Around 20,000 years ago, the massive Laurentide ice sheet halted its southerly advance just past Cape Cod and, shedding its load of till, and began to form a terminal moraine still discernible in the series of hills that stretch from Tuckernuck to Siasconset. Back then, sea level was nearly 400 feet lower than today, placing […]
Henry David Thoreau’s poetry inscribed on leaves. The symbiotic link between nature and literature is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in Concord, Massachusetts. With just enough forest between Concord’s tree-lined streets and Boston’s bustling avenues, this village remains a place of solace for writers and vacationers alike. In one shady corner of town you’ll find […]
For more than 25 years, a clientele of dedicated food and wine enthusiasts have ascended the creaky staircase of an 1886 Gloucester Street brownstone in Boston’s Back Bay to celebrate the milestones of their lives with chef Frank McClelland of L’Espalier. Now the much-anticipated opening of the Mandarin Oriental hotel at the Prudential Center on […]
When we first corresponded with the owner, we weren’t sure whether to visit this property. The owner is well-known artist and sculptor Kendra Ferguson, whose work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Harvard’s Fogg Museum, and others. When she told […]
The secret to savoring New Hampshire’s Monadnock region is to drive slowly and stop often.
I live in a small house with many windows. From mid-October to Thanksgiving, the front and sides bathe in a fierce yellow light, thanks to the leaves of the Norway maple that grows in the eastern tree zone. Its leaves hold the light of the sun; even at dusk and on overcast days, there’s a […]
I recently attended the wake of a colleague’s husband. It was made bittersweet by the fact that his wife and family had carefully displayed old photos and scrapbooks, their wedding album, and small mementos gathered over the course of his lifetime. This makeshift memorial illustrated that even in death, this man would not be far […]
Peter Ralston is telling me about a boy he once knew. In 1957, when the boy is seven years old, he moves to an old gray stone house in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
“I grew up on a farm in New Hampshire,” says Frank McClelland, “so I couldn’t imagine not having a garden, let alone not teaching my children about how things grow.” For almost two decades, Frank has been chef and owner of Boston’s L’Espalier restaurant, a fine-dining spot that has long set the standard for elegance […]
Biennial art exhibitions, whether by invitation only or juried shows open to all, have become waypoints on the contemporary art landscape, providing artists and audiences alike a chance every couple of years to see what’s new, what’s happening, who’s hot, who’s arrived. As big, brawling, messy, and imperfect as they are, biennials are welcome events, […]
Bombay-born, London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor is frequently called a magician or an illusionist because of the way his art plays with perception, capturing reflected environments in highly polished surfaces, distorting them like funhouse mirrors, inferring unseen volumes and negative spaces with works built into floor and walls, performing sleight-of-form acts with huge objects that function […]
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 […]
