Growing up in Buffalo, New York, I saw fall as a harbinger of doom. All I could ever see was winter down the pike. But autumn here in New England is really a different thing, and it’s a big deal. It’s like Mardi Gras is to New Orleans — a famous tourist event, but also […]
Yankee
Magazine
Wyeth Art Works in New England
While the public cannot personally visit Allen Island and the neighboring Georges Islands, you can see some of Andrew Wyeth’s Maine paintings, watercolors, and drawings at over a dozen New England art museums. Start with the Farnsworth Art Museum & Wyeth Center in Rockland, Maine. The Farnsworth has the region’s largest collection: 26 (compared with […]
Magazine
David Haskell’s Picks
One of David’s fall favorites is an unusual plant called Heptacodium miconioides (seven-son flower). It is a shrublike tree with green leaves during summer, but it puts on a command performance come fall. First, it produces panicles of star-shaped white blossoms in September and October. Then, its calyxes, which are green when flowering, ripen to […]
Small stones crunch beneath David Haskell’s boots as he strolls along a shady path amid Allen C. Haskell Horticulturists in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Son of the late genius plantsman Allen Haskell, David now presides over the seven-acre retail nursery and landscape design business created by his father over the past 50 years. The nursery, which […]
Magazine
Donald Hall: A Poet for All Ages
Donald Hall has long been one of New England’s most gifted writers of poetry and prose. Writing from his farmhouse in the village of Wilmot, New Hampshire, Hall’s images cut to the heart of anyone, anywhere. This month he begins his one-year appointment as poet laureate of the United States. To honor its local gift […]
This fall, the Red Sox will have to share the spotlight with a new player in town — the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). The ICA, which has moved from its Boylston Street location to an ultramodern 65,000-square-foot building on Boston’s harborfront, is the first art museum to be built in the city in nearly […]
Magazine
Maxfield Parrish’s Work Gets a Home
Maxfield Parrish’s Daybreak recently sold for $7.6 million. That’s good news, because the seller’s grant of $300,000 will help purchase a permanent home for the Cornish Colony Museum, in Windsor, Vermont, home to the largest collection of Parrish’s work. The name of its current Parrish exhibition is, appropriately enough, Coming Home. Through October 29. 802-674-6008. […]
Born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, the late Harvey Ball, a self-employed commercial artist, drew the first smiley face in December 1963 for a local insurance company that wanted happy buttons to raise employee morale. He said he received about $45 for the sketch, drawn with black felt-tip pen on yellow paper. Before his death […]
Magazine
2012 Fall Photo Contest Finalists
Yankee Magazine‘s fall photo contest is the most popular one we host, and each year our readers submit hundreds of stunning photos. After careful consideration, we’ve narrowed it down to five images that stand out from the rest. Here are the judges’ comments on why these five photos made it into the finals. Congratulations to […]
Magazine
Foliage Photo Tips
HOW IS THE FOLIAGE going to be this year? It’s more than a passing interest at Yankee magazine. It’s an obsession! I worked in Yankee‘s art department for 15 autumns, and New England’s color was always spectacular. Some years there was a little more red or the leaves turned earlier than the year before, but […]
Magazine
Why Leaves Change Color
1. Leaves contain a green pigment called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is instrumental in photosynthesis, the process in which energy from sunlight (along with water and carbon dioxide) is used to make sugars that feed the plant. Over time, chlorophyll breaks down, but during the growing season it is continually replaced. 2. In autumn, the environment is […]
1. DO get lost. Carry a good map (we like the detailed atlas and gazetteer series by DeLorme mapmakers in Yarmouth, Maine; 800-561-5105; delorme.com) and get a little lost. With 7,401 miles of unpaved roads just in Vermont, there’s ample opportunity to find adventure. 2. DO observe proper foliage etiquette. Locals use the back roads […]