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Beginning in 2018 "Ruth's Neighborhood" entries were also posted on Ruth's FACEBOOK page where her entries (usually weekly, on Sunday mornings) lead to lively conversations.

This Page: July-September 2025

 

D-H AUTUMN

September 28, 2025

               Last Tuesday as Wanda and I left at 6:45 a.m. for my every-three-months appointment at Dartmouth-Hitchcock we talked about rain. Like so many other places, our area is in a “severe drought.” But today’s weather report was predicting a chance of “scattered showers.” We’ll welcome every drop, we said.
              The dawn was cloudy. The drought has been drying up leaves to brown, but some of the trees along the way were still green and some had muted colors, faded rust, old gold. Squam Lake’s surface looked hazy, pale gray-blue.
              When we reached Meredith and were passing the Lake Winnipesaukee bay I saw a flock of geese overhead—flying south, I hoped.
Suddenly tiny little raindrops speckled the car’s windshield. In wonder we exclaimed, “Look!” The raindrops stopped.
              The Route 104 Diner’s sign said:

Your stomach called.
It’s hungry.

              As we went past the Good Shoppe Lollipop, which sells outdoor furniture, we remarked that in our minds Shirley Temple was singing about the “Good Ship Lollipop.” Little raindrops began again and stopped again and of course the song changed to “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”
              Sign:

MOOSE CROSSING NEXT 4 MILES

              We stopped at the Danbury Country Store for gasoline. In the parking area there was a very old car wearing a blue ribbon that we assumed it had won in some vintage car show. Nearby came a modern sight, a young man walking out of the store to his modern car carrying an aluminum pan of something for his lunch and a bag of potato chips.
              Onward we went, past the sign that always intrigues me, Haunted Whisper Vineyard, a place out of sight down a driveway.
              Now amid the faded colors in the woods we saw jolts of bright red. “Swamp maples,” we said.
              In Enfield we passed a farm stand colorful with pumpkins and chrysanthemums. And there were Halloween figures in front of the main street stores.
              At Dartmouth-Hitchcock I had the steroid shot in my right knee. Then as we headed back to Enfield rain returned, acting more like rain, loud enough to pitter-patter. We made our usual stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts. Wanda decided on a breakfast sandwich and hash browns. That farm stand’s pumpkins had got me thinking about pumpkin spice and what did I see on the menu but Iced Pumpkin Loaf Cake. I definitely had to have that!               While I was enjoying it I told Wanda about the discovery of a cookie at Heath’s Supermarket in Center Harbor. Recently when my niece stopped there on her way to visit me she noticed in the bakery section some items named Chaos Cookies; she brought me one. I was fascinated by its name and highly amused; the cookie looked like a chocolate chip cookie decorated with pieces of pretzels. I tasted. Something else, chewy, caramel-y, in the chaos. So we Googled recipes for Chaos Cookies.
              The rain continued off and on as Wanda and I headed home, rejoicing whenever it  needed windshield wipers. In Canaan, Mount Cardigan was a pale shadow with the summit lopped off by cloudiness.
When we reached the Route 104 Diner the other side of the sign said:

HOT GRIDDLE
COLD SHAKE
FULL PLATE

© 2025 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

 

CHARLOTTE, ETC.

