Summer Breeze

by Rose Kowaliw

A soft warm breeze gently touched
my cheek, my lips and I heard
it whisper. The grass
shivered and the rose reached up
and sighed knowing it
would not pass this way again.

(Rose Kowaliw is a Troubadour reader from Swanzey, NH)

Singing Water

by Michelle Reynoso

I hear
the water singing to me-
giggling and gurgling;
dancing over a familiar path.

It
sings;
it sings to me.

I watch
the water push forward;
over mossy rocks,
through decaying leaves and sediment.
It pushes,
but leaves a piece of itself.

And still
it sings;
it sings to me.

I will sing back.

(Michelle Reynoso is a Troubadour reader from Hackensack, NJ)

The Silent Giants

by Meggin Dail

The Silent Giants
are on the ground
They heave and sigh
They are heavens bound.

Their colors shame
The Rainbow hues.
Their bodies lift
with the morning dew.

Their fiery breath
warms the air
They ascend like clouds
to who knows where.

The graceful monsters
crowd the sky
On gentle winds
They float, not fly.

The Silent Giants
are here and gone.
Just like the day
that once was dawn.

(Meggin Dail is a Troubadour reader from Pittsfield, NH)

A Seaside Sonnet

by Lesley Morgan

I’d walk a mile to reach this shore
To savor the sting of salt and wind,
And revel in crashing waves, and bend
My gaze to scour the ocean floor.

No better place my heart to mend
When nettled by loss and fear forlorn;
Or frame my thoughts to shipshape form,
Buoyant and safe beyond land’s end.

When sunny, a beach so vast and warm
Can heal the souls of those most faint-
From lowest wretch to highest saint-
While worshippers tan and children swarm.

It’s best though, when we stroll and talk;
So hand in hand, my love, let’s walk.

(Lesley Morgan is a Troubadour reader from Brentwood, NH)

by Stephanie Wolicki

Seagulls swooped from overhead
Down to the floating crusts of bread.
Think or wonder they did not do;
Different they are from me and you.
Not concerned with right or wrong,
They scooped up the offering and sped along,
Kurak, Kurak, Kuraking their “thank you” song.

(Stephanie Wolicki is a Troubadour reader from Portsmouth, NH)

CHOCORUA

by Candace Cole-McCrean

Prince
of a mountain
Spirit leader
of native peoples,
I paid you tribute.
I climbed, struggled,
strained, and gave
of my spirit essence
lovingly
to the life-scarred
surface
that is your face.

Prince
of a mountain
Spirit leader
of native peoples,
you paid me tribute.
You sustained, strengthened,
nurtured, and gave
of your spirit essence
lovingly
to the life-scarred
surface
that is my body.

Memory
can never again but recall
that we have met,
have loved,
have lived each other
as one.
It is not strange…
that night we slept together,
even the owls were hushed.

(Candace Cole-McCrea is a Troubadour reader from Milton, NH)

Canobie Lake’s Canobie Queen

by Charlene Mary-Cath Smith

What amazes me most
simply sitting
at water’s edge
a mildly hazy movie moon above
not ten full feet away
from its wooden presence
done up in the fashion
of 19th century
river showboats
inhaling the exotic aroma
of cotton candy apples
buttercorn of Tennessee
Williams’ smoky summers…
even without
the long gown garb…
is the imagination
that never goes stale
Even after thirty years
of dock locked journeys

the power to produce goose bumps
Even in the hearing
of its own narration

(Charlene Mary-Cath Smith is a Troubadour reader from Manchester, NH)

NH Troubadour July, 1943

IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE…

At a largely attended auction in a New Hampshire town the local physician put up a squawk that he had made a higher bid than was made by a woman farther back in the crowd. The auctioneer, who was also the town undertaker, insisted that he didn’t hear his bid. Finally the doctor lost his temper and yelled, “Trouble with you is, you made a mistake and now you’re trying to cover it up.” Pretending to be hurt the auctioneer turned sadly to his old friend and inquired, “Why Doc, don’t you believe in reciprocity? I’ve been covering up your mistakes for more’n forty years and never told a soul.”

