A new N.H. Seafood brand will help residents purchase local fish. Can it help preserve our local fishing industry?

Travel anywhere on the Seacoast and you’ll see fishing boats along the shore. But where to eat their fresh fish? Good luck with that. About 11 million pounds of fish, including just over 3 million pounds of fin fish, landed on the New Hampshire coast last year, and nearly all of it left the state after being unloaded on the pier.

Like most of us, I didn’t have a clue that our fish are heading down the interstate. But for those who’ve been watching the industry consolidate over the last 30 years, it’s like standing by while trucks full of money disappear down the road. And seeing 400 years of tradition being sold to out-of-staters. And, for some reason, saying “no, thanks” to an affordable supply of fresh healthy food, only to buy it back a few days later and older, at a higher price.

To explain the dauntingly massive, multi-faceted, all-encompassing reach of the U.S. health care system, Everett Page pointed to the term “reification.” It means regarding something abstract as a physical, material thing. Health care, he said, is a living, breathing organism, a giant anthropomorphous creature that crawls across the nation, constantly consuming and growing and swelling. Picture an overweight komodo dragon towering over the country, flicking its forked tongue and getting bigger every second. That’s health care.

Page is the former CEO of Matthew Thornton Health Plan, a Manchester-based health insurance company. His experience gives him a unique perspective on one of the most vilified aspects of the health care system. And, indeed, Page characterized insurers as a crew with precious little compassion for families struggling with high premiums and health care costs. “Frankly, Scarlet, we don’t give a damn,” he said.

But Page said there’s no point blaming health insurers for the myriad problems associated with a system that has left at least 45 million Americans without coverage. Insurance companies are not solely responsible for driving up prices and leaving millions uncovered, he said.

“We can beat on insurers all we want,” Page said. “The rate of growth is coming from an aging population and what’s happening within the health care system.”

At the onset of summer in 2007, The Wire issued a stern warning to readers about the various perils of the great outdoors. We warned of ticks carrying Lyme disease, mosquitoes transmitting EEE, timber rattle snakes, black bears, mako sharks and even brown recluse spiders.

We did not run a guide to summer dangers last year, but watched in horror as a menacing giant red ant conquered Market Square in Portsmouth. A local hero’s efforts to decapitate the ant were foiled when it simply grew a new one, also sprouting spikes on its back to discourage future acts of bravado.

The sharp crack of wood against packed leather reverberated through Hadlock Field in Portland, Maine, as New Hampshire Fisher Cats second baseman Bradley Emaus smacked a foul ball into the leftfield stands.

“I love that sound,” remarked a fan in one of the stadium’s 7,368 seats, on hand to see the Cats take on their division rival Portland Sea Dogs. 

As right-handed pitcher Jarod Plummer gazed in toward home plate, leadoff hitter Adam Calderone took a few steps off first base. Calderone had reached when Plummer hit him with a pitch to open the game, and now he was looking to swipe second. When Plummer wound up to deliver his next pitch, Calderone dug his cleats into the dirt and took off, sliding in safely beneath the tag.

“The Shoes of Rochester” not only celebrates the city’s significant mill history, but also paves the way for a future in which Rochester is recognized for its talented artists.

The community art exhibit is the first project by Art Esprit, a group of about 40 visual and literary artists who have been planning it for more than a year. Together, they created and decorated 11 over-sized, sculptural shoes, which will double as planters and beautify the downtown area. The shoe styles include a Zodiac brand western-style boot, of a variety once produced in one of five Rochester shoe mills.

From the early 1700s to the mid 1900s, Rochester had a long history in shoe manufacturing. As factories moved overseas, the shoemaking industry disappeared, but the history and many of the workers’ families still live in the city.

The sculptures will be revealed in their various locations around the city at a kickoff event on Saturday, June 6, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The shoes are arranged in a walking tour, with signs for each one that include a poem relating to it. Brochures with a map can be found online or at many area businesses. “The Shoes of Rochester” will be in place until Sept. 26.

Temperatures have finally snapped the 90-degree mark, and the sultry weather brings thousands of visitors to the Seacoast to absorb the cool ocean breezes that massage the beaches and docks. Residents and tourists alike can find plenty of outdoor gatherings over the next few months, celebrating the area’s diverse foods, art, music and history. Summer is festival season on the Seacoast, and there are well over 20 to choose from this year. What follows is The Wire’s annual summer festival guide.


