Yankee

Antiques: Bradford Washburn Photographs

“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 […]

Yankee

A Summer Flower Show

As I sit here at the keyboard, my backyard view is of gardens punctuated by deep red bee balm and bright yellow black-eyed susans, pink lilies and lobelia, buttery primroses and lilac hostas. High summer is not a time for strenuous intellectual or artistic activity. It’s a time for rest and relaxation, for enjoying the […]

Massachusetts

Boston, MA: Boston Public Library

Just about any destination you head to in Boston takes you past the Boston Public Library on Copley Square. Don’t zip by–leave time to poke inside one of the city’s greatest structures. You just might find a day of enlightenment. The building itself is a grand bit of architecture and artwork, with structural references to […]

Magazine

Mermaids

Ten years ago during our annual summer vacation in Round Pond, Maine, our daughters, 12 and 14, ran down to the little harbor at low tide to roll around in the mud. On a lobster pier above them, diners observed with delight, applauding the reckless abandon of these two teenagers whose laughter echoed across the […]

Yankee

Time Passes Photographically in Boston

A photograph is essentially a split second in time captured on film or digitally, a record of what light revealed for the instant the shutter was open. Most of the time when you’re looking at a photograph, you are seeing something like 1/125th of a second captured from the eternal present as it passes before […]

History

When “Maudlin” Was “In”

Welcome to the November 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. When “Maudlin” Was “In” Years ago in New England, people viewed death and dying quite differently …Get Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! […]

Food

Why I Read About Grilling in the Early Spring

I love this time of year in New England, and I hate this time of year in New England. I love that the days are getting longer and warmer and that there are indeed signs of short-sleeve weather on the horizon. But I hate setting the clock forward. I really do. It was getting lighter […]

Yankee

Artist John Bisbee and Bowdoin College Museum

There’s no such thing as bad art. I used to think that the work of the art critic was to judge art and artists, to sort out the good and dispose of the bad. Years ago, however, I came to realize that on the scale of human actions from genocide to sainthood, making art ranks […]