If Only Lebanon NH Had Had a Longbranch Saloon . . .

If only Lebanon, New Hampshire had had a Longbranch Saloon, I am reasonably certain it would have ousted Lebanon, South Dakota from the number one spot on Fadi BouKaram’s list of favorite Lebanons.

BouKaram, a Lebanese photographer, made two trips around the United States to visit each and every town named Lebanon, sometimes gifting cedar trees as he went. Artful tried to piece together the story of his time in Lebanon, New Hampshire with the help of some sleuth-y Upper Valley residents. (Click here for The Tree That Was, Then Wasn’t.)

Recently one of the sleuths unearthed the above video, in which BouKaram describes his journey and his affinity for Lebanon, South Dakota, a town of less than 30 people where Hazel and two other women tend bar at the Longbranch. Don’t want to give too much away, but there are accordions, darts, and the rapid degustation of trays of baklava. This five-minute video, above, is guaranteed to warm your heart and maybe even those winter-cold toes.

“I felt like I’m on an episode of Cheers.” Stories elicit empathy. “I heard a lot of people’s stories. . . Just getting to know people destroys barriers.” —Fadi BouKaram

—————————————————

Thank you! You’re reading Artful, a blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley, and I hope you’ll subscribe (still free) and then share this post with your friends and on your social media. We now exceed 3000 subscribers.

And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.

“Small Things Like These” at the Hop on January 18

A version of this review previously appeared on Artful in November, 2024 (but without the trailer, above) after I saw this film at the Nugget Theater. It has turned out to be a movie that I continue to reflect upon, especially its atmospherics and Cillian Murphy, who, as observed below, delivers this story “almost entirely on [his] face.” Here’s another chance to see this small intimate movie where the drama, though understated, is no less formidable.

Small Things Like These, a film based on the book by Claire Keegan, is the story of Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), a coal merchant, set in 1958 in a small Irish town that contains, on its outskirts, one of Ireland’s now infamous Magdalene laundries. The laundries were run by the Catholic Church for decades; they housed, in total, tens of thousands of young women who had “misbehaved” by becoming pregnant or otherwise flaunting (or maybe just failing to observe) social expectations for women. The laundries were punitive, like prisons, and babies were taken from mothers and set up with or “sold” to adoptive families. In recent years, the history of the laundries has been revealed and recognized for the horror it was.

The story takes place almost entirely on Murphy’s face, swimming in the infinite sadness of those ice blue eyes.—Sean Burns, North Shore Movies, 11/18/24

A deliberate film that uses small moments to examine one of the great questions of our time: how good people let bad things happen, and how we might push back against the dark.  —Helen O’Hara, Empire Magazine, 11/13/24

In Small Things, the townsfolk whisper about the laundry but mostly just ignore it. Not Bill Furlong, who comes face to face with the dehumanizing and cruel treatment of the young women, and the creepiest of Mother Superiors, a chilling character portrayed by the inimitable Emily Watson. Despite threats to his own well-being and that of his family, Bill steps up. What he does is a small thing that is not small.

Small Things Like These is playing this weekend on January 18 at 2:00 pm and 4:30 pm at the Loew Auditorium in the Black Family Visual Arts Center at Dartmouth. Tickets are available here.

Programmed in conjunction with the Tuck School of Business class on "Moral Reasoning: From Machiavelli to The Bomb to AI” and as part of Dartmouth's Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, with the theme of "Moral Courage in the Face of Uncertainty.”

—————————————————

Thank you! You’re reading Artful, a blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley, and I hope you’ll subscribe (still free) and then share this post with your friends and on your social media. We now exceed 3000 subscribers.

And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.

Our Town/Noah Kahan

Wilder’s play is coming to the Chandler, with a more contemporary vibe

It’s the Our Town you know and love, but different. Gone are the dowdy period costumes that sometimes mire the play in the long-ago years of the last century. Under the direction of Ben Rapson, who also plays the Stage Manager, this is a more modern and Vermont-centric take on the New England classic. It’s coming to the Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph, VT on February 28 and will run through March 9, 2025. Rehearsals are already afoot, with 40 or so actors and musicians swarming around the stage, many of them from the Randolph area.

