Tag: 200910

The Weekly Dish 20/09/10

• Recipes from the heart: Join the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester) for a socially distanced book signing on Saturday, Sept. 12, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., with Dawn Hunt of Cucina Aurora in Salem. Hunt will be presenting her new cookbook, A Kitchen Witch’s Guide to Recipes for Love & Romance, which was released on Aug. 25. The book explores food’s roles in self-love and relationships with personal anecdotes, spiritual techniques and more than 50 original recipes and illustrations. Featured foods include cinnamon crumb pound cake, avocado chocolate mousse, pomegranate mimosas, pork loin roast with cherries and red wine and more. Admission is free; masks are required. Copies of the book will be available for sale. Visit cucinaaurora.com.

• Grapes galore: The Hollis Grape Festival returns for its fourth year on Sunday, Sept. 13, from 5 to 7 p.m. on the Hollis Town Common (Monument Square, Hollis). The event features a variety of Italian desserts and grape-themed goodies, in addition to photo opportunities in a grape-stomping barrel and a live performance from Joey Canzano. Admission is free, but signups online in advance are requested, by visiting fulchino-vineyard-inc.square.site. Donations will also be accepted for the Hollis-Brookline Agricultural Scholarship Fund, the Hollis Police Benevolent Association and the Hollis Fire Department’s Explorers program.

• A trip to Greece: Online ordering is available now for the next Greek food pop-up drive-through event at St. Philip Greek Orthodox Church (500 W. Hollis St., Nashua), happening on Friday, Oct. 2, and Saturday, Oct. 3, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day. A follow-up to a similar event the church held in June, this next pop-up will include slow-fired spit-roasted lamb, pastichio (Greek lasagna), Greek meatballs, stuffed grape leaves with egg-lemon sauce, spanakopita and baklava, plus additional treats like galaktoboureko, a Greek custard baked in phyllo dough, and koulourakia (Greek butter cookies). Call-in orders are also accepted on either day of the event. Visit nashuagreekfestival.com or call 889-4000.

• New orchard directory: In line with the start of the apple picking season in the Granite State, the New Hampshire Fruit Growers Association has reimagined its member farm and orchard website directory for visitors to find where to pick their own apples, according to a press release. You can visit nhfruitgrowers.org and click on the “find an orchard” tab, where you’ll be directed to a map of the state with icons for farm stands or stores, pick-your-own orchards and more. More than 50 varieties of apples are grown in New Hampshire, according to the release, including McIntosh, Cortland, Empire, Macoun, Gala, Mutsu and Honeycrisp.

Tenet (PG-13)

Film Reviews by Amy Diaz

John David Washington is exactly the A-list blend of dramatic gravitas and action chops that he appeared to be in BlacKkKlansman and watching him is the best part of Tenet, Christopher Nolan’s two-and-a-half-hour movie that has been saddled with the job of Saving Movie Theaters.

Will it save movies? According to Variety on Sept. 6, Tenet made a little over $20 million during Labor Day weekend in the U.S. and was at a worldwide total of around $146 million (it opened internationally before it hit screens in the U.S.). When I saw the movie on Sept. 1, I was one of six people in the screening room (which is actually not terrible for a mid-week 6 p.m. movie, based on my experience). So … we’ll see?

About the movie itself: I’ll try not to spoil anything major, but I don’t promise anything, partly because I’m not entirely sure what would be a spoiler. The most basic description for this movie I’ve seen is something like “spy action with sci-fi elements.” To me, it falls in the “Christopher Nolan genre”: There’s a lot of deep bass “wahm wahm”-ing on the score, there’s a pervading sense of doom, there’s a fun Michael Caine scene.

Washington, whose character doesn’t have a name (I didn’t notice that while I was watching it but searching around afterward everything just calls him The Protagonist, which is how he refers to himself a few times), is a CIA-or-something agent whom we first meet while he’s on a mission in the Ukraine. The mission goes sideways but, after some torture and stuff, he is rescued and told he is now part of an even more secret mission, one he is given very little information about other than the word “tenet” and a little fingers-clasp-y gesture.

