunch bike ride through the dunes to one of the lighthouses. The sea-level view here seems never-ending; the Atlantic just rolls on […]
I live in a house with two small boys, two large dogs, and one boisterous husband. Silence is truly golden. I find myself cherishing the kind of peace and solitude that in my youth would have left me with a bad case of cabin fever. Time and maturity have taught me to embrace silence. In […]
Do You Want to Start a B&B?
Read about one couple’s experience: Hawthorn Inn, Concord, MA The first and ultimately the most important question is whether or not you are by temperament suited to innkeeping. You must be tolerant of people, most of whom are not going to be exactly like you. If you cannot imagine yourself sleeping a wall’s thickness away […]
Water: New England Numbers
10 miles: width of Lake Champlain between Burlington, VT, and Port Douglas, NY, its widest point 1,300 lakes and ponds in New Hampshire 6,000 lakes and ponds in MaineGet Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! Email(Required) Subscribe 4 feet: Cape Cod National Seashore land lost each year to erosion 316 feet: maximum depth […]
Books: Poems, Birds, Gardens
In his typically smart and funny introduction to Bright Wings, former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins cheerfully admits the uselessness of poetry. “Of course, if the meaning of ‘useful’ is extended from how to assemble a piece of outdoor furniture to how to engage our verbal intelligence and uplift the human spirit,” he adds, “then […]
Wood and Canvas Canoes
Twenty years ago I paddled down the St. John River in northern Maine on an eight-day wilderness canoe trip. I remember much about the rhythm of that ice-out trip: how the eight of us put in below Baker Lake into a shallow, smooth current. The water quickened and grew more powerful with each gathering day, […]
Mary’s Farm: High School Reunion
I didn’t come out of the oven here, as the old folks like to say. I’m originally from New Jersey. Growing up, visiting my New England relatives, I vowed to one day make this place my home. And, after college, I did, pushing off from the shores of the Old Country, arriving here eager to […]
The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center is welcoming spring to southern Vermont with five new exhibitions (all through July 11) featuring the works of 18 contemporary artists. They present a lively mix of artists from the region and from away that continues the Brattleboro MAC’s commitment to seasonal shows with wide visual appeal. Occupying the […]
SLIDE SHOW: Winslow Homer
The Portland Museum of Art will present Winslow Homer and the Poetics of Place June 5 to September 6 to commemorate the centennial of the artist’s death. Read more: Finding Winslow Homer in Maine Six Places to Find Homer’s Art This slide show of Winslow Homer‘s oils and watercolors comes from the collection of Maine’s […]