When cargo ships arrive in Portsmouth from all parts of the globe, the sailors can stand on deck and watch people stroll by on Market Street, or gaze at the brick buildings in downtown Portsmouth, but they can’t step foot on shore. Seafarer’s Friend is their only link to the local community.

adventures in social media, community, and instant information

The data cloud has dropped to street level, the barrier between the real and virtual worlds has fallen, and the billion computer screens that once served as discrete windows onto the Internet have calved and splintered. Six essays illustrate the changes taking place around us every day, part of this ever-fascinating, ever-accelerating, and often confounding historical transformation in which we find ourselves unexpectedly taking part.

The Seacoast is a horror hub, teeming with writers, artists and publishers of ghastly books, comics and anthologies.

It seems our love for zombies and ghouls knows no bounds. A resurgence of horror fiction—including some new local productions—proves that the undead have a special place in our cold New England hearts.

Exeter commemorates 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s historic 1860 visit

When Abraham Lincoln visited Exeter, most residents were only vaguely aware of who he was. His speeches here changed that, and helped send him to the White House. Exeter celebrates the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s visit with “A Sesquicentennial Celebration” from Wednesday to Saturday, March 3 to 6.

poet and activist Nikki Giovanni will headline multi-day MLK celebration, "Art as Struggle and Exultation"

Now a distinguished professor at Virginia Tech, Nikki Giovanni says she believes humankind has made significant progress toward reaching King’s vision for a just world, but there’s still a long way to go.

That work involves more than addressing race issues, alone. Freedom is a planetary pursuit, one that applies to all people, not just blacks and minorities. “Sometimes people forget that segregation was hard on white people, too, because you had to remember to be white,” she says.

When Mark Anastas was growing up in the 1970s and early ’80s, only a handful of dedicated surfers frequented the waves off Long Sands Beach in York, Maine. That has changed. Anastas estimates the area attracts 15 times as many surfers today as it did a couple of decades ago.

“There’s more surfers now than there ever has been,” said Anastas, who owns Liquid Dreams Surf Shop in York and Ogunquit.

As a York Beach business owner and surfer, Anastas keeps a close eye on issues that affect the beach, including one recent proposal to significantly expand the beach’s surfing zone, and another to dump hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of dredged sand from the Piscataqua River off York’s coast.

Anastas is among those who want to know if the town is prepared to keep beachgoers happy.

a look at proposed legislation in New Hampshire in 2010

It was a landmark year for New Hampshire government in 2009—not only for the size of the budget deficit ($250 million) and the number of state layoffs it induced (200), but also for legislative action on some controversial social issues, like gay marriage, the death penalty and medical marijuana.

Gay marriage was the only clear winner among these debates, as the Legislature’s spring vote to legalize same-sex marriage took effect Jan. 1. The death penalty was nearly outlawed and remains under scrutiny by a special study commission. And Granite State legislators narrowly approved a statewide medical marijuana program—only to have it vetoed by Gov. John Lynch.

But these scores are far from settled, as evidenced in the new round of bills up for debate in Concord’s 2010 legislative session, which officially kicks off on Wednesday, Jan. 6. Both the House and Senate will meet every Wednesday until June, and they’ll be busy. So far, 819 bills have been proposed to create, repeal or otherwise change New Hampshire’s laws.
 

Part Three: The leaders and the people

It’s not every day that a Seacoast resident travels to North Korea. In fact, it’s remarkably rare for any U.S. citizen to visit this eastern Asian nation. The socialist country’s nuclear ambitions have had American officials on edge for years, and sour relations between our two countries stretch back at least to the 1950s. U.S. envoy Stephen W. Bosworth’s brief trip to North Korea in early December marked the first visit by a high-level American official in more than a year.

When Seacoast resident Nathan Groth took a five-day guided tour of North Korea in October, however, he wasn’t there to discuss foreign relations with the government. Groth, who had previously visited nations like Iran and Cuba, traveled to North Korea to observe a culture and geography largely sealed from American eyes. The places and events he witnessed were at times awe-inspiring and at others disturbing, but always fascinating and educational.

Groth chronicled some of his experiences for The Wire. Click here for a full slideshow.

composting programs are piling up on the Seacoast

The Seacoast doesn't have curbside composting yet, but a growing number of restaurants and businesses have begun sending their waste back to the farm. In its first week of business this fall, EcoMovement—one of several new companies offering hauling services—recaptured nearly a ton waste from just four businesses, while restaurants like Beach Pea Baking Co. are diverting 90 percent of their waste from the landfill and slowing global warming. Find out why brown is so very green.

upcoming festivals carry on seasonal traditions

Dedicated volunteers are organizing festive celebrations around the Seacoast to build community cheer and charity fundraisers. It's like a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past, since scenes like these turn back time to New England holidays before the era of Cyber Monday.

An upcoming vote on a contentious union contract will determine the fate of thousands of state workers—and the services they provide.

The State Employees Association of New Hampshire represents about 10,000 state workers. They provide medical services, environmental protections, prison security, highway maintenance, information technology, employment security and a variety of other critical functions.

But the SEA has not yet reached a contract agreement with the state for the 2010-2011 biennium, which began on July 1. Both state employees and politicians are anxious about the results of an upcoming vote on a contentious proposal that will decide their fate.

The SEA sent out ballots to its 6,700 union members on Sept. 24, along with copies of the proposed contract. If they reject the proposal, Gov. John Lynch will move forward with a plan to lay off 750 state workers. If they approve it, they will be forced to take 19 unpaid furlough days over the course of the next two years—and many of them still might lose their jobs.

