I went down to Connecticut for Thanksgiving with my cousins. We were many and there wasn’t much left over by the time the roasting pan had been scrubbed and the last counter wiped down. But there was the carcass and I begged to bring it home with me, a request that was gladly granted. Everyone […]
[feature slug=”the-popcorn-myth”] Faculty art shows at colleges and universities all over the universe tend to be wonderfully democratic yet wildly incoherent free-for-alls lacking any cohesive idea or theme. For that very reason, I stopped reviewing them decades ago. It’s just not possible to say anything meaningful about a show of random works by a bunch […]
Art conservators have many of the same hi-tech sensing and imaging technologies available to them that medical and military personnel do — x-ray diffraction and fluorescence, infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, optical scanning, ultrasound, x-ray tomography, etc. Initially employed in the service of detecting cracks and damage and material properties useful in conserving works […]
One of my favorite New England writers is John Hanson Mitchell, whose Ceremonial Time (1984) investigated the “deep history” of Scratch Flat, a one-square-mile piece of ground 35 miles northwest of Boston, from the Ice Age to the Digital Age. His new book, The Paradise of All These Parts (Beacon Press; $24.95), attempts the same […]
Make a Christmas tree farm visit a new family ritual! Just add a saw, snow, and a hillside filled with balsam, Fraser fir, and Scotch pine.
With a frost warning up, last week I picked all the tomatoes left on the vines. And I do mean vines — these tomatoes were among the most vigorous, the most aggressive I’ve ever grown. I planted them, probably ten or twelve plants, in early June, as usual. I had dressed the garden with a […]
I’ve mentioned my affection for the great food shops of Watertown, Massachusetts, and my friend, chef Ana Sortun of Oleana. Well, the two have come together. Ana opened Sofra (sofrabakery.com) a few weeks ago. Technically it’s in Cambridge, but it’s at the split where Mt. Auburn and Belmont streets meet (or separate) — it’s in […]
By Nan Fornal Peterborough When I want to show guests — especially from the city — the essence of country life, I take them to Pickity Place. On a winding country road, just after the pavement ends, we take a left at the welcoming sign. There, an old red Cape houses a unique restaurant. We […]
By Polly Bannister Home and Garden Editor, Yankee Magazine I’ve lived in the Monadnock region for 30 years — almost long enough to consider myself local. In my migration around the area over the years, I’ve lived in seven of the 40 or so towns that consider themselves located in the shadow of the mountain […]
When I was doing graduate work at Simmons College back in the early 1970s, I often spent my lunch break next door at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, that elegant little palazzo frozen in time on Boston’s Fens. The art, the architecture, and the atmosphere, especially the indoor garden, were like a vacation abroad, if […]
I felt true sadness this morning when I saw a notice in the local paper about the death of Dwight Miller, Jr., a veritable icon in the northern world of fruits and vegetables. When I lived closer to Miller’s orchard in Dummerston, Vermont, I used to go there to pick apples in the fall or […]
New England paint colors range from subdued, earthy tones to bright, vibrant hues, but all draw from the rich landscape and history of the region.
