Category: Q&A

CO-Owner of The Rugged Axe

Charles Keith co-owns The Rugged Axe (377 S. Willow St. in Manchester) with his wife, Melinda Asprey.

Explain your job and what it entails.

I am the owner and operator of The Rugged Axe. We have private parties, scheduled parties, we do events here, so day-to-day operations. I also do the back-of-house inventory, accounting, scheduling, all that stuff.

How long have you had this job?

We opened almost three years ago. In June it will be three years. My wife and I built it ourselves. I have a daughter that works here full-time, another son that works here part-time, and I have my mother coming in, doing some of the artwork.

What led you to this career field and your current job?

I sold computers and software for 18 years for a local IT company, sitting in a cubicle, on the phone all day long. My son was in the Coast Guard at the time. We went down to Florida to visit him. He wanted to go ax throwing, I had never done it, he’d never done it. So we spent a couple hours throwing axes and as I’m doing that I’m quickly realizing, doing the math in my head, this is a pretty decent business to be in. On the flight home I wrote a business plan, told my wife all about it … I had to present that a hundred times to her. On the 101st time she said, “either do it or don’t,”… so we found a spot, we built it out and within about five months we were open and going.

What is your typical at-work uniform or attire?

Logo T-shirt and jeans. So pretty casual, comfortable.

What is the most challenging thing about your work, and how do you deal with it?

Probably coming up with innovative ideas to attract the customers in the door.

What do you wish you had known at the beginning of your career?

How many hours I was going to work. You always think, well, you know, I can get this done, we’re only open 40 hours a week, a few hours in the back of the house, rest of the time I’m on the floor working with customers. It slowly turns into all the time. You work all the time. I didn’t quite realize that at first. After three years you really get a handle on it, you can manage your time a little better.

What do you wish other people knew about your job?

Most of the time people just think you’re talking to customers, throwing axes and having a good time. I’m an accountant, I’m an advertiser, I’m a builder, I’m an artist. … I don’t think people realize going into business for yourself you’ve got to be a jack of all trades.

What was your first job?

I stocked beer and wine and bread and milk for my dad at a supermarket. Him and my grandfather owned a supermarket, a small one.

What is the best piece of work-related advice you’ve ever received?

Don’t give up and you are only as strong as your weakest link. — Zachary Lewis

Five favorites
Favorite book: Cujo from Stephen King
Favorite movie: Rocky
Favorite music: Led Zeppelin, all day long
Favorite food: Hamburgers
Favorite thing about NH: You get a little of everything in New Hampshire. I like that. You get the mountains, the ocean, the fall, good summers, the beaches. I think the diversity of things to do in New Hampshire, I like that, yeah….

Featured photo: Charles Keith and Melinda Asprey. Courtesy photo.

A NH Audubon biologist discusses the importance of our feathered residents

Rebecca Suomala is a Senior Biologist with the New Hampshire Audubon Society.

Why are birds important to New Hampshire?

Birds are such an important part of our state for many reasons. For personal enjoyment, for economic reasons. There are birds that eat insect pests, there are birds that excavate cavities that other birds and other creatures use in the woods, and they’re just a phenomenal presence. They’re the one form of wildlife in the state that anybody can see — I’m excluding insects in this statement. If you think about when you walk out your door, if you’d like to see wildlife, birds are everywhere. We’re fortunate in New Hampshire that we still have woods, we still have fields, we still have coastal areas, we still have habitat for a wide variety of birds and it’s just wonderful.

What are some birds you are likely to see migrating back to New Hampshire?

We’ve got migrants coming back that have spent the winter to our south. Some of the ones that people are starting to see are red-winged blackbirds, chipping sparrows, killdeer and broad-winged hawk. Those are a few that people might see right in their backyard or nearby. Killdeer won’t be in people’s backyards, but they come back to schoolyards and big open field areas.

What are things that people can put out for birds in spring to bring birds to their homes that will not attract bears?

Birdbaths are something that can be an attractant to birds. You can, also, scatter seed on the ground. Not concentrated like it would be at a feeder but scattered around in your yard on the ground, and some of the smaller birds will feed on the ground, like cardinals like to feed on the ground. Northern cardinals, those are the red birds with the red crests. People really love them and they will feed on the ground, so scattering some seed under some bushes might be a good way to still have some seed out for birds. When we get into May, hummingbirds start coming back, and so you can put out a hummingbird feeder, which has sugar water in it, or you can put out fruit like orange halves or grape jelly for Baltimore orioles — they are a very colorful orange and black bird.

