Vintage baseball comes to the Seacoast

If you’re a baseball fan in New England, chances are you live for April, and dream about playing for the Red Sox at Fenway Park. But some baseball fans live for April 1861. Their dream is to play for the Boston Red Stockings on an untended field on a local farm, playing the old-fashioned way without gloves or batting helmets, stepping to the plate swinging a bat that’s as heavy and thick as the tree it was made from. A game where home plate itself is an actual round plate made from a 12-inch wedge of solid iron. This is vintage baseball, and teams all over New England play it from April to October. This season, Portsmouth has a brand new home team taking the field in the uniform of the Portsmouth Rockinghams.

Jared Diamond examines what traditional societies can teach the Western world in “The World Until Yesterday”

When Jared Diamond first began doing field work in the highlands of New Guinea in the 1960s, tribal warfare was a recent memory and writing was still new to many of the tribes, including the Fore, the first tribe that Diamond worked with. Diamond returned to New Guinea many times in the intervening years, and each time, the changes in the people were remarkable. In 1998, he came back to the island to work on an environmental survey and was struck by how different New Guinean society had become in a few short years. “In the next room, there was a New Guinean using a computer. He was doing engineering diagrams; he was Fore, and his father had been the first person in the southern Fore area who learned how to write,” Diamond says.

We all celebrate New Year’s Eve, but not all celebrations are created equal. Some of us like to join a crowd of 15,000 for family-friendly First Night celebration that includes puppets, magic shows, and ice sculptures. Others don’t feel the night has been well spent unless they find themselves wearing only one shoe and in search of eats at 4 a.m. With that in mind, here’s The Wire’s round-up of New Year’s Eve events on the Seacoast.

Think a WiiU might fix all your problems? It’ll be safe, you can play it together, and maybe it will heal this digital rift that’s growing in your house. Does this sound familiar? Let’s talk.

When I talk to other parents of small children, they often talk about videogames as something that just happened to their families, and to their children. Like: one day, they were happily playing together as a family unit, taking hikes or making pizza together; the next, little Johnny and baby Janie find the Nintendo DS, or the iPhone, or the old GameBoy that was hidden in the attic, and suddenly they’re noses-deep in the simulated, stimulating addiction of a videogame world.

Despite modest improvements in the economy, demand at local food pantries is higher than ever this holiday season.

The New Hampshire Food Bank, which distributes provisions to more than 400 food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, day care centers and senior citizen homes, provided more than 21,000 turkeys with trimmings for Thanksgiving this year. That’s a significant increase over the last several years of deep recession, said director of development Nancy Mellitt. “We did 7.8 million pounds of food last year in 2011, and we are tracking to do 9 million (in 2012),” she said. According to Mellitt, there are currently 143,000 men, women and children in New Hampshire who are considered “food insecure,” meaning they do not know where their next meal will come from. That’s one in nine people in the state.

N.H. Bishop Gene Robinson makes a faith-based case for gay marriage in his new book, which arrives as Maine and the rest of the nation make strides toward equality. One of the pioneers behind the gay marriage movement, Robinson hopes making a pitch based around Christian values will help persuade even members of the religious right that supporting gay marriage does not violate the tenets of their creed.

Four centuries of fishing chronicled in “The Mortal Sea” offer a new perspective on the North Atlantic

While warning signs have existed in every generation, the crisis of today, Jeffrey Bolster writes, is unique for the reams of evidence that document the living ocean’s deep predicament and the implications for the rest of our planet. “The speed with which this crisis got the attention of ecologists, fisheries managers, and conservationists is head-turning,” he says. Bolster hopes a historical approach—one that measures conservation successes of today against the unfathomable abundance of centuries past—can help put the crisis in perspective.

In a tough rental market, local groups are envisioning ways to boost affordable housing options on the Seacoast.

Between rising costs and increased competition, it is more difficult than ever for many families to find an affordable place to live. “New Hampshire has traditionally been a place that has a shortage of rental housing,” said Dean Christon, executive director of the N.H. Housing Finance Authority. “We actually see vacancy rates going down, meaning the market is tightening. People looking for someplace to rent, particularly affordable rental units, are really at a disadvantage pretty much across the state.”

The pending relocation of The Barley Pub to a bigger, more prominent site is the latest development in Dover’s expanding nightlife.

A gradual exodus of artists and musicians out of Portsmouth and into Dover has caused a tectonic shift in the Seacoast scene. While Portsmouth is still widely viewed as New Hampshire’s cultural leader, boasting a diverse array of fine-dining restaurants, stages and art galleries, the bulk of the region’s younger artists live, work, hang out and perform primarily in neighboring communities.

a look at the first round of legislative requests filed by New Hampshire’s state representatives for 2013

State representatives have submitted their first round of bill requests for 2013, and it looks like another year of divisive politics at the State House in Concord. From income taxes to collective bargaining, abortion to firearms, the proposed legislation takes up a broad range of controversial issues in New Hampshire.