Prescott Park Arts Festival
begins June 6

Portsmouth’s summer-long attraction in Prescott Park kicks off with the 25th annual WOKQ Chowder Festival on Saturday, June 6. When the gates open at 11 a.m., thousands of residents will flood the waterfront park and sample fresh chowders from a record number of area restaurants. Judges from Taste of the Seacoast magazine and local food critic Rachel Forrest will award the finest selections.

Green Commute Week, Bike/Walk to Work Day, and the Seacoast Bike Tour bring attention to our increasingly bike-friendly state

 In 1971, Belgian cyclist Gustave Van Cauwenberghe founded Gus’ International Bicycle Shop in North Hampton. Twenty-eight years and two owners later, the shop still does good business on Lafayette Road. According to current owner Jeff Latimer, who took over the store in December, many shoppers are now buying bicycles as part of a general shift in their lifestyles.

“They’re not coming in for expensive road bikes, they’re just looking to get started,” Latimer said. “It’s being done in tandem with a lifestyle change.”

Seacoast residents are looking to lose weight and get healthier, Latimer said, while also being environmentally conscious. That means more and more people are commuting to work on bicycles instead of in cars, getting exercise while saving money on fuel and keeping harmful emissions out of the air.

The second weekend in May is filled with opportunities to see and support the arts on the greater Seacoast.

On Friday, May 8, ArtsFest combines an eclectic mix of theater, dance and music performances in one show at the Rochester Opera House. On Saturday, May 9, another creative collaboration makes up the second annual Arts Festival at One Washington Center in Dover. That same day, artists at the Salmon Falls Mill in Rollinsford will open their studios and offer other entertainment to visitors. 

ArtsFest Showcase is an innovative performance that includes hip-hop, reggae, Broadway, African drumming, visual arts, modern dance, comedy skits and more. “It’s so entertaining that everyone’s going to like it,” said artistic director Erin Lovett Sherman. 

People of all ages milled about the lobby of Newington’s Regal Cinemas at 9:30 a.m. on a recent Sunday, sipping coffee, munching doughnuts and chatting amiably. Some guests were in their 20s and arrived with friends, while others were whole families with parents and children. Some wore T-shirts that said “No Perfect People Allowed.” Rock music blasted through the sound system as a couple of hundred guests filed into one of the theaters and took their seats. The atmosphere of anticipation seemed more typical of a rock concert than a church service.

And indeed, a six-piece rock band soon took the stage beneath the movie screen. The band leader, who played acoustic guitar and sang, instructed audience members to rise to their feet and sing along as the group energetically rolled through three songs, the lyrics scrolling across the screen.

Downtown South Berwick does not look terribly different today than it did 150 years ago. A framed photograph hanging in the Sarah Orne Jewett House museum shows the town square as it appeared in 1870, and other than a group of cows clogging the dirt road, the landscape hasn’t changed much. Many of the wood buildings that surrounded the intersection of Main and Portland streets are still standing, lending this southern Maine community on the New Hampshire border enduring charm.

The house, constructed in 1774 by a wealthy sea merchant named Tilly Haggens, is also remarkably unchanged. Sarah Orne Jewett was born in this luxuriant Georgian home in 1849 and lived there, on and off, until her death in 1909—exactly a century ago. Jewett’s second-story bedroom is just as she left it, with various trinkets and pictures on the fireplace mantle, her reading glasses hanging from a wood-framed mirror. Not far from her bedroom door, an old writing desk sits beside a sunny window that overlooks the square. It was here that Jewett penned some of the locally set novels that earned her a permanent place in the nation’s literary canon.

Pontine Theatre is commemorating the 100th anniversary of Jewett’s death with an original stage adaptation of the “Dunnet Landing Stories,” which represent some of the famed local author’s final works. The two-person ensemble of Marguerite Mathews and Greg Gathers, along with an arsenal of handcrafted puppets, will offer performances at West End Studio Theatre in Portsmouth beginning on Friday, April 24. Five stories will come to life with the integration of two live actors, intricate puppets and other homemade props.