Are there any plants people can use to attract birds?

There are, and at this time of year if you have berry bushes or trees that hold their fruit all winter then there will be birds which come feed on them this time of year. The ones that people see the most right now … maybe crabapples that have stayed on the tree long would [attract] either the robin or cedar waxwings.

How should Granite Staters deal with woodpecker noise and bird nests?

In the springtime, the woodpeckers are usually making noise because a woodpecker drumming, you know that tet tet tet tet tet tet tet tet tet, that’s the woodpecker’s song, that’s how the male proclaims his territory, so he wants to make noise. He’s not trying to get into whatever he’s pecking on, he’s trying to make nice big loud noise, which of course, wakes you up in the morning. The best thing to do in that case is put something over wherever he’s pecking so it doesn’t make any noise, some foam or something over it that won’t make noise when he taps on it. Birds that make nests, like in a mailbox or on a wreath hanging on your door, the one thing to remember about that is that [for] small birds, it’s roughly two weeks to incubation and two to three weeks until the young fledge, so if you can stand it for like four to five weeks, then they will be gone.

Talk about your work with the common nighthawk.

They’re a fantastic bird! They eat insects, which they catch on the wing. They fly around and catch their insects. They’re only here from about mid-May until the end of August and they are active at dawn and dusk, they’re a crepuscular species…. They’re vulnerable to predation because they nest on the ground. They’re also vulnerable to the use of pesticides. Pesticides … can be fatal to some birds and then pesticides that cause decrease in insects cause a decrease in the food supply for nighthawks, so they’re a very vulnerable species, and they migrate all the way down to South America…. We’re still learning where they winter. In New Hampshire they are only remaining in a few places. The Ossipee Pine Barrens is one of the remaining strongholds. There are also pairs that nest in the Concord area but they used to nest on stone rooftops but many of those rooftops have been converted to … PVC. With the declining nighthawk population the only town that still has nighthawks resting in it is Concord. They have a fantastic display, the males do. They display over a potential nest area and they circle around above it and make a noise like … peent peent peent and then they do a spectacular dive where they just dive straight down and all of a sudden they pull their wings forward and swoop out of the dive and make this little whoosh noise, then they do it all over again. – Zachary Lewis

Earth Day Celebration
The New Hampshire Audubon holds its annual Earth Day celebration on Saturday, April 20, with a variety of family-friendly activities. This year’s theme is “Planet vs. Plastics” according to the website. The day will feature animal ambassadors, games, crafts, seed giveaways, nest box building while supplies last, a food truck and more.
Where: NH Audubon Massabesic Center, 26 Audubon Way in Auburn
When: Saturday, April 20, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Admission: $15 for a family of four
More info: nhaudubon.org or 224-9909, ext. 400

Featured image: Becky Suomala birding at the southern tip of South America. Photo by Zeke Cornell.

Jewelry maker and owner of CCMDesigns in Nashua (@ccmdesignsforyou)

What do you wish you had known at the beginning of your career?

How expensive beads are. It’s pretty expensive. When I did my taxes this year I was very surprised at what I’d spent on tools and supplies. It’s expensive.

What do you wish other people knew about your job?

I wish people that are creative and have an idea just go for it. I remember one day I had a friend who wanted to make earrings and she goes, ‘What do I do first?’ and I said, ‘You just have to start,’ so I wish people would just start.

What was your first job?

Working for the Telegraph [The Nashua Telegraph] delivering papers.

What is the best piece of work-related advice you’ve ever received?

Probably from my dad, who was in the military, and it was, just be the hardest worker I can be. If it’s slow, you should be doing something. Always be working.

– Zachary Lewis

Five favorites
Favorite book: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
Favorite movie: Avengers: Endgame
Favorite music: My favorite band is Paramore
Favorite food: Cheeseburgers
Favorite thing about NH: That it’s so close to Maine where my family lives.

Featured photo: Chantelle Morin. Courtesy Photo.