NH Troubadour July, 1951

THE STONE WALL

by B. Telfair Mines

Men come and go, some leave a trace,
Of efforts, through the years,
A memory perhaps of joy,
A distant thought of tears.
But stone walls speak of labor,
Of toil by calloused hand
Where some forgotten pioneer,
Has said, “Here ends my land.”

NH Troubadour August, 1938

A New Hampshire lady who is fond of cats and who doesn’t object to dogs who stay at home recently inserted this businesslike ad in the local paper: “Warning to all dog owners, I am prepared to dispatch any and all dogs that enter my premises to harass or destroy my cats. No further notice will be given except the obituary. I am especially looking for a large red dog, and a large police dog.

NH Troubadour August, 1949

ON THE CONTOOCOOK

by Eleanor Vinton

From Riverhill to Blackwater
Is longer by canoe.
The river dallies all the way;
The road goes briskly through.

But Riverhill to Blackwater,
Canoe’s the way to go
To hear a tree of finches sing
Or watch a flapping crow.

From Riverhill to Blackwater
There’s Broad Cove in between
With lilies looking at the sky,
And have you ever seen

From Riverhill to Blackwater
Beyond the bend, the sight
Of four wild black ducks
In sudden startled flight?

Since launching in February, Remembered Voices organizers (from left) Tom Godek, Margo Brandano, Al Brandano, and Deidre Christiansen have given 500 free voice cards to soldiers and their families, including Claire Denton (front), to record messages of love and support. (Photo: David Lazar)

So Brandano approached her husband Al, an airline pilot and marketing executive, with an idea: to devise a way for people to record their own messages and memories by phone or computer so loved ones could access their voice forever. Of particular importance, she felt, was giving soldiers overseas and their families the ability, at no cost, to record messages of love and support for one another. So Al contacted a close friend, Exeter software executive Eric Peterson, and together they compiled a team of contacts in the corporate community to create Remembered Voices – an online database accessible via the web or telephone that allows users to permanently store and listen to voice recordings. “Anyone can write a story,” Al Brandano says. “But when you say it in your own words with your own intonation and inflection, it’s something that can’t be duplicated.”

This past Memorial Day, with support from local businesses and residents, Remembered Voices handed 500 voice cards – worth upwards of $25,000 – to returning soldiers and those headed for Iraq and Afghanistan through Portsmouth’s Pease Greeters. “These young men and women sacrifice so much for us,” Al Brandano says. “For them to know before they go into harm’s way that they can hear the voice of a loved one has got to be an incredible source of comfort.”

Since launching in February, Remembered Voices has been just that for Stratham mom Claire Denton, who suffers from a neuromuscular disorder that severely limits her speech, and whose husband Jason was an Air National Guard member serving overseas. “There are so many stories I want to tell my kids, so many things I want them to hear, but I can’t always give that to them,” says Denton. “Plus, when you have a spouse or a loved one who’s away… and they’re on completely different schedules and time zones, it can be a tremendous challenge… This program has really shown me the awesome power of voice.”

Remembered Voices is generously offering 50 Troubadour readers a free voice card to record memories, messages, poetry and ‘verbal family trees’ of their own. For more information, call (603) 583-4880 or visit www.RememberedVoices.com.

THE TALL GRASS STALKS SWAY WITH THE WIND
AS LOVERS THEY DANCE AWAY IN WAVES ACROSS THE MEADOW
UNATTENDED FIELDS GROW WILD AS WILL A NEGLECTED CHILD
IT’S SUMMER STORMS THAT ROLL OVER THE DARKENED SKY
AS WHITES OF LEAVES TURN EYES HIGH
AND LIMBS FRANTIC WAVE LIMBERING TO ENDURE
WITH BLACKBIRD’S RED WIN FLASHING A SAD GOODBYE
SWIRLING CATTAILS HIDE HIS NESTLINGS WITH PRIDE
TO BE A SUMMER BREEZE AND DANCE WITH ALL
TO DIP THE WING AND GLIDE OVER A SWALLOWS GLEAM
AND DELIVER THE SEEDS OF TOMORROW’S LIFE TO GROUND
FOR I’VE FELT THE LOVER’S CRY AND ACHED WITH THOUGHTS OF WHY
AS THE FIRST DROPS OF TEARS FALL FROM THE DARK BLUE SKY
BUT ASK NOT OF THE TEARS OF RAIN WHY THEY CRY
DO WE AS CIVILIZED SEEK SHELTER FROM THE STORM
OR TAME THE FURY WE SEEK WITH EYES WIDE
OR IS IT ALL A FADING WHISPER IN OUR MINDS

