ART NABE, a Manchester organization dedicated to amplifying the voices of underrepresented communities, is hosting the inaugural Celebrate HER, a gala-like event with live performances to show appreciation for female musicians based in New England.
The event will be held inside Southern New Hampshire University’s Robert Frost Hall on Saturday, April 1, and will also be livestreamed via Zoom — attendees will be able to mingle, enjoy light refreshments and hors d’oeuvres and, of course, listen to music.
“A person attending … would be supporting the music scene of New Hampshire, but more so, local artists,” event director and local artist MHB, who also goes by just M, said. “They would be able to experience live music from so many different genres [such as] afrobeat, hip-hop, rap [and] R&B.”
The concept of ART NABE, M said, was born in the fall of 2021. Raised in the Granite State, M returned home from school in Philadelphia to work in the art industry and soon realized that there wasn’t a place for artists to come together, nor a space to display their work.
“Our team really just thought it would be a good idea to expand on this idea of creating a space for all these artists to display their talents and their small businesses,” M said. “Our mission is really to highlight … underrepresented groups … that are either creative or entrepreneurs in the entertainment arts and culture space.”
ART NABE highlights these groups by hosting pop-up events related to art, music and food, like the local arts market they hosted last summer. This event included live music, in addition to vendors who were selling their products and artists displaying their work.
While discussing what to do for their next event, they ultimately decided they wanted to center it around women in music.
Sydney Choate, who is also frequently referred to by her stage name, Sydney the Singer, is among the event’s featured artists. Originally from Richmond, Maine, Choate grew up in a musical family with a mother who sings, a stepfather who plays the drums and the guitar, and a grandfather who is a songwriter as well as a guitarist.
“I was raised on really, really soulful voices and I think that definitely molded who I am as a musician,” said Choate, who credits artists like Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé, Toni Braxton and JoJo as some of her biggest influences.
Growing up listening to these artists, Choate knew from a young age that she wanted to be a singer.
“You’ll see my journals [when I was] like 5 years old talking about how I wanted to be a musician and sing on stage, sing my own original music and have my name in lights, and I think it’s the only picture I ever had for myself since I was very little,” Choate said.
Choate, who was involved in ART NABE’s art market last summer, was eager to be a part of this year’s event.
“Why I want to do this show in particular is because advocating for women [and] empowering women is very much part of who I am … so I couldn’t think of an event that resonated with me more,” she said.
As is in line with ART NABE’s goal, Celebrate HER will continue to help the voices of these women in the community be heard.
“I hope that more of the artists get exposure in the local community so that they have future opportunities that aren’t just … in line with ART NABE,” M said. “We’re hoping that it will just open the doors for opportunities for everyone that’s involved in the event.”
Celebrate HER When: Saturday, April 1, 7 to 10 p.m. Where: Robert Frost Hall, at Southern New Hampshire University, 2500 N. River Road, Manchester Cost: Tickets are $25 for the showcase, or $5 to attend virtually via Zoom. Visit: bit.ly/celebrateher2023, or see “ART NABE” on Facebook
Featured photo: Sidney the Singer. Courtesy photo.
An adventure with the classic combination of peanut butter and jelly
Typically I would try to start an article on peanut butter and jelly with some sort of hook, like a story about how a Japanese princess drove off 15 ninjas with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or how a 5-year-old boy foiled a mugging by dropping a jar of peanut butter on a thief in an alley from the 30th-floor window of his apartment. I could tell you a personal story about the philosophical breakthrough I made while eating a spoonful of peanut butter at dawn in an Indian ashram on my 40th birthday.
The thing about those stories, aside from the fact that none of them is remotely true, is that they are unnecessary.
It has to do with the time of year.
Go into any supermarket this week, past the displays of shamrocks and Easter candy, and what do you see? End-cap displays of chicken-noodle soup. Mint Milanos. Extra-large containers of taco chip party mix.
In other words, comfort food.
It is theoretically almost spring. But we all know that even when it comes it won’t be a real, tra-la-la, skipping through the meadow, strewing flower petals type of spring.
It will be mud. Followed by slush. Followed by more mud.
If you are a person who shaves or wears makeup, you’ve seen the haunted look in your eyes in the mirror lately. Do you know what you need?
That comfort food.
And, grilled cheese sandwiches aside, what is the quintessential comfort food?
Peanut butter and jelly.
So let’s peanut butter it up, Skippy.
PB&J Bundt cake
“Cake Gunk” – equal amounts of vegetable shortening, flour and vegetable oil
⅓ cup (75 grams) finely chopped dry-roasted peanuts
½ cup (114 grams) sour cream
1¼ cup (213 grams) brown sugar
½ cup (135 grams) peanut butter
1¾ cup (210 grams) all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon (3.3 grams) baking powder
½ teaspoon (3 grams) fine sea salt
¼ teaspoon (1.7 grams) baking soda
3 eggs
⅓ cup (76 grams) half-and-half
1 teaspoon vanilla – I’ll be honest here; I never measure vanilla. I add a big glug or a small glug. This recipe calls for a small glug.
¾ cup (255 grams) strawberry jam
17 or 18 (60 grams) maraschino cherries, stems removed
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
PB&J Bundt cake. Photo by John Fladd.
Prepare a Bundt pan – brush the inside surface thoroughly with Cake Gunk (see above), then dust with crushed peanuts. (“But what if I’m allergic to peanuts? Is there something else I can use?” Um, theoretically, graham cracker crumbs, but have you read the title of this article?)
