2024 – Page 42

Making connections

Morphs and Milestones reaches kids with animals

Morphs and Milestones is a nonprofit that utilizes “rescued and rehabilitated reptiles in education and therapies for persons with special needs,” such as DiGeorge Syndrome, autism, and all kinds of delayed development. It also works with standard education as well as individuals with emotional PTSD. Nate Monty runs the organization with his wife, Brenda Casillas. Nate has more than a decade of veterinary technician and zoo experience. They will present an educational program at Manchester City Library on Wednesday, Oct. 23, from 4 to 6 p.m. and expect to be opening a facility in Francestown in a matter of weeks, although no date has been made official yet. Visit morphsandmilestones.com.

What is Morphs and Milestones?

Morphs and Milestones is a nonprofit that me and Brenda started. We started it because of the work we did with our daughter, Autumn Rose. My daughter, Autumn, has DiGeorge Syndrome, and she is nonverbal, and they were having an exceptionally hard time teaching her how to communicate effectively so that they could go ahead and figure out exactly what she was learning and what she wasn’t learning. We found that through the exposure to reptiles, which were her favorite animals, that she would get in a mode of almost being very investigative. And we utilized that to help teach her ASL … we were urged by her special education team to make it available for others. So at the core, Morphs and Milestones is a nonprofit organization that uses rescued and rehabbed animals and we use them as therapy and educational aids.

What made you think to try using reptiles to help with your daughter, Autumn?

[W]e were building with some sticks, some just fun stuff to build and knock down. And on one of the displays I had mounted on the wall, I had turned on YouTube … and a YouTuber came up that was handling snakes and she got really excited. And then immediately after being excited, she sat down and just watched the screen. And I said, ‘Hey, wait a second, there’s something here.’ And that’s how we got into reptiles.

What will the educational program be like at Manchester City Library?

At Manchester it’s going to be an auditorium-style program. That’s what we did last time. And it’s not like a standard auditorium program. There will be a time where I am up front and I am speaking and showing the animals, but I also utilize our volunteer team. And while I’m talking about the animals, the individuals watching the program and attending the program actually get to physically touch and see the animals up close so that they can see and almost feel the experience in real time. So we’ll do that over several ambassadors that we bring. And at the end we invite everybody to come up to the front or on the stage. And they can interact with the animals at a higher level and really have one-on-one conversations with things that interest them about the animals.

Can you expand on the Autumn’s Adoption Corner portion of Morphs and Milestones?

Morphs and Milestones started off just doing the therapy work and then as it grew we did therapy and education. As that grew, people started finding out that we’re here, and sometimes it was people who needed to find a place to actually put an animal … they started reaching out to us and said, ‘Hey, can you help us?’ … So we built Autumn’s Adoption Corner. When the animals come in to see us, they’re all evaluated and taken care of and then the adoption process is very similar to what you see with other companion animals like dogs and cats and horses. We modeled a lot of it off like what we saw with the SPCAs and the rescue leagues so that the next home could be a forever home.

What does the future look like for you all?

[W]e’re actually opening a facility in Francestown, New Hampshire. It’s at 74B Main St. And the facility is .. an old firehouse. And on the bottom floor is going to be an adaptive classroom … The second floor of it …is going to be the area where we have a teacher resource center.

Morphs and Milestones
Educational Program
When: Wednesday, Oct. 23, 4 to 6 p.m.
Where: Manchester City Library, 405 Pine St., Manchester
Free, open to the public
morphsandmilestones.com

Featured image: Courtesy photo.

News & Notes 24/10/17

The ick season

The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services is encouraging Granite Staters to talk to their health care providers about immunizations to protect themselves from serious illnesses related to flu, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and Covid-19, especially high-risk populations “including older adults, infants and young children, pregnant mothers and individuals with weakened immune systems,” according to an Oct. 9 press release. “The best way for people to protect themselves against the flu and other respiratory illnesses this season is to get recommended immunizations,” said State Epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan. “Staying home when you are sick and washing your hands frequently are also important measures….” New Hampshire residents can get a sense of the respiratory virus levels in specific communities at wisdom.dhhs.nh.gov; click on “Wastewater Surveillance” under the “Infectious Disease and Immunization” category. To find locations to get vaccinations in your area, go to vaccines.gov.

