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News & Notes 25/02/13

Fritz retires

Fritz Wetherbee, broadcaster and longtime teller of stories from New Hampshire history on WMUR-TV’s New Hampshire Chronicle, has announced his retirement. “For nearly 25 years, Wetherbee has brought the history, folklore and charm of New Hampshire to life through his signature segment, ‘Fritz Wetherbee’s New Hampshire,’ on New Hampshire Chronicle. His unmistakable voice, quick wit and unparalleled knowledge of the state have made him a household name and an integral part of New England’s cultural fabric,” according to a press release from WMUR. “A five-time Emmy Award winner and a New Hampshire native, Wetherbee’s career in broadcasting spans more than half a century,” the release said.

“I’ve had the privilege of telling New Hampshire’s stories for most of my life, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Wetherbee said in a statement in the release. “But now, it’s time for me to step back, take a breath and enjoy the history I’ve been so lucky to share.”

“WMUR will air a special tribute, I’ll Tell You the Story: A Thank You to Fritz Wetherbee, on Feb. 24 at 7 p.m.,” the release said. An archive of 60 of Wetherbee’s past segments will be available for viewing via WMUR.com starting Monday, Feb. 24, and all 5,000 pieces will eventually be available, the release said.

Mpox

An adult from Merrimack County was identified as having mpox and “is currently self-isolating and recovering at home” and their illness poses “no current risk to the public,” according to a New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services press release on Feb. 7. The individual’s illness is likely related to their recent travel to eastern Africa, where there is an ongoing outbreak of Clade 1 mpox, the genetic type of mpox the individual has, the release said. “There is no evidence that clade 1 mpox is spreading from person to person in New Hampshire or within the United States. This is the first clade 1 mpox diagnosis in New Hampshire and the third … in the United States,’ the release said. The department is “conducting a disease investigation to identify anyone who may have had close contact with the individual. There have been no public locations identified where exposure may have occurred,” the release said. The virus is spread “primarily through direct physical contact with someone who has mpox and has developed an infection skin rash,” according to a statement from State Epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan in the release. For more on mpox, see the department’s webpage about the illness including information about the vaccine at dhhs.nh.gov.

Mission Zero

On Friday, Feb. 7, no adults were waiting in a New Hampshire hospital emergency department for a bed in an inpatient psychiatric treatment facility, with two adults waiting in correctional facilities, according to a press release from the N.H. Department of Health and Human Services and New Hampshire Hospital. “As a result, New Hampshire Hospital will end the day with open beds for the first time in recent memory,” the release said. The DHHS project Mission Zero is “a collaborative effort to eliminate hospital emergency department psychiatric boarding,” according to dhhs.nh.gov. “Today gets us closer to that goal,” DHHS commissioner Lori Weaver said in the Feb. 7 press release. “The collaborative efforts among DHHS, the New Hampshire Hospital Association, NAMI NH, hospitals and advocates are making a real difference in the lives of the people we collectively care for.” See the “Mental Health” section of the DHHS website for the department’s 10-year mental health plan and more on Mission Zero.

More museum time

The Aviation Museum of New Hampshire (27 Navigator Road in Londonderry; aviationmuseumofnh.org) will expand its regular schedule starting Wednesday, March 5, according to a press release. The museum will be open five days a week (an additional two days from its current schedule): Wednesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. The museum will celebrate the new schedule with a ribbon-cutting and cake on Wednesday, March 5, at 10 a.m., the release said. Admission costs $10 for adults and kids 13 and up; $5 for age 6 to 12, 65+ and veterans and active military. Kids 5 and under get in for free.

During the upcoming February school vacation week, the museum will also be open additional days — 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday Feb. 25, through Thursday, Feb. 27, the release said.

Hike Andres

The Andres Institute of Art (106 Route 13 in Brookline; andresinstitute.org) will hold a guided hike of its sculpture-filled trails during February school vacation on Thursday, Feb. 27, at 10 a.m. The hike has a suggested age of 8 and up and will be on the Quarry Trail or the Parkway Trail, depending on conditions, according to an Andres newsletter. The hike will be 45 to 60 minutes with stops at sculptures, the newsletter said. The hike will start at the AIA welcome center, where trekking poles are available for sale for $20, the newsletter said. Sign up for this hike by emailing the number of attending hikers and ages of participants as well as contact info to [email protected].

