Mark Wentworth Home reopens

The Mark Wentworth Home reopened in Portsmouth last week after an $11.5 million makeover. The senior housing facility now offers 48 assisted living suites and 19 nursing home beds for elderly citizens living in the New Hampshire Seacoast, southern Maine and northern Massachusetts.

Mayor Tom Ferrini attended a grand reopening ceremony on July 30, and Ruth Griffin, Eileen Foley, Evelyn Marconi and Charlie Vaughan served as official ribbon cutters.

Located at 346 Pleasant St., the Wentworth Home closed in April 2007 after mold was found in the building’s walls. Extensive renovations designed by JSA Inc. were already underway when the closure occurred.

senatorial and congressional races compete for funding in NH

Democrat Jeanne Shaheen’s U.S. Senate campaign announced last month that it had raised more than $1.6 million in the second quarter of 2008, breaking the record for money raised by a federal candidate in New Hampshire.

The former governor says her fundraising success reflects residents’ desire for change. “People are ready for a leader in Washington who puts New Hampshire families, not special interests, first,” she said in a press release.

That statement was a dig at incumbent opponent John Sununu, who Democrats accuse of accepting $45,000 in campaign contributions from Alaskan Sen. Ted Stevens’ Northern Lights Political Action Committee. Following Stevens’ indictment on seven felony counts of filing false financial disclosures, Sununu agreed to return $10,000 that the Northern Lights PAC contributed in the 2008 election cycle. But Democrats feel he should return the remaining $35,000 collected during previous campaigns.

Herbie Hancock plays at the beach

It’s a rare feat for a jazz musician to win a Grammy for Album of the Year, but pianist Herbie Hancock pulled it off with his 2007 release, “River: The Joni Mitchell Letters.” During his five-decade career, Hancock has helped not only to advance the jazz genre, but to pioneer innovations in the realms of hip-hop, R&B, techno, fusion and pop. Hancock will be at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom on Wednesday, Aug. 13, for an 18-plus show beginning at 8 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $60.

Should there be a moratorium on resurrecting movie franchises after more than five years? “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” makes a compelling case for leaving well enough alone and allowing fondly remembered movie franchises to lie peacefully in their cinematic sarcophagi. Instead, after seven years, Brendan Fraser and crew are dragged from their restive slumber by an ancient Hollywood curse (also known as a contract) for this third mummy-filled outing. This time, there’s some kung-fu fighting between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, along with a parade of yetis and a three-headed dragon to sweeten the deal. But even with all that hot monster action, “Tomb” feels like it should have been called “The Mummy 3: Contractual Obligation.”

Essential Films, 1997

If you’re into cult movies, there are some exciting developments on the horizon. A “Friday the 13th” remake is in the works, reinventing iconic killer Jason Voorhees. Director Sam Raimi has alluded to a long-awaited fourth installment of “Evil Dead,” thrilling Bruce Campbell fans everywhere with a long-awaited ray of hope. There is even talk of an updated remake of 1979’s “Rock ’n’ Roll High School.”

“Wow, that sounds like a great idea,” said David White, his voice oozing with sarcasm. “I wonder if The Ramones will be in it.”

David is in charge of marketing for Cinema Suicide, a blog dedicated to film reviews and news about cult, exploitation and horror movies. His brother Bryan White started the site at www.cinema-suicide.com last summer as a way to turn his life-long love of horror movies into a useful tool for like-minded people.

N.H. Eat Local Week is underway

Ingredients: Garden fresh vegetables in heirloom varieties, local duck eggs and organic spice mix.

This was just one item of many to be found in the potluck dishes at Slow Food Seacoast’s bimonthly meeting on Sunday evening, Aug. 3. The food brought to share was prepared with as many local ingredients as members could find, and dinner was followed by a homemade cake with ripe Maine blueberries that one member said “taste like flowers.”

The meeting and dinner kicked off the state’s Eat Local Week at the historic Stoodley’s Tavern at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth. N.H. Eat Local Week, as officially designated by Gov. John Lynch, runs through Saturday, Aug. 9.

Rebecca Rule is a storyteller, a self-proclaimed professional liar.

When she speaks of long-winded town meetings, late night moose sightings, dead-end roads and self-reliant farmers, it all sounds a little familiar. Maybe that’s why so many people tell her the same stories, claiming them as their own and insisting that they really happened.  

Rule’s latest book, “Live Free and Eat Pie: A Storyteller’s Guide to New Hampshire,” is a compilation of stories, traditions and attractions unique to the state. As a New Hampshire native, meaning her family goes back at least five generations in the state, Rule is entitled to speak with authority about the stories that she has been told over the years.

It started out strictly business but became a pleasure over the five years Barrington resident John Cafasso regularly traveled to China as a manufacturing engineer for Pratt & Whitney, a technologies company based in North Berwick, Maine.

Cafasso worked in Chengdu, China, a large city where one of the company’s factories is located. He started to venture out into the countryside over time, making friends, buying souvenirs, eating traditional cuisine and taking photographs.