September 21, 2025

                After Don and I had been renting apartments—and once a house—for a dozen years we decided it was time to find a perfect place we could afford to buy. How to describe to realtors what we wanted? We summed it up by saying, “On a dirt road off a dirt road.” We were living in Dover, NH, and we found that place nearby in Farmington.
                I thought of this when I began reading an article in the September/October issue of YANKEE magazine: “Property Values." For seven-plus decades, YANKEE’s wide-roving ‘House for Sale’ column offered readers the chance to dream about moving to the country. By Bruce Irving.” He wrote:
                “A Starbucks on every corner, a new car in the driveway, an embarrassment of entertainment options out on the town—the pleasures of urban and suburban America are hard to ignore or resist. But every so often the heart yearns for a dirt road and a star-filled night . . .
“That’s how the ‘House for Sale’ column got its hooks into YANKEE readers . . . It was part of the print magazine from the early days up until 2023 . . .
                “ . . . a rare bylined ‘House for Sale’ in 2017 [was written by] Mel Allen, then YANKEE’s editor . . . E. B. White’s house in North Brooklin, Maine, was being put on the market, and Allen was given a tour for the September/October issue. The resulting column drew attention from THE NEW YORK TIMES, TOWN & COUNTRY, and other media outlets, and went on to be the most-read ‘House for Sale’ in the magazine’s history.
                “The CHARLOTTE’S WEB author had purchased the 44-acre saltwater farm in 1933, doing his own version of chucking it by leaving New York City and moving to Maine permanently four years later. The latest owners were a couple who’d purchased the property on a handshake from White’s renowned boatbuilder son Joel in the early 1980s . . . The tour included the barn where Charlotte may have spun her web, complete with Fern’s rope swing, and ‘the trim boathouse where, when the weather was right or there was too much going on in the house, E. B. White would retreat with his black Underwood typewriter,’ Allen wrote. ‘There he built a simple table and bench, placed a barrel for waste and an ashtray by his side, and with the sea breezes for company typed some of the most elegant and memorable sentences in the English language.’
                “The listing agent was Martha Dischinger of Downeast Properties. ‘I must have gotten 35 to 40 inquiries a day back then,’ she says. ‘The farm sold for full asking price a week after it came on the market, but the phone just kept ringing. I probably got five or 10 calls a year for five or six years afterward.’ The phone still rings occasionally, and schoolchildren sometimes write, asking about Charlotte and the barn.”
                When Don and I decided to return to the Lakes Region and went house-hunting, we still wanted dirt roads. We compromised; our house is on the paved section of a dirt road. And during mud season we were very thankful for this.

© 2025 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

 

DUNOLLIE

September 14, 2025

                I’ve been listening to audiobooks about the British family Bridgerton (in the Bridgerton Series by Julia Quinn), most recently ROMANCING MR. BRIDGERTON.  In this we learn that Mr. Bridgerton has kept journals about his travels to many countries—including one nearby: Scotland. This got me thinking about my Scottish journal, from which in a July post I quoted my description of a sheepdog trial in Dingwall.
                Now from that journal here’s an adventure Don and I had before Dingwall. After we arrived at the Glasgow airport on September 10, 1997, we drove to Oban, home of the MacDougall clan, and arrived at the King’s Knoll Hotel where we had reserved a room. We’d made a pilgrimage to Oban in April 1965 when we were living in England so we were sort of seeing double, as I realized the next morning as we went for a walk to visit again Dunollie Castle—that is, what’s left of it, the “keep,” the fortified tower. I wrote:

              We set off down the street and out along the esplanade. Amongst the hotels we spotted the place where we stayed 32 years ago, the Oban Bay Hotel.
                The wide sidewalk eventually disappeared and we walked along the seaside road, ready to squeeze flat when cars passed. The Dunollie keep loomed up, vine-green, dramatic, romantic.
                We tried to figure out changes in arrangements. You no longer can get to the “New House,” the white house where last time a key to the castle keep was left. [During our 1965 visit, outside the New House —built in 1746!—there had been a guest register to sign and when we emerged from the keep we were invited indoors for Don to sign the MacDougall book.] We climbed up the steep rocky path to the keep, stopping at a sign: “Warning! No Camping. No Fires. Stones have fallen recently from the castle walls into the courtyard. This is private property. Visitors enter at their own risk and are advised to stay away from the building for their own safety. Dunollie Estate, August 1997.”
                We walked around—long high views of the bay—and investigated the inside, climbing the narrow dark staircase to the first (second in American counting) floor of arches and fortified views.
                Many emotions. Thirty-two years and we’re back! Don’s roots. The sheer ROMANCE of ruins—Ann Radcliffe novels, etc. It had been green in April 1965 and it also is in September 1997, that color dominating the memory—ivy overgrown stone, open to the sky.
Four other people came in.
                [Description of walking downtown, browsing and shopping and snacking. Then we returned to the hotel.] We coped with the pay phone in the lobby busy with incoming guests. Don spoke with Jean MacDougall about our previous visit and he was asked to sign the MacDougall book tomorrow morning—and we were invited to have coffee with her and her husband. [Later we walked downtown again “in a light rain, glistening streets, yellow lighted interiors of fish-and-chip shops” to have supper at McTavish’s Kitchens, choosing Haggis and Neeps and Grilled Salmon. As we dined “a piper began playing in the restaurant, walking around.”]
                Friday, Sept. 12, 1997. Off in pouring rain to Dunstaffnage, once a MacDougall castle, lost to Campbells. . . The sun came out, shining on gray rock, green grass . . .
We’d have stayed longer if we didn’t have another castle to attend to. We drove the way we’d walked to Dunollie yesterday but this time with last evening’s phone permission we took the long lane to the New House, where in 1965 daffodils were blooming when we picked up the key. We parked in front. A man appeared, pushing a wheelbarrow, and said, “They aren’t here yet—no, here they are.”
                A small car came up the lane and out emerged slowly three older people, the two women in MacDougall tartan skirts, the man wearing a jacket. With infinite courtesy they introduced themselves, Jean MacDougall and husband Dr. Stephen Hadfield and the other surviving MacDougall sister whose name we unfortunately didn’t get; she was the one who’d been living here in 1965. Now they all live in two houses down the road, “a well-worn path between.” The man with the wheelbarrow and his wife are tenants here now.
We went into a room—hall?—instantly familiar from 1965—cold stone floor, tartan drapes, and then on into a newer room designed by an architect whom a family member had married. I saw coffee and biscuits ready on a table and thought what trouble these people had gone to for a remote relative from across the sea. The tenant wife looked in to check the coffee arrangements and disappeared.
                Our hosts made us comfortable, small tables were shifted, we were seated in armchairs, coffee brought, a plate of cookies and shortbread passed. General conversation about our travels, New Hampshire, etc., and then we learned that the oldest sister, the chief in 1965, had died. Her older daughter is now chief, living in the south of England.
                After our repast we went into the dining room—“It hasn’t changed since I was a child,” said Jean—and Don again signed the MacDougall book amid tartan drapes. He looked back through entries and found the April one in his 1965 handwriting (he said later, “It was rounder then”) and Stephen thought this duplicating interesting enough to put a marker there.
                We looked at an album-notebook of archeological finds at Dunollie and then were taken upstairs to see old family tartans on display, plaid trews, dresses, a wedding gown.
                Much more that I’m remembering in a blur—my absorption powers filled to saturation. It was all a delight and sad and strange and fascinating.
                We said goodbye—they making jokes about not being here if we waited another 32 years to visit—and we drove off down the lane.