Beware: The Seacoast has a powerful and somewhat disturbing appetite for Halloween debauchery, and this year will be no exception. It’s a time of ghastly jack-o’-lanterns, horrific haunted houses, raucous costume parties, terrifying parades and processions, and so much more. And since there is no such thing as too much of a good thing, The Wire has created this calendar to help you make the most of the season. We hope you have a blast shambling, plotting, smashing and rocking your way through the most twisted month of the year.

On most days, there is parking to be found near downtown Portsmouth. Even free parking. You just have to know where to look. And, at peak times, you might have to be willing to walk five or 10 minutes to reach your destination. The same can be said of downtown Dover. And yet, as both cities anticipate an economic recovery that will increase demand for prime parking, they are considering major expansions to their parking infrastructure.

Activist Maude Barlow talks global water rights as she returns to the site of Save Our Groundwater’s fight against corporate bottling.

Some researchers have predicted that, by the year 2030, demand for water will outstrip supply by 40 percent. Already, in Detroit, thousands of families have had their water cut off because they can’t pay their bills. Many rural communities across North America lack access to water sanitization services. “These struggles are going on everywhere, because we are a planet running out of clean water,” Barlow said. “It’s a very, very serious situation we’re fighting.”

When Portsmouth conducted its last survey of the economic impact of the arts in 2007, the business climate was much more favorable. That survey found that local arts and culture generated about $38 million in economic activity. After five years of economic doldrums, arts advocates weren’t sure what to expect from the Arts and Economic Prosperity Survey IV. “It was a little bit of a nail biter,” said Nancy Pearson, president of the Art-Speak Board of Directors. “The last time we did this, the economy was really booming, so we weren’t sure what was going to happen.”

For at least 135 years, fall in New Hampshire means gathering at the fairgrounds to celebrate and sample the fall harvest and covet thy neighbor’s oxen. That tradition is carried on by the Deerfield and Rochester fairs, but also echoed in the other community celebrations taking place around the Seacoast this fall.

a voter's guide to the six Democratic and Republican candidates who want to be New Hampshire's next governor

Democrat John Lynch has handily maintained control of the governor’s seat in Concord ever since defeating Republican Craig Benson in 2004. He repeatedly won reelection by a landslide, and has endured as one of the Granite State’s most popular governors of all time. But Lynch is not running for reelection in 2012, and that makes this year’s gubernatorial primaries the most intriguing state races in nearly a decade. There are three Republicans and three Democrats vying for their party’s nomination on Tuesday, Sept. 11. The two winners will face off in November in what promises to be a very close contest.

While trivia options abound, some hosts set their games apart for the Seacoast

In the calm confines of Teatotaller Tea House in Somersworth, a pitched battle is taking place between the Cari and Andrew Ballew, who’ve adopted the team name The Freudian Slips, and their rivals, the staff of Teatotaller, operating under the moniker of Team Teatotaller. Their task: name as many European countries as they can before time runs out. Their prize: a free game of mini-golf at Hilltop Fun Center, a gift certificate to a Chinese restaurant, and all the glory of winning second place in the Sunday morning trivia contest.

Alt-country band Say ZuZu played its final run of shows at The Stone Church in Newmarket in February 2003. It was the end of a saga the band members could faintly have imagined more than 15 years earlier, when they picked up guitars and strummed their very first song. They didn’t know it then, but with those first few chords they were embarking on a musical journey that would bring them across the United States and around Europe. And, when they weren’t traveling, they always returned to the bustling Seacoast music scene of the ’90s, where numerous other energetic young bands were pursuing their own dreams. They would take risks, experience incredible highs and demoralizing lows, and have the time of their lives.

A Smuttynose poster on ‘True Blood,’ a local lighthouse in ‘Hope Springs’ and Bailey bags in ‘Premium Rush’ are among the latest Seacoast references on TV and film.

Attentive viewers of TV’s “True Blood” may have spotted a familiar sight in the new episode that aired on Sunday, Aug. 5. A Smuttynose Star Island Single poster was visible on the wall in the background of one scene, clearly showing its red-headed mermaid mascot holding up a glass of frothy brew by the seashore.

With droughts plaguing the nation, state and regional planners are pondering how to keep food on our plates in an insecure future

Our nation is in the midst of the most widespread and devastating drought it has experienced in 70 years. So far in 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated some 1,369 counties across 31 states as disaster areas.