Year: 2024

Sox are off and running

The Big Story – Baseball’s Opening Day: After an awful off-season and what was the most subdued spring training in decades, the Red Sox kick off the 2024 season today in Seattle vs. the Mariners. As you can guess, it begins without high expectations in light of John Henry’s reversal of his once free spending ways. Especially in a division where everyone is spending but the Orioles, who, along with Atlanta, have the best young talent in baseball. Sorry to kick it all off with such an optimistic note, but that’s how it stands on Day 1.

Sports 101: It has only happened once in baseball history that the batting average of every player on one team stayed exactly what it was before the game started. How did that happen?

News Item – Ohtani’s Interpreter Fired After Gambling Disclosure: We could be at the beginning of a whopper of a story around the gambling-related firing of Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, on Friday. Conflicting stories have emerged about the $4.5 million wire transfers to pay off Mizuhara’s gambling debts. Nothing has indicated Ohtani did any betting. There are still many holes to be filled in on what could become baseball’s worst gambling nightmare since Pete Rose was banned for life in 1989 if it’s more than just some guy getting in over his head while gambling.

News Item – NCAA Tourney Delivers Usual Thrills: Award winners from Weekend 1:

Best Comeback: Daytona trailed Nevada by 17 before a 24-4 over the final 7 minutes made them 63-60 opening-round winners.

Biggest Upset – Yale Over Auburn: Who had Ivy League champion Yale taking out a SEC power when the 13-seed Bulldogs shocked everyone with a 78-76 win over the 4-seed Tigers?

Say What? Award: OK, maybe the student section at Oakland University (of Michigan) has a point saying 14-seed OU’s 80-76 win over 3-seed Kentucky was a bigger upset.

Phew … Win of the Weekend: Speaking of major upsets, after being just the second 1-seed to lose a 16 last year, Purdue fans breathed a sigh of relief Friday when they put Grambling away early in a 78-50 romp.

Biggest Blown Call: With all the stupid use of replay these days, why don’t they have one for a crucial play like in the Kansas-Samford nailbiter? The zebras clearly blew the call on a spectacular chase down block by A.J. Staton–McCray on a Nick Timberlake breakaway in a one-point game with 15 seconds left. It robbed Samford of getting the final shot to conclude a 22-point comeback. Instead Timberlake made two gift free throws and KU won 93-89.

Revenge Win: He’ll probably never admit it, but Tennessee’s 62-58 win over Texas had to feel good for Rick Barnes after being fired as Texas HC not long ago.

The Numbers:

7 – magic number over their last 11 games for the Celtics to clinch home court advantage throughout the playoffs.

… Of the Week Awards

Bracket Buster Award – Sorry, Charles: That thud you heard was Charles Barkley’s bracket being busted as Creighton ran past Oregon 78-63 on Saturday. Chuck had the 11-seed Ducks somehow making it all the way to the final fame. He also had opening-round 12-seed George Mason loser taking out 5-seed Wisconsin and 4-seed Duke and going to the Sweet 16. Oh, and King Charles went to Auburn, so it wasn’t a good weekend all around for Chuck.

Sports 101 Answer: It happened April 16, 1940, when Cleveland fireballer Bob Feller no-hit the White Sox on opening day, leaving all of Chicago’s hitters with the same .000 batting average every player starts their season at.

Final Thought – How To Enjoy The 2024 Red Sox: First you put a pin in your learned experience from around 1994 to realize they’re not getting within three or four time zones of the World Series. Then focus on watching what happens with their young players to see how good they become by September.

I’m looking forward to seeing if Triston Casas can grow into one of the best hitters, as some believe he can. There’s also the young outfield of Jarren Duran platooning in left, Wilyer Abreu in right and exciting rookie Ceddanne Rafaela, a gifted center fielder who hit .284 with three homers in 64 spring at-bats.

There’s promising second-year hurler Brayan Bello, the first home-grown pitcher since now retired Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester to give any sense of promise. Plus it’ll be interesting seeing if second baseman Atlanta import Vaughn Grissom is the first good team-building move by new GM Craig Breslow or part of the Chris Sale salary dump. And with top prospects Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer a step away in AAA this could be the start of a promising young core. Time will tell.

Email Dave Long at [email protected].

Created by friendship

Author Shannon Hale discusses her process

On Friday, March 29, at 6:30 p.m. author Shannon Hale and illustrator LeUyen Pham will be at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord (45 S. Main St., 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) to promote the latest installment in their Kitty-Corn children’s book series, Bubbly Beautiful Kitty-Corn.