Measure or weigh out the sour cream, brown sugar and peanut butter in the bowl of your stand mixer, or the bowl that you’re going to finish the cake batter in. Now leave it alone until you are ready for it.
Combine all your dry ingredients in a separate bowl. If you worry about such things, go ahead and sift them together; otherwise just stir them together with a spoon.
Beat the sour cream, sugar and peanut butter together into a fine goop. (This is a technical term. If you were using butter or shortening, this would fluff up impressively. But you are looking Betty Crocker in the eyes, knocking back a shot of whiskey and using sour cream. This Bundt cake is not for cowards. In the end you’ll be happy about using the sour cream, but for now you will have to accept that your sugar-fat mixture is not fluffy. It is goopy.)
When your goop is as light and fluffy as it is going to get, continue beating, adding the eggs, one at a time, followed by a small glug of vanilla.
At this point your mixture is pretty soupy. You’ll be happy to know that it’s time to add the dry ingredients, alternating with the half-and-half.
So what’s the big deal about alternating ingredients? It’s not like the cake is going to care, is it?
Actually, it will, but only if it’s got a dark sense of humor. If you dump too much of the flour mixture in all at once, you’ll get a face full of flour, which, theoretically, your cake batter will find hilarious. If you pour too much half-and-half in too quickly, some of it will splash out onto your counter and you will start worrying about whether you’ve thrown off the proportions of your recipe, and again the cake batter — understandably, given that you are about to bake and devour it — will feel smug about.
Scrape the sides of your bowl down to make sure that everything has gotten mixed together, then pour a little more than half of your batter into your Bundt pan.
Bonk the Bundt pan firmly on the counter twice. This is to make sure that there are no air pockets. If you want to, you could wait until you’ve added all the ingredients. In this particular recipe, it might also drive your jam and cherries downward, to what will be the top of the cake, and make visible jam inclusions. In any other cake this would be a bug. In this cake it would be a feature.
Gently spoon the jam in a ring around the Bundt pan, on top of the batter you just poured in. Place the cherries in a ring on top of the jam.
Pour the rest of the batter into your pan, making sure to cover the jam and cherries. Don’t worry about being particularly neat; the batter will level itself out.
Bake at 350 degrees for about half an hour. If you are worried about whether it is completely baked, stab it with a probe thermometer. If it reads over 200 degrees F, you’re fine. Don’t worry about it being overbaked; that’s what the sour cream is there for. It has your back.
Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 to 20 minutes, then invert it onto a plate. I find that I rise up onto my toes as I make the flip, then come down hard on my heels. I don’t know if that does anything productive, but I like to think that it lets the finished cake know that I mean business, and that I haven’t forgotten the whole flour-in-the-face thing.
This is a moist, not-too-sweet snack cake, ideal for sharing with a special friend over coffee. The peanut butter is there, in the background, but isn’t in your face. The jam brings even more moisture and the sweet fruitiness the body of the cake needs. The cherries provide a juicy pop, once per slice.
Could you serve this as an actual dessert?
Absolutely. It’d hit the plate with lightly sweetened sour cream in place of whipped cream.
Peanut butter soufflé
2 large eggs, separated
½ cup + 1 Tablespoon (120 grams) brown sugar
¼ cup minus 1 teaspoon (55 grams) peanut butter
Small glug of vanilla – about 1 teaspoon
Pinch of salt
A lot of people are intimidated by soufflés — making them, eating them, or even talking about them. They seem extra-fancy and a little fussy. And sometimes they are. There is a place for extra fancy and fussy. But do you know what is the least fussy, least fancy food in the world? Peanut butter. Let’s do this.
Peanut butter soufflé. Photo by John Fladd.
Preheat your oven to 350°.
Separate your eggs. Do this over the bowl to your stand mixer or the bowl you will be beating the egg whites in. Put the yolks in a separate bowl. Everyone has their own method for separating eggs. My preference is to break the shell on a flat surface, like a countertop. (This pretty much eliminates small pieces of shell in the bowl that I have to fish out.) I crack the egg open and pour it into my open hand. I keep my fingers just far apart enough that the egg white will eventually release its hold on the yolk and slip through them into the bowl. Remember to wash your hands before and after doing this.
Add the brown sugar and peanut butter to the egg yolks. Mix it well with a spoon. The mixture will be really stiff, so it will be more a matter of mashing than mixing.
Add the salt and vanilla to the egg whites, then whisk them to medium peaks. Have you ever seen a cooking show or competition where a baker beats their egg whites, then holds the bowl over their (or a competitor’s) head to show that they are stiff enough? This is what bakers call stiff peaks. That’s a little stiffer than we want for this recipe. We want them to be the consistency where the TV baker starts giggling and it is just enough to make the egg whites slowly glop onto somebody’s head.
With a silicone spatula, scoop out about a third of your egg whites and mix them into the peanut butter mixture. This is what professionals call loosening up a stiff base. Go ahead and mix everything together. As the mixture becomes more liquidy and stir-able, the doubt you’ve been feeling about your ability to pull this whole soufflé off will ease up by about 15 percent.
This next step is the closest thing to tricky. Use the spatula to scoop out about half the remaining egg whites and put them in the peanut butter bowl. Run the edge of the spatula through the middle of the mess, then sweep it around the edge of the bowl. A tiny bit of the whites will mix together with the base. This is called folding in the egg whites. Even though you can’t see it easily with the naked eye, beaten egg whites are made up of a gazillion tiny bubbles, held together by the sticky proteins in the egg white itself. Remember when your hands felt sticky and gross after separating the eggs? That stickiness is what’s holding those tiny bubbles together. Those bubbles are what’s going to lighten your soufflé and give it lift. By folding the egg whites into the mixture, instead of just stirring it, you are preserving as many of the bubbles as possible. Keep folding until the whites are mostly incorporated with the base.