© 2025 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

SANDWICH BOARD—AUTUMN BEGINS

September 7, 2025

                Last Tuesday after the Labor Day Weekend crowds had subsided, Wanda and I did grocery shopping in Center Harbor; the supermarket had gaps on shelves and a feeling of relief. We then stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts for two doughnuts and drove over to the town dock for a car picnic and Lake Winnipesaukee scenery. Some people were still fussing with boats but again there was a feeling that “the unofficial end of summer” had happened. Autumn is beginning.
                And here are some of the posts on the Sandwich Board:

     August  29. Baby Carrier? We are looking to borrow Saturday morning a backpack carrier for a two-year-old for an ascent of Rattlesnake [Mountain].
Later: Child backpack found—thank you!
      [As I’ve mentioned a million times, the first mountain I “climbed” was Mount Belknap; that is, our father carried me and lugged Penny in his wicker packbasket.]

     August 31. Birds. When a blue bird landed on one of my shepherd’s hooks, my camera and I started shooting! I looked at my photos and knew that it wasn’t an Indigo Bunting but a Black-throated Blue Warbler! This is a great time of year to see some migrating birds and I must say this is one of the most striking birds I have seen.

     Two photos of the bird. [Don and I were lucky enough to see an Indigo Bunting a couple of times but never this bird. In the photos the black throat looked almost a dark blue.]

          August 31. Honey for sale. Our bees have been very busy and we have honey for sale at Beede Farm. Today and tomorrow or until it’s gone. Apples and pears coming soon.

     September 1. SunGold Tomatoes on Vittum Hill. Swing by Vittum Hill Road to pick up some yummy SunGold (cherry) Tomatoes. There is a “stand” by the second drive closest to barn. $4 a container. Enjoy. Elaine, September Moon Farm
     Later: Tomatoes Gone. Thanks to everyone who stopped. We will have more on Wednesday at the Farmers’ Market.

     September 2. Allan DiBiase’s Thoreau Comes to Sandwich. September 2, 1841 in Thoreau’s JOURNAL.  “Sometimes my thoughts rustle in midsummer as if ripe for fall—anticipate the russet hues and dry scent of autumn, as the feverish man dreams of balm and sage.”

     Allan’s Sept. 2, 2023 photograph: russet grasses in foreground of bog waters.

