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Special Event: Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies Watch Party at Red River Theatres!

Red River Theatres in Concord, NH is holding an Opening Ceremonies Watch Party on Friday February 9th at 8:30 am. This event is free and open to the public!

From RRT’s website:
On February 9th, at 8:30 AM, Red River Theatres and the World Affairs Council of New Hampshire invite you to join us for the opening ceremonies for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Celebrate the event with friends and sports enthusiasts as we watch the world come together through the love of sport. Whether you can come for fifteen minutes or stay for the whole ceremony it will be a great sight to see the ceremonies on the big screen! Light refreshments will be available for those who attend.

For more information see Red River Theatres’ event page at:
http://www.redrivertheatres.org/2018/01/opening-ceremonies-watch-party/

Fore more information about the 2018 Winter Olympics, see:
https://www.pyeongchang2018.com/en/index

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#myreadsmonday Red Clocks by Leni Zumas

I’ve heard people refer to Red Clocks as “The Handmaid’s Tale for a new generation” and I can see why these comparisons are being drawn. Red Clocks is a brilliant novel. It’s a concise, moving portrait of the lives of five different women struggling to find their places in the misogynistic world they inhabit. Five women, with five different lives, five different stories, but they are all connected by the trials of their sex. I don’t want to give too much away about the story, but in this very believable not-too-distant future, abortion is illegal, as well as in-vitro fertilization and adoption by single women. Legislation has given rights to unborn fetus’ that were previously only known to living and breathing Americans.

Lest you think this is all a story of doom and gloom, there is hope in these women’s tales. There is a quiet power found in the way they navigate their narrow existences. You’ll cheer for them, cry for them, want more for them, and wish them well on their journeys. You’ll get to the end and want to know more. Promotional materials for this novel ask “What is a woman for?” Leni Zumas both asks and answers this question in this terrifying and yet inspiring novel.

 

 

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Lottery Alert: Love Never Dies at Boston Opera House

The online lottery to win the opportunity to purchase discounted tickets to see Love Never Dies at the Boston Opera House is open right now! You’ve got less than 24 hours left to enter, as the lottery is only open until noon on Monday January 29th. If you win, you’ll be able to purchase up to 4 tickets at $49 each. These are typically premium seats! You can only win the lottery once, so choose only the performances you can attend.

Enter the drawing here:
http://www.luckyseat.com/loveneverdies-boston/

Want to know more about the show? Check out the official Boston Opera House – Broadway in Boston website:
https://boston.broadway.com/shows/andrew-lloyd-webbers-love-never-dies-phantom-returns/

Good luck!

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Ticket Alert: The White Card – A New Play by Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine’s new play, The White Card,  is set to open at the Emerson Paramount Center in Boston, MA on February 24, 2018. The production will run through April 1, 2018, and tickets are selling fast! Many performances are already sold out.

From the ArtsEmerson website:
At a dinner party thrown by an influential Manhattan couple for an up-and-coming artist, questions arise about what—and who—is actually on display. Claudia Rankine’s 2014 New York Times best-selling book, Citizen: An American Lyric, unpacked the insidious ways in which racism manifests itself in everyday situations. Now, this world-premiere play poses the question, “Can American society progress if whiteness stays invisible?”

I’ve got my ticket purchased, and I’m excited to experience what this play has to offer. I’m very intrigued by the note on the ArtsEmerson website which states, “The White Card will utilize non-traditional seating at the Emerson Paramount Center’s Robert J. Orchard Stage. Patrons will be assigned specific seating locations at a later date.” I’m curious to see if we’ll all be part of the fictional dinner party, seated cabaret style, a la Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812? However we are seated, these tickets are HOT and this production promises to be engaging and thought provoking.

ArtsEmerson has added several performances, and they continue to sell quickly. If you think this show sounds like something you’d like to experience for yourself, get your tickets sooner than later, because I’m convinced this will sell out completely! Tickets can be purchased at the ArtsEmerson website:

http://bit.ly/artsemersonwhitecard

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Sunday Art Talk at LaBelle Winery: A Sense of Place with Yoav Horesh

LaBelle Winery, in partnership with the New Hampshire Institute of Art (NHIA), is presenting “A Sense of Place” with Yoav Horesh. This lecture will take place on Sunday, January 28th from 3:00-5:00pm at LaBelle Winery, 351 Route 101, in Amherst, New Hampshire. Horesh is a contemporary Israeli photographer best known for his work in both black and white and color photography capturing images of conflict, human tragedy, memory, and recovery in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

From the LaBelle Winery website:  “Since 2001, Yoav Horesh’s work has been concerned with history, conflict, memory, ethnicity and multiculturalism. His projects took place in the American South-West, Germany, Laos, Israel, the Gaza Strip, Bolivia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Mongolia and Cambodia, where history still shapes and influences current events and daily life. In his lecture, Yoav will talk about the “Sense of Place” as a common thread running through his work and how it relates to time, space and history.”