At this point, your peanut butter mixture should be looking a lot lighter. Your soufflé stress will also lighten up — probably another 15 percent. Fold the rest of the egg whites into the mixture.
Gently spoon the mixture into two large ramekins and put them into your preheated oven.
Bake for approximately 30 minutes. Your oven and mine are probably different by a few degrees, so you might have to make this recipe a couple of times before you perfect the timing. The good news is that even sub-optimal soufflés are awfully good.
Pull the puffed-up soufflés from the oven and serve immediately. The now-baked bubble matrix is proud and puffy, but it will collapse within the next 10 minutes. Serve with a fruit compote; my suggestion is rhubarb (see below).
When most people think of soufflés, they tend to think of delicate, lighter-than-air dishes that require a lot of concentration to eat. These peanut butter soufflés have a little of that, especially when they first come out of the oven, but they also have a substantial, gooey quality that make them extremely comforting. A fruit compote will help give a contrast to the rich, peanut-butteriness of the soufflé itself.
Why are all the ingredients listed in cups and grams? Cups: Everyone has measuring cups. There will probably not be any math involved. You don’t sound like a nerd. Grams: You can measure more precisely. Flour, for instance, can take up many different volumes, depending on whether it is fluffed up, packed down, or if Mercury is in retrograde. After you add each ingredient to a bowl, you can use the tare button to zero your reading out and be ready for your next ingredient.
Fruit compote
This is the easiest thing you will cook this week. It has a “Toast” level of simplicity.
Combine equal amounts, by weight, of frozen fruit and sugar in a small saucepan. This works for almost any type of fruit, but for this particular application I like to use chopped rhubarb; it has a sour acidity to it that contrasts nicely with the gooey peanut butter.
The important thing here is to use frozen fruit. If you have fresh fruit that you want to use, chop it to a size you like, then freeze it. The freezing, while bad for the texture of whole fruit, is perfect for making jams, syrups and compotes. As the liquid inside the cells of the fruit freezes, it forms large sharp ice crystals that pierce cell walls and help the fruit give off more juice.
Cook the fruit-sugar mixture over medium heat. As the fruit thaws, the sugar will help draw out liquid. By the time it comes to a boil, the sugar has dissolved thoroughly. Stir occasionally as it cooks; you might want to help the process along with a potato masher. This is also a good way of separating out cherry pits, if that’s an issue.
When the mixture has come to a boil, remove it from the heat and let it cool. Taste it and maybe add a squeeze of lemon or lime juice to brighten it up, if it needs it. You can use this compote as is, or strain it to make syrup (see pancakes, below). The remaining pulp is excellent on English muffins, or a peanut butter soufflé, if you don’t want it so runny.
Keep in mind that raspberries and blackberries are very much more seedy than you think. You will almost certainly want to strain them and make syrup.
A peanut butter and jelly cocktail
You did a really good job with that soufflé. You deserve a reward.
2 ounces Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey
3 ounces Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine
1 ounce fresh-squeezed lemon juice
5 or 6 ice cubes
Peanut butter and jelly cocktail. Photo by John Fladd.
Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake until thoroughly chilled.
Pour, unstrained into a rocks glass. Drink, with a child-like song in your heart.
If you had to guess beforehand, you’d probably think that the Manischewitz would be a little too sweet and that the whiskey would give this drink some backbone. In fact, though the wine is nice and grape-y, the sweetness comes from the Skrewball. In fact, it might even be a little cloying, if not for the lemon juice, which steps in at just the right moment and says, “I got this, Boss.”
This is shockingly good. One of these might turn your day around. Two of them might encourage you to try a new recipe — maybe pancakes (see below). Three of them might bring on some ill-advised, late-night texts. Or a nap.
Peanut butter pancakes with blackberry syrup
Peanut butter pancakes with blackberry syrup. Photo by John Fladd.
So, to make these pancakes the way I really want to, we’d have to run a brunch bar in Las Vegas.
That sounds good to me; it might be our ticket out of here. Tell me more.
Well, OK. It would be really nice to have sourdough pancakes.
Ooh, I’m in. Let’s do that.
Yeah, unfortunately, the batter needs to proof for 12 hours or so. That wouldn’t be a problem in our Vegas Brunch Bar — I’m thinking we should call it Midnight at Schmitty’s — but real people almost never realize they want pancakes until about five minutes before they eat them.
I see your point. Until we get the Vegas place going, I’m going to stick with a boxed mix I like. And who’s Schmitty?
I know a guy, who knows a guy.
And—
That’s Shmitty.
Oh, OK. What about the peanut butter?
Yeah, that’s another thing that will work better in Vegas. I spread some peanut butter on a silicone sheet and froze it, then chopped it up to sprinkle on the wet side of the pancake as it cooked in the pan.
That sounds like a really good idea.
Well, it does, but a home freezer doesn’t really get the peanut butter cold enough. It freezes solid, but because of the high oil content, it melts after the first pancake. We’d have to use liquid nitrogen. That would get it cold enough that a line cook wearing snowmobile gloves and a face shield could drop it on the counter and shatter it into peanut butter shards that she could put back into a bowl of liquid nitrogen until she’s ready for them. It would make a great show.