Conditions on the trail are not like in your yard

Lt. Jim Kneeland is the Search and Rescue Team Leader and Coordinator at New Hampshire Fish and Game, and the Hike Safe Representative/Partner with the U.S. Forest Service. Visit hikesafe.com.

What is your advice for inexperienced hikers?

Depending on experience levels I always think that hiking in a group is obviously a good idea. Then you can bounce ideas off of one another when you’re out on your excursion, like when to turn back or if you don’t feel comfortable with the conditions. Or better yet if you’re really inexperienced there are a list of guides that you can find online and going with an experienced guide, maybe taking your first time or two to kind of go through a safe way to go hiking … in adverse conditions or basic conditions that you’re not familiar with. That’s another good way to gain some experience is to go with a guide.

What should hikers know about springtime in New Hampshire?

Hiking enthusiasts [who] come from the south where their lawns might be green and the daffodils are coming out … there are still a lot of times late into the spring [with] winter-like conditions and that means you should be prepared … with clothing, footwear, traction devices, even after today you probably need snowshoes again here, even in April. That’s the kind of thing we see people usually screw up here and that’s the change of the seasons, being prepared for where … different weather conditions that are still going on here in elevation.

What is a Hike Safe card?

A Hike Safe card is a way that we help fund search and rescue here in New Hampshire. Traditionally, prior to the advent of the Hike Safe card, the only way that Search and Rescue was financed was through this $1 surcharge on OHRV [Off-Highway Recreational Vehicle] registrations and boat registrations, and that wasn’t eating the cost of search and rescue here in New Hampshire, so they came up with the voluntary Hike Safe card, which is a $25 per person or $35 per family Hike Safe Card which lets you support Search and Rescue in New Hampshire and actually has helped defray the cost of Search and Rescue placed upon the agency.

What should you do if you encounter a bear, bobcat, etc.?

We do have, obviously, bears, bobcats, coyotes, foxes, those kinds of things here in New Hampshire. It’s very rare, you might see one, but it’s very rare that you have an adverse interaction with one. Making noise, making yourself appear large, usually gets the animal to go the other way. I can’t think of a time, there’s only been a few occasions where … not myself, but I have heard of bad interactions with people outdoors and that’s typically because they surprised the animal or maybe even, in the instance of a bear, maybe got between a sow and its cub, but typically most wildlife doesn’t hang around long enough…. Noise is my best advice.

What should Granite Staters do to help preserve wilderness areas they frequent?

They can visit websites through the Forest Service, Appalachian Mountain Club and whatnot to see the best ways to protect those fragile environments above treeline and that’s basically staying on the trail, not trampling vegetation…. A lot of our trails are marked by rock cairns, which are piles of rock that mark the trails, and then in the summer months when you can see the granite that you’re hiking on there’s usually a painted blaze on the rock or a tree that depicts where the trail goes, so staying on marked trails…. Then obviously, no one likes to see garbage and stuff up on the trail. Take what you bring. It baffles me to go hiking and you see people putting dog poop in the green bags and leaving the bags on the side of the trail. If you’re going to pack it in, you can pack it out, so that’s my advice on trash….

—Zachary Lewis

Featured image: Lt. Jim Kneeland. Courtesy photo.

Owner and tattoo artist at Neon Lady Tattoo

Explain your job and what it entails.

I am a tattoo artist and that entails drawing custom pieces for clients and bringing their ideas to fruition.

How long have you had this job?

I’ve been tattooing for 11 years. Started apprenticing in 2013 and opened my own business four years ago in February 2020.

What led you to this career field and your current job?

I wanted to be able to create artwork for my clients and wanted to do something I enjoyed as my career. Creating custom work and being able to do custom art pieces has always been a passion of mine and being able to support myself doing that has been one of the greatest things.

What kind of education or training did you need?

I did go to art school for a little while, for a couple years, but you do need an apprenticeship, so finding a mentor and another tattooer that has experience and is willing to take on a student or an apprentice, in order to be licensed to be able to tattoo legally.

What is your typical at-work uniform or attire?

I wear whatever I please that is comfortable and black usually. It’s my favorite color. It hides the ink and the blood — you can include that or not; it’s the truth, though. It’s professional, looks artsy.

What is the most challenging thing about your work, and how do you deal with it?