The big news about this production is the music of Noah Kahan, young Upper Valley-born and raised musician who has rocketed to stardom, including as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live and as a 2023 Grammy nominee for Best New Artist. Three of Kahan’s songs—performed by a live American roots-ish band—will be incorporated into this production of Our Town, as well as some “echoes” of his work which are infused throughout the play. (But, Rapson cautions, it’s not a musical.)

The artistic marriage of playwright Thornton Wilder and songwriter/musician Kahan seemed more than apt to Rapson. Kahan’s music is a way to connect Wilder’s work to a more modern audience. But more so, Rapson saw similarities in how both Wilder and Kahan use their words to express some universal small-town truths. He explained:

“Noah’s songwriting speaks to so many of us in Randolph and the rest of Vermont, in the same way that Thornton Wilder’s words perfectly capture something eternal about being a human with a northern attitude. We’re really taking that Wilder-Kahan kismet and running with it. And I’m thrilled to say we received Noah’s personal blessing to cover his songs in our show — a truly serendipitous benefit to the nature of community in our state.”

Rapson himself appears to be living the small town experience that he is trying to capture for the stage. He left Seattle for Vermont in 2018, and recently became a homeowner in Randolph, a town replete with art and makers and civic engagement. Randolph still has a printed newspaper, the White River Valley Herald; Rapson recently helped to organize a celebration of the paper’s 150th anniversary. And then there is the Chandler Center itself, with a beautifully renovated 575-seat music hall, its presence a testament to the importance of the performing arts in a town whose population hovers at just over 4800 residents.

If I get too close
And I'm not how you hoped
Forgive my northern attitude
Oh, I was raised out in the cold
If the sun don't rise
'Til the summertime
Forgive my northern attitude
Oh, I was raised on little light.

—Excerpt from “Northern Attitude” by Noah Kahan

In addition to the play, audiences are invited to explore the Smithsonian Institution’s Crossroads: Change in Rural America exhibit in the Chandler art gallery from February 8th until March 23rd. Tickets and more information about Our Town can be found here.

Photo, center: Rob Marois, Hayley Sherman, Caleb Spring, and Rita Champion - Photo by Jess Rhoades. Art, top, courtesy of Chandler Center for the Arts, designed by Eric Dickerson.

—————————————————

Thank you! You’re reading Artful, a blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley, and I hope you’ll subscribe (still free) and then share this post with your friends and on your social media. We now exceed 3000 subscribers.

And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.

Loving the Dairy Twirl

Thinking of the Dairy Twirl today, but in better and sunnier times . . .

During our twenty-four years of living in Lebanon, my husband and I tried often to avoid the Dairy Twirl because we loved it too much. Which meant that even if sparingly, we made sure to enjoy a banana split (shared) or a small or medium cone a time or two each season.

Sometimes we exercised self-control and drove on by when out doing errands in Lebanon. But we always rubbernecked, and noted the lines of people waiting for ice cream. A friend said she did this too, describing it as imagining “all of the expectations” inherent in humans standing in line, anticipating. Various members of the community from babies to elders, meandering to the end of the line, the board listing the possibilities: soft-serve or scooped, sugar or regular cone, a multitude of flavors. Maybe a milkshake? Pay up and stuff a tip in the jar by the window. Grab a fistful of napkins because undoubtedly you will be wearing a drip or more of that ice cream soon. For some reason, the frequent presence of dogs—they often got a small cone or dish of vanilla—was a big plus to the entire experience.

Politicians like to suss out the archetypal community gathering places to put in an appearance. In 2015, Hillary Clinton chose to stop at the Dairy Twirl during her presidential campaign, even offering to buy ice cream for the members of press who were following her. The ice cream shop thus made it into a story in The New York Times.

Many in the UV awoke on Friday morning to learn about the multiple-alarm fire on Thursday night in the building housing the Dairy Twirl, and no doubt felt the sense of potential loss to the community of what was more than just a simple ice cream shop. The building post-fire looks pretty awful. Tenants have been displaced, in the dead of winter no less. No information yet about what happens next. Nevertheless, I am hoping for, and choosing to anticipate, the Dairy Twirl’s reopening next summer, as always. Small cone, soft-serve, chocolate, extra napkins.

