Byline: John Angelo

Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, highly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases…” Such is the opening line of Peyton Place, the controversial novel published in 1956 that eventually sold 20 million copies, was turned into a sanitized 1957 major movie that garnered nine Academy Award nominations, and  became a prime-time soap opera that ran for 524 episodes and debuted both Mia Farrow and Ryan O’Neal.

Big hair and leg warmers. Hooksett thrift store Corey’s Closet is hosting a 1980s prom for special needs teens and adults on Saturday May 11 at Manchester’s Puritan Event Center from 5:30 to 10:30. Tickets are available at the 1329 Hooksett Road store. The prom tickets are $50 and include a buffet. The event benefits Camp Fatima, a Gilmanton Iron Works summer camp that hosts a pair of two-week sessions for people of varying abilities, Corey among them.

February can be the cruelest of months in New England. It can be full-bore winter with all the snow and freezing temperatures we’ve avoided this year in December and January. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. It’s also a month of holidays and days of recognition, some serious, some shady and some downright silly.

The North American bird population declined by three billion birds between 1970 and 2020 scientists say. Researchers working in a protected forest in New Hampshire found that the number of beetles there had fallen more than 80 percent since the mid-1970s, while the bugs’ diversity has dropped by nearly 40 percent. The staid New York Times noted an “insect Armageddon” with losses in the quintillions. Birds need insects. Georgetown University’s bird researcher and conservationist Dr. Peter Marra says, “You don’t publish a paper on the loss of three billion birds and go back to your day job.”

I’ve been wary of slumber parties ever since my then 7-year-old sister Jean Marie left my Beatles White Album on a radiator. Back in the U.S.S.R.?  Permanent vacation. While My Guitar Gently Weeps? Cry me a warped vinyl river. Gone. Gone for good… almost.

eBay lists 93,000 pillowcases under Home Décor and if you don’t know what thread count or waffle weave are then join my club.