How do your own children or family influence your work as an author?

They influence my work a great deal. I have four kids and my first book came out the same year my first child was born. When they were younger I was writing young adult and adult novels, but as they grew up I was reading so many picture books and chapter books with them and graphic novels that what I’ve chosen to write in the last few years is greatly influenced by them. Also, sometimes, they just give me ideas for books, they’ll say something, and I’ll be like, ‘Aha! That’s a great idea.’

Can you talk about the importance of friendship and how that influences your work?

My theory is that all stories are about relationships. The relationships between characters is what makes us invested in them and interested in them and that’s the heart of every story, so I love friendship stories. With me and Uyen [LeUyen Pham], we are legitimately best friends and Itty-Bitty Kitty-Corn was born directly out of that friendship. It really is just about our love of each other and learning how to best support each other and take care of each other and have fun together. That’s really the essence of those books.

What are your writing rituals or processes, if any?

I don’t have any rituals. I’m not a fussy writer. I think a lot of that is born out of being a stay-at-home mom with four kids for my whole career. I have to write whenever I get a chance. If the kids are distracted for half an hour, I’m writing. I didn’t have a full-time nanny or that kind of leisure. I’ve never had an office space where I would go to, to work, so that I was alone. I have learned to write in kind of a guerilla warfare way, where, if there’s time, I get myself to focus and I just write.

What is your favorite thing about book tours?

My favorite thing about book tours when I am touring with Uyen is that we get to be together. It’s just like extra friendship time. In between events, we keep very busy, it’s exhausting, but in between events we might go to a coffee shop and start working on a new book together. That’s how Itty-Bitty Kitty-Corn started, [it] was in a coffee shop in St. Louis, Missouri, between a couple of events on a book tour for one of our graphic novels. So, I love that. I also really, really love seeing the kids. These picture books are so fun because the little kids are adorable. We get to read the picture book to them and see their reactions and hear their hilarious questions and commentary. I just adore that. My kids are older now. My kids are 13 through 20, so I don’t have any little kids at home anymore, so I just eat that up.

Do you have any advice for aspiring children’s book authors?

I guess the main thing would be to write for fun. You need to be able to develop your craft to the point where you can get your sentences to do what you want them to do and that takes a lot of time and a lot of practice. It’s like learning an instrument or a sport. So the more fun you can have while you’re doing it, while you are developing your craft, the faster it will develop for you.

—Zachary Lewis

Featured image: Shannon Hale. Photo by Jenn Florence.

News & Notes 24/03/28

Crime stats

Calling 2023 “a year of great progress for this agency,” the Manchester Police Department reported that “we have continued a trend of crime reduction” according to the message from police chief Allen Aldenberg in the department’s 2023 Annual Report, which is available on the police department’s website (manchesternh.gov/Departments/Police). According to the report, “the violent crime rate for 2023 decreased by 8 percent compared to 2022 and was down 32 percent compared to the 10-year average,” with 482 violent offenses reported in 2023.

The report did list 8 murders in 2023 (compared to 5 in 2022), 51 reported rapes (compared to 38 reported rapes in 2022) and 99 robberies (compared to 87 in 2022), with aggravated assault being the number that decreased in the violent crime category — 294 in 2023 to 355 in 2022.

There were 2,309 property offenses, which is a 21 percent decrease from 2022 and a 27 percent decrease compared to the 10-year average, the report said. “Overall, Manchester’s total crime rate decreased by 19% compared to 2022 and decreased 36% compared to the 10-year average,” according to the report.

Militello nominated for Poet Laureate

According to a Press Release from March 22, New Hampshire’s Executive Council has confirmed Gov. Chris Sununu’s nomination of Jennifer Militello of Goffstown as the next New Hampshire Poet Laureate. Militello will serve a five-year term beginning in April as an ambassador for all poets in the Granite State and will work to heighten the visibility and value of poetry in the state, according to the same release.

The New Hampshire Poet Laureate position includes an honorarium of $1,000 for each year of the five-year term to help the next Poet Laureate achieve their stated mission with contributions from the Walter Butts’ New Hampshire Poet Laureate Fund and coordinated through the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, which also contributes to the honorarium, according to the same release.