—————————————————

Thank you! You’re reading Artful, a blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley, and I hope you’ll subscribe (still free) and then share this post with your friends and on your social media. We now exceed 3000 subscribers.

And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.

MIT Museum: For Jibo, Love Does Not Compute

But you can write a poem of sorts.

Boston—There’s a boatload of brilliance right there on the Cambridge side of the bridge in Kendall Square. And no problem, apparently, that the super smart people at MIT are not willing to take on. The MIT Museum, in a new(ish) location since October, 2022, should be congratulated for its courage in trying to explain it all to those of us less proficient in all things science and technology.

Truth be told, I went there hoping to engage with the magical works of kinetic sculptor and UNH alum Arthur Ganson that had been on display at the museum during a previous, former-location, visit in 2019. While the museum website states that something of his is still there, and that “We expect to exhibit his work in large numbers in the future,” I did not find anything. Big alas, and a hope that “in the future” means soon.

A second disappointment was that many exhibitions were unfortunately over my head. I don’t fault the museum for this, though maybe a little more expository material, or a human guide, would have helped. Or not. The vocabulary can be tough and I was less brave than I wanted to be.

Galleries on the second and third floor offer something for everyone; many exhibits are interactive. Some are historical, because MIT has been at it for a while; the specific exhibition of the moment is AI: Mind the Gap. Here are three things that made me stop and play:

Write a Poem with AI: I sat in front of a screen that invited me to partner with it in writing a poem. It chose the topic: Ocean. I declined. It chose another: Morning Light. I hit Enter, then composed and typed in the first line. Poem Machine followed with a second line I could either accept or reject. Then back to me. I rejected a few of the offers. After 15 or so alternating lines, I declared the poem to be finished. Assessment: my lines were better, more original. Poem Machine resorted to cliches like “sun caressing your face.” Poem Machine might have agreed with me. When it came time for Poem Machine to title the poem, it chose “Another Chance,” which it lifted from one of the lines I had authored.

The Ketchup Bottle: Oh, the cumulative food waste—estimated to be a million tons per year of unused condiments—that occurs when you can’t get that last smidgen of ketchup from the bottom of the bottle to the mound of fries on your plate. MIT has had people working on the problem. The solution is LiquiGlide.

“LiquiGlide”—a nontoxic, super-slippery coating for the inside of condiment bottles—has garnered national media attention. Thousands of fascinated consumers have watched and re-watched videos in which ketchup slides swiftly out of a gently tilted LiquiGlide bottle.

Before you say (as I did) that a tablespoon of water and a vigorous shake of the capped bottle will produce the same result, ketchup may be a tad beside the actual point.

“Varanasi and his team didn’t set out to help the food industry. With seed funding from the MIT Energy Initiative, they’ve been designing water-repellent coatings to improve the efficiency and durability of steam turbines—critical components in the generation of 86% of all global power. Other targets include “non-wetting” coatings to increase the freshwater output of desalination plants, to prevent the formation of ice on airplanes and power lines, and to keep methane hydrates from building up and clogging flows in deep-sea oil and gas pipelines.”

Hey Jibo: Jibo is an AI creation designed to carry on a conversation with you, which you must initiate by saying “Hey Jibo.” Jibo was designed for home use—an early example of a “robot friend,” it was featured on a 2017 Time Magazine cover as one of the year’s best inventions. [No longer available.] Once its little round featureless face pivots your way, you can ask any question you like. There is a list of prompts nearby in case you freeze, like “What’s the weather?” And more personal inquiries, like “What are you afraid of?” Jibo, who is highly electronic, fears “water.” But when I asked Jibo “Are you in love?” the answer was sad and probably true. Jibo didn’t hesitate, and responded: “That does not mean anything to me.”

********************

Got a few minutes? Arthur Ganson’s Margo’s Cat (MIT Museum 2019) is mesmerizing:

——————————————————————

Thank you! You’re reading Artful, a blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley, and I hope you’ll subscribe (still free) and then share this post with your friends and on your social media. We now exceed 3000 subscriptions.

The Hopkins Center for the Arts helps support Artful and joins Artful in celebrating those who love, make and share the art in our community. View the Hop’s 24/25 season.

And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.