Granted and named in 1768 for Sir William Meredith, a member of British Parliament who’d opposed taxation on the colonies, Meredith for decades hummed along silently as a farming village, turning out steady crops of corn, wheat, potatoes, and apples. That would change in 1818 when local farmer John Bond Swasey devised an underground canal connecting Lakes Waukewan and Winnipesaukee. The result was a dramatic waterfall and, more importantly, a source of waterpower potent enough to spark a thriving mill industry, employing thousands locally and manufacturing everything from flour to linen and lumber.

For years, Meredith’s twin population centers – Meredith Village and Meredith Bridge – quietly coexisted, each with distinct identities. When a new town hall in Meredith Village, however, fatally collapsed during an 1855 town meeting, the ensuing tension was too much and Meredith Bridge split off, becoming present-day Laconia. Meredith Village ultimately survived the rift, and as rail travel through the region grew, so did its status as a resort for those seeking a cool, lakeside respite from the heat and hustle of city life.

Today, Meredith and Winnipesaukee are synonymous, drawing thousands of boaters, campers and honeymooners annually to the area’s placid waters.  History remains important to locals here, and when you’re not admiring Swasey’s stunning waterfall and the arresting architecture at Mill Falls Marketplace, Meredith’s impressive historical museum is a must, housed in the town’s first bank/ post office/piano factory and incorporating all three into unique, rotating exhibitions. Elsewhere, you’ll want plenty of space in your trunk to visit Moulton Farm, where generations of Moultons since 1892 have stocked villagers’ baskets with some of the sweetest corn and freshest produce around. And, leave room in your stomach to visit George’s Diner, where the waitresses still call you ‘Hun,’ and the homemade turkey, mashed potatoes and decadent desserts have been loosening belts and filling doggie bags for decades.

• Population of 6,623 (2008 census).
• Long considered the heart of NH’s Lakes Region, Meredith has been a favorite tourist destination for generations, nestled among the state’s largest lakes—Winnipesaukee, Squam, Winnisquam, Waukewan, Kanasatka, Wicwas, Pemigewasset and Winona.
• From the early 1950’s until 2008, Meredith served as home to production of collectible Annalee Dolls. At its height, the company, founded by Concord, NH native Barbara Annalee Davis, employed more than 300 individuals, filled over fourteen acres of land dotted with seven buildings, and produced nearly $15 million in sales. The most popular Annalee Dolls have reached up to $6,000 at auction.
• The Great Meredith Rotary Fishing Derby, entering its 32^nd year, is an annual ice-fishing tradition held each February, in which hundreds of participants vie for thousands of dollars in cash and prizes.
• Notable residents of Meredith have included: U.S. Senator George G. Fogg; U.S. Congressman Samuel Newell Bell; Canadian runner George Orton, winner of a gold and bronze medal in the 1900 Summer Olympics; Renowned architect Eben Ezra Roberts; “Archie” Comic Book creator Bob Montana; Emmy-Award Nominated soap opera actor Bradford Anderson.

Since its 1933 opening in Edith Bond Stearns’ barn, the Peterborough Players has helped launch dozens of careers, including film and stage legend James Whittemore, whose final performance was in 2008’s “Our Town.” (Photo courtesy of the Peterborough Players).

TAMWORTH – Francis Cleveland was an accomplished actor in search of steady summer employment when he gathered a group of stage friends one sweltering season, hit the road for his family’s residence in this tiny mountain village, and in the tradition of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, declared “Let’s go put on a show!”