The SEA’s bargaining senate has recommended rejecting the contract. But the decision is now in the hands of thousands of individual workers, many of whom already struggle to feed their families and are afraid of losing their jobs. They must cast their votes by Monday, Oct. 12.

Eighteen-year-old Josh Prinopoulos winces and leans back in his chair as tattoo artist Nick Filth colors in the full sleeve image on his inner forearm. It’s the Somersworth resident’s first tattoo, an elaborate Asian design that wraps around his right shoulder and down his arm to the wrist. The dreadlocked teen already has a nose ring in his right nostril and stretched earlobe piercings in both ears, but he is new to the art of tattooing. It’s taken four separate sessions at Iron Works Tattoo to get this far, and Filth says at least three more sessions will follow.

“You might get some tears,” Prinopoulos jokes as the fourth and most painful session begins. But he and Filth chat casually throughout most of the process, even as Filth wipes smears of blood from his client’s arm. The atmosphere is like that of an old-time barbershop, except instead of cutting hair, the barber drags a motorized needle across his customer’s flesh.  

People getting their first tattoos generally fall into one of two camps, says Filth, who has been working at Iron Works since it opened in downtown Portsmouth in May. Either they want an image with deep, symbolic, personal meaning, or they just want cool looking artwork. Prinopoulos belongs to the latter category.

“I’ve always been into the whole Asian style of tattooing. It’s just so sick,” he says. “I just love the images. It’s awesome.”

Seacoast native Ethan Gilsdorf describes his book on gaming geeks

On a sticky, humid Friday night at Elite Hobbies in Dover, two five-man squads of Death Copters and a horde of orks are moving into position behind a blasted, crumbling miniature building. They’re not alone. A few blocks away, three trucks idle full of even more orks, waiting for something to attack. Caught in the middle of this ork invasion is a squad of daemonhunters, vastly outnumbered, out-gunned, and minutes away from being reduced to a greasy stain on the pavement.

Commanding the army of daemonhunters is 16-year-old Will Chapman of Rye. A few minutes into the battle, Chapman’s soldiers destroy a truck full of orks—but thanks to the fickle hand of fate and some unlucky dice rolls, the orks in the truck make it out unscathed. Meanwhile, the generals of the other two ork hordes, Mark Seamon, 23, of Dover, and Rabbit, a 22-year-old on vacation from California, pull out their tape measures and rulebooks and start plotting a counterattack.

“Road to Ogunquit,” a painting by Clarence Chatterton, looks and feels like the shortening days of summer in a New England coastal town. There’s a row of colonial style houses and an abandoned white rowboat along a dirt road. The light is still warm, but the long shadows are turning blue.

“You immediately understand it’s August 25,” said Thomas Denenberg, chief curator at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. He spoke about the museum’s current exhibit, “Call of the Coast: Art Colonies of New England,” during a recent visit to the Ogunquit Museum of American Art.

The painting by Chatterton, dating back to 1940, graces the cover of a book accompanying the exhibit, which runs through Oct. 12. Images from New England art colonies, such as this one, define what the quintessential American coast looks like in our minds, Denenberg says.

Woodstock’s opening act Richie Havens reflects on a legendary career

This is an abridged version of a story originally printed in The Wire in June 2008, prior to a Richie Havens concert. The story has been updated slightly, but all quotes are from the original interview. To read the full interview, visit www.wirenh.com, do a search for “Havens” and scroll down to “singing for freedom.”

The song “Freedom” was first performed on the evening of Aug. 15, 1969—day one of the Woodstock Festival in upstate New York. Opening act Richie Havens, then a rather obscure folk singer and guitarist who emerged out of Greenwich Village, had been mesmerizing the audience of 500,000 for over two hours. Covers of Beatles songs like “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Hey Jude” paved the way for a tear-inducing performance of “Handsome Johnny,” which captured the spirit of the festival in a way that would be memorialized forever in the “Woodstock” film the following year.

Exeter’s Ticia Agri recalls her inspirational summer on the Woodstock production team

Ticia Agri left her backstage perch and wandered into the swarm of 500,000 people as Richie Havens kicked off his opening set at the Woodstock Festival 40 years ago.

“I went into the middle of the crowd for Richie Havens and stood there and watched him sing ‘Freedom,’” the Exeter resident recalls. She also watched Jimi Hendrix perform at the festival’s conclusion, but she remembers precious little of the 30 acts in between. “It’s just a blur to me, but those two are really cemented in my brain.”

Agri’s memory lapse does not result from partaking in the festival’s famously liberal drug consumption, however. “I didn’t get stoned. I’m probably one of the few people that didn’t,” she says with a laugh.

On the contrary, Agri made sure to have her wits about her throughout the four-day festival. She served as an assistant to Michael Lang, the famed producer of Woodstock. It was a daunting job, considering the concert included more than 30 of the world’s biggest bands and half a million impassioned fans.

“Woodstock” director Michael Wadleigh explains why there will never be another festival like it

In the summer of 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to walk on the moon. It was an extraordinary event that made international headlines and put the United States ahead in the global space race.

“Here we are 40 fucking years later and we haven’t been back there,” says former Dover resident Michael Wadleigh. 

Wadleigh sees a parallel with the Woodstock Festival, another indelible event that took place in the summer of ’69. Much like the moon landing, the world has not seen anything like Woodstock in the last 40 years. 

Fortunately for those born after ’69, we still have audio recordings of Armstrong uttering his famous “giant leap” line. We also still have the “Woodstock” movie, which Wadleigh directed. Widely considered one of the greatest documentaries ever made, the film is the primary way that most people remember Woodstock, whether they were there or not.

“It’s a kind of classic capsule about people’s values and ideas and conflicts and love,” Wadleigh says of his film, originally released by Warner Brothers in the spring of 1970.