He partners with Neil (Robert Pattinson), a British intelligence operative, who helps him unravel the origins of some strange weapons he first saw in Ukraine. The movie becomes a series of heists: get into this impregnable place to meet this person, weasel into the orbit of this other person, steal this thing from this other impregnable place, etc, all leading up to a big battle.

The deeper we get into this movie the more I started to see its similarities to the Bill & Ted movies; there’s a fair amount of “because phone-booth time machine, just go with it” (though, strictly speaking, Tenet isn’t about time travel in the phone-booth sense). And I’m OK with that. I don’t need to see the math — one of the flaws of this movie is that it does a little too much trying to explain the math to us. Basically, the core idea of Tenet is based on a cool visual effect. It’s pretty cool the first time you see it and pretty cool throughout. If sliced down to its central elements, a pretty cool visual effect, a very compelling performance by its lead (Washington) and interesting chemistry in the core partnership (Washington and Pattinson, who does solid work here), Tenet has good bones.

But.

But the movie is at least 45 minutes longer than it needs to be. I get it — cool effect, look at all the ways we can use it. It gets exhausting after a while, especially in the final fight sequence, where I understood, in the macro sense, what was happening, but in the second-to-second sense it was frequently all a jumble of Stuff. I feel like we’re watching the same trick too many times and the more mechanics and repetition are piled on, the more the central performances and the urgency get lost.

Another “but”: I found myself annoyed by the handling of a character played by Elizabeth Debicki. I like Debicki (see also Widows) but there are a lot of irritating choices made with her. I don’t know that any of the Tenet characters act like recognizable humans but there are really only two female characters of any consequence and this one feels like she was written by an alien who has never met a woman.

The experience of watching Tenet was strange; I felt myself constantly alternating between thinking “ugh, enough, movie” and thinking “huh, cool.” The movie feels very self-aware, which I think is on purpose, but it is a little too impressed with its own cleverness. B-

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some suggestive references and brief strong language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Tenet is two whole hours and then another 30 minutes on top of that and is distributed by Warner Bros. In theaters

Fathoms

Fathoms, The World in the Whale, by Rebecca Giggs (Simon & Schuster, 284 pages)

In July rescuers worked three days to free a humpback whale that had become entangled in 4,000 pounds of junk near the entrance to New York Harbor. This story had a happy ending; many do not, like the sperm whale found on the coast of Maine with a greenhouse in its stomach.

Yes, a greenhouse, full of tarps, ropes, flower pots and other necessities for growing tomatoes. Also found in the belly of the beast: a coat hanger, an ice cream tub and parts of a mattress. Suddenly the Book of Jonah doesn’t seem quite so fanciful.

“Like a chamber furnished for a prophet or castaway, these stomach contents recalled stories of people surviving inside whales,” writes Rebecca Giggs in her journey to “the world in the whale,” Fathoms.

This is the first book by Giggs, a nature writer in Perth, Australia, who has been compared to Rebecca Solnit (Drowned River) and Annie Dillard (The Abundance) but most reminds me of Diane Ackerman, the American poet and naturalist whose books include The Moon by Whale Light.

Like Ackerman, Giggs writes with a pen dipped in awe and approaches the natural world with reverence and curiosity. They also share an ability to say ordinary things in extraordinary ways, as when Giggs described a tired man with “fatigue pleated around his eyes” or says of a wet boat, “seawater griddles the windows.” In other words, they are not so much authors as poets.

Giggs begins with a riveting experience of attending the death of a whale on Australia’s coast, in her hometown. In nature, the death of a whale is called “whalefall,” a beautiful euphemism that describes how the whale’s body descends to the ocean floor, where it is food for a hidden ecosystem. “A whale in the wild goes on enriching our planet, ticktocking with animate energy, long after its demise,” she writes. “So the death of a whale proves meaningful to a vibrant host of dependent creatures, even as it may look senseless from the shore.”