Polyvinyl chloride records nearly fizzled out of existence in the 1980s and ’90s. Compact discs, with their conveniently portable size and polished sound, became the preferred package for recorded music. But vinyl has experienced a steady resurgence in recent years, as more and more collectors dust off old record players and drop the needle down to the sweet sound of amplified crackles and pops.

Local collectors attribute the vinyl resurgence to a variety of factors. For one thing, the album art is much bigger on a record sleeve than on a CD case. “It’s more of a piece of art at that size. It’s like the difference between a painting and a postcard,” said Alden Ulery, manager of the Loaf & Ladle in Portsmouth.

Others point to the general vogue of vintage items in American culture. “The technology has gotten so far, people just kind of want to revert back and be nostalgic,” said Michael Bray, manager of Bull Moose in Portsmouth.

Still others insist that the purity of the vinyl sound exceeds all other forms of recording. “There’s nothing that sounds like vinyl, really. It has a much warmer sound,” said Bruce Pingree, manager of The Press Room.

Join us as we kick off this year’s global RPM listening party with music, video, and a live webcast connecting us to other RPM listening parties around the world. All the finished 2009 albums will be on display, there will be a live VJ set by Mike Marchand, and the entire Seacoast music community will be there!

Bands, make sure you check in at The Music Hall at 6:30pm to get your name tags!

2009 RPM Challenge participants step forward to host global listening parties

Every month or so, multi-instrumentalist Taylor Weston clears out all the furniture from his living room in Seattle and hosts a concert for area artists. Weston lives with the three other members of his metal band, Gladiators Eat Fire. Their spacious living room has capacity for up to 60 people, and they have hosted as many as four bands on a single night, sometimes expanding their jams to the rooftop or the backyard.

“We’ve had bands all the way from England,” Weston said.

On Saturday, March 28, Weston will host a different kind of musical house party in the Emerald City. His home will serve as one of at least 16 venues for RPM Challenge listening parties taking place around North America and beyond.

In the state-of-the-art Chase Ocean Engineering Laboratory on the University of New Hampshire’s Durham campus, students and researchers test their designs in huge tanks of water with simulated waves and currents.

They are mindful of all the ways an experiment could go wrong, because outside, they don’t have that kind of control.

A team of engineering students and professors recently tested a tide turbine in the Great Bay estuary. They moored off the old General Sullivan Bridge between Newington and Dover, led by Martin Wosnik, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering.

Wosnik said the turbine had to be lowered from a 35-foot floating platform in just the right place and time. There’s a limited area, between the water’s width and depth, where the current is fast enough to properly spin the turbine while remaining outside of the lane of marine travel. There were only about 10 minutes to catch the slack water from the incoming tide.

If something were to go wrong, it would happen “quickly and badly,” Wosnik said. But professor Ken Baldwin, director of the Center for Ocean Engineering, who watched from the bridge above, said it looked as though nothing at all was happening.

“It may not look treacherous from shore, but it’s quite dangerous,” said Wosnik. He said the platform was struck by an “iceberg” during the February test (really just a floating layer of ice) and one of the crew members was humming the theme song from the “Titanic” movie.

Nat Baldwin played a dangerous set. Standing alone with his double-bass, he lurched from his written material, to guttural free jazz. The rhythm to “Enter the Light Out” was askew; the bow against his strings sounded raw. The half-hour or so set was searching at worst and exhilarating at best. And the audience, rapt as they sat on the floor or leaned against the dark walls, worked with him the whole way.

There are few sounds more satisfying than a 12-pound ball colliding with a set of wooden pins and scattering them off the floor and walls. The savory clatter echoes down the lane and through the entire alley, overlapping with the noise of other collisions and contributing to the general din of strikes, spares and gutters. The sonic texture is strangely soothing to the ear. It’s the sound of people setting aside their assorted quandaries and having fun despite it all. It’s the unmistakable sound of bowling.

The number of bowling alleys on the Seacoast has shrunk slightly in recent years, with Bowl USA vanishing from Newington more than a year ago. But other alleys in the area have adapted to the times, finding new ways to draw people to an age-old sport. Even with the economy in shambles, some alleys report that business has remained relatively steady, as people of all ages seek inexpensive forms of entertainment.