     September 3. Lakes Region Humane Society needs pet food donations. Great little shelter and about two minutes from Hannaford’s in Ossipee. Seeking donations of dry dog and cat food, litter, and canned dog food to help re-stock our community pet pantry. The shelves are looking a little sad today. Please help out if you can. Thanks.

     September 4. Allan DiBiase’s Thoreau Comes to Sandwich. September 4, 1857 in Thoreau’s JOURNAL. “Would it not be worth the while to devote one day each year to collecting with pains the different kinds of asters—perhaps about this time—and another to the goldenrods?”
Allan’s Sept. 4, 2023 photo of—yes, asters and goldenrod!

© 2025 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

LOBSTER ROLLS

August 31, 2025

                Coincidences seem to be coming thick and fast lately. After my mention of lobster rolls on Facebook and our subsequent discussion here, I happened upon two Food Network shows that were featuring lobster rolls.
                The first was BEAT BOBBY FLAY. The show’s setup: two challengers have a brief cooking contest to see who’s going to try to beat Bobby and the winner announces a  “signature dish” to be made by the winner and by Bobby, to be judged by three chefs/restaurant owners. On this episode the signature dish was lobster rolls. Bobby is known for going Southwestern and to my horror he mixed lobster meat with chili peppers and avocados for the roll. Then he made a potato salad with pickles, shallots, and corn.
                I had hopes for the challenger but instead of steaming or boiling the lobster he grilled it to get a “char,” mixed the lobster meat with anchovy mayonnaise, and put it in brioche buns. He served it with coleslaw.
                Although the judges thought Bobby’s rolls soggy, Bobby won.
                A week or so after this, I saw the second lobster-roll coincidence on Joanna Gaines’s MAGNOLIA TABLE. She talked about how she and her husband had honeymooned in Maine; then she boiled the lobsters for eight minutes in salted water and used the tail meat in a “rough chop.” Then she heated a stick of butter with tarragon and flatleaf parsley and added the chopped lobster. Eek, herbs! For rolls she did use “New England split top.” She buttered the sides and grilled them—she called it “toasting” them. She served the lobster rolls with hush puppies and a wedge salad with bleu cheese dressing. And for dessert, Cherries Jubilee.
Back in July 2016 I wrote here about cooking lobsters:

In A BORN MANIAC Puddles learns the best way to cook lobsters:
“The secret to cooking lobsters,” Tammy said, “is to steam them in seawater.”
Puddles said, “But what if a person lives inland? We boil them in regular water.”
“You’re not inland now, are you.”
                The most delicious lobsters Don and I ever ate were steamed by Michele, a friend of my sister’s, who dipped the water right out of the sea in front of Michele’s house.
                On the Maine Lobster Council’s Web site, I learned that “lobster boiled or steamed in seawater maintains its characteristic ocean taste. But not every cook has access to a few gallons of the Atlantic Ocean, so boiling or steaming in well-salted water is the next best thing.”                 They add that “steaming is more gentle, yielding slightly more tender meat.”
                But I’ve always boiled them, maybe because of the indelible childhood memory of watching my Grandmother Ruth boil lobsters in a big kettle of water at the cottage my grandparents rented summers on Rye Harbor on New Hampshire’s brief coast.
                Well, actually Don does the boiling of our lobsters. I’m not so brave as my grandmother; I’m squeamish about their deaths. I oversee the meal but Don cooks the lobsters and he has his own methods of dealing with them. He likes to plan a lobster meal for a day before the town dump is open so that the next day he can get rid of the shells there while we reminisce about how my grandfather used to take them out to the cottage’s harbor rocks for seagulls to dispose of. When the lobsters are cooked, Don pulls on a pair of insulated rubber gloves he bought in Maine, the type that lobstermen use in their work at sea. He drains the lobsters fast in a colander and then breaks off the claws and tails and shakes out excess water, to keep the dinner plates from getting sloppy.
                And then we feast.

                To return to lobster rolls: I’ve had my second of the summer, again takeout from Moultonborough’s Red Hill Dari. Simple bliss—with French fries on the side.