The year was 1931. Times were tight and jobs scarce – stage performers were anything but the exception. For Cleveland, who’d earn Broadway renown during his career as the first ever Stage Manager in the Broadway production of “Our Town” and as Elwood P. Dowd in “Harvey,” a fervor for the arts was more than just ingrained, it was as his nephew George puts it today, ‘prenatal.’ As the children of a certain former White House inhabitant and of a lifelong arts patron, Cleveland’s and his sister Alice’s love of entertaining others was an impassioned pursuit.

And so Francis and Alice Cleveland and their band of Broadway friends packed up their props and costumes in pickup trucks, and set about the barns of the North Country and southern Maine, from Plymouth, Tamworth and North Conway to Holderness and Poland Spring, putting on a new show each week and gaining a following that would span generations.

“You would have actors and actresses who over the course of eight weeks would be playing eight different parts in eight different shows,” says George Cleveland. “You could be the footman one week, and the hero the next. It was brutal for the actors, but oh my God, the discipline and experience. And you got to do it in the terminally bucolic village of Tamworth.”

James Whittemore

Eighty years later, the Barnstormers, as they’d become known, continue to entertain thousands each summer, still producing eight shows in eight weeks, and remaining among the nation’s oldest and proudest summer stock theatre traditions. Indeed, to enter the old (albeit winterized and renovated) white grainery on Main Street the Barnstormers have called home since 1935, is to step back in time and to, each week, enter a world of their own making. This summer’s production, for instance, of ‘The Ghost Train’ pays spooky homage to the Barnstormers’ first ever show, using actual train gears placed beneath the floor to recreate the rush of a freightliner screaming through.

“We don’t cut corners,” says longtime artistic director Bob Shea. “We remain very involved in every phase of production, creating every prop, every costume, and every set piece and sound effect onsite. It’s kind of like Boeing, except rather than planes coming down the assembly line, we have plays we’re putting together piece by piece.”

And star by star. Over the last eight decades, the Barnstormers, like so many of its counterparts across the state, has seen its fair share of major players in the summertime, whether it was Joseph Cotton and Katharine Hepburn breezing through while touring with ‘Philadelphia Story’ (Hepburn, not knowing she was in the home of late President Grover Cleveland, would take a look at his portrait in the entryway and famously – and unflatteringly – declare its likeness to President Taft!), or the likes of William Christopher (Father Mulcahy on ‘MASH’), Arlene Francis of ‘What’s My Line?’ fame, or General Hospital’s Emily McLaughlin.

It’s all part of a rich summer tradition that NH Cultural Resources Commissioner Van McLeod says only deepens New Hampshire’s legacy as a quiet, rustic retreat for artists to create some of their finest work – from novelists Willa Cather and Louisa May Alcott to Thornton Wilder, ee cummings, and of course, Robert Frost. And for residents and vacationers alike to, in turn, enjoy it first.

Begun as a theatre troupe that traveled in trucks and played barns throughout the region, Tamworth’s Barnstormers this summer celebrates its 80th anniversary, still producing eight shows in eight weeks, including a revival of its first ever show, “The Ghost Train.” (Photo: David Lazar; images courtesy of The Barnstormers).

“New Hampshire has always been a place of refuge for artists not only in the visual or literary sense, but for those who are performers, as well,” McLeod says. “While we’re often quick to think of the White Mountains School of Art or the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough or the Cornish colony, the town halls and opera houses across the state served as their own venue for some of the nation’s most talented performers to practice their craft in the summertime.”

Indeed, to travel from town to town across New Hampshire is to witness a theatre tradition that dates back more than a century to Vaudeville’s earliest days – one where virtually every town hall and Grange hall was built with a balcony and removable floor seating; where towns like Goreham built its opera house right on the train tracks to accommodate performers and visitors; and Rochester’s featured the state’s only hydraulic orchestra section, capable of lifting an entire audience to view a show.