Aaaand, most of us don’t actually have access to liquid nitrogen, so—
Uh-huh. At home, we’re stuck with using tiny jam spoons to drop dollops of the peanut butter onto the wet side of the pancake.
Does it work?
Really, really well. And then there’s the syrup.
What about it?
We could make it for customers on demand. We could have a buffet of frozen fruit for them to choose from, and they could fill up a bowl with it and we’d make it right in front of them.
And if a customer wanted something special, what could we make?
Twenty-five dollars per pancake.
Peanut butter banana cocktails
The best bananas aren’t pretty.
It’s that simple; people want pretty, yellow bananas, maybe a little bit green at the tips. The ones that don’t have a huge amount of flavor and might even be acidic enough to hurt the roof of your mouth. Ones, in short, that don’t taste very much like bananas.
Photo by John Fladd.
This is what a delicious banana looks like.
No. Not the yellow ones on the bottom shelf.
No. Not the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, though we will get to the peanut butter, soon enough.
The brown bananas with blotches of yellow, sitting in front of the cash register at a convenience store. The ones that look like they have seen too much and lost the will to live. They are the ones that will actually taste like bananas.
And what will you do with one?
Banana rum
1 very ripe convenience-store banana. You want the sketchiest-looking one in the gas station. Pick it up, cradle it in your hands, and murmur to it, “Shhhh. It’s OK. You’re safe now.” This is patently untrue, but lulling your banana into a false sense of security will make this whole process easier.
2 cups white rum
Peel the banana, then muddle it thoroughly in the bottom of a large, wide-mouthed jar.
Add the rum, seal the jar, then shake vigorously.
Put the jar somewhere cool and dark. (I like to put it in the laundry room.) Shake it twice a day for a week.
After a week, strain, filter and bottle it.
This will give you a lovely, slightly cloudy rum that tastes of bananas but is not terribly sweet.
Peanut butter rum
This will use a bartender’s trick called “fat washing.” This exploits a chemical loophole: Any flavor that bonds to an oil will also bond to alcohol. So if you expose something flavorful and fatty — bacon grease, browned butter or, in this case, peanut butter — to a high-proof alcohol, given enough time, the booze will strip away some of the flavor and give it a new home.
Empty a jar of peanut butter into a non-reactive container with a lot of surface area. A glass casserole dish would be ideal for this. Spread the peanut butter over the entire bottom surface of the container with a silicone spatula or the back of a spoon.
Fill the empty peanut butter jar with medium-quality white rum. You don’t want the very cheapest stuff, but the flavor of the peanut butter will cover up any delicate flavor notes, so probably not the most interesting stuff you have either. A bottle of Bacardi or Captain Morgan will do very nicely.
Put the cap back on the peanut butter jar, and shake it to wash out any peanut butter you might have missed, then pour it into your container, to completely cover the peanut butter.
Put some sort of cover over the container — parchment paper, followed by a layer of aluminum foil, perhaps. Put it somewhere out of the way, where nobody will bump into it for a few days.
After four days, carefully pour the rum off into a new container. Filter, and bottle it. It is now delicious.
Two delicious cocktails you can make with these rums
An Elvis martini
Combine 2 ounces each of banana and peanut butter rums in a mixing glass with ice.
Stir gently, then pour into a chilled martini glass.
Garnish with a strip of bacon.
Even better: a peanut butter banana daiquiri
Peanut butter banana daiquiri. Photo by John Fladd.
In a cocktail shaker with ice, add 1 ounce Banana Rum, 1 ounce Peanut Butter Rum, 1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice, and ¾ ounce simple syrup.
Shake thoroughly, then strain into a coupé glass. Garnish with a slice of lime.
Just as with the banana you used to infuse your rum, you will want to use a lime that has seen a few too many things, one that, if it were starring in a fruit-based buddy cop movie, would say, “I’m getting too old for this.” It might be a little dried up. It might even have started to turn yellow. You want an experienced lime for this.
Your resulting cocktail will be stunningly delicious. You will be able to taste each element — the peanut butter, the banana, Grampa Lime, and the hint of sweetness that you’ve used to make everything mesh.
The world’s best breakfast sandwich
Thanks for meeting with us, Otto. We’re very excited about this project.
The world’s best breakfast sandwich. Photo by John Fladd.
“My pleasure. I’ve always wanted to direct an adaptation of a Shakespeare play. Romeo and Juliet will be a good challenge for me.”
Outstanding! We’re all on the same page. We’ve made a few notes for you on the casting.
“Oh, I’ve got a casting director in mind. I’ve always worked with her and she’s always done really solid work for me.”
Oh, no doubt. We love her. She’s like family.
“And yet, you still have some casting notes for me.”
Excellent! I’m glad we’re all in agreement here. The first part we’ve cast for you — we’re really excited about this — is a bit of a coup. We’ve gotten Helen Mirren to play Juliet.
“Dame Helen Mirren?”
Like I said, we’re really excited about this. Juliet is supposed to be beautiful and Helen Mirren is one of the most beautiful women in the world.
“Yes. Yes, she is. She is also 77 years old. Juliet is supposed to be 14.”
Mirren’s a pro; don’t worry about it. You’re really going to like this next one. We’ve found your Mercutio!
“And who do you see playing him?”
A CGI Scooby Doo!
“Because—”
He’s incredibly popular. This will bring in a whole new generation of Shakespeare fans! We can’t kill him off, of course, but he’ll totally refresh the whole duel scene!