The whale dying on the beach was not so beautiful, although Giggs manages to make it so, with her descriptions of a community that gathers around the whale in empathy.

As the whale wheezes and gasps over several days, surfers kneel, families take pictures, a woman tries to crown the whale with a wreath made of seagrass and flowers. (“It took three wildlife officers to pull her off the side of the whale, kicking.”) Giggs herself passes the time interviewing wildlife officers about why they can’t humanely euthanize the whale and why, when it dies, its body will be carted to a landfill. “The whale as landfill,” she writes. “It was a metaphor, and then it wasn’t.” She touches the whale and discerns its heartbeat, and then when it passes, launches an exploration of why whales, whose genetic ancestors go back 50 million years, elicit such emotion in humans and what is happening to them in a time of ecological change.

As made evident from her opening story about the greenhouse, Giggs is disturbed about how the detritus of capitalism is filling the ocean and its inhabitants. At least this cruelty to whales is unintentional, unlike in generations in past when we hunted the animals to near extinction. (As late as 1960 whales were the planet’s most economically valuable animal, commanding $30,000 per carcass, which amounts to about $260,000 today, Giggs says.)

She writes in unemotional detail of the boatside flaying of whales and how the whale, especially in the 19th century, was shockingly present in almost every aspect of life — from candles to oil to hair brushes to eyeglass frames to piano keys to the stuffing in sofas. Whales are not fish — they are mammals — but for a time, the Roman Catholic Church sanctioned their meat on Fridays during Lent. And during World War II, Americans were encouraged to eat whale meat in order to save beef for troops.

Fathoms is filled with interesting detail like this, and although she is not a journalist Giggs does a good job of separating myth from fact, while leaving open the prospect of mystery, as when a whale-watch captain explains the leaping of whales as nothing more than a grooming ritual, trying to get barnacles and lice off their skin. (Whales, it turns out, are lice-ridden, which you might want to remember if you ever come across one stranded on a beach.) Actually, some scientists believe that the leaping that so thrills whale watchers may enable communication with distant whales, and Giggs is not willing to discount the idea of play.

In all, Fathoms is a book of wonder, and although the American reader may occasionally tire of its focus on Australian events, Griggs is an accomplished tour guide to their complex world. B+

BOOK NOTES
If you haven’t already taken a side, it’s time to choose: Team Dan or Team Blythe?
Dan, of course, is Dan Brown, one of New Hampshire’s most famous writers, and his former wife was said to have been a great part of his success. The pair that The Guardian once called a “formidable literary team” divorced last year, however, and recent headlines show that a “finalized” divorce is not necessarily final.
Blythe Brown, according to The Boston Globe and other news sources, is suing the The Da Vinci Code author saying that he withheld information about new projects, among other unethical behavior she alleges.
Those new projects, it’s been reported, include a TV series based on Brown’s popular character Robert Langdon, and a children’s book released recently.
It’s a pity that the scandal has eclipsed the publication of the children’s book, which looks simply delightful. Wild Symphony (Rodale, 44 pages), illustrated by freelance artist Susan Batori of Hungary, is the story of an all-animal symphony conducted by Maestro Mouse. It’s not just a book but an interactive experience, with a website (wildsymphony.com), app and accompanying songs composed by Brown, who was an aspiring musician before he became an author.
Brown is not the first author of adult books to later publish a children’s book. Others include Carson McCullers (Sweet as a Pickle and Clean as a Pig), William Faulkner (The Wishing Tree), Aldous Huxley (The Crows of Pearblossom), Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond books, who also wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and of course C.S. Lewis, equally famous for his Christian apologetics like Mere Christianity and his children’s books set in Narnia (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, among them).
There’s also E.B. White, who was a staff writer for The New Yorker and co-authored a classic book on writing, The Elements of Style, before going on to write children’s classics like Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little.
Another already famous writer has a children’s picture book in the works: J.K. Rowling’s The Ickabog, set for publication in November. Rowling and Brown will have to sell a lot of books, however, to compete with the best-selling children’s book of this week, also by an unexpected author: I Promise by LeBron James, the NBA superstar, is an aspirational book for preschoolers up to grade 3, illustrated by Nina Mata.