It is to also witness a summer stock culture that remains as vibrant today as it did nearly 90 years ago when Peterborough’s Mariarden Theatre-in-the-Woods seated 600 and featured up-and-comers like Brian Donlevy, Paul Robeson, Cornelia Otis Skinner, and Sugar Hill summer resident Bette Davis. While stages have sporadically sprung up in other states in the decades since, summer stock theatre remains a uniquely New England phenomenon – one which, from its earliest days, capitalized on the region’s status as a cool respite for vacationing city dwellers, and on a deep well of rising and accomplished professional actors anxious for a summer paycheck. In old barns, theatres like the Barnstormers, Whitefield’s Weathervane Theatre, the Peterborough Players and the New London Barn Playhouse found inexpensive (if basic) venues to entertain large audiences, and feature major actors, from “Carousel’s” John Raitt who performed regularly at the Lakes Region Playhouse on Winnipesaukee, to Tony Award winner James Whitmore who began and ended his career with the Peterborough Players.

The Barnstormers

Today, they remain among 21 summer stock stages across New Hampshire (from the Seacoast to the North Country), entertaining more than 800,000 vacationers and locals last year, and in many ways paying tribute to simpler times when a show was a regular part of one’s summer vacation and the computer generating the special effects was a director’s imagination.

The Barnstormers performing

“It’s all about creativity,” says McLeod, who himself founded the Paper Mill Theatre and the North Country Center for the Arts. “It’s easy to be creative when you’ve got a lot of technical gadgetry and million dollar budgets. But in summer stock, where your budgets are certainly anything but, the one criteria by which the audience judges is believability. It really is about telling a story and making it feel real for the people in the seats.”

For nearly as long as the Barnstormers in the White Mountains, the Peterborough Players have been doing just that in the shadow of the Monadnocks, earning a loyal regional following and national recognition as a serious player in summer theatre. Like the Clevelands in Tamworth, Edith Bond Stearns’ decision to launch the Peterborough Players in 1933 came as the child of wealthy summer vacationers who’d fallen in love with the region and were lifelong arts patrons. Stearns’ father had donated the money to build Bond Hall at the MacDowell Colony (where Thornton Wilder famously wrote ‘Our Town’), and when Stearns inherited the family’s 100-plus-acre farm after her mother’s death, it was her friendship with colony co-founder Marian MacDowell that encouraged her not to sell, but to instead open part of the farm as a theatre and proving ground for performers.

The days of a screen covering the entire left side of the theatre to keep bugs out, of horse stalls doubling as dressing rooms, and audience members bringing their own seat cushions and fans on warm summer nights are long gone. In their place is a thoroughly modern, air-conditioned space – though still unabashedly a barn – that has endured because of its connection to the community (locals use the theatre year round, watching the Metropolitan Opera there via satellite in the fall and winter) and ability to attract first-rate performers and directors with quality plays.

“It’s always been an opportunity for performers to gain a tremendous amount of experience in a relatively short amount of time,” says Peterborough Players artistic director Gus Kaikkonen. “Here, they’re able to do the play they’ve always wanted to do and to take part in a quality production outside of New York.”

Over the years it’s a formula that has attracted significant summer talent – actors like William Hurt, Robert Morse, Mary Beth Hurt, NH native and former “NYPD Blue” star Gordon Clapp, and film director Tom Moore – while also serving as a training ground for young actors, actresses and writers. Folks like James Whitmore, a New York native who arrived in Peterborough during the early 1940s in search of experience and summer work. Whitmore would serve in WWII, returning to Peterborough for more roles after being decommissioned. Whitmore was all but penniless in 1947 when he received a Broadway invitation to audition for the role of the Sergeant in “Command Decision.” Stearns, who both believed in Whitmore and in her theatre’s ability to turn out young talent, volunteered to pay for Whitmore’s ticket to New York and to have his roles covered while he was away. Whitmore would win the role and with it a Tony Award, launching a 60-plus year film and stage career that included turns in “Oklahoma,” “Kiss Me, Kate,” and “The Asphalt Jungle” and an Oscar nomination for his performance as Harry Truman in “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” It was Peterborough, however, that always held Whitmore’s heart. When asked in 2008 at age 86 if he’d consider reprising his own turn as the Stage Manager in “Our Town,” Whitmore reportedly said, “As long as I’m taking sustenance, I’ll be there (in Peterborough).” It was to be his last role.