The Pembroke Historical Society will host a presentation on “Vanished Veterans: An Illustrated Introduction to NH’s Civil War Monuments and Memorials” on Thursday, Feb. 13, at 7 p.m. by historian George Morrison at the Pembroke Town Library, 313 Pembroke St. in Pembroke. The event is free and open to the public. Call 566-1031 for info.

Flag Hill Distillery & Winery in Lee will host the snowshoe race the County Line Derby on Sunday, Feb. 23, with racers following a .42-mile course around the vineyard, snow or no, according to a press release. The event is free but tickets are required and are available at CountyLineDerby2025.eventbrite.com. The event begins at 9:30 a.m.; racers are “tasked with … creating a racer persona,” the release said, and can win Best In Style prizes. Spectators can also compete for a Best Derby Outfit prize, the release said.

The Franco American Centre will hold a Mardi Gras celebration on Sunday, Feb. 23, from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Alpine Club (175 Putnam St. in Manchester) featuring Mardi Gras-themed snacks, family-friendly Hurricane Punch, making a Mardi Gras mask, creating a mini-float, a Mardi Gras parade, Mardi Gras bingo and more, according to a Centre email. Tickets cost $20 for adults, $10 for teens and $5 for kids, plus fees, at facnh.com.

Science Cafe NH will hold its next meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 18, at 6 p.m. at Soel Sistas Cafe, 30 Temple St. in Nashua, for a panel discussion about wastewater, according to an email. The group meets on the third Tuesday of each month; find them on Facebook.

Cover it in Chocolate — 02/06/2025

On the cover

10 What’s better than a delicious strawberry or cookie? A strawberry or cookie (or salty pecan cluster with caramel or even a spicy Cheeto) covered in chocolate! In this week’s issue, John Fladd looks into the transformative power of covering tasty stuff in chocolate to make it even tastier. He gets advice from the experts on buying (cough, Valentine’s Day, cough) and making your own chocolate treats.

Also on the cover: Which restaurant serves the best Indian food? Where can you find a great cookie? Who does a great steak? Answer these delicious questions and more in Hippo’s Best of 2025, our annual readers’ poll. Find a link to the survey at hippopress.com.

It’s good weekend for music. Michael Witthaus talks to Chris Nelson of Lotus Land, which is playing Friday and Saturday at Tupelo (page 26). Find more ticketed shows in the Concert listings (page 30). Or just chill out with a band playing a local brewery or restaurant — find music daily in the Music This Week listing on page 27.

Read the e-edition

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Double Rush

Lotus Land plays twice at Tupelo

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

A good tribute act walks a tightrope, capturing a sound without trying to fully reproduce it. It’s something that bassist Chris Nelson thinks about frequently. His band Lotus Land plays the challenging catalog of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame trio Rush, and Nelson knows that convincing proximity, not perfection, is a sane performer’s best target.

“It’s not like we’re trying to repaint the Mona Lisa, that’s almost a thankless task,” he said by phone recently. “We’ve gelled into performing this stuff with a certain degree of our personalities. Tone comes from the hands of the musician; you can’t help but sound a bit like yourself … you’re not trying to just be a robot.”

Fortunately, Nelson’s voice has a natural pitch that’s similar to that of Rush’s lead singer. Comments about the vocal resemblance have followed him for years. “I’d sing a Zeppelin tune and without fail people would say, ‘You sound so much like Geddy Lee,’” he said. “Here I thought I was doing a pretty good Robert Plant! But anyway, I’m a crazy Rush fan.”

His bandmates, guitarist Bob Chartrand and drummer Mark Dalton, started Lotus Land as a four-piece, parting ways with the original bass and keyboard players when they met Nelson and became a trio. Before playing out, they watched videos and practiced hard, aware that Rush’s fans would “be as understandably critical of us as they are loyal to the real thing.”

They approached their first gig fretting about the formula, prepared to bail if it failed. “I’m not going to put myself and my bandmates through the embarrassment — if it doesn’t work, that’s going to be it, because I know it’s a tall order,” Nelson recalled thinking at the time. “But it was well-received … and it kept snowballing.”

The band took its name from a line in “Freewill,” a song from Rush’s breakthrough 1980 album Permanent Waves. The late Neal Peart was inspired by Homer’s The Odyssey when he wrote it, according to interpretations. In the book Merely Players, Peart said the “Lotus-land” was “a metaphor for an idealized background, a land of milk and honey.”