Give blood, get a treat

To restock blood products after recent hurricanes the Red Cross is urging people to give blood, according to a press release from American Red Cross of New England. Go to redcross.org/nne to find donation times and locations near you. Through Oct. 31, donors will receive an emailed $10 Amazon gift card for donating and be entered to win one of three $5,000 gift cards, according to the website.

Help for helpers

Easterseals NH has received a state grant to train “direct support professionals working for organizations across New Hampshire,” according to an Easterseals press release. “Easterseals NH will be offering courses that provide direct support providers a pathway to advancement and certification through the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals (NADSP),” the release said. “Professionals who earn NADSP certification are acknowledged for their exemplary work in supporting individuals with intellectual disabilities or acquired brain injuries.” Online and in-person courses will be available and the courses will begin in November. See eastersealsnh.org/training-center-of-excellence.

Loons & lakes

The Loon Preservation Committee has two talks on the October calendar. On Thursday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. Iain MacLeod, executive director of the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, will talk about “what has been learned by attaching satellite trackers to several ospreys migrating from New Hampshire to South America. Iain has been studying ospreys for decades, including monitoring the growing breeding osprey population in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region since 1997,” according to a Committee newsletter. The event takes place at the Loon Center, 183 Lees Mill Road in Moultonborough. On Thursday, Oct. 24, at 4:30 p.m. the Loon Center will host a session with Bree Rossiter from the Lake Winnipesaukee Association about the basics of cyanobacteria (the talk will also be posted online afterward), the newsletter said. See loon.org.

Eats for a cause

The Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire will hold its sixth annual “Share the Bounty Weekend” on Saturday, Oct. 19, and Sunday, Oct. 20, when shoppers and diners at participating locations will help raise money for the Farm Share Program, according to a NOFA-NH release. Participating eateries include Revival Kitchen & Bar and The Works Bakery Cafe in Concord; The Works locations in Durham, Keene and Portsmouth; Witching Hour Provisions in Hopkinton; Kearsarge Food Hub & Sweet Beet Market in Bradford, and Black Trumpet Bistro in Portsmouth, the release said. “The Farm Share Program connects community members with limited incomes to low-cost Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares, also known as farm shares, from local, NOFA-NH member farms,” according to the release. See nhofanh.org for more.

Sports news

NHTI — Concord’s Community College has appointed Annie Mattarazzo as the college’s new athletics director, according to an NHTI press release. “Mattarazzo comes to NHTI from Bishop Brady High School, where she served as its athletic director, media and communications coordinator, and math and leadership teacher,” the release said. In the release, NHTI President Patrick Tompkins said, “Annie is extraordinarily well known, respected, and loved in the Concord community and athletics more generally. Just as Paul Hogan essentially created NHTI’s athletics program over the last two decades, Annie will shape our women’s and men’s sports for the next chapter.”

Mattarazzo is a Concord resident, a graduate of Manchester’s Trinity High School and an alumnus of Plymouth State University (for undergrad) and Southern New Hampshire University, where she earned an M.S. in Sports Management, the release said. NHTI has 13 women’s and men’s sports, the release said. Mattarazzo will start her job at NHTI on Nov. 1, the release said.

Put your carved pumpkin on one of the four pumpkin towers in downtown Laconia during the upcoming NH Pumpkin Festival. Register your pumpkin participation at nhpumpkinfestival.com, according to a festival email. Pumpkin Drop-Off is Tuesday, Oct. 22, through Friday, Oct. 25. See nhpumpkinfestival.com.