Album Reviews 20/09/10

Brothertiger, Paradise Lost (Satanic Panic Records)

Honestly, I haven’t come this close to burning a promo CD for personal use in I don’t know how long (shut up, that’s how us old-time music critics roll, because we refuse to pay one red cent for streaming services, given that we literally own enough beloved CDs to cover a football field). This Brooklyn-by-way-of-Ohio chillwave guy (John Jagos) really opens his soul with this one, and it’s a very warm welcome. Right off, the record is like waking up in a Maldives hut and diving right into the crystal-clear water to hang with the crew of sea turtles who’ve gathered to mooch your breakfast scraps. I love everything about it (I suppose I should disclaim right here that I feel right at home with albums like Moby’s Play, and some of that vibe — the mellowest side of it — is inherent in the sort of electronic pop this fellow favors), a set of sinfully sweet tunes over which Jagos’ pliable voice simply glides. If you’d like to hear Above & Beyond release a singles-oriented album, it’d be a lot like this. Awesome stuff. A+

Shira, Birds of a Feather [EP] (self-released)

My blackened soul can only tolerate so much American Idol-sounding stuff, even when the singer isn’t someone I take a visceral disliking to right off the bat, but I was impressed enough that this New Yorker had gotten some press love from the New York Times that I immediately decided she was Going To Be Important In Some Way. No, that’s a lie; I got roped into this when I noted that she called herself a “fairy-folk” artist, you know, like Tinkerbell, and sure, she is something like that, I suppose. Her voice is undeniably huge in this EP’s title tune, switching deftly between a Sarah McLachlan-esque sound to big-top Celtic Woman mode, where she demonstrates that she could definitely blow away an arena-load of over-perfumed grandmothers. She’s a work in progress, certainly; in “Usually” she switches over to ’90s radio-folk and tables what comes off like (top-notch) Jewel karaoke. But sure, fairy folk. I don’t hate the idea. B

Retro Playlist

Eric W. Saeger recommends a couple of albums worth a second look.

It’s true that the Covid-19 pandemic has spelled doom for a lot of businesses. It’s destroyed a lot of individuals and families as well, of course, people who’ve looked on as their savings melt away to nothing. For now, though — and you may have noticed signs of this on social media — others are pretty chill about it. Financially secure retirees with savings, pensions and Social Security income are doing OK. I know some of them. They’re taking it in stride, living relatively happy lives, minding their due diligence with regard to social distancing, wearing a mask and all that (I’m pretty sure I’m the only one in my circle who’s still militant about wearing disposable gloves, and have no plans to stop, especially after plague expert Laurie Garrett said she uses them religiously). One such guy is a local author whose Facebook output often consists of first-world-problem-type griping, but as well a lot of “life is good” observations. Not much choice, really; he’s got good scotch, which always helps.

Anyhow, a crew of us old writer grumps had a little Facebook discussion the other day about “yacht rock,” a genre that’s actually very relaxing, even if it’s mocked and detested by a ton of people. “Yacht rock” is stuff you’d hear, well, on yachts: Toto, Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins, and, the guy I nominated as the absolute worst yacht-rocker of all, Michael McDonald. McDonald’s dreadful doggy-voice ruined the Doobie Brothers when he took over as lead singer, and he didn’t do Mr. Cross any favors either with his unintentionally hilarious turn on “Ride Like The Wind.”

I don’t mind yacht-rock; in fact, I caught a little flack during that online exchange for saying that I actually like Cross’s “Sailing” (from his self-titled 1979 debut LP). I’m a sucker for Toto’s “Africa,” too (from 1981’s Toto IV).