Their website describes “an obsessive approach … that inevitably compels us to incorporate every authentic Rush nuance into whatever amazing tune of theirs we may be playing,” and on songs like “Spirit of the Radio” and “Tom Sawyer” they deliver on the promise with masterful musicianship that honors the original songs.

Nelson’s bonafides as a fan are undeniable — he’s seen them live almost 20 times, and Lotus Land performed at the 2012 RushCon in Toronto. The latter was a life-changing event for him — he met his future wife there. She was there from L.A., along with thousands of others who’d traveled there.

The meeting only sparked a friendship; both were with other partners at the time. “Two years later, our situations changed, and here we are married; so I can credit the band for that,” he said. “What’s cool is I got to tell Geddy Lee that, very briefly at a book signing, I had my 60 seconds like everybody else, and I got to tell him that.”

Asked to name his most enjoyable moments during Lotus Land’s set, Nelson responded, “I love that question. People have their favorite areas of the band and mine happens to be from Permanent Waves through Grace Under Pressure, so that’s also Moving Pictures and Signals. For my natural register as a vocalist, that feels right in my pocket, so that’s the kind of stuff I love to do.”

That said, there’s another song he loves not on any of those albums.

“I love playing ‘The Path,’” he said, adding a side note. “I never try to change my voice to sound like him at all. I hear some other tribute acts do, but I’ve got a higher, and similar register as Geddy, so I’m just going to sing in my natural voice. If it sounds like him at the end of the day, great. If not, it shouldn’t be too painful on people’s ears because I’m going for the right pitch … it should be close.”

Lotus Land

When: Friday, Feb. 7, and Saturday, Feb. 8, 8 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $42 and up at tupelohall.com

Featured Photo: Courtesy Photo.

The Music Roundup 25/02/06

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

• Reflective: A tribute to touring life, “The Road” from Rebecca Turmel is a fine depiction of the creative impulse that drives many performers. “I had no choice, the music chose me; and once it did, no going back,” she sings. Recorded in Nashville and released in the summer of 2023, the song includes guitar from longtime Jackson Browne Band member Val McCallum. Thursday, Feb. 6, 6 p.m., DOX on Winnisquam, 927 Laconia Road, Tilton; see rebeccaturmel.com.

• Inclusive: The musical nom de plume of singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Roz Raskin, Nova One performs with a band of identically dressed members — bob blond wigs, black dresses, tights and heels. The group is described as “lush, dreamy music that celebrates and centers vulnerability, self-love, self-expression, and queer futurity.” Their latest album is create myself. Friday, Feb. 7, 7 p.m., UNH Strafford Room, 83 Main St. (second floor), Durham, $10 non-students.

• Unscripted: After 25 years in the cast of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Brad Sherwood comes to town for a night of one-man improv comedy. He creates an experience that’s akin to jam bands like Phish, only funnier; no two shows are ever the same. Saturday, Feb. 8, at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $43 and up at palacetheatre.org.

• Escapist: Steer clear of big game hype by having an early brunch with music from Marc Apostolides. There’s nothing like eggs Benedict washed down with mimosas to help forget that the closest New England is getting to the Super Bowl this year is Tom Brady’s commentary. Apostolides is a veteran singer/songwriter who’s also known for producing the Sacred Sessions livestream. Sunday, Feb. 9, 11 a.m., Copper Door, 15 Leavy Drive, Bedford; theapostolidesproject.com.

• Camaraderie: In 1994, a brilliant collection of folk music was released, On A Winter’s Night. Organized by Christine Lavin, it was a showcase of the genre’s finest performers. Among the featured artists were Patty Larkin, Cliff Eberhardt, John Gorka and Lucy Kaplansky. The four are back by popular demand for an in the round song pull and collaborations. Wednesday, Feb. 12, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $29 and up at etix.com.

Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music (TV MA)

Questlove codirects Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music, a very Questlove-y documentary about the role of music in Saturday Night Live throughout the decades.