© 2025 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

2025's GOLDEN CIRCLE LUNCHEON

August 24, 2025

                On Thursday, August 14, Wanda and I set forth to the annual Keene State College Golden Circle Luncheon. As I’ve written about here in past years, the society is for alumni who graduated fifty or more years ago. The luncheons are held in different areas of the state: Concord, Hancock, Dover, and in Meredith at Hart’s Turkey Farm Restaurant.
               Through the summertime bumper-to-bumper traffic we reached Meredith, where we saw in the bay two boats and two paddleboards. They seemed solitary and serene out there on Lake Winnipesaukee compared with the population explosion on land. Wanda managed to make a left-hand turn into Hart’s parking lot.
               The luncheon as usual was held in a separate room, with tables and chairs arranged for—Wanda and I counted—thirty-eight alumni. Dotti, a classmate, was at a table near ours and while we chatted she and I wondered if our Class of 1961 would be the oldest here. And soon the master of ceremonies asked how many 1961 alumni had come. I counted four of us raising our hands. Were we the oldest? Nope, an alumnus raised his hand; he was 1960.
               I’ve often read the Hart’s history printed on the paper placemats and I did so again, remembering when the farm was a farm. As the placemat said, “Our story began when Mae and Laurence Hart started vacationing here in the 1920s. The clear waters of the Lakes Region drew them in. In  1946 they decided they loved the area so much they moved from New Jersey and purchased this beautiful mountain-view farm. Sons Russ and Larry and their wives soon followed and also began farming in New Hampshire.”
               Farming. This reminded me of an item in the Sandwich section of a recent issue of the MEREDITH NEWS weekly newspaper: “Sandwich Historical Society Director Jim Mykland has pulled together some interesting entries from the SANDWICH REPORTER (1883-1944). Below is an excerpt.
“August 5, 1886. Farmers say there never was such good hay weather as the past season.
“Whiteface. [Whiteface Intervale and Mountain are part of Sandwich.] Haying is nearly over and there is a good crop in this vicinity. Oliver L. Ambrose has perhaps as full a barn as there is in town, being full to the ridgepole of very nice hay.
“Inez Page has gone to Laconia to work. Quite a number of Sandwich girls work down that way in the mills. It is a pity that some industry could not be started in Sandwich, to keep our young folks here.”
               Inez would have moved about twenty-five miles from her hometown.
               I returned to reading the placemat, which described how the Harts “began selling produce, chickens, eggs, and turkeys from a delivery truck. In 1953 they began raising turkeys exclusively . . . In 1954 the Hart family opened the Lakes Region’s original farm-to-table restaurant.”
               And now we alumni proceeded to dine on Hart’s famous turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, squash, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls—and apple crisp for dessert.  As the placemat’s headline says, “Every Day Is Thanksgiving Day at Hart’s Turkey Farm Restaurant!”

RED HOT DOG FESTIVAL

August 17, 2025

                On the Maine TV morning news last Saturday, August 9th, I was startled by a news item that told me the Maine Red Hot Dog Festival was being held that day in Dexter, Maine. Then I started laughing. A red hot dog festival!
                And then I tried to remember why I knew of Dexter, which Don and I had never visited in our Maine travels. Did Dexter mean shoes in my memory? Where was Dexter—upstate, west of Bangor? To answer the latter question I consulted my Maine map. Yes. To answer the former I went to Wikipedia: “Population 3,803 at the 2020 census . . . In the 1960s the town’s name became familiar throughout New England because of the pervasive log style factory outlets of the Dexter Shoe Company.” Aha! I had shopped in those outlets in New Hampshire.
                I’d gathered from the news item that the town was having the festival to remind people about the town. And when I Googled the festival I read, “The Maine Red Hot Dog  Festival is a Dexter Development Association fundraiser designed to attract a large number of people to the town to see what Dexter has to offer, and to simply have fun!” The events included a 5K “Bun Run,” a Red Hot Dog Eating Contest, a Children’s Cupcake Eating Contest (eek to both of those contests!), and “Four Red Hot Stages with Live Entertainment All Day.”
                Then I turned my attention to the most important part of the news item, the hot dogs.
                In July 2019 I wrote here about reading in a Down East magazine’s “Maine Food Issue” an article titled “The 35 Maine-iest Foods.” One of them was “Red Snappers,” the nickname for red hot dogs. I explained, “‘Red snappers are bright red hot dogs that snap when you bite. Don and I didn’t encounter them until later in life, when they were being grilled at a fund-raising hot-dog stand at sheepdog trials held in East Conway, NH, which is close to the Maine border.” We’d always preferred snappy natural-casing hot dogs, so we took to red snappers. But we never cooked red snappers at home; we saved the treat for the sheepdog trials. Black-and-white dogs and red dogs!
                I also wrote about the Maine-iest Foods:
“To my surprise, two of the foods I had never even heard of, much less tasted. One was ‘cretons’: ‘Spiced with cinnamon and cloves, the Quebecois pork paste often pairs with ployes in the Acadian country of the St. John Valley, but folks from Lewiston to Lincoln are known to spread their memere’s [grandmother’s] recipe on crackers and toast.’ I do happen to be acquainted with ployes; they’re a French Canadian type of buckwheat pancake and Don and I have made them.
“The other unfamiliar food was ‘Needhams.’ When I asked my niece, who grew up in Maine, if she knew about cretons she said, ‘Oh, yes,’ and then when I asked, ‘Needhams?” she said, ‘Potatoes!’ and explained that they are mashed potatoes in a Mounds-type candy. The magazine says, ‘These yummy dark-chocolate squares combine shredded coconut and spuds. Creamy, sweet, and all but unheard of outside of Maine.’”
                However, suddenly our Center Harbor supermarket had Needhams—and I made up for lost time.

