When I was 8 years old, my grandmother gave me a cloth doll for Christmas. Neither pretty nor fancy, she was plainly dressed in gingham, with yarn hair, button eyes, and a painted-on smile. She wasn’t exactly fun or exciting, and I didn’t play with her much. But long after my other childhood toys had […]
Every year at this time, I drive down into the Connecticut River Valley, down through Northfield and Sunderland and Hadley, to buy my winter supply of onions and potatoes, plus winter squash and apples, and a few other things that will keep in my root cellar. This way, I don’t have to think about buying […]
For truly natural, eco-friendly, green cleaning, try using mayonnaise, vinegar, and baking soda. Green Cleaning with Mayonnaise 1. Mayonnaise is one of the best green cleaning substances. Try it on pine pitch, grease, or to wash tar off your hands. Rub it on, let it sit for a few minutes, and clean off the spot. […]
It was the summer of 1953. Ernest F. Fetske, a prominent naval architect from New York, and his wife, Bettina, were taking a load of bricks in their boat out to their vacation home on five-acre Brockway Island in Essex, Connecticut. They’d been spending weekends there since purchasing it in the early 1940s. Folks around […]
I love many things about this area, but one of my strongest pulls is from the legacy of art that underlies this and our surrounding towns. Beautiful landscape paintings seem like the very earth beneath our feet here, or at least this earth is the sustenance out of which these paintings have grown. Many artists […]
While growing up, I shared a room with my very neat and organized sister. I was the bane of her existence. Artsy and disheveled, I provided the perfect foil to her tirade of tidiness. “A place for everything, and everything all over the place” was my motto. I favored pretty; she liked practical. I liked […]
On Bruce Ware’s porch above the shores of Lake Champlain, I lower myself into a deep wooden chair and lean back. “The way you’ll know a real one is the height of the chair off the ground, and where your knees come up to,” Ware tells me. “In some, where the angle is wrong, they’ll […]
ATTRACTIONS Best Historic Walking Tour: PORTSMOUTH HARBOR TRAIL HIGHLIGHTS TOUR, Portsmouth Delve into the city’s rich past on this hour-long walking tour of Colonial residences and historic landmarks, and hear the stories of early townspeople (merchants, politicians, and laborers) who helped build it into a four-star destination. Call for seasonal schedule. Reservations recommended. Greater Portsmouth […]
ATTRACTIONS Best Boutique Art and Science Center: BRUCE MUSEUM, Greenwich It’s a small but mint venue that mounts extraordinary exhibitions that often go on to tour nationally or internationally. On view through May 24, Innovations in the Third Dimension: Sculpture of Our Time (Rodin, Calder, Nevelson, Moore); through June 14, Dinosaurs: The Art of Reconstruction; […]
See Yankee‘s travel bargains in New Hampshire Yankee recommends that you call ahead to confirm dates and times. MAY 9: AMHERST, Amherst Garden Club Annual Plant Sale. Offering more than 1,300 locally grown hardy perennials at Wilkins School. Annuals, hanging baskets, heirloom vegetable plants, unique herbs, hostas, a raffle table of garden products, garden-accessory vendors, […]
See Yankee‘s travel bargains in Massachusetts Yankee recommends that you call ahead to confirm dates and times. APR. 29-MAY 6: WILLIAMSTOWN, NORTH ADAMS, Jazz Festival. A showing of the film Ben-Hur, accompanied by live big-band music, kicks off this event, in venues throughout both towns. Other offerings include the Intercollegiate Jazz Festival, featuring 12 regional […]
Back in 1998, entrepreneurial museum director Thomas Krens created something of an art world sensation when he filled the Guggenheim Museum in New York with 114 motorcycles. The controversial The Art of the Motorcycle prompted some wags to suggest that the bike show had finally fulfilled the circular Frank Lloyd Wright museum’s destiny as a […]