Temple Adath Yeshurun Brotherhood will hold its annual candidates forum on Sunday, Oct. 27, at 9 a.m. at the temple, 152 Prospect St. in Manchester. Doors open at 8:45 a.m. and the forum will be moderated by George Bruno, former U.S. ambassador to Belize. Candidates slated to attend include gubernatorial candidates Joyce Craig and Kelly Ayotte; congressional candidates for House District 1 Chris Pappas and Russell Prescott and for House District 2 Maggie Goodlander and Lily Tang Williams, the release said.

The Bedford Historical Society will hold a Harvest Gala to support the Stevens-Buswell Community Center, a project that is rehabbing the town’s original two-room school house for use as a community center, on Friday, Oct. 18, at 6 p.m. at the Manchester Country Club in Bedford. Enjoy music, dancing and food. Tickets cost $100. See bedfordhistoricalnh.org.

University of New Hampshire in Durham announced the addition of Aaron Gray as assistant coach for women’s lacrosse, joining UNH first-year head coach Taylor Bastien. Gray comes to UNH from UMass Lowell, where he was an assistant coach for the 2023 and 2024 seasons, according to a press release. See unhwildcats.com for updates on the lacrosse season.

Sunday, Oct. 20, is the final Sunday of the season for the Nashua Farmers Market, which takes place on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 6 Hartshorn Ave. in Nashua. See downtownnashua.org.

Hit the road — 10/10/2024

Time to hit the road! In this week’s cover story we look at self-guided art and crafts tours, an upcoming vineyard tour and different ways to see some historical sites. We’re talking extremely local road trips, just in time for your (hopefully) long weekend — but short enough that you can enjoy them in an afternoon.

Also on the cover, It’s the annual Milford Pumpkin Festival (see page 6) and the annual Warner Fall Foliage Festival (see page 17). And next weekend enjoy a relatively recent annual celebration — the Mount Uncanoonuc Brewfest (page 22).

Read the e-edition

News & Notes 24/10/10

241010 Featured Content News

Teacher of the year Candice DeAngelis, a Spanish teacher at Bedford High School, was named New Hampshire’s 2025 Teacher of ...

Make a scarecrow, fling a pumpkin

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241010 Q&A

It’s Milford Pumpkin Festival weekend The Milford Pumpkin Festival has been going strong for 35 years thanks to the region’s ...

Fans getting restless

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241010 News Sports

The Big Story – Is It Time For Drake Maye? It’s still a little too early to throw in the ...

Quality of Life 24/10/10

241010 News Quality Of Life

Like clockwork, pumpkins appear Each year on Oct. 1 two pumpkins appear on the spires of the tower of Rounds ...

This Week 24/10/10

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241010 News This Week

Thursday, Oct. 10 Read2Me3 (167 S. River Road, Bedford, 494-3849) will host an informational meeting for parents about cursive writing ...

Hit the road

A red car driving through winding road with beautiful autumn foliage trees in New England.

241010 Cover Stories Featured Content

Arts tours, vineyard visits, historic sites and more half-day road trip ideas Take a tour Meet the artists and craftspeople ...

Witch hysteria

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241010 Art & Theater Featured Content

Powerhouse performs The Crucible For a play that is set in the late 17th century and debuted on Broadway in ...

The Art Roundup 24/10/10

241010 Art & Theater Visual Arts

The latest from NH’s theater, arts and literary communities • Welcome to Cicely, Alaska: Pembroke City Limits (134 Main St ...

Autumn colors and a parade

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241010 Fairs & Festivals Featured Content Outdoors

Warner celebrates with its annual Fall Foliage Festival By Zachary [email protected] Celebrate fall in Warner Friday, Oct. 11, through Sunday, ...

Kiddie Pool 24/10/10

241010 Family Fun Outdoors

Family fun for whenever Fun in the dark • The Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live Glow Party comes to SNHU ...