Just as it has since 1933, the New London Barn Playhouse still rents seat cushions for a nickel, revels in its rusticity, and works as a training ground, teaching performers the ins and outs of both acting and stage production. (Photo: David Lazar; images courtesy of the New London Barn Playhouse).

“You ask us how we’ve been able to last – the support of the town has a great deal to do with it,” says the theatre’s managing director Keith Stevens. “Peterborough is a unique place. It isn’t necessarily a summer destination like other towns with thriving summer theatres that draw tourist traffic. But it is a place with a remarkable amount of culture, and where there is a great interest locally in these kinds of institutions.”

An hour north in the quiet Lakes Region retreat of New London, the Barn Playhouse has been generating significant local interest itself since 1933, helping to cultivate the careers of countless young stars and claiming distinction as the state’s oldest continuously operating summer theatre. Like the Peterborough Players and the Barnstormers, the circa-1820 red barn on Main Street here has evolved quite a bit since its early days when actors would have to exit the theatre itself to reenter on the opposite side of the stage (always interesting, laughs the theatre’s chief historian, when there was a downpour outside and a play was set in the desert); or when a power outage one evening forced the theatre to light the stage with the headlights of a vehicle in the barn’s doorway. Which isn’t to say the Barn Playhouse has donned all the quirks of its age, whether it’s renting out seat cushions for a nickel (the same price as in 1933) to support a long-running scholarship fund, or admonishing patrons using the restroom during a 1989 production of “Singin’ in the Rain” not to flush during the second act because it would cut the water pressure onstage.

New London Barn Playhouse performers working

All, of course, pale to the quality productions the Barn Playhouse has churned out over the years and to a roster of talent it has developed as one of the stage industry’s top summer training grounds. Indeed, when visiting Mt. Holyoke College professor Josephine Etter Holmes launched the Barn Playhouse, it was with the intent of “establishing a theatre group presenting dramas of stimulating artistic and literary merit.” The result has been a company that each summer gives college students and recent grads a solid grounding in set, sound and costume design, along with the ability to star in shows – from “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Hello Dolly” to this summer’s “Hairspray” – ordinarily reserved for performers twice their ages, if not more.

Among the interns to emerge from the Barn Playhouse over the years have been Laura Linney, Taye Diggs, and Oscar winner Sandy Dennis, alongside writers Tom Fontana (“Homicide” and “St. Elsewhere”) and Steven Schwartz (“Godspell”). One intern from 2007 is starring on Broadway in “A Little Night Music” with Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta Jones, while another just finished playing Tony in Broadway’s current revival of “West Side Story”.

“Our mission here is really to nurture young artists,” says Barn Playhouse artistic director Carol Dunne, “to give them a break from commercialism and let them experience theatre as it is supposed to be – created with a tremendous amount of imagination, but not necessarily a lot of money. For a lot of us who’ve been in this business a long time and have worked on and off Broadway, we get more excited here in this little theatre than with the multi-million-dollar productions you’ll find in big cities.”

Judging by the reactions of its audiences, the Barn Playhouse continues to excite them, too, filling seats and sustaining the beliefs of many, like George Cleveland, Van McLeod, Keith Stevens and others that summer stock is a Granite State tradition whose curtain is far from closing. “As you look at history, New Hampshire has always been a place that has fostered artistic development and expression,” McLeod says. “As long as there is the imagination, the inspiration, and the desire from the public, it will continue to be.”

Special thanks to Carl Lindblade, Van McLeod, the Peterborough Players, the Barnstormers, and the New London Barn Playhouse for their generosity and assistance with this story.

True story, a census taker stood on the stoop and knocked on Mrs. Burke’s front door.  He knocked and knocked.  No response.  Then he heard a voice from across the road:  “Ain’t nobody there but me, and I’m over here.”