Michael McDonald’s voice is another thing altogether, though. Trust me, one note from that horrible voice of his when I’m on hold or trapped at a Hannaford supermarket, and I just want to run into the street, screaming like a loon. Hatred.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Email [email protected] for fastest response.

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Stop this crazy calendar thing, summer’s totally over, I give up. The next general CD-release Friday date is Sept. 11, and there will be CDs released that day, so as not to make me look stupid. English art-rock band Everything Everything will personally assist me in this endeavor by releasing their first LP in three years, Re-Animator, just in time! Like everyone else in America, you probably haven’t heard of this awesome band, because they haven’t done a booty-shake collaboration with Nicki Minaj or whoever, which is all it really takes in order to make it big in America! But that’s OK, because I will tell you about them, by covering their new single, “In Birdsong,” a tune that starts out basically like a Nintendo-cheese nonsense song from Postal Service but then becomes an epic experiment in soundscaping, incorporating the soaring vocal dramatics of Elbow and swooshing, rootsy ’80s synth-prog. It is cool, so I will use reverse psychology on your brain: do not listen to this song. There, maybe that’ll work for once.

• Wayne Coyne, the leader of the Flaming Lips, is from Pittsburgh, which pretty much explains everything. The band is now based in Oklahoma, which also explains everything. No, I kid; the Flaming Lips, they are a great band, if you’re in your 60s and grew up wishing that someday you’d have a band to listen to that sounded like a cross between Captain Beefheart and a synthesizer being assaulted by a drunken groundhog. As usual, I don’t expect to be into whatever nonsense I’m about to hear from the band’s new album, American Head, but some of you love the Flaming Lips (right?) and so I shall endeavor to listen to the new song “Will You Return/When You Come Down” with an open mind, prepared to hold down my rather large lunch. Right, they’re singing in annoying falsetto, as always, and the melody is basically, as always, a variation on a Beatles song, “Don’t Let Me Down” in this case. You really like this stuff? Well, then, by all means, enjoy.

• Oh, why not, more falsetto, this time on “Prisoners,” the new single from The Universal Want, the latest from U.K. post-Britrock dudes Doves. Oh wait, the falsetto stopped, and now it sounds like Coldplay. The song seems to be about the existential angst of everyday working people who choose the wrong girlfriends, but whatever they’re babbling about, it’s a bummer. That’s just what we need in these times, sadboy-indie songs that sound like Coldplay.

• To end this week’s roundup on a hilarious note, Marilyn Manson is here, with a new album, called We Are Chaos! Nowadays, Marilyn is the only one left whose name comes from that super-adorable combination of famous-model/actress-and-last-name-of-serial-killer, because Twiggy Ramirez is long gone, and so is Ginger Fish (get it?). Oh whatever, “We Are Chaos” indeed, let’s see what the title track sounds like. Huh, this song is pretty dumb, just like everything else they’ve done since “Beautiful People.” Why is Marilyn wearing the same grillz on his teeth as Jared Leto when he (unfortunately for all humanity) played the Joker? Why would anyone do that? — Eric W. Saeger

Local bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Flowers fit for a dog

In celebration of Daffy

Daphne mezereum was the registered name of my corgi, Daffy, who passed away on Aug. 25. Born in 2006, Daffy was my constant companion who was always ready for an adventure — or especially a meal or snack. When her back legs gave out, she figured out ways to propel herself forward with glee — ignoring the inconvenience, and trying to overcome the pain. Finally, when the pain was nearly constant, we reluctantly called the vet.

We buried Daffy alongside her cat friend, Winnie, who passed naturally at age 23 in June, and Abby and Stanley and Emily, all good dogs who have passed on and been buried in a quiet shady place on our property. Each had their graves decorated with flowers from the garden. Let’s take a look at some of the plants I grow, and that I used to commemorate Daffy and celebrate her life.