Treasure Hunt 24/10/10

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241010 Family Fun Treasure Hunt

Hi, Donna, My parents got this from my dad’s aunt about 20 years ago, not sure how long she had ...

The Weekly Dish 24/10/10

241010 Food

News from the local food scene • Chocolate: The New Hampshire Chocolate Expo will take place Sunday, Oct. 13, at ...

Brews for a cause

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241010 Featured Content Food

The 2024 Mount Uncanoonuc Brewfest raises funds for veterans For Brian Hansen, the organizer of the Mount Uncanoonuc Brewfest, part ...

In the kitchen with Leah Borla

241010 Food Q&A

Owner, Sweet Love Bakery (20B Main St., Goffstown, 497-2997, sweetlovebakerynh.com) Leah Borla is a New Hampshire native who moved home ...

Apple Fritters

241010 Food

Start with 3 apples – whatever kind you like; ideally, they should be crisp; I like Fuji or Braeburn, but ...

Album Reviews 24/10/10

241010 Albums Pop

The Bruce Lofgren Group, Earthly And Cosmic Tales (self-released) Apparently it’s already the start of Grammy-voting season, given that I’ve ...

William, by Mason Coile

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William, by Mason Coile (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 224 pages) Earlier this year, Ray Kurzwell gave us a cheery picture of ...

Joker: Folie à Deux (R)

241010 Film Reviews by Amy

Joaquin Phoenix returns as the scrawny Arthur Fleck, a sad man who set Gotham aflame with his violent chaos as ...

The Music Roundup 24/10/10

241010 Music This Week

Local music news & events • Throwback girl: On her 1987 debut “Foolish Beat,” 16-year-old Debbie Gibson became the youngest ...

Go with Todd

241010 Featured Content Nightlife

Rundgren performs in Nashua A few years ago, redemption came to fans of Todd Rundgren when he was inducted into ...

Go with Todd

Rundgren performs in Nashua

A few years ago, redemption came to fans of Todd Rundgren when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, it didn’t culminate years of Rundgren calling “Hello, It’s Me” to the Rock Hall — far from it. He didn’t seek the accolade, and bowed out of the induction ceremony due to a show on the same night, four hours away in Cincinnati.

To call him an iconoclast is an understatement. Rundgren has charted his own course from early in his career. He became a producer when most people barely knew what that was, because he realized the guy his label hired to supervise the first album of his band The Nazz was a bean counter who either didn’t care about their album’s sound or couldn’t bring it off.

One of his first assignments was The Band’s Stage Fright album. He went on to produce Grand Funk, Hall & Oates, XTC and many others. Music became a side hustle for Rundgren as a result, as his main source of income was so lucrative. His take from Meatloaf’s 1978 LP Bat Out of Hell bought him a house in Hawaii.

That said, he’s made a lot of records over the years, and some of them have produced hits like “Bang On the Drum” and “Can We Still Be Friends?” The difference is he does them to please himself, not the critics or label executives.

“I’ve essentially cultivated an audience that helps me survive in the music business,” Rundgren said from his home in Kaua’i. “I’ve never had the expectations that I should be recognized, I do it for my own purposes. I’m grateful to have an audience for it, but I never had the expectation that it’s going to be hugely successful.”

Younger listeners bored with mainstream pop have lately found albums like 1972’s A Wizard, A True Star, and Nearly Human, a 1989 record that was his last with a charting single. For Rundgren, seeing these new fans at shows is equally gratifying and bewildering. “They’re coming at it more from the place I came to it from, which is I’m making a historical document,” he said. “It’ll be there long after I’m gone.”

Rundgren is less sanguine about contemporary music. “The most successful so-called musical artists today are pole dancers,” he observed. “They don’t intend to remain in music, they all want to eventually have acting careers … now you get famous for being famous. In that sense there is a lot of what’s called music that really doesn’t qualify, at least to me.”

He recently re-launched a service begun in the 1990s as PatroNet to help independent artists.