Time management. Especially as a business owner, beyond just being a tattooer, owning the business. Just trying to balance personal life and work life is very challenging but it comes with its own rewards.

What do you wish you had known at the beginning of your career?

How much of my time would be dedicated to being involved in it. Like the emails and customer service aspect of it, again, the work-life balance.

What do you wish other people knew about your job?

It can be physically taxing, mentally taxing. But a positive aspect of that, though, is you get to meet so many different people and I feel like you definitely grow as a person with all the folks that you meet and how close you end up becoming with some of your clients and the importance of some of the art pieces that come in. Whether it’s a memorial piece or you’re doing a cover-up or scar cover, how important that can be with some clients and that comes with some responsibility too, being able to give someone a sense of themselves back.

What was your first job?

My father owned a pizza restaurant for several years…. So I pretty much folded pizza boxes for a dollar to help the family, swept floors, cleaned tables, that was my first job.

What is the best piece of work-related advice you’ve ever received?

Stay humble and keep growing. There’s always an opportunity to learn.
—Zachary Lewis

Five favorites
Favorite book: Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt
Favorite movie: An American Werewolf in London
Favorite music: I like a mixture of punk and rock ’n’ roll, in general. Some rap, some hip-hop, some oldies.
Favorite food: Sushi!
Favorite thing about NH: There’s so much to do, especially with nature. I love to hike, I like to garden, I like the seasons.

Featured photo: Neon. Courtesy Photo.

A discussion with Jennifer Militello

Jennifer Militello, award-winning Goffstown poet and MFA Director at New England College, on being named New Hampshire Poet Laureate, to begin her five-year term in April.

What do you believe led to your nomination?

There is a process. There is a selection committee that goes through the applications, or nominations, and it’s made up of members of the different art communities around the state: New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, New Hampshire Writers Project, Poetry Society of New Hampshire. It is a pretty long, extensive process. Then they bring the name that they choose to the governor and he nominates that person and then the Executive Council finally approves it. I think I’ve just been doing a lot of work to increase the visibility of poetry throughout the state for a long time. I’ve been advocating for poets…. There are many excellent poets in the state and many people who could do an excellent job in this role, but hopefully people saw that I had started a festival, run an MFA program, invite visiting poets, and I am in schools a lot. Hopefully, it was a natural next step for some of the work that I’ve been doing.

What does the Poet Laureate do?

There’s no real definition or expectation or role. I think each Poet Laureate chooses the way they want to grow and support the poetry community individually. I think ideally it is someone who is really active in connecting with other members of the poetry community. Someone who is thinking about young people, who is thinking about schools, who’s thinking about libraries, who’s thinking about event organizing, and also who’s just increasing the visibility of poetry. I know there have been poet laureates who have started websites or put together anthologies with New Hampshire poets’ poems featured, there are people who have worked to support poetry in schools. One poet laureate I know created a conference and got together all the poet laureates from across … the different states and then had them do readings in different parts of New Hampshire for a weekend, which was really cool…. I think really it’s just the person who is like ‘poetry is here,’ and it’s amazing, kind of the poster child for New Hampshire poetry for five years. If people are interested in poetry or have questions about poetry they can go and shoot me an email and let me know and I’m here.

What is your take on the state of poetry in New Hampshire?

New Hampshire is in a really exciting place at the moment. One of the things that I always think about when I think about New Hampshire is the incredibly rich literary history of the state. There’s a foundation here. It’s a state full of poetry history. Robert Frost is, of course, the first person we all think of and then, more recently, we have Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, Sharon Olds, who were all living here. I think now the poetry community in New Hampshire is … writing poems that are rooted in the poems of their foremothers and fathers, but … also looking to contemporary poetry to find out what a poem wants to be in the current moment…. It’s a really rich place, it’s pretty exciting.

What led you to the state of New Hampshire?

I was born in New York City and grew up in Rhode Island but I wanted to live in New Hampshire from the time that I knew that you could choose where you wanted to live. We used to come up to go camping when I was a kid, and sometimes skiing. I wanted to be a poet since I was really young and I always saw those two things hand in hand. I always wanted to live in the woods and write some poems and be in a place that felt like a place poets would live in my very young, naive mind, and Robert Frost wrote some of the first poems I was familiar with and loved… When I turned 17 I came up to UNH to study with Charles Simic. I have spent a few short stints away in other places but for the majority of my adult life I’ve lived in different parts of New Hampshire. … It’s an adopted role, my New Hampshirite-ness, but it is something that has always been a dream of mine to live here.