And by “Questlove-y” I mean wonderfully insightful about the music, not afraid of addressing controversy and exquisitely edited — see also his 2021 doc Summer of Soul (… Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Get a taste of what you’re in for with the six-ish-minute intro, which has been floating around online featuring a mashup of interviews and performances from 50 years of the show’s history. The doc proper keeps the energy going, with a look at the technical aspects of how a performer approaches an SNL appearance, the role that music has had in the show and some of the more memorable performances including the “riot” that wasn’t during a performance by punk band Fear, Sinéad O’Connor’s protest against the Catholic Church, Rage Against the Machine’s tumultuous appearance (as told by Tom Morello, a guy with a fair amount of insight into the music history presented here as well), Ashlee Simpson’s technical difficulties and more. Talking heads from Lorne Michaels, Justin Timberlake, Andy Samberg, Jimmy Fallon, Jack White and others don’t slow things down and help to give both context and, especially from the behind-the-scenes crew, some nice dirt on how the show and the musical elements come together. A must watch for fans of SNL, Questlove and music in general. A Streaming on Peacock and, like, however else you get your NBC. Summer of Soul, which is also awesome, is available on Hulu/Disney+, Tubi and for purchase.

Sing Sing (R)

Colman Domingo is my pick of the five actors nominated for a Lead Actor Oscar this year for his role in Sing Sing, a feature film based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

Domingo, Paul Raci and Sean San Jose act alongside formerly incarcerated men who participated in the program and are here playing, more or less, themselves. These men clearly know how to draw from their experiences to present an entirely raw wallop of emotion that radiates out from them even when all they’re doing is just standing there. Domingo plays John, an author and one-time student at the Fame high school, who helped to found the theater program at Sing Sing. John says he has proof that he didn’t commit the crime he was convicted of and is hopeful that an upcoming hearing will lead to his release. Perhaps it’s his knowledge of his innocence and his belief that eventually he will be able to present his case to someone who will accept and believe his evidence that keeps him relatively optimistic. He writes plays, he helps scout new members for the program’s productions and he seems to work hard to hold up the men for whom the program is something of a life raft.

Divine Eye (Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, a real-life program alum) is a new member who goes through the process of breaking down his prison defenses in order to perform in productions as varied as Shakespeare and a new comedy written by the group’s director Brent (Raci) that includes time travel, cowboys and gladiators. The tough-guy-ness that keeps them alive (and may have also brought them to the prison in the first place) is chipped away and the theater program becomes a place where they can all become vulnerable.

The actors here — both the RTA guys and the civilian actors — get to the heartbreak of the men’s situation (which includes the sense that, had they had an outlet like this for their emotions before they committed crimes or fell into a life of violence, they might not have made the choices that they did). Domingo in particular is excellent as the guy who believes in what he’s doing, has hope for the future, can find joy in the moment — until he can’t. The movie manages to mix moments of levity, moments of “let’s put on a show” goofiness and moments of devastation in a fully captivating way. A Available for rent and purchase.

You’re Cordially Invited (R)

The overly involved father of a bride and pushy sister of another bride find themselves sharing a double booked wedding venue in You’re Cordially Invited.

A single dad since his wife died, Jim (Will Ferrell) wants recent college graduate daughter Jenni’s (Geraldine Viswanathan) special day to be perfect, even if he thinks she’s way too young to marry Oliver (Stony Blyden). Meanwhile, Margot (Reese Witherspoon), a reality TV producer wants her baby sister Neve (Meredith Hagner) to have her dream wedding to Dixon (Jimmy Tatro), an Army National Guard medic and exotic dancer. Both Jim and Margot book the same weekend at a small inn, which can really only do one wedding at a time, on Palmetto Island in Georgia. Because Margot and Neve eventually feel bad for Jenni, they offer to share the hotel, making everything a little crappier for everyone. When slights trigger mutual animosity, both Jim and Margo turn to various degrees of sabotage.

This is an intensely stupid movie — an intensely stupid movie that I had to pause at one point because I choke-laughed so hard I thought I might need medical help. The movie also features a very dumb but enjoyable bit with an alligator, and “Islands in the Stream” is used twice for solid comic effect (as is Peyton Manning). To some degree I feel like the whole thrill here is watching Ferrell and Witherspoon play their standard characters — kooky and tightly wound, respectively — but with the “improbable nuttiness” turned up to 11 and a whole lot more swearing. That sounds hacky, and maybe it is hacky, but they win, they got me. Just ignore the 11th-hour attempt at rom-com-ery; the movie doesn’t seem to think much of it either. B Streaming on Prime Video.

Featured Image: Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music (TV MA)

All the Water in the World, by Eiren Caffall

All the Water in the World, by Eiren Caffall (St. Martin’s Press, 294 pages)

“Storms always came. They took things,” the young narrator of All the Water in the World says matter-of-factly, explaining what life was like before melting polar ice caps drowned New York City.