Militello is an acclaimed poet, author and teacher and has supported poetry in New Hampshire throughout her life, including as a founding director of the New Hampshire Poetry Festival and Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at New England College, according to the press release. She has written five books of poetry and won the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize, with her third book of poetry, Body Thesaurus (Tupelo Press, 2013), named one of the top books of 2013 by Best American Poetry, according to the release..

In a statement, Militello said, “New Hampshire boasts one of the richest poetry traditions in the nation, and it will be my deepest honor to celebrate and nurture that statewide love of poetry as New Hampshire’s next Poet Laureate.”

Melanie Chicoine, President of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, said in a statement, “Jennifer’s passion for poetry is evident in all she has accomplished in both writing and teaching. … We are excited for the opportunities we know Jennifer will bring to the poetry community across New Hampshire and in the surrounding communities.” The New Hampshire Poet Laureate is an honorary five-year position and was established by the state legislature in 1967. Visit the NH Poet Laureate page at psnh.org and see nh.gov/nharts/artsandartists/poetlaureate.html.

New Arts Council logo wanted

The New Hampshire State Council on the Arts will celebrate its 60th anniversary in 2025 and is seeking an artist to design and create a new logo to appear on the Council’s print and electronic materials starting in 2025, according to a press release. The logo development will be a collaborative process with Arts Council staff as they review proposals and select artists to interview, and selected artists are expected to work cooperatively with the Council staff to make necessary adjustments to the proposals.

This opportunity is open to professional artists over 18 years old, and the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts will honor the copyright and intellectual property rights of artists submitting proposals, according to the press release. A total budget of $2,500 has been allocated to commission this project, including artist-design fees, any associated travel costs, and insurance. The deadline for submission is April 5. For details and the full request for proposal, see www.nh.gov/nharts/aboutus/newnhscalogo.htm.

Poetry Out Loud

The New Hampshire State Council on the Arts announced in a March 18 press release that Morgan Cole from Portsmouth High School is the winner of the 2024 New Hampshire Poetry Out Loud High School Championship, and George Fortin from Holderness School was selected as alternate champion.

Cole will represent New Hampshire at the national finals, which are scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., April 30 through May 2. Visit nh.gov/nharts.

The 10th annual “Easing Heartbreak Hill 5K: Don’t Forget Your Wings” will take place on Saturday, March 30, from 10 a.m. to noon in Concord (2 Delta Dental Drive). The event website said that this race is featured as part of one runner’s fundraising efforts for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the official charity of the 2024 Boston Marathon (Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge) with all race proceeds going toward Beth’s goal of $13,100 for cancer research at Dana-Farber. Registration is $25. Visit www.eventbrite.com/e/easing-heartbreak-hill-5k-dont-forget-your-wings-tickets-787223776507

Saint Anselm College’s women’s softball team will play two home games on Saturday, March 30, at noon and 2 p.m. against the Assumption Greyhounds at the South Athletic Fields at Saint Anselm College in Manchester (100 Saint Anselm Dr.). Games are free. Visit saintanselmhawks.com.

Tickets are on sale now to see authors Joe Hill and Michael Koryta in conversation on Monday, April 1, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Nashua Public Library (2 Court St. in Nashua). Tickets are $10, or $39 for admission and a book, plus fees, via nashualibrary.org; admission ticket sales end March 31 and ticket-plus-book sales end March 29.

Bringing the jokes home

Comic Koutrobis films special in Nashua

One of the reasons comics decide to make a special is inertia. Unlike the case for musicians who can lean on their hits forever, once a set of jokes is committed to video, a comedian needs to write some new ones. When Mike Koutrobis greets a hometown audience at Nashua’s Center for the Arts on March 21, he’ll say goodbye to his tight 60, ready to face the blank page.

It makes sense. When Koutrobis began standup 30 years ago, he was a single guy, and the laughs came from trying to remember who was in the photos on his girlfriend’s apartment walls and being stymied by one hung with a sample picture still in it, like some kind of weird test.

These days, he’s married and a father.

“The material’s writing itself now,” Koutrobis said in a recent phone interview. “My son just turned 5 and I’m turning 53. He’s getting more active; I’m getting less active. He’s learning new ways to do things; I’m learning new ways to cope with an injury.”

Entertainment is in his blood. In high school, Koutrobis worked as a professional clown, juggling fire and riding 6-foot unicycles. Upon graduation, “I literally joined the circus,” he said. “The day out of high school, I was a performing clown at York’s Wild Kingdom in Maine.”