“Ruh-roh, Romeo’?”
See? This practically writes itself!
Details matter, people.
Ingredients
Assemble in the following order:
1 slice of white toast. You’re going to be tempted to use better bread — something with seeds, or fiber, or flavor. Save them for a more conventional sandwich. This one calls for toasted white sandwich bread.
Natural peanut butter — the kind that separates if you don’t refrigerate it. Use the KISS principle here: Keep It Simple, Sandwich.
Pickled jalapeños. Not fresh chilies. Not hot sauce. Pickled. Jalapeños.
A scrambled egg. I make mine in the microwave. Beat an egg in a small bowl with a tablespoon or so of milk or cream, then cook it for 67 seconds. Will it be the fluffiest, most delicate scrambled egg you’ve ever had? Probably not, but it’s the right egg for this sandwich.
Fresh ground black pepper and coarse sea salt.
Believe it or not, this is an excellent sandwich. The spicy acidity of the pickled jalapeños cuts the richness of the peanut butter. The egg gives it dignity and gravitas. Delicious bread would be a distraction, but the crunch of the toast pulls everything together.
“OK, but I can put cheese on it, right?”
No.
“It doesn’t really need jalapeños, does it?”
Yes, it does.
“No offense, but I don’t think I’m going to make this; it sounds too weird.”
Don’t worry about it. This sandwich will be there when you need it. Someday, you will be clawing your way back from a broken romance, or a late night out, or three hours of your life in a meeting that you will never get back, and this sandwich will be there for you.
Peanut butter and jelly sorbet
In our increasingly strident and partisan world, it’s easy to feel alone and bitter. It sometimes feels like we have nothing in common. Black is white. Up is down. Tangerine is a color. Madness!
Is there a common thread to humanity where we can find common ground?
Ice cream.
If someone says that they don’t like ice cream, do not trust them. I’m not saying that they are absolutely, 100 percent, reptilian aliens in a skin suit, but you should really not take the chance.
This is technically a sorbet, meaning that it is made without dairy, so we can’t call it ice cream, but it’s frozen and smooth and peanut buttery. It is a riff on a recipe from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop.
Ingredients
¾ cup (180 grams) smooth peanut butter
¾ cup, heaping (180 grams) brown sugar
2⅔ cup (660 grams) unsweetened almond milk. I like the vanilla-flavored kind. (Dairy purists can use half-and-half.)
Pinch of salt
A small glug (see above) of vanilla
Jelly or jam for ribbon
Peanut butter and jelly sorbet. Photo by John Fladd.
Add peanut butter, brown sugar, almond milk, salt and vanilla to a blender. Blend everything until it is completely mixed and takes up slightly more room in the blender jar.
Chill the mixture for several hours.
Freeze and churn in your ice cream machine, according to the manufacturer’s instructions. (Or according to what the spirit of Mr. Peanut told you in the dream you had after eating all that questionable cheese from the back of the cheese drawer.)
As you spoon the sorbet into whatever dish you will be freezing it in, alternate between gobs of sorbet and spoonfuls of jelly. I have found that jellies with bright, acidic flavors work best; seedless raspberry is good. I haven’t tried lime marmalade yet, but I have high hopes for it.
Harden in your freezer for several hours.
This sorbet is exactly what it purports to be. It is cold and intensely flavored with peanut butter. The jelly ribbon gives contrast in taste and texture. It is refreshing, both physically and emotionally.
This weekend may be your final chance to hit the slopes as many southern New Hampshire ski resorts are projected to close for the season. Sunday, March 26, is the last day to ski at McIntyre Ski Area (50 Chalet Way, Manchester, 622- 6159, mcintyreskiarea.com), Crotched Mountain Resort (615 Francestown Road, Bennington, 588-3668, crotchedmtn.com) and Pats Peak Ski Area (686 Flanders Road, Henniker, 428-3245, patspeak.com), according to the ski areas’ websites. You may get few more weeks on the slopes if you head up north; Gunstock Mountain Resort (719 Cherry Valley Road, Gilford, 293-4341, gunstock.com) closes on Sunday, April 2; Mount Sunapee (1398 Route 103, Newbury, 763-3500, mountsunapee.com) and Bretton Woods (99 Ski Area Road, Bretton Woods, 278-3320, brettonwoods.com) close on Sunday, April 9, and Loon Mountain (60 Loon Mountain Road, Lincoln, 745-8111, loonmtn.com) expects to stay open through Sunday, April 16.
Heating help
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance program (LIHEAP) has been approved to receive an additional $4.2 million in federal funding, the New Hampshire Congressional delegation announced in a press release. LIHEAP funds New Hampshire’s Fuel Assistance Program and helps low-income households pay their home heating and energy bills to prevent energy shutoffs, restore service following energy shutoffs, make minor energy-related home repairs and weatherize their homes to make them more energy-efficient. “Throughout this winter, LIHEAP has played a critical role in helping vulnerable Granite Staters lower their utility bills,” U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that funds LIHEAP, said in the release. “I’m thrilled to see these additional funds headed to New Hampshire, ensuring those in need of heating assistance have the resources they need to cut heating costs and stay warm.”