But in the early days of the climate apocalypse, the girl named Nonie explains, there was always a sense that things could be fixed, that the world could adjust to a new reality without cars, reliable electricity, airplanes, bananas — whatever disappeared next.

“Every year, the storms were bigger — moving the ocean up into the streets” and eventually moving Nonie and her family onto the roof of the American Museum of Natural History, where her parents had worked before the world shut down.

That living arrangement was safe until it wasn’t, when a “hypercane” — a monstrous hurricane with winds up to 200 mph — made even a rooftop in Manhattan unsafe, and Nonie and her people had to relocate even though it seemed that the whole world was under water. It wasn’t just their few belongings that they had to worry about, but the whole of history that had been contained within the museum and has now been painstakingly described in a handwritten logbook for future generations, if they exist.

Eiren Caffail’s debut novel was inspired by actual events: the struggle to save museum collections from the devastation of war.

During the siege of Leningrad in the second World War, Caffail writes, curators stayed in the Hermitage museum, eating paste to stay alive and caring for the art. “They belonged to the art and the art belonged to them and it was a sacred duty. But so was the vision of what it would be one day when the siege was over and the windows repaired and the museum alive again for everyone, for the world that mattered, the one they wanted.”

In All the Water in the World, Nonie’s parents work to save what they can of the museum’s collections, wrapping and hiding artifacts, hoping that they will one day again be treasured and displayed. Nonie herself contributes, making a “water logbook” and writing descriptions of the storms as they get bigger and bolder.

Unlike her sister, Bix, who is terrified of water, Nonie has “water love,” a gift from her mother, now dead. And so it’s Nonie who has to comfort Box as they climb into a birchbark canoe, once part of an exhibit of an indigenous civilization and now their only means of transportation as the water rises in the museum.

Four people — the sisters, their father and an entomologist from the museum — launch the canoe in terrifying conditions hoping to follow the Hudson River to a family farm they know used to exist to the north. Their journey at times is Walking Dead-esque — “Sometimes what looks like shelter is only menace,” Caffall writes — except the horror comes from the water, not zombies. Through it all, Caffall’s prose is gorgeous:

“The new sea coursed with lost things. Debris swirled and rose in the water — headphones, water bottles, flotillas of paper, broken birds, photographs. In the mud of the Park after a storm, photographs surfaced, bleached and peeling, evidence of lives in The World As It Was, lives that included trips in planes, cake with candles, people in fresh clothing with white teeth and no idea what was coming, a child on a three-wheeled bicycle, a newborn screaming with a red face faded pink, a man holding it, on the edge of laughter, eyes slapped wide, joy pouring out of his smiling mouth.”

As they progress through New England, the group meets sickness and death and new people, with more about the past revealed in flashbacks. In this landscape of sorrow and misery, it is an accomplishment for Caffall to close the story in a way that doesn’t end with utter destruction, like the movie Don’t Look Up. But she does so, like the parents kept Nonie and Bix going: “with hope thrown hard at the darkness.”

Caffall has published one other book, a memoir called The Mourner’s Bestiary, which weaves together her family’s struggle with a genetic kidney disease and the plight of animals affected by ecological change in the Gulf of Maine and the Long Island Sound. Dystopian climate fiction is all the rage right now, but Caffall brings a thoughtful voice to the genre and is writing books that have value as books and not just as storylines for disaster movies.

The only part that didn’t work for me were the occasional excerpts from Nonie’s logbook, which, frankly, just aren’t that interesting, compared to the rest of the narrative, because the writer is 13. (Example: “Keller told me that ‘nor’easter isn’t a real weather word, and that at some point, there were so many storms that you could hardly call anything nor’easters anymore.”)

Caffall said it took her 11 years to write this book, and it shows. While some readers might wish for more of a disaster-movie plot, it was clearly not her intent to write that kind of a book. It’s not so much a climate novel as it is a climate meditation that just happens to have a submerged Empire State Building in it. B+ —Jennifer Graham

Featured Image: All the Water in the World, by Eiren Caffall

News & Notes 25/02/13

Cover it in Chocolate — 02/06/2025

Double Rush

The Music Roundup 25/02/06

Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music (TV MA)

All the Water in the World, by Eiren Caffall

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