At 21 he started hanging out at bars, and soon was hosting karaoke.

“I couldn’t sing, so I made it funny,” he said. “I love the attention — middle child syndrome. It just kept going, and I’ve never turned back. Anything to do with entertainment or being in front of people just attracts me.”

A booking agent pointed him to an open mic night at Stitches in Boston. “He says, you’re funny, do you write jokes? I go, ‘I don’t know … I’m just being myself,’” Koutrobis said. “I went down, and I was absolutely horrible; I still have it on tape, I’ll never get rid of it. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”

Rising to the challenge, he kept at it, studying other comics, looking for clues to their success. He recalls Boston comedy legend Patrice O’Neal complimenting him early on. “He goes … ‘I don’t know what the hell it is, but you have something.’ I thought, now I gotta figure out what the hell that is.”

Since then, Koutrobis has done a little bit of everything, appearing in movies and on television, promoting shows, teaching other comics, working as a DJ, and that’s for starters.

“I have 72 jobs,” he said. “I’m literally in a parking lot right now about to be a hospital clown at Tufts Medical Center … there’s not much I don’t do.”

When he quit his day job, Koutrobis realized that ubiquity was his key to success in entertainment.

“I need to be the guy where someone goes, ‘We need this for a party, let’s call Mike — either he does it, or he knows somebody that does.’ My business card says, and it’s my favorite quote of all time: ‘Eventually, you’ll hire me for something.’”

Koutrobis is excited to appear at the newest venue in the town he’s called home since he was a toddler. Advance sales for the show have been brisk.

“I’m already beyond what I was hoping for,” he said. “People from high school that I haven’t spoken to in years are messaging me, and they bought tickets. We’re already over 300 sold, [and] honestly, that was my number.”

A retirement party for material that long served him well had to happen, Koutrobis concluded.

“I got lazy with my writing, but when you put something out there it’s, ‘OK, that stuff’s done now.’ Look at Juston McKinney or Bob Marley, speaking of two local guys. As soon as they put out a CD, or Juston does his Christmas shows, it’s pretty rare you’re going to hear any of those jokes ever again.”

Mike Koutrobis Comedy Special
When: Saturday, March 23, 8pm
Where: Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua
Tickets: $27 at nashuacenterforthearts.com

Featured photo: Mike Koutrobis. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 24/03/21

Local music news & events

• Emerald Islanders: Keep basking in a green glow at an evening with Altan, a band considered one of Ireland’s finest musical exports. Their just-released album Donegal celebrates the county where they were formed. The new record is also their first with recently added fiddler and singer Claire Friel, who takes a lead vocal on “Faoiseamh a Gheobhadsa.” Thursday, March 21, 7:30 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $35 and $45 at palacetheatre.org.

• Founding father: Richard Thompson has stayed a folk music force since he co-founded Fairpoint Convention in 1967. His memoir, Beeswing, was published in 2021, and he recently dropped “Singapore Sadie,” the first single from the forthcoming album Ship to Shore. Friday, March 22, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $60 and up at tupelomusichall.com.

• Helpful humor: Enjoy dinner followed by a free comedy show with Chris Tabb headlining. Presented by the charity-minded Comedy On Purpose, the night includes sets from Sara Poulin, Nick Gordon and Bill Douglas. Saturday, March 23, 7 pm., Stonebridge Country Club, 161 Gorham Pond Road, Goffstown, call 497-8633 for reservations.

• Bluegrass power: A regional roots supergroup, Little Wishbone is the combination of Green Heron — married duo Scott Heron and Betsy Green on banjo and fiddle — and Old Hat Bluegrass Band, which has Steve Roy on mandolin, guitarist Whitney Roy and Amanda Kowalski on upright bass. The band plays an afternoon show at a barbecue restaurant run by another member of the bluegrass community. Sunday, March 24, 3 p.m., MrSippy BBQ, 184 S. Main St., Rochester. More at littlewishbone.com.

• Empire statement: Extending the program begun 30 years ago by Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Presents is a touring initiative currently featuring Bria Skonberg and Benny Benack III, the latter affectionately known as BB3. Both are trumpet players and singers, exploring the Great American Songbook. Wednesday, March 27, 7 p.m., Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord, $43.75 and up at ccanh.com.

Unshrinking, by Kate Manne

Unshrinking, by Kate Manne (Crown, 277 pages)

The national airline of Finland announced recently that it would ask passengers to step on a scale with their carry-on luggage in order to get an accurate assessment of the plane’s load and ensure a “safe takeoff.” It’s voluntary, inasmuch as is possible with the airline essentially saying we could crash if you don’t comply.