A cheese and wine reception will begin at 3:00pm, followed by Horesh’s lecture at 3:30. Registration is required; the event is free to NHIA members and alumni, and $5.00 for general public. For more information and to register, visit LaBelle’s website at:

https://www.labellewineryevents.com/event-registration/?ee=1073

Yoav Horesh is the current BFA Chair of Photography at NHIA, as well as a MFA Photography faculty member. More information about Yoav Horesh’s photography can be found at his website: http://yoavhoresh.com/

If you are interested in more information about membership opportunities at the New Hampshire Institute of Art, visit the membership page of their website at:

http://www.nhia.edu/alumni-and-friends/nhia-membership

Also of note, Horesh has an upcoming exhibit at Gallery Kayafas in Boston, Massachusetts.  His “Serene Oasis” Solo show at Gallery Kayafas, runs
March-April 2018. For more information on this show, visit Gallery Kayafas:

http://www.gallerykayafas.com/home/artists/yoav-horesh/

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#myreadsmonday The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

If you knew when you were going to die, what would you do with that information, and how might it affect the way you live your life?

This is the heady topic Chloe Benjamin tackles in her latest novel, The Immortalists. Her book opens with the four Gold children, Varya, Daniel, Klara, and Simon, as they visit a fortune teller and are each told the date they will die. Starting with the story of Simon, the baby of the family, we are led through their individual narratives and into their adult lives. We see how they handle their given death dates, and how the knowledge colors and weighs on their life story.

The novel spans 5 decades, and takes us through the Gold’s life as an ever-shrinking family. Were the predictions from the fortune teller true or mumbo-jumbo? Does that really matter? It’s fascinating to see these characters struggle, each in their own personal way, with having that date looming over them. Benjamin has written an incredible family saga that tackles the oftentimes twisted bonds of familial love and the questions of what is destiny versus what is choice.

Friends know I’m a sucker for books set in New York City, and I’ll admit that was what initially drew me to this novel. The story does start out in New York, but quickly shifts to San Francisco and beyond. This is a book that will make you think! A phrase that came to mind when reading this book was, “it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years that matter”. This book explores that phrase in four different ways. And for the record, no, I would not want to know the date I’m going to die. Would you?

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Celia Thaxter’s Garden Announces Summer 2018 Tour Dates

I have always wanted to go out to Appledore Island and see Celia Thaxter’s garden, perhaps this will be my year! I had hoped to fit it in last summer but by the time I’d nailed down a date I could go all the tickets were sold out. I’ve been out to Star Island before (one of Appledore’s neighboring islands) but Appledore is special, because of Celia Thaxter and her garden.

Don’t know the story of Celia Thaxter? Let me fill you in:
Celia Laighton Thaxter was born in Portsmouth, NH in 1835. When she was a young child her family moved to Appledore Island, one of the 10 or so islands that make up the Isles of Shoals, located approximately 6 miles off the coasts of New Hampshire and Maine. (Some of the islands are part of the state of Maine, some are part of New Hampshire. Appledore happens to be located in Maine.) Her father initially held the job of lighthouse keeper on White Island (also part of the Isles of Shoals), but after several years he left that position to build and open the Appledore Hotel on Appledore Island.

Celia grew up on Appledore, and married her father’s business partner Levi Thaxter when she was just 16. The Thaxters initally lived on the mainland, in Watertown and Newburyport, Massachusetts. Celia and Levi Thaxter separated after 10 years of marriage and Celia returned to Appledore Island to both care for her mother and help with the running of her father’s hotel.

While on Appledore she met many literary and artistic luminaries of her day, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Whittier, Childe Hassam and William Morris Hunt. There are several well known paintings by Hassam of Celia Thaxter and her gardens.

