Welcome to the August 2008 edition of Jud’s New England Journal, the rather curious monthly musings of Judson Hale, editor-in-chief of Yankee Magazine, published since 1935 in Dublin, New Hampshire. Making Fun of Democrats and/or Republicans Actually, New Englanders have always managed to make fun of just about everyone …Get Our FREE Yankee Best New […]
Yankee
Magazine
Classic: Seasons of Ice
Yankee classic from January 1981 People who live along inland waters in northern New England know there are really only two seasons: ice-in and ice-out. All else is but prelude and aftermath. A frozen lake draws us: we dare it early and we dare it late, probing the limits of a most delicate balance — […]
Boston-based musician Jennifer Hruska has made her career on the less glamorous side of the record industry. She’s been a sound designer, audio engineer, composer, electronic instrument designer, and president of a small recording studio. With apparently no other jobs for her to explore in the music business, Hruska has decided to take the plunge […]
Yankee
Maine in the Abstract
Last week I was contacted by the Abbeville Press’s Abbeville Manual of Style to do an on-line interview about contemporary art in Maine and New England. In answer to the question “Do you have a favorite artist or favorite work of art?”, I wrote that “As a Maine native and chauvinist, I am most drawn […]
Yankee
The Gift of the Glaciers
During my childhood summers in Chester County, Pennsylvania I did many things: played baseball, rode my bike, caught fireflies, waited for the twilight jingle of the ice cream truck — but swimming in clear fresh water was not one of them. My town was too far south for the ice age glaciers to have reached […]
Magazine
Moonrise On the Beach
On Friday I drove out to the end of Cape Cod to attend a memorial service for an old friend, Arturo Vivante who wrote beautiful short stories, some of them for this magazine. I had planned to visit with him this past April. We had picked a date but when I called a week ahead […]
Magazine
International Picnics
I’ve been on the road for about a week, with more miles ahead of me. I sometimes tell people I don’t write for a living, I drive. I once calculated that I had driven a million miles in the course of my work for Yankee and that was some time ago. If I have to […]
Greenbush, Maine Harold Murray, director bangormaineghosthuntersassociation.com Harold Murray had a paranormal experience when he was young, but that is not what turned him into a paranormal investigator. “Watching the Travel Channel, the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel — this is what did it,” Harold says. “Every year, they have these specials on. I’m a retired […]
Yankee classic from December 1995 If the tawdry, materialistic displays that too often mark a modern Christmas make you feel like the Grinch, then travel with me to Thompson, Connecticut. It is an evening in early December, and the Old Town Hall, at the northwestern edge of the five-acre Thompson Hill Common, is ready for […]
Magazine
Rangeley, ME: An Angel in Rangeley
Yankee classic from December 1993 It’s a long road to Rangeley. Route 4 twists through miles of thickly forested land, rising and falling as it heads north from Augusta, and on winter nights snowbanks narrow the road, shining white in the headlights, tunneling through the darkness. Surrounded by the mountains and lakes of western Maine, […]
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in the Cheever-esque village of Ridgefield, CT, is one of the rare non-collecting art institutions in New England. Like the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Real Art Ways in Hartford, and Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, the Aldrich Museum exists to support new art, a place where […]
In 1962 Waine Morse decided to build a make-believe store beside his vegetable garden in Greenfield, MA, to house his burgeoning collection of Americana. He couldn’t stop. Excerpt from “’The Man Who Build a Town in His Backyard,” Yankee Magazine, December 1989.Get Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! Email(Required) Subscribe It didn’t start […]