There was immediate backlash, with some calling the policy “fatphobic,” which is the popular catch-all term for any sort of perceived discrimination or cruelty against people with overweight or obesity (to use the preferred medical terminology these days). But it’s great timing for Kate Manne, a philosopher and associate professor at Cornell University, who has taken up the crusade against fatphobia in her third book, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia.

In Unshrinking, Manne brings a philosopher’s take to a subject that Roxanne Gay, Lindy West and other writers have tackled: the hardships and cruelties that people with large bodies suffer as they navigate a world that prizes thinness. The solution that fat people (her preferred term) are usually offered is the suggestion to lose weight. But Manne believes it’s the world that needs to change, not people who are overweight. People should have the right to be any size they choose without the expectation of discrimination or mockery, she says; in fact, she argues, being a hundred, or a couple of hundred, pounds over what the doctor says we should weigh is another form of diversity, like skin color or the shape of our nose.

While Manne has been a range of sizes over the course of her life — she says almost apologetically that she is not currently significantly overweight — she was overweight enough as a child to endure the frequent casual cruelty that can stay with a person for a life. She recalls, for example, the boy in fifth grade who said “Fat little Kate-lyn” to her in P.E. class and another boy who ranked her attractiveness saying her figure “left something to be desired.”

Internalized, these sorts of insults convince a person that their body is something to be ashamed of, leading grown women with graduate degrees and good careers to still feel inferior when it comes to their body.

“I have been swimming just once since the age of sixteen. (I wore leggings and an oversized T-shirt.) I haven’t been dancing since I was twenty. And nobody, save my husband and doctors, has seen the dimpled, stretch-marked backs of my knees over the same time period,” Manne writes.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried to lose weight, and at times, she had done so successfully — as when she developed an Adderall addiction and once didn’t eat for a week, causing her to nearly pass out during a doctor’s appointment. But her weight would go up and down, and when in 2019 she was offered an all-expenses-paid book tour in Europe in conjunction with the paperback release of her book Down Girl, she refused to be photographed. It was a time when her doctor’s chart categorized her as “severely obese” and she couldn’t bear for photographs of her at that weight to go out into the world.

Then came the pandemic, during which she began to imagine a world in which she didn’t always feel the need to hide. This did not involve a diet — Manne argues, with lots of science to back her up, that diets don’t work and instead inflict suffering. Instead she imagined a world in which the word “fat” is a neutral term, not an insult, and in which large bodies aren’t judged.

Fatphobia, Manne says, is a “feature of social systems that unjustly rank fatter bodies as inferior to thinner bodies, in terms of not only our health but also our moral, sexual, and intellectual status.” The book catalogs many of these from Jordan Peterson’s “Sorry, not beautiful” pronouncement about a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model to examples of professional women viewed as less intelligent than their peers because of their weight. In these sorts of stories, Manne has a slam-dunk case; there is no question that fat-shaming is one of the last kinds of shaming that are permissible and Hollywood has helped perpetuate this idea.

Manne also deftly pokes holes in the arguments that defend treating large people differently from others. Her fellow Australian philosopher Peter Singer, for example, argues that airlines should set fares based on the weight of the passengers. “In terms of the airplane’s fuel consumption, it is all the same, whether the extra weight is baggage or body fat,” Singer has written. Manne counters with a calculation that shows it would cost just a few dollars more in fuel to transport an overweight man than a thin woman. She is at her best with this kind of sparring, and Unshrinking is thoughtful and deeply researched, belying a cover that suggests otherwise.

Ultimately, though, this is not a book that solves arguments, but rather raises them. Obesity is surging not only in America but in other parts of the world, and health experts say that excess weight is a factor in many types of cancer and other diseases. Yo-yo dieting is certainly not the answer, and weight-loss surgeries and drugs carry risks, as Manne points out. She wants a society where there is no pressure for people to lose weight — even at the doctor’s office — and where we don’t have to feel shame for succumbing to our appetites, for choosing lasagna over grilled vegetables. But with mounting evidence that restricting calories improves health outcomes — even for people who are not overweight — it will be hard for some people to accept her defense of hedonistic eating. Grilled veggies are better for the human body than lasagna, and no amount of fat acceptance can change that. B —Jennifer Graham

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