The newly named Global Nation’s goal “is to give creative people a maximum amount of freedom,” he said. “First of all, to create what they want, and have it appear exactly as they’ve created it … we’ve standardized the display to be essentially a virtual HDTV. So it looks the same no matter what you play it on — and you can play it on HDTV.”

Critically, the service helps creators keep most of the money.

“Instead of you getting the short end of the stick after Apple Store takes theirs and the publisher takes theirs and you wind up with 30 percent of the cost of the subscription, we want that to be closer to 80 percent,” he said, adding the Global Nation is presently in soft launch mode. “We are on the air; we’re just not aggressively pushing it.”

At Rundgren’s upcoming Me/We Tour stop in Nashua on Oct. 16, he’ll draw from a deep catalog, while saving his biggest hits like “I Saw the Light,” “Hello It’s Me” and “The Last Ride” for the encore. Fans of deep cuts like “I Think You Know” and “Woman’s World” will be happy with the setlist.

“It’s a fixed set list so people can have the confidence that if there’s a song they want to hear that I played before, they will hear it,” he said. “If they need to know beforehand, they can probably look up the set list and find out.”

Todd Rundgren Me/We
When: Wednesday, Oct. 16, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua
Tickets: $59 and up at etix.com

Featured photo: Todd Rundgren. Photo by Rex Rundgren.

The Music Roundup 24/10/10

Local music news & events

• Throwback girl: On her 1987 debut “Foolish Beat,” 16-year-old Debbie Gibson became the youngest artist to perform, produce and write a No. 1 single, a feat that likely will remain unmatched in today’s committee-run pop world. She marks the 35th anniversary of her chart-topping Electric Youth album by stripping it down for an acoustic tour stopping in Nashua. Thursday, Oct. 10, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $39 and up at etix.com.

• Nouveau chapeau: Few New England songwriters have the clever wordplay command of Jake McKelvie. Take two lines from “Eat Around the Pudding,” where he rhymes homeowner, combover and organ donor while still delivering a jaunty tune that’s either a breakup song or musical self-therapy. McKelvie performs at a favorite area venue to celebrate his latest record, A New Kind of Hat. Friday, Oct. 11, 7 p.m., Union Coffee House, 42 South St., Milford. Visit jakemckelvie.com.

• Hard rocking: With a new album just released, Texas Hippie Coalition — THC to their fans — are back on the road, with an upcoming Lakes Region date. Playing a hybrid of Southern rock they call “red dirt metal,” the quintet’s latest, Gunsmoke, owes a debt of gratitude to John Wayne, the band’s lead singer Big Dad Ritch said. Its lead single “Bones Jones” is a scorcher. Saturday, Oct. 12, 7 p.m., The Big House, 322 Lakeside Ave., Laconia, $25 at eventbrite.com.

• Dynamic duo: A pair of formidable folksingers share the stage. Patty Larkin and Lucy Kaplansky have recently been part of the On A Winter’s Night reunion tour with John Gorka and Cliff Eberhardt. For Larkin, it was a miracle comeback; in summer 2022 she tripped and fell during a family vacation and suffered a near-paralyzing spinal cord injury that forced her to re-learn the guitar. Saturday, Oct. 12, 7:30 p.m., BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $35.75 at ccanh.com.

• String power: With a mix of funk, rock and blues, Ana Popovic has a few famous fans. Bruce Springsteen called her “one helluva guitar player,” and she was the only female guitarist on the all-star Experience Hendrix tour that ran from 2014 to 2018. Popovic also has magnetic stage presence, and she can belt out a song as well. She appears with members of her Fantastafunk big band Sunday, Oct. 13, 7 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $39 at tupelomusichall.com.

Joker: Folie à Deux (R)

Joaquin Phoenix returns as the scrawny Arthur Fleck, a sad man who set Gotham aflame with his violent chaos as Joker a few years earlier, in Joker: Folie à Deux, a movie where Lady Gaga is also present.

