As the largest city in northern New England, Manchester was built on the water power captured at the Amoskeag Falls in the Merrimack River.
GRANITE STATE’S QUEEN CITY
Tag: Life
A LITTLE AFTER THE FACT
So there we were a few days ago, finishing our Chinese dinners before dashing down the street to choir rehearsal. After cracking open my fortune cookie, rather than reaching into my pack for my eyeglasses, I asked my companion if he’d read my little slip to me. (Ah, the joys of getting older.)
After he recited my fortune, I replied, “You’re making that up, right?”
I was rather impressed, actually, and he does have a great sense of humor. Not bad for improv.
“No, here it is. You read it.” Which I did:
You are a lover of words someday
you will write a book.
LOOKING FOR THOSE LOCAL DISTINCTIONS
As I said at the time …
Greetings again from this old mill town along the Merrimack River.
There is still a special feel to an octavo-size, typeset journal – a unity of design and purpose carried throughout – even in this era of desktop design and photocopy wizardry. A major challenge, whether it’s in shaping a literary journal like yours, a daily newspaper, or even an old-fashioned country dance, is simply: what can we do to make our own locale distinctive?
An example: a few years ago, the New England contradance scene was becoming generic: you’d drive for miles to a village town hall only to find the same faces and same pieces you had faraway the week before. Fortunately, that seems to be changing as different callers, musicians, and promoters are striving to put their own distinctive signature – and a local stamp – on each venue. So there’s your challenge!
I’m struck by the fact that even familiar voices from our round of journals seem to sound different in varied locales. If you’ve ever been around paintings, as I was when married to an artist, and seen a piece go from her studio to our living room to an art gallery to a major museum, you would be amazed how different it appears it each setting. Publishing is the same.
ASPARAGUS
My fondness for asparagus arises in the years I lived in an orchard in the Yakima Valley, where, thanks to an earlier agricultural disaster, asparagus seeds had gotten into the irrigation water and spread everywhere. The green sprouts were often touted as “Local ’Grass.” As a consequence, we had about a month when we could take our knives and, being careful to avoid areas of pesticide use, return with a basket of stalks for lunch or dinner. I learned to glut out in season, realizing it would be another year before we’d indulge again.
Now that we have our own asparagus bed and repeat the ritual, albeit on a smaller scale, we’ve also come to regard the damage asparagus beetles inflict as well as the miracle appearance of lady bugs to the rescue. That, in itself, has convinced us of the value of organic farming.
As for Shiva, he’s the horny Hindu god of creation and destruction, and he wields a wicked blade.
EXPLODING COLOR
INTO THE GREAT PLAINS
To grow a leafy tree requires more than thirty inches of rainfall or its equivalent each year. If you drive west across the United States, you can cross an imaginary line that passes through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and beyond it deciduous, or leafy, trees are quite rare. Soon, so are conifers, the evergreens. Irrigation becomes a fact of life if you want to raise food or flowers or even a lawn.
The Great Plains eventually pass into desert – and you might be surprised to discover that most of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington state is actually desert. The rainy belt is little more than a thin band along the Pacific-facing side of the Cascade and Olympic mountains.
Quite simply, it’s a different world from the one most Americans know.
~*~
As for the Great Plains, let me recommend Kathleen Norris’ Dakota. It’s a unique and marvelous book.
ON THE CHARLES
OLD ROUTE EXPOSED
SHE SEZ, PLANTING SEEDS
My garden is equal parts solace and frustration.
COCHECO DAM AND FALLS
Jnana's Red Barn 