Welcome to the September 2009 edition of Jud’s New England Journal, the rather curious monthly musings of Judson Hale, the Editor-in-Chief of Yankee Magazine, published since 1935 in Dublin, N.H. Some Things We Can Count on Not to Change It’s not quite as easy to come up with unchanging things as we first thought… We […]
Yankee
Yankee
Yankee Classic: Ghost Town
Yankee Classic from Mysterious New England, 1971 Here is a tragedy so heinous, a mystery so unfathomable, an abduction so strange, as to cause all who hear the tale to look askance, and shake their heads. Have you ever tramped the trails leading from the White Mountains down onto the eastern bank of the Connecticut […]
Magazine
The End of No Summer
It is the end of summer, a strange thing to say since some of us feel there never was a summer this year. Just a long wet spring. And now we are about to celebrate Labor Day and school has already started. Because we have a number of lakes in this town, we have a […]
Yankee
Artist in Residences
Since 1990, artist Connie Hayes has been painting landscapes, still-lifes and interiors in and around houses where she has stayed as a houseguest, methodically borrowing the homes of friends and friends of friends in order search out new subject matter. In 2004, Hayes documented her peripatetic paintings in Painting Maine: The Borrowed Views of Connie […]
Magazine
Harriet Goes to School
Harriet is six months old now, old enough to know better about some things. It would be obvious to most everyone who walked in the door that she is an alpha dog, whether they know the term or not. She dominates. She’s got to be first in line, ahead of the game, issuing the orders. […]
Yankee
Drawing in the Sands of Time
Conceptual artist Jim Denevan turns the classic dictum ars longa, vita brevis (art is long, life is short) on its head. His elegant, large-scale sand drawings on vacant beaches last only as long the incoming tide. Then they are swept away forever. Denevan, is a chef, surfer, and sand artist from Santa Cruz, CA. I […]
Magazine
Lowell, MA: Jack Kerouac
From Yankee Magazine September 1994 Writer Jack Kerouac died 25 years ago, down on his luck and estranged from the city of his birth, Lowell, Massachusetts. But his literary star is once more on the rise, and his hometown seems to have found a way to forgive him. Jack Kerouac was dead before I even […]
Magazine
Corn Mazes in New England
Have you been to a corn maze? Bring a sense of adventure and get ready to laugh, scream, and have fun at these New England fall farm features. Visit, for example, Marini Farms in Ipswich, Massachusetts, where an 8-acre, interactive Maze Quest opens with clues via 3-D glasses and text messages. The maze takes about […]
Producer/Director Ken Burns describes his work as “emotional archaeology.” For nearly 30 years, Burns has unearthed compelling, surprising, complex stories surrounding seemingly well-documented subjects. His newest film, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, a six-part, 12-hour series, is scheduled to air on PBS stations beginning Sunday, September 27. We spoke with Burns in his office […]
Magazine
The Leaf Seeker: Jeff Folger
It’s the church steeple that causes Jeff Folger, a.k.a. Jeff “Foliage,” Yankee‘s compulsive foliage blogger, to spin his red Silverado pickup truck around the town green of Brooklyn, Connecticut. The steeple is an unusual one, with a rectangular base giving way to a mansard-roof cupola covered in copper sheathing. And more to our purpose, it […]
“Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature”: Cicero said it, and Bradford Washburn lived it. A pioneering mountain climber, pilot, mapmaker, geologist, and founder of Boston’s Museum of Science–Washburn was all of these. This New England-born explorer was also a prolific artist behind the lens of a camera, capturing some of the […]
Magazine
Best 5 Fall Camping Spots
We asked Carol Cambo, co-author of New England Camping (Avalon; $21.95), to choose the five best fall camping spots to pitch your tent or park your RV during the height of New England autumn color. Little Moose Management Unit Greenville Junction, ME Backcountry hikers in the mood to rough it may choose from a handful […]