Local voices chime in on a variety of topics.
There seems to be a universal friendly gesture, or hidden code if you will, among Black people here in New Hampshire. It’s the eye contact and head nod. Whether shopping for food, weaving through the aisles in Walmart, or sitting in traffic, that head nod means acknowledgment.
It happened so fast that I barely registered the whizzing of the firework heading straight at me. The base of the box had tipped over on the grass, and the last shot in the pack came zipping at me.
Mark was more than a brilliant political commentator, he was a good friend. I think back fondly to our meetings over lunch in Washington, DC where we’d talk policy, debate, and enjoy swapping stories over our mutual love of American politics. Mark was one of those rare political whizzes who could disagree with you without being disagreeable. He was always ready to hear a counterpoint but was more than ready to counter you right back.
“This isn’t the same town I grew up in!” I hear that said over and over again, and this is from people a lot younger than I. Well, I’ll tell you how it was before you all were around. I was born in 1950. We lived on Grove Street. That was the Greek section of town, Auburn Street, Cedar Street, Spruce Street, etc. My mom told me how no one locked their doors around there, how the kids went from house to house, how it was one big family.
At the turn of the millennium, I was working with local teens at risk through a two-year grant administered by Franconia Notch University.* These were tough kids – butane huffers, illiterates, tempest-tossed, just plain tossed out like so much refuse. Our primary work was to mend a thousand traumas as best we could and to point these kids in the right direction before they were forever lost.
Alison has been my muse for over 30 years now, though she doesn’t know it. Her happy crayons created !Good nite by Alison! in a millyard child care center after-school program circa 1990. I think I was the teacher, but now I’m not so sure. She was about 6 at the time of her masterpiece.
My daughter reads while she swings, a book called “Town is by the Sea.” In the book, the young protagonist speaks to the reader about his home and his town. “It goes like this…” he says, a miner’s son, going to the store for milk, playing on the slide. In the background of his life, the sea is always shimmering, as the sea does. As the summer does. As life in the backyard does.
Nobody wants to be homeless. Nobody wants to have to beg or panhandle, or take food from a food pantry. That isn’t a choice people make, ever. Not if they have other options. I know more of the people in this city who are struggling with homelessness than just about anyone else does
She loves sushi. You hate sushi. But right now—in the face of this grave discussion—you’re willing to make concessions. Besides, she’s your daughter and since the SCOTUS stripped her—and millions of other American women—of the basic human right to privacy over their own bodies, nothing has been palatable anyway.
While listening to the cacophony of jackhammers as the city installs sewers on my street[1], futilely attempting to finish a sentence amidst the pounding outside my house, I’m reminded why I prefer the night.