Excellence in NH
The New Hampshire Department of Safety, Division of Emergency Services and Communications (DESC) has received its sixth recognition as an Accredited Center of Excellence (ACE) for emergency medical dispatching. According to a press release, the accreditation, issued by The International Academies of Emergency Dispatch, is the highest distinction given to emergency communication centers, certifying that the center is performing at or above the established standards for the industry and demonstrates strong local oversight, rigorous quality processes and a commitment to data-driven continuous improvement. In 2022, DESC answered 468,809 emergency calls throughout the state, 98.83 percent of which were answered within the first 10 seconds of the caller dialing. “The Division of Emergency Services and Communications takes pride in offering one of the finest Enhanced 911 systems in the nation,” Mark Doyle, Director of the Division of Emergency Services and Communications, said in the release. “Our re-accreditation from the IAED is a testament to the hard work and dedication from everyone in our 911 call centers.”
Future of health care
Concord Hospital health system’s Concord Hospital Trust is accepting applications from nursing and allied health care students to receive scholarships through the Concord Hospital Trust Scholarship Fund. According to a press release, the Trust awards approximately $45,000 annually, with scholarships in amounts ranging from $500 to $3,000. Eligible applicants must have lived within Concord Hospital health system’s primary service area for more than one year, graduated from a high school within the service area within the past five years, or been employed by Concord Hospital health system. Recipients are selected based on financial need, academic merit, personal character and other criteria. Applications must be received or postmarked by April 23, and award decisions will be announced in June. Download an application at giveto.concordhospital.org/stewardship/scholarship-fund and call 227-7000, ext. 3082, with questions.
History with purpose
The American Independence Museum in Exeter announces the launch of “We Are One,” a new initiative that will serve as the museum’s guiding principle for the next three years. According to a press release, “We Are One” consists of four tenets: bringing history to life, educating children and youth, engaging older adults and building community. The museum, which is home to a collection of 3,000 historic artifacts, is developing a variety of new programming, events and exhibits centered around the “We Are One” tenets, with an organizational emphasis on inclusive and diverse perspectives. “We’ve always been a country full of people with big ideas, sometimes wildly different ideas, which I think makes us stronger,” Alena Shellenbean, events and marketing manager, said in the release. “‘We Are One’ is an idea that can hold us together and make our differences into a strength.” Visit independencemuseum.org to learn more.
The 2023 New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival’s wrap party and final in-person film event will be held at Red River Theatres in Concord (11 S. Main St.) on Sunday, March 26, at 3:30 p.m. The theater will screen Dedication, a film based on Roger Peltzman’s one-man play of the same name that follows the true story of his family’s escape from Berlin to Brussels in 1933. A discussion with Peltzman will follow the screening. Tickets cost $12 at redrivertheatres.org. To learn more about this year’s New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival and to access virtual screenings of films, which will be available through April 16, visit nhjewishfilmfestival.com.
The NCAA DI Men’s Ice Hockey Manchester Regional Championship will take place at the SNHU Arena in Manchester (555 Elm St.), with the first session on Thursday, March 23, featuring Boston University vs. Western Michigan at 2 p.m. and Denver vs. Cornell at 5:30 p.m., and the second session on Saturday, March 25, when the winning teams of the two first-session games will go head to head at 4 p.m. Get tickets at snhuarena.com.
The New Hampshire Audubon’s Massabesic Audubon Center in Auburn (26 Audubon Way) is holding a NestWatch Volunteer Training session on Saturday, April 1, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., for people who want to learn about the Eastern Bluebird and/or volunteer an hour or two a week from April to August to record data about the Eastern Bluebird. The nature center has nearly 100 monitored nest boxes, according to the NH Audubon website. The session costs $5, and registration by March 30 is required. Call 668-2045 or visit nhaudubon.org to learn more.
Growing up in a small town in California, I learned early on there were two places where I was to be on my best behavior. One was our parish church and the other was the town library. Both were somewhat monumental structures in terms of their outward appearance: the former a red brick Gothic with a very tall steeple, and the other a granite classical Greek style building. Both were presided over by equally imposing and formidable people: the former by Monsignor Jacobs, and the latter by Miss Emily Richardson. In their own distinctive ways, these two exercised considerable influence over me and my contemporaries. In church, we learned religious teachings, ritual, music and a good smattering of Latin. At the library, we learned that information, and eventually knowledge, is acquired by hard work, persistence and curiosity.
Miss Richardson was a strict teacher, but one whose love for her profession came to the fore when she saw the expression of discovery on our faces after helping us find a reference or a book that took us to new places. Of course, we had to obey the rules: no unnecessary talking, never reshelve a book yourself, and never write on or in, other otherwise deface, any library materials. During our pre-teens, when the hormones were stirring, she would carefully monitor our visits to those stacks where there were to be found graphic anatomical illustrations, asking if there were a specific research paper we might be doing that required such materials. Shamefaced, we’d slide back to our chairs.
At the regular library board meetings, however, Miss Richardson was a completely different person. A passionate advocate for her collection to be as up-to-date as possible, she would forcefully rebut the objection of the occasional patron who expressed the view that Peyton Place or Lady Chatterley’s Lover should not be in our stacks. “Our library should be a place where the judgment of the librarian to select and the judgment of the reader to read can both be accommodated without conflict.” She once affirmed. That value stayed with me, and I’ll never forget how embarrassed I was when Miss Richardson, having read a book report I’d written for my freshman high school English class, commented, “Stephen. You should be reading better literature than this.”
My story harks back to a time when professional judgment was valued, and its exercise respected. That is in sharp contrast with the challenges of librarians today. A friend recently told me she had resigned from her town’s library board because she could not find a way to mediate the good-faith efforts of her librarian and the protests of concerned parents and even local legislators demanding the removal of certain books.