Of course I cut branches of her namesake, Daphne mezereum or February Daphne. It is a fabulous shrub that blooms in May here in Cornish Flat, displaying pinky-purple fragrant flowers in abundance. It is slow-growing, so easy to maintain. No need to do much pruning, other than stems I cut to force in a vase each year in April.

And I put in her grave a couple of stems from a Harry Lauder’s walking stick shrub. A walking stick seems fitting for a dog that had trouble walking. It’s a curly hazelnut that would not really be good as a walking stick — there are no straight bits. Mine is a variety called ‘Red Majestic’ of the European filbert (Corylus avellana).

In the spring the leaves are a deep red-purple but develop a greenish tinge as the summer progresses. I have mine in a flower bed and have been able to keep it to a six-foot-wide and -tall tree by annual pruning.

And I sent Daffy off with diamonds: Pink Diamond, that is. It’s a lovely variety of hydrangea paniculata. I bought one that is a “standard,” meaning that it came with a straight trunk that had branches grafted on at the four-foot-high level. So it started out as a shrub with some height, and never suffered from the awkwardness common to many hydrangeas that start as multi-stemmed shrubs.

At the bottom of Daffy’s grave I placed boughs from a Canadian hemlock (Tsuga canadensis). This is a native evergreen tree that grows well in sun or shade. In 1972 I dug up several growing wild in a field nearby and planted them as a hedge. They are now 50 feet tall or so. My late sister, Ruth Anne, lived in Canada and loved Daffy fiercely, calling her “the dog of joy.” So these boughs commemorated them both. I no longer promote planting hemlocks because an insect pest, the wooly adelgid, is decimating them, though thankfully not in my area, as yet.

Of the woody plants, the last I placed in Daffy’s grave was a stem from my Bartlett pear. Daffy, always hungry, would gorge on the pears that fell on the ground beneath this tree, so it seemed fitting to put a branch in.

I cut fresh perennial flowers for Daphne’s grave, too. Phlox have been gorgeous this year, disease-free and fragrant. Daffy is the only dog I’ve had who noticed flowers. I have a picture of her checking out a vase of tulips. But phlox is in all its glory in sunny beds, so I cut some.

Daffy had a sunny disposition, even at the end when she was in pain, so I included a sunflower. Like Daphne, it was a short one, perhaps ‘Teddy Bear.’ There are so many great sunflowers out there, many short and with multiple flowers branching off the main stem. They are easily started from seed. Chipmunks love them when they are just starting, so I grow them in six-packs until they are tall enough to ignore the rodents. Deer love sunflowers, too, however, when they get bigger.

And roses went in the grave, too. My favorites are the Knockout roses. Perhaps because they are not fragrant, they don’t seem to be attractive to the Japanese beetles that can plague old-fashioned roses. They are fast-growing and can reach a height of four feet in a couple of months even if all above-ground stems died over the winter. The one I selected for Daffy has had 25 blossoms most of the time this summer.

Then we added some Shasta daisies, those wonderful, cheerful flowers with white petals around a central yellow button. My patch of those gets a bit bigger each year in full sun. And Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifolia), a six-foot-tall orange annual in the daisy or sunflower family. We start lots of these by seed each year, and I am always delighted by the results.

I suppose there were other flowers we picked for Daphne’s last day, though it’s all a bit of a blur. I do know that flowers always lift my spirits, and certainly they needed some lifting that day. But I’m doing better now, and being in the garden has helped. Later this fall I will plant bulbs on her grave – snowdrops. They are the first flowers to bloom in spring, and always bring me joy. And after all, she was the Dog of Joy.

The Art Roundup 20/09/10

• DIY art: Studio 550 Art Center (550 Elm St., Manchester) is now offering art-at-home kits, which include all the materials and tools needed for a do-it-yourself art project. Projects include mosaics, succulent plant arrangements, clay jars, fairy houses, mugs and open-ended clay projects. The kits come with step-by-step instructions, accompanying video tutorials or guided workshops by request. Completed clay creations can be dropped off at the studio for firing. Visit 550arts.com/classes/diy or call 232-5597.