On a Saturday evening in late December, a car hit a female pedestrian at the intersection of Market and Bow streets in downtown Portsmouth, outside Fat Belly’s Bar and Grill. Emergency personnel rushed the victim to the hospital with serious leg injuries. According to police, she is still in a wheelchair.

About a month later, authorities responded to The Page on Hanover Street after receiving a report of an unresponsive woman in the bar. That woman was only 19 years old and had to go to a hopsital emergency room to get her stomach pumped.

Both cases led to arrests. The 27-year-old driver who struck the woman outside Fat Belly’s faces felony charges of driving under the influence, reckless conduct and vehicular assault. The 19-year-old patron of The Page faces one count of unlawful possession of alcohol. 

An upcoming event at The Red Door in Portsmouth will stir booze, superheroes, comedy and literature into one potent cocktail of entertainment. As part of a new reading series co-sponsored by RiverRun Bookstore, the State Street bar will present humorist G. Xavier Robillard, author of the new superhero satire “Captain Freedom,” on Tuesday, Feb. 24.

It’s not every day that a Port City bar hosts an author reading, but RiverRun events coordinator Michele Filgate hopes it will be “the perfect mix of booze and books.” Filgate modeled the idea after a similar literary series in Massachusetts called Four Stories. She attended a recent installment of the series at a martini bar in Boston.

Late last month, police in Manchester arrested a 43-year-old man for allegedly stealing a number of unattended purses, wallets, checkbooks and credit cards from several homes and businesses. A brief article about the arrest posted on the Union Leader’s Web site spurred a short chain of comments from readers.

“And it’s one, two, three strikes he’s out!” wrote Rob, of Manchester.

“Lock him up and throw away the key!” added Jim, also of Manchester.

February has arrived, and close to 2,000 musicians around the globe are now holed up like hobbits in their bedrooms, basements, attics, garages—wherever they managed to clear out some space for a makeshift studio—recording new albums for the 2009 RPM Challenge. Although their methods may vary wildly, each band’s ultimate goal is the same: to write and record 10 songs or 35 minutes of original music by March 1.

The Seacoast marked the fourth annual challenge with a kickoff party at The Press Room in Portsmouth on the evening of Jan. 31. By the end of the next day, around 2,000 artists had signed up to participate in Record Production Month.

Only once has sixth-degree black belt Matt Randall been forced to use his martial arts training outside the ring or classroom. He was at a bar in Durham while in college when he accidentally bumped into another patron, spilling some of his beer. The man became “quite irate” and grabbed Randall’s shoulder. In a flash, Randall swept the assailant’s arm and locked up his wrist. He then calmly advised the man that accosting him was a “bad idea.”

how New Hampshire could benefit from President Obama’s stimulus plan

As the U.S. Congress considers one of the costliest bills ever to hit its desks, many state officials and citizens are wondering what New Hampshire stands to gain from President Barack Obama’s proposed $825 billion economic stimulus plan.

The latest version of the proposal put together by Obama’s economic team and House Democratic leaders reportedly calls for federal spending of $550 billion and tax cuts totaling $275 billion over the next two years. Votes on the controversial bill known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan should come within the next few weeks, kicking off the freshly inaugurated president’s first term with a mighty big bang. The plan is intended to generate up to 4 million jobs nationally.
Because the bill has not been finalized, it’s unclear how much money would funnel into New Hampshire or how it would be distributed within the state. But many state agencies and municipalities already have their stimulus wish lists drawn up—including Portsmouth and Dover.

Forget the $70 lift tickets, gas money for the two-hour trek to the slopes, airport-priced resort food, lessons and equipment. No doubt, there are things to be depressed about financially right now, but the exorbitant cost of winter sports does not have to be one of them. Alpine skiing and snowboarding are merely two options among a long list of winter sports that rival in adventure and win in affordability.

cross country skiing

Long before the days of gondolas, groomed trails and manmade snow, people in northern latitudes set out on skis as a mode of winter travel. Invented by the Nordic peoples of Norway and Sweden 1,000 years ago, cross country or Nordic skiing exists today as a sport of worldwide popularity.

Hillary Behr, a Dover resident and long-time skier, says she loves cross country because it can be done almost anywhere.