Do you have a favorite poem about New Hampshire?

This is so cliche but I really love ‘Birches’ by Robert Frost…. One of the great things about literature is that it can permanently change the way you see things. When I am here and I see birch trees, there are always moments from that poem. There’s one moment where Frost talks about the birch trees bent over by an ice storm as women who have kind of thrown, bent over throwing their hair over their heads, and I see that image in my head every time I drive through New Hampshire after a snow or ice storm and I have read it so frequently to my daughter that she has it memorized; it’s a really long poem. So yeah, it’s an oldie but goodie and I would say, just off the top of my head, it’s the one I think of.

What’s more important, the sound of the poem or the meaning of the poem?

I actually think a lot of times the meaning grows out of the sound, ideally. I always tell my students to think about songs on the radio that they love. The lyrics are important but the music is important and poems only have the language to accomplish both of those things. You are responding with your intellect but you are also responding with your instinct or emotions. For me, I really like it when a poem is an experience that hits me emotionally and then the intellectual aspects of it follow. So, I am a sound person.

—Zachary Lewis

Featured image: Jennifer Militello. Courtesy Photo.

Bartender at Stark Brewing

Explain your job and what it entails.

I’ve been bartending for 34 years. Bartending instructor for 10. Basically, knowing bartender duties, making drinks, waiting the tables, waiting on the people, keeping your bar clean and stocked, and customer relations, is basically what I do.

What led you to this career field and your current job?

I was a carpenter in the ’80s…. I needed a secondary job to get me through the off season, so I picked this up. My father sent me to bartender school in 1990. I picked it up as a second job and as the years have gone on it’s morphed into my full-time work. I got trained as a bartender but then I got into restaurant work so I can wait tables, I can manage, I can host, I can do basically all aspects of the front of the house of the restaurant.

What kind of education or training did you need?

My only formal education was the bartending class that I took about 30 years ago. It was a 40-hour course. The rest of the training I’ve gotten is through companies and corporations training you to do stuff their way.

What is your typical at-work uniform or attire?

Generally, black and whites, or here, it is basically whatever I want as long as it isn’t offensive. Jeans and a Stark shirt is what they want me to wear. But generally I wear jeans, and if I don’t have a Stark shirt I’ll just wear black.

What is the most challenging thing about your work, and how do you deal with it?

Just dealing with the guests, dealing with the people can be the hardest part depending on the guest’s personality and their level of intoxication.

What do you wish you had known at the beginning of your career?

Well, I kind of walked into it with eyes open. I mean, I know what a bartender does, I got the job. Maybe started a little earlier — I was in my mid to late twenties when I started. That’s about the only thing, really.

What do you wish other people knew about your job?

A personal pet peeve of mine is when people yell drinks at me while I’m in the middle of doing something else. A good bartender has his next three or four steps planned out. But if I’m in the middle of Step 2 and you yell something at me, it’s going to throw me off of step 3 and 4 and then you’re going to get mad at me because I’m going to need to take care of 3 and 4 before I can take care of you….

What was your first job?

Not including paper routes, washing dishes in an Italian restaurant in the early ’80s … a family-owned pizza joint called the Capri. I washed dishes and did prep work there when I was like 15, 16.

What is the best piece of work-related advice you’ve ever received?

… I use this all the time, especially in my bartending classes. It’s all about the dollars and cents. If you’re not making the dollars, it doesn’t make any sense.

—Zachary Lewis

Five favorites
Favorite book: Dean Koontz is the author.
Favorite movie: I like old ’70s car movies, to tell you the truth. Stuff like Vanishing Point and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry.
Favorite music: Classic rock. I have a vintage stereo system … over 600 records….
Favorite food: Probably more of a seafood person.
Favorite thing about NH: The location. Within an hour of Boston, within an hour of home, within an hour of where I grew up, within an hour of the beach, within an hour of the mountains.

Featured photo: Phil DiLorenzo. Courtesy Photo.

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.