By Mary Ellen Shaw As often happens when a group of women get together, phones are taken from pocketbooks and pictures are shared. One of the most recent reasons for doing that was to show pictures of grandchildren who attended junior and senior proms. Some proms had taken place locally and some out of town.…

By Brett Yates I’ve gotten to the point where my hatred of superhero movies is so intense that I get angry just seeing that a new one has been released. In the case of last weekend, it was “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” the Marvel character’s second reboot in the past five years, and the sixth Spider-Man movie…

By DJ Dave Hoffenberg This year would have been the 75th birthday of Jerry Garcia and while there are many celebrations planned around the country, there is a great one that happens every year just over the border in Bath, N.H. I’m referring to Jerry Jam, which I had the pleasure of attending for the…

By Dom Cioffi My doorbell rang the other night around dinnertime, but I didn’t think much about it since my doorbell rings every night around dinnertime. Ninety-nine out of one hundred times, it’s one of my son’s friends looking to play basketball, shoot Nerf guns, or zone out in front of the Xbox. But this…

If Cal had seen it coming, perhaps she would not have gone to the pool on July 4, whereby a simple trip resulted in a broken hip.  But we do know enough about astrology to understand that something similar would have happened, eventually. For those who understand that time is not linear and that we live…

Clearly Moguls kept their winning ways going with a sweep of the “M” teams — McGrath’s Sushi and Max Team — but both were hard fought see-saw battles. C.M. welcomed back veteran ace pitcher “Ronzoni” Hacker to the mound, having been away for the past two games while scouting prospects down in Florida. His team got off…

By Cal Garrison a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Scorpio Moon. Yes, there’s a lot we can say, but time is of the essence this week. With an early, Independence Day deadline let’s skip the introduction, keep it simple, invite you to enjoy your Horoscope,…

By Joe Rankin It’s the classic story of unintended consequences. In 1890, Eugene Schieffelin released 60 starlings in New York’s Central Park with the hope of establishing a breeding population. Just in case the experiment wasn’t successful, he released another 40 the next year. Schieffelin was a big Shakespeare fan and he wanted to bring…

By Marguerite Jill Dye and Marguerite Loucks Dye Injustice, insurrection, independence, and new beginnings are what the 4th of July is all about. Pilgrims fled Europe for religious freedom and new opportunities. Many risked everything to cross the dangerous seas and begin a new life. People that came to New England were tough stock. They…

By Brady Crain Thee healing chronicles continued: I have good days, and I have bad days. The thing that gets me down the most is not really being able to move my torso at all. Luckily, tomorrow I will be allowed to start lifting weights with 20 pounds in each hand, as long as I…

By Brett Yates One of the important duties I’ve set for this column has been the task of settling, once and for all, in the inviolable space of print, some of the common internet debates in which pedantic males between the ages of 14 and 45 take part on message boards and in comment threads…

By Dom Cioffi I had a conversation recently with a young mother who was pining over the sickness of her newborn. At six months old, this was the child’s first real illness so she was understandably concerned. I could sense the nervous tension in her voice as she spoke about the child’s symptoms. “He’s not…

By Kathy Bernier I give a lot of tours at my 80-acre homestead, and have found that most visitors are delighted for the opportunity to connect nature with real life. Those of us who spend much time rubbing elbows with nature might say that it is real life, but for many people the connection is…

By Marguerite Jill Dye Have you ever felt unsafe in your own home? Can you imagine risking your own and your children’s lives to flee from your country to save your lives? Never underestimate the power of two women on a mission. When a courageous young woman from Albany, N.Y., met Sham, a “fierce” mother of…

By Brady Crain I have spent the last 11 days recovering from a L3-4 Fforaminotomy, which is an operation involving the grinding away of bone in the nerve opening (foramina) that has been causing my sciatica for 30 years or so. The day of the operation I got up at 3 a.m. and skied my…