When historian and constitutional scholar Joyce Lee Malcolm first discovered a 1765 bill of sale for a 19-month-old slave boy, she put it aside. She was reconstructing the famous running battle between the Minutemen and the Redcoats that passed through Lincoln, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775. The couple who bought Peter, Josiah and Elizabeth Nelson, […]
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Summer Skin Soothers
Sun, sand, and surf can wreak havoc on skin and tresses. Wearing plenty of sunscreen outdoors is key to protection; then when you step inside (or into an outdoor shower), soften things up with luxe products–featuring ingredients such as olive oil, almond oil, green-tea extract, shea butter, vitamin E, and sea salt–from New England beauty […]
2,710 summer camps in New England 2,481,000 children who attend New England summer camps $7 million cost to build Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s summer cottage (a.k.a. The Breakers) in Newport, RI, in 1893-95Get Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! Email(Required) Subscribe 31.7 height in feet of Ed Jarrett’s world-record sand castle, constructed in South […]
Pan-Mass Challenge
VIDEO: Pan-Mass Challenge There are people who possess a gift they don’t really know they have, until something unexpected happens and their life takes a turn, and then their gift becomes the life itself. For instance, Billy Starr. In the summer of 1973 he had just graduated from college. He’d grown up in suburban Boston, […]
Fireworks | Mary’s Farm
In the next town to ours is a company that manufactures some of the best fireworks in the country. As a result, most towns around here hold extravagant fireworks shows on the Fourth. One of my favorites is in a nearby town, where the show is hosted and paid for by a private lake club. […]
Sally Snowman is the 70th keeper of Boston Light, a post that dates back to 1716. She’s the last of her kind; every other Coast Guard light station in the country has long since reassigned its full-time keepers in the wake of automation. Secluded on Little Brewster Island for weeks at a time, she’s one […]
We romanticize them, but what makes New England lighthouses quintessential icons is their simple, sturdy practicality. They weren’t built to be the stuff of tourist brochures, postcards, and collectibles. They were built to mark the rocky shore for ships. At the end of the road on the tiny burr of the prickly Maine coast where […]
A Strawberry Homecoming
Yesterday, friends came over for supper. Our main course was to be strawberry shortcake. It’s strawberry season here and, even though we’ve had way too much rain to make it a good year for berries, there are still wonderful berries to be had. At this time of year, we all have our favorite berry patches. […]
Old Home Days 2009
The tradition of Old Home Days began in 1897 in New Hampshire and still goes on every summer across New England. Parades, ball games, and band concerts are the order of the day, while new folks get acquainted and returning folks reconnect with their communities. Read more: Old Home Days: A New England Tradition Here’s […]
Indiana Is an Island
Robert Indiana will be upstaging the late, great Andrew Wyeth as the featured attraction at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, this summer as Robert Indiana and the Star of Hope (through October 25) brings the artist’s collection of his own work ashore from the island of Vinalhaven. The Star of Hope is the […]
Video: Interview with David Carroll Excerpt: David Carroll’s new book, Following the Water Yankee Class from June 1993 In the April afternoon, the sun sinks low, coloring the wide oval expanse of the marsh. David Carroll tugs his waders to the tops of his thighs and strides into the place he calls the Route of […]
CLASSIC: Fireworks in Jaffrey, NH
Yankee Classic from July/August 2001 In a three-acre sandpit in front of Steve Pelkey, 11,000 live fireworks shells poke out of the grit like land mines. Most are stuffed into mortars, racks of them bolted onto flatbed trailers or strung together on the ground with wooden strapping in sets of three, four, six, and ten. […]