Jesse and Paul bought a house at the end of a dead-end road.  They noticed, shortly after settling in, that a new family had moved into the house at the beginning of their road.   Often, as they passed the house, Jesse would say to Paul, “We really ought to stop in and say hi to the new people, introduce ourselves.”

Time passed as it is apt to do.  One day Jesse and Paul invited some friends over for a pancake breakfast – only it wasn’t happening until almost noontime, so they called it brunch.  Just before the guests were set to arrive, they realized they had no maple syrup.  Jesse remembered that the folks at the start of the road had a sign out for syrup, so she hustled down, pulled into the door yard, knocked at the door, and purchased a quart.

She said, “I’ve been meaning to stop by ever since you bought the place.  How long have you lived here anyway?”

“Lived in town all my life, so far,” the man said.  “But in this house? ‘Bout seven years.”

“My goodness,” Jesse said, “I should have paid a call long before this. I’m mortified.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the man said. “We weren’t waiting for you.”

The same can, of course, be said for our lakes, our seacoast, our valley along the Connecticut, and perhaps most emphatically, our people. And while much has changed across the nation in the centuries since Mr. Webster spoke those words, our state remains as remarkably beautiful, our people as genuinely decent and hard-working, and our pride in our communities as fervent as ever.

The NH Troubadour, since its re-launch in 2008, has always been by, for, and about you. It’s been about your participation, your stories, your memories, your artistry, your volunteerism. In a time when so much of what we hear in the news is negative, it’s been about bringing you something positive to read and uniting Granite Staters – opinionated at birth, after all – around a point of agreement: the blessing we have of living in the greatest place in the world. In the letters, poetry and photos that continue to fill our mailbox, you have confirmed this. And so in recent months, we have thought about ways to harness this positive energy and to bring folks of like mind and a shared love of New Hampshire together.

On Friday, September 17, we will launch a statewide society – The Troubadour Society – at the NH State Library in Concord as a way of expressing our appreciation and gathering neighbors from across the state together to share stories, salute volunteers, and make new friends. The ceremony is set for 11:30 am that morning on the front steps of the library, with a luncheon to follow at noon. The cost to attend is the same as this publication: free. Space, however, is limited, so we ask that you contact us for more information and to reserve a seat.  We look forward to seeing you there!

We also celebrate another milestone of sorts—namely the conclusion of our second year of sharing the Troubadour. Since re-introducing this unique blend of people, places, history, heritage and home-spun tales in 2008, we have seen a level of response, enthusiasm and participation that even we didn’t anticipate, both throughout the state and beyond. So much has your support inspired us, that we are creating another opportunity for you to become part of the Troubadour experience (“Our NH,” pg. 22).

In fact, the smiles and stories of life in NH know no borders as we have expanded our reach to include delivery to residents of 39 states, D.C. and parts of Canada. Former NH residents, frequent and casual visitors to the state, and even complete strangers who happen upon an issue of the Troubadour, consistently ask to join our mailing list. And, we happily oblige. Now the challenge is to sign up folks from the states that have not yet discovered our “wonderful little magazine”. So, if you have friends or family in Alabama, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri or either of the Dakotas, share a Troubadour and encourage those you know to take part in our publication so we can blanket the country with all the good that NH has to offer!

A SLIGHT COOL BREEZE FLOATS THE FOG
ACROSS THE CALM QUIET WATER
THE MORNING SILENCE YET AWAKE TO DISTURBANCE
I CAME TO FLOAT SUBMERGING MY THOUGHTS AS A LOG
TO BE PART OF A STILL AND GENTLE TIME OF MATTER
WE SPIN TO DANCE A JOURNEY OF INFINITE DISTANCE
AS MUSICAL CHIMES OF TIMES RACE BY
TO SURROUND YET FAILING TO FILL OUR POCKETS WITH LOVE
ARRIVING ITS PRACTICED ROUTINE THE MORNING TUNE
TO WATCH THE SUN CLIMB AND PUSH THE FOG FROM THE SKY
AS THE DISTANT COOS DRIFT FROM THE MORNING DOVE
AND THE SILENT RIPPLE OF THE DIVE AND RISE OF A LONE LOON