
Hearing the distant sounds of cannon at the Battle of Bunker Hill to the south, local militia mustered here on Nottingham Square in New Hampshire and began marching to combat. It’s only an hour-plus drive today.


You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall

Hearing the distant sounds of cannon at the Battle of Bunker Hill to the south, local militia mustered here on Nottingham Square in New Hampshire and began marching to combat. It’s only an hour-plus drive today.



This lovely tidal channel links Pepperell Cove to a town park called Seapoint and sets Fort Foster off on its own island.


At the mouth of the Piscataqua River downstream from where I live, Fort Foster has long guarded the entrance to Portsmouth Harbor. It’s now a town park.
By purchasing a season pass each year, I’ve come to consider it my private patch on the ocean — one shared with some folks who’ve become sunny friends as we swim and then warm in the rays.
The rocky shoreline allows a fine introduction to tide pool life, while the pebble beaches have their own experience. There are also some sandy pocket beaches and a trail to meander while looking out over the cobalt Atlantic.


New Hampshire has more than its share of vanity license plates, a practice that often provides amusement in the thick of traffic or parking lots. For a number of years, mine said QUAKER, which spurred some lively conversations — to say nothing of what happened when parked next to Bob McQuillen’s QUACKER plate. (His goes back to his days of teaching high school shop classes — the result of one day when a student I will not name accused him of sounding like a duck when he got angry.)
So we were driving through downtown the other day when we noticed this plate:

Only in the photo do I notice the second D rather than O — representing another variant on the root surname Hodgson. Still, it can be unsettling when you have a rather uncommon one to see another around.