• Duo display: “2020 Double Vision,” an exhibit featuring work by two New Hampshire Art Association artists, is on display now through Sept. 17 in the lobby at 2 Pillsbury St. in Concord. Both artists create paintings inspired by scenes in New England and beyond. Debbie Mueller’s style uses bold, simple designs with a focus on light and how light affects the shapes and colors within a scene. Marianne Stillwagon’s paintings depict picturesque villages and changing seasons in a contemporary primitive Americana style. “It’s extraordinary how two artists can look at the same scene and create vastly different paintings,” Mueller said in a press release. “We each have our unique vision and way of interpreting our world … [and] our unique viewpoint to our scenes.” All artwork is for sale. Viewing hours are Monday through Friday from 5 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Saturday from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sunday from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Visit nhartassociation.org or call 431-4230.

• Virtual author events: Gibson’s Bookstore of Concord has two virtual author events coming up. On Sunday, Sept. 13, at 2 p.m. there will be a “Roaring 20s Middle Grade/Young Adult Author Panel” with authors who debuted their middle grade or young adult novels in 2020. Featured authors will include Josh Roberts (The Witches of Willow Cove), Lorien Lawrence (The Stitchers), Cat Scully (Jennifer Strange), Kaela Noel (Coo) and Cathleen Barnhart (That’s What Friends Do). Participants are encouraged to come with questions about the authors’ stories and writing and publishing processes. Then, on Monday, Sept. 14, at 7:15 p.m., Meredith Hall will present her debut novel Beneficence in a pre-publication event. The novel is a story of love and the gifts, obligations, covenants and compromises that come with it. She will be joined in conversation by New Hampshire poet Wesley McNair. The events will be held on Zoom, and registration is required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• Sculpture symposium concludes: The 13th annual Nashua International Sculpture Symposium will have its closing ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 12, at 1 p.m., when the public can see the completed sculptures revealed at the installation site, located at the west entrance of Mine Falls Park. It will also be livestreamed at accessnashua.org/stream.php. Sculptors Taylor Apostol from Massachusetts, Elijah Ober from Maine and Kelly Cave from Pennsylvania have spent the last three weeks in Nashua creating the sculptures. They will continue working up until the closing ceremony, daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the installation site. The public is invited to stop by during those times to watch the sculptors work and interact with them during their breaks. A map of the 36 existing sculpture sites along with suggested walking and biking tour routes is available at nashuasculpturesymposium.org.

• Last chance for free comics: Free Comic Book Summer, a reworking of Free Comic Book Day in which local comic book shops put out a handful of different free comics every Wednesday, will conclude with its last batch of free comics on Wednesday, Sept. 9. The comics will include The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess/Splatoon (adventure/fantasy, for teen readers) with Squid Kids Comedy Show; The Incal (sci-fi, for mature readers); and Sue & Tai-chan (a “kitty comedy” based on the Chi’s Sweet Home series, for readers of all ages). Visit freecomicbookday.com for the full list of this year’s free comics and to find participating comic book shops in your area.

• Plays by the Lakes: The Winnipesaukee Playhouse (33 Footlight Circle, Meredith) announced in a press release that it has reopened, with a small season of three productions to be performed at the Playhouse’s outdoor amphitheatre in September and October. Or, will run Wednesday, Sept. 2, through Sunday, Sept. 6, and Wednesday, Sept. 9, through Saturday, Sept. 12, at 4 p.m. The historical play by Liz Duffy Adams’ is a fictionalized account of the life of England’s first female playwright Aphra Behn. Tickets cost $29 to $39. Or, will be followed by The Mountaintop, opening on Wednesday, Sept. 16, and No Wake, opening on Wednesday, Sept. 30. Visit winnipesaukeeplayhouse.org or call 279-0333.

Featured Photo: Debbie Mueller art, featured in “2020 Double Vision” exhibit. Courtesy photo.

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