Apparently the time between the events of Joker and now has, in the world of the films, been spent with the authorities of Gotham — such as assistant district attorney Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) — trying to figure out if Arthur is sane enough to stand trial. Arthur’s lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), wants to argue that as a result of childhood abuse Arthur has split personalities and the “Joker” is a protective alter. The Joker killed people but Arthur isn’t criminally responsible, is her argument. A somewhat zonked out Arthur doesn’t seem to have an opinion on this or anything really until a chance meeting with Lee — Harleen Quinzel (Lady Gaga) — an inmate at the more mental-health-focused side of Arkham. He is instantly enamored with her, and she with him, and they engage in a romance of dream-sequence musical numbers and occasional real-life (maybe) meetings that lead to Lee being the queen fan of Joker’s supportive public. With Lee’s encouragement, Arthur lets the Joker come out more — but he isn’t ultimately any more comfortable as the poster boy for societal discontent than he is as the damaged Arthur.

This movie doesn’t seem to fully invest itself in any one thing. The Lee/Arthur relationship feels like it could be something, but it deflates before we really get a whole lot of “Deux” out of their “Folie à Deux.” I could live with how little we get of Harleen and her personality and motivations if the movie did something interesting with her in Arthur’s story, but it doesn’t.

I also wondered for a while if the movie was trying to subvert the expectations of the last movie. The last movie was all modern red-pill-internet bleakness in a fancy “gritty 1970s film” wrapping; there were times when I wondered if this movie was trying to say “all that stuff you thought was so cool was actually really horrible and sad.” But the movie seems only half in with this idea.

While the movie tells us that Lee loves the fame aspect of it all, we don’t really see that either. Most of the media about Arthur and his crimes — a book, a TV movie — feels very off screen. We never know what, if any, role Lee has in the Joker mythology. There’s a mention of her doing a lot of interviews. Is she just a Joker cheerleader, an entertaining focal point for the Joker-loving malcontents in her own right or is she, like, the Yoko of his legend?

And if the movie is trying to Say Something about crime as entertainment or how we filter our stories through the beats of movies, it doesn’t really stay with that either. I didn’t love the first Joker, but I understood the story it was telling and how it wanted to tell it. Here I feel like the movie had its centerpieces — Joker but sad! Lady Gaga! Surprise, it’s a musical, sort of! — but didn’t know how to construct a story around those. I feel like there is an interesting story here about the After of a burst of societal anger and violence. What becomes of the leader, what becomes of his followers when the leader doesn’t live up to their ideal, what fills the vacuum left by the original focal point of all that energy? But there’s also a lot of unnecessary junk getting in the way of that.

Which brings us to this movie’s final moments. After what felt like a forever of watching the movie search for a purpose for its visuals of Gaga in Harley Quinn makeup or the duo on a ’70s-style variety show — elements that feel like they haven’t yet made the jump from “idea board” to “part of the story” — we get to the very end when the movie bows out with a “ha made you look” beat of self-satisfied cleverness that made me think “shut up, movie.” Well, things other than “shut up” but “shut up” is the only one that can be printed in a newspaper. This is maybe this sequel’s greatest failing — when it’s not boring, it’s needlessly annoying. C-

(I thought about going lower but there isn’t even an “interesting failure” aspect about this movie. It’s solidly in forgettable “meh” territory. Its most lasting impact is probably forcing me to learn how to make the “à” character — alt 0224, my fellow character map aficionados.)

Rated R for some strong violence, language throughout, some sexuality, and brief full nudity, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Todd Phillips with a screenplay by Scott Silver & Todd Phillips, Joker: Folie à Deux is two hours and 18 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Warner Bros.

Year: 2024

Making connections

News & Notes 24/10/17

Hit the road — 10/10/2024

Go with Todd

The Music Roundup 24/10/10

Joker: Folie à Deux (R)

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