Celia Thaxter had been writing prose and poetry her entire adult life, but she is most well-known for her book An Island Garden which was published a year before she died at age 58 in 1894.  In the book, Thaxter lovingly describes her beautiful gardens, which she had arranged by height, as opposed to any specific color scheme. Flowers from her garden were made into arrangements that decorated both the Appledore Hotel and her island cottage home.You can see the entire text of Thaxter’s book, An Island Garden, here: 

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/thaxter/garden/garden.html

Celia Thaxter’s garden was reconstructed by Dr. John Kingsbury in 1977. Kingsbury was the founder and first director of the Shoals Marine Laboratory. He located the garden in the exact spot where Celia Thaxter’s garden had been, and some of her original plants still grown in the garden, including snowdrops, day lilies and the hops vine.

Now that you know a little more about Celia Thaxter, wouldn’t you love to visit Appledore and see her island garden? The Shoals Marine Laboratory runs a day trip tour limited to 34 participants per tour. It includes transportation to and from Appledore Island. The trip costs $100 per person; in addition to transportation, this fee covers a guided garden tour as well as a gourmet catered lunch. For more details, as well as the link to register, go to:

www.shoalsmarinelaboratory.org/event/celia-thaxters-garden-tours

These dates are limited and do sell out! There are only 10 tour dates, which means 340 spots. Don’t just dream of warm summer sea breezes and garden beds exploding with color, book your trip soon, or you’ll lose out like I did last summer!

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Atria Books Free eBook Giveaway!

Head to www.atriawomensmarch.com and you download any one of these six books pictured here for FREE this weekend! I just got a copy of Never Caught! (which is awesome because I’m going to hear Erica Armstrong Dunbar speak this Tuesday night –  See my post from earlier this week for the details on that event)

Don’t delay, this deal is only good for this weekend! Thank you Atria Books!

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Erica Armstrong Dunbar to Speak at Saint Anselm College

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, author of the book Never Caught: The Washington’s Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, will be speaking on Tuesday, January 23 at 7:00pm at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH.

This is a New Hampshire Humanities Program, officially titled, Rethinking Resistance: Ona Judge, the Washington’s Runaway Slave and the Meaning of Escape. The lecture will take place at the Dana Center For the Humanities on the Saint Anselm campus, and will be followed by a facilitated discussion led by Dr. Dr. Jennifer Thorn and Dr. Beth Salerno. It is open to the public and free to attend.

Never Caught was nominated for a 2017 National Book Award. It chronicles the story of Ona Judge and her quest for freedom. Judge was a 22 year old slave who left her position in the household of George Washington, and was then doggedly pursued by Washington, who hoped to recapture his property.

Representatives of Gibson’s Bookstore of Concord, NH will be on hand that evening to sell copies of Never Caught, and there will be a book signing opportunity.

https://www.nhhumanities.org/events/rethinking-resistance-ona-judge-washingtons-runaway-slave-and-meaning-escape

http://www.gibsonsbookstore.com/event/dunbar-at-saint-anselm

Erica Armstrong Dunbar is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University. She also serves as Director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Her first book, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City was published by Yale University Press in 2008. She is also the author of Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge.

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#myreadsmonday Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters

Did you know that Alice Waters was just 27 years old, with no formal culinary training, when she opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA in 1971? You’ll learn that plus a lot more about this iconic Chef in her lovely new memoir, Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook. Waters takes us on a journey through her early life right up to the day the doors opened at 1517 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. You’ll have the chance to connect the dots from her repressive early childhood, wilder high school days, activist college life, and into her bohemian early 20s. It was then that Alice Waters met many of the friends and colleagues who helped shape and in some cases quite literally build her dream of a restaurant into existence.

I love looking at old photographs, and it was a delight to see so many photographs from Waters’ life shared throughout the memoir. She also shares excerpts from letters, giving us an intimate glimpse of who she was as a young woman.

Waters has led an extraordinary life, and the experiences she catalogs in the formative years pre-Chez Panisse are filled with humorous anecdotes about food, fascinating stories about film, and you’ll even hear about the time she missed out on dinner with John Lennon! Waters also reveals the origins of her love of garlic, and lays out the connections which helped create the Garlic Festival at Chez Panisse. Overall the book is a fascinating catalog of both the successes and failures that led her down the road to opening Chez Panisse.

My favorite part of the book, old photos aside, is the narrative which leads to the explanation of the naming of Chez Panisse. Could you imagine Alice Waters being famous for a restaurant called Le Metro? That was her original idea! I’m grateful for her friends who served as a sounding board when it came to names; I couldn’t imagine Chez Panisse by any other name.