As I reflect on my early years, I appreciate the complementary of the First Amendment right to read and the First Amendment right to religion. It is a balance we must work harder to maintain.
After two years more or less on the sidelines, St. Patrick’s Day revelry returned to full flower in 2022, and the party only looks to get better with the big day landing on a Friday this year. Across New Hampshire, pub keepers are counting down. Early hours and Irish breakfasts are the rule, along with a bevy of traditional music.
Running a chain of Irish pubs, Salt hill, the Tuohy family exemplifies this celebratory spirit. Every year each pub kicks off with a traditional breakfast of bangers, mash and black pudding. Musicians like Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki and Concord band Rebel Collective start the day there and make their way back to bigger venues for evening sets.
This year, fiddler Tirrell-Wysocki will perform at noon in Lebanon, then head to Bedford for a private show. He’s also at LaBelle Winery on March 16, Claremont Opera House on March 18, and Stone Church on March 19. See jordantwmusic.com.
Rebel Collective will kick things off in Lebanon at 9:30 a.m., play the Shanty at 1:30 p.m. and head to Shaskeen for 8 p.m. See https://therebelcollectivemusic.com.
Other musicians making the rounds that day are O’Hanleigh, Atlantic Crossing, JD & the Stone Masons, and Celticladda. The Salt hill Celli Band will be in Newport and Sunapee, led by Anthony Santoro, a musician who’s led the weekly Irish session in Lebanon since Josh and Joe Tuohy opened it in 2003.
“He is so good that other really good musicians want to find him and play with him,” Josh Tuohy said while sitting at the original pub’s bar. “I’m not exactly sure who Anthony has with him this year, but I know it’s only high quality, because I don’t think he would play with less.”
Salt hill’s other locations are in Newport and at the foot of Mount Sunapee, a stone’s throw from the original site of The Shanty, a pub Tuohy’s mom and dad ran from 1968 to 1991. The famous and infamous have stopped there over the years.
In the ’70s, a pre-sobriety Steven Tyler pushed a cigarette machine down a flight of stairs, resulting in a lifetime ban from Mother Tuohy. A reformed Tyler has dropped by the new Shanty many times. Two summers ago he lingered long enough to take pictures with staff and even helped wash a few dishes.
New York subway shooter Bernie Goetz enjoyed a burger and a beer there while on the run from law enforcement and staying at a nearby hotel. “We didn’t know who he was until a couple of days later when the news hit,” Josh recalled.
March 17 is often the only time of the year many people go to an Irish bar, but Salt hill is a bit different.
“There’s people that come in a few times during the year,” Josh Tuohy said. “They’re always here on St. Patrick’s Day; it’s everybody’s go-to, and I like to think they wouldn’t consider going anywhere else. We always have a little extra for them that day.”
Those extras include a $500 cash prize at each location, along with plenty of Guinness, Jameson, Smithwick’s and other assorted bar swag. “We give away so many prizes,” Josh said. “We want everyone to feel like they got something.”
Pre-pandemic there were five pubs. One in Hanover was due for a lease renewal in mid-2020, as Dartmouth College went remote and events that filled the bar got canceled. “I don’t think we could have done anything else,” Josh said. “A lot of people said, ‘I’m sorry you went out of business,’ but we really just chose not to stay there.” Another in West Lebanon shut temporarily in September 2022 citing staffing shortages, and did not reopen.
Despite those setbacks, the Tuohys aren’t looking back.
“My brother and I are burger-flippers and bartenders by trade for our whole lives, and I love what we’ve accomplished,” Josh said. “The little victories, the challenges, the difficult things — it’s never the same day twice. I don’t think I’d know how to retire…. I’m wicked lucky to say we still love when we do.”
High on his list of reasons for that feeling is every Irish pub’s green letter day.
“Everyone, wherever they go for St. Patrick’s Day, I hope they’re safe and have a great time,” Josh said. “If they come to our places, they’re going to have more live music that they can shake a stick at and the best authentic traditional Irish food around, and everyone’s going to go home with a prize — if I could do it safely, I’d have a T-shirt cannon. I expect and hope to see all of our friends and family back, and anyone who’s new and hasn’t been here, give us a try. You’re going to have a good time, I promise that.”
St. Patrick’s Day at Salt hill starting at 9 a.m. Salt hill Pub: 2 W. Park St., Lebanon; 448-4532 Salt hill Shanty: 1407 Route 103, Newbury; 763-2667 Salt hill Newport: 58 Main St., Newport; 863-7774 Full schedule at salthillpub.com
A dozen more New Hampshire Irish pubs with St. Patrick’s Day festivities Barley House 132 N. Main St., Concord; 228-6363 Cara Irish Pub 11 Fourth St, Dover; 343-4390 Casey Magee’s 8 Temple St., Nashua; 484-7400 Fury’s Publick House 1 Washington St., Dover; 617-3633 Holy Grail 64 Main St., Epping; 679-9559 Kathleen’s Irish Pub 90 Lake St., Bristol; 744-6336 Kelley’s Row 417 Route 108, Somersworth; 692-2200 McGarvey’s 1097 Elm St., Manchester; 627-2721 Olde Kilkenny Pub 30 Middle St., Milford; 283-6631 Peddler’s Daughter 48 Main St., Nashua; 821-7535 Shaskeen Pub 909 Elm St., Manchester; 625-0246 Wild Rover Pub 21 Kosciuszko St., Manchester; 669-7722
Featured photo: Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki. Photo Credit: Mark Myers.
