Birds can fly. Humans can not, but they dream of flying. Some birds are mighty hunters or they feast upon the dead. Others are unaccountably clever or even devious. Still others are beautiful in some unearthly way. All of these attributes and more have caused birds to find places in religion…

Despite the weird weather lately, things are clicking along at the farm. It feels later in the season than it is, with warm weather creating two or three mud seasons on the dirt road. Turkeys were showing their colors and feathers to the girls last week, confused by the weather. This week, w…

My dog lied to me...

You are probably aware this is an election year. During the next several months, the candidates will discuss issues that should greatly interest you as a citizen. But as an investor, how concerned should you be with the results of the presidential and congressional elections?

Now that we are comfortably on the other side of the New Year, you will probably have noticed that there have been a multitude of lists to hit newspaper and the internet.

As I write on Friday morning, Thursday’s cold snap has now been followed by a warming trend that may bring rain. It has been that kind of a winter: mild, but a bit messy because of the constant down and up from freezing to thawing. It may just be a coincidence, but I wonder if it is causing …

This morning, I decided to take a ride over to the state beach in Sunapee to see if there were any bob houses perched on the lake. There were three ice fishing shacks sitting on the sidelines in anticipation but none were actually on the ice. I didn’t even see any craters rimmed with extract…

Sometimes it is just plain hard to keep a positive attitude. Here, when one of the cattle is sick, a freezer full of ice cream dies, there is a leak in the cellar in the sewer pipe, ice coats the ground and makes daily living a hardship and work obligations make what you want to be doing an …

Everybody does, but people believe that yours would sell. Write a book, they say, your story is interesting and funny and exciting. And so you start to imagine the crowds at your book signing. You think about the money you’ll make. You picture the life of a writer. You should read “ConsiderT…

As a business owner, you are always thinking of what you need to do now. But you can’t forget about the future – yours and that of your business. So it may be a good idea to consider your personal retirement plan and business succession strategy.

I always get a chuckle when I read bloopers, where folks mean to say one thing and say something completely inappropriate instead. I don’t know if it is the possibility that it could be me suffering such an embarrassing moment or simply the funniness of the bloopers, but they always bring a …

The following sentiment is straight from Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” and one I often prefer to use in life but even more so in films: “She preferred imaginary heroes to real ones.”

Two chipmunks vie for seeds on our front lawn. One lives directly underneath the bird feeder. Another hails from the far side of the house, address unknown.

It’s cold outside, and nothing is happening in my garden. Well, I guess deep beneath the soil surface there are microbes and worms and moles alive and doing whatever they do in winter. But I am doing nothing in the garden, so this is a time to read about gardening.

Great horned owls breed in every county in New Hampshire, and their breeding season is now underway. From late December into March, male and female owls will be calling to each other in the night as they pair up to begin nest-building in late January. The call of the great horned owl is the …

It might not have made the headlines, but a recently passed piece of legislation could affect the IRAs and 401(k)s of millions of Americans beginning in 2020. So, if you have either of these accounts, or if you run a business, you’ll want to learn more.

By Rachel Cruze

I was introduced to the snow bunting in upstate New York. There is still a lot of active agricultural land in the Finger Lakes region, where I lived for over a decade. During the winter months, whenever I drove north from the village of Trumansburg into the town of Covert (it is a family nam…

The musical experience is a unique one in cinema and nothing like the Broadway experience. With that said, Broadway success does not often translate to cinema success.

A couple of decades ago, before smartphones and Google maps, I was running some errands in downtown Newport when I was approached by a lost tourist. He was holding a hand-drawn map of the area roads when he asked for directions to Newbury Harbor. I started to explain the way by pointing to S…

A few years ago, I learned that the Twelve Days of Christmas on the Christian calendar begins on Christmas day and stretches into January. This is a very good thing for my family, as the countdown to Christmas begins before Thanksgiving as we work on making wreaths and getting Christmas tree…

There’s only one of you.

A couple of decades ago, I spent several winters living in Crested Butte, Colorado, where I learned to peer into the cottonwood trees between Route 135 and the East River on the rare occasion when I needed to travel south to the closest “big” town. There, just downstream from the local fish …

In the history of cinema, there has been nothing quite like Star Wars. The film series that began in 1977 with “Star Wars: A New Hope” has now spanned a total of 43 years. To put it into perspective, the franchise has spanned entire lives and generations.