Another sequel, another spate of Ghostface killings in Scream VI — or, wait, is it a franchise now?
After all, as Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown), one of the Core Four (as they extremely reluctantly call themselves) next-generation survivors from the last movie (the 2022 installment, the fifth Scream, called just Scream), says, the rules for a franchise are different. Legacy characters like Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) can die. Main characters like Sam (Melissa Barrera), last movie’s lead girl and daughter of OG Ghostface Billy Loomis, and her younger sister Tara (Jenna Ortega) also can die — or be the new killer. They killed Luke Skywalker and Tony Stark, Mindy explains; franchises can do anything.
Scream VI takes the action out of Woodsboro and to New York City, where Sam and Tara and Mindy and her brother Chad (Mason Gooding) have all moved to try to put the past behind them but still stick together. They are all dealing, sorta: Tara is going to frat parties and making bad choices, Chad is slow to act on his feelings for Tara, Mindy is hanging close in part because what are the chances lightning (i.e. a serial killer) will strike twice (heh), and Sam is attempting therapy, in part because the narrative about Sam has shifted. The internet has decided that she is the secret true killer, not her boyfriend and his secret girlfriend, whom (the internet says) she framed. So sometimes strangers throw drinks on her and call her a killer while filming her reaction — a particularly disturbing turn of events because Sam does wonder if some part of her does have her father’s stabby inclinations.
Right away, the killings start — actually, as Mindy predicts, the movie goes bigger and actually starts with two Ghostface killings, rather cleverly setting up the movie’s whole vibe of being not just self-referential in its dialog but structurally meta too. And intentionally, I think, the movie pretty quickly lays out the best suspects for the murders, subverts your expectations a little but then steers right back onto the path you suspected from the start. And it works? There’s something sort of cute about how it plays with and fulfills your expectations at the same time. It’s, I dunno, fun in a way that keeps this movie, so so deep into its lore, so full of characters I do not remember at all (did you remember Hayden Panettiere was in this series? because I did not), unexpectedly lively. The new characters are fun, the old characters are fun. This is a solid cast that seems to understand what’s being asked of them and are able to (mostly) keep their characters just interesting enough to get me moderately invested in them. (As to the “mostly,” the movie itself points out that you’ve gotta fill out the cast with some redshirts.)
While I didn’t find most of the movie particularly scary or horrifying (it is not quite Cocaine Bear goofy in its gore but it’s also not entirely not that), there were a few legitimately unsettling moments, usually tapping into some non-horror-specific fears about whom in your life you can trust and some nice “everybody looks like a serial killer on this subway” shots (it’s Halloween in the movie so there are legitimately multiple civilians dressed as horror movie villains but also that kind of paranoia is well conveyed).
Scream VI is, ultimately, fine — which was more than I was expecting and just enough to make me like it more than not. B-
Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, and brief drug use, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and written by James Vanderbilt & Guy Busick, Scream VI is two hours and three minutes long and distributed in theaters by Paramount Pictures.
65 (PG-13)
Adam Driver reminds you that he can do action movies with 65, a non-Jurassic Park franchise film that allows for fighting dinosaurs.
It’s been a minute since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) and he’s done more prestige-y stuff since then, so walking around in a chest-hugging shirt wielding a big sci-fi gun while uttering a minor amount of dialogue is probably good, career-wise, just to keep his hand in.
Mills (Driver) is the captain of a science space vessel transporting a bunch of people in cryo-sleep. The trip is going to take him two years, two years when he’ll be away from his wife (Nika King) and his young daughter Nevine (Chloe Coleman). This makes him sad but, as his wife reminds him, the trip significantly boosts his pay, giving the family the means to pay for Nevine’s medical treatment.
So, you know, paying for health care is a bummer everywhere, even a long time ago on a planet far far away, because, as we’re quickly told, we’re 65 million years ago and Mills and his family live on another planet.
Mid voyage, Mills’ ship runs into an unexpected asteroid field and is badly damaged. It crashes onto an unknown planet, with the cryo pods being flung this way and that. At first it appears that all the passengers have died, but then Mills discovers that one pod, carrying a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), is still intact and he takes her out of cryo sleep. He searches for the escape pod that will take them off the planet to where they can be rescued. It is about 13 kilometers away, which doesn’t sound so bad on this planet with breathable air and potable water except that Mills quickly realizes it is also chock full of giant bugs and even gianter people-eating dinosaurs. And there is a ticking clock on this endeavor; it seems that a catastrophically large asteroid from the field his ship flew through is headed to the planet.
Because — dun dun DUN — Mills is on Earth! Right before the dinosaurs are about to have a Very! Bad! Day!
This is maybe a mild spoiler; though I felt like the movie make most of this pretty clear pretty fast. There was something about this very blunt setup and the surface-level bleakness of the characters that made me worry initially that this movie would be very slow going with very little in the way of stakes. And while it did feel this way a little bit in the beginning, I did find myself interested enough in these two characters and in Adam Driver’s overall performance. Koa and Mills don’t speak each other’s language, which helps keep the cutesiness to a tolerable level. The movie uses very simple scenes and moments between them to build their makeshift parent-child relationship and I believed it enough. And Driver is compelling; I mean he brought something to Darth Sulkypants in the last Star Wars trilogy and he is able to make even the goofiness of House of Gucci watchable.
65 isn’t particularly deep or innovative in its Man vs. Dino interactions but it is a solid enough bit of action. B-
Rated PG-13 for intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Scott Beck & Bryan Woods, 65 is an hour and 33 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by Columbia Pictures.