                Another Maine-iest food was lobster rolls. The magazine said that “the classic Maine lobster roll is ‘served in a split-top bun’ and the lobster meat is ‘chilled, dressed lightly with mayo.’” This August had my first lobster roll of the summer; New Hampshire’s are Maine-style. As Puddles would say, I was happy as a clam at high tide.
                After I’d learned about the Red Hot Dog Festival, the next time Wanda and I were at the Center Harbor supermarket I browsed in the hot-dogs section. And I saw one red variety, Kayem’s Old Tyme Reds. They didn’t seem the same red that I remembered; they were pinkish. This probably is because, as my Googling had informed me, in January 2025 the FDA banned the use of Red Dye No. 3 in foods. Food manufacturers have until January 2027 to comply, and companies are developing new recipes.
                In the supermarket I suddenly heard myself thinking: Sic transit gloria mundi. And I started laughing, as I had on the day of the Red Hot Dog Festival.

OLD HOME WEEK 2025

August 10, 2025

                This past week was Sandwich’s 127th Old Home Week Celebration. There were several events each day; here’s a selection of one a day from the program:

                Saturday, August 2. 5:30-7 p.m. Advice to the Players’ [Sandwich’s Shakespeare company] THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. Our main stage production is a downright romp exploring themes of money, marriage, and friendship—where they overlap and where they don’t. It features local regulars, visiting artists, and emerging professionals. [Outdoors at] Quimby Park, 8 Maple Street.

                On the Sandwich Board there was a post about the play: “‘In this play, the female characters have 58% of the lines—more than in any other play Shakespeare wrote,’ observed director Amie Bjorklund. ‘As a strong female leader in my community, I seek out stories where the female voice is vital and well represented. THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR does just that. Add in some slapstick physical comedy, joyful music, and fun dances, and you have a recipe for a wonderful summer show. I’m glad to step into this sitcom where two women get the last laugh.’”
                [I remembered at Keene Teachers’ College sitting beside Don in Professor Sprague Drenan’s Shakespeare course but I couldn’t remember any mention of the percentage of the lines in THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.]

                Sunday, August 3, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Lower Corner Schoolhouse Open House. Experience a slice of history and see how education looked in days gone by. Our schoolhouse offers a charming and educational glimpse into early American school life. From chalkboards to wooden desks, you’ll see firsthand how students of all ages learned together under one roof. Refreshments. 22 Schoolhouse Road.

                Monday, August 4. 9 a.m.-10 a.m. Fishing Derby. 12 and younger. Prizes. Cookies and lemonade. Littles Pond, Little Pond Road. [Memories of fishing in Lake Winnipesaukee off my father’s rowboat and only catching sunfish.]

                Tuesday, August 5, 9 a.m.-noon. Old Plants for Modern Humans. Foraging walk sponsored by the Sandwich Historical Society. Chapman Sanctuary & Visny Woods.

                Wednesday, August 6, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Grange Hall Open House. Step inside a true symbol of grassroots tradition and neighborly spirit. Our Grange Hall has long served as a gathering place for farmers, families, and friends—where ideas were shared, dances held, and communities strengthened. Refreshments. 36 Maple Street.

                [On Tuesday and Wednesday there was the Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale.] Thursday, August 7, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. Friends of the Library Half-Price Book Sale. Great selection of both adult and children’s books, including graphic books, puzzles, DVDs, CDs. Proceeds support the Library’s activities throughout the year. Please come support this effort and get some great summer reading! Smith Building, Fairgrounds. [I used to do my Christmas shopping at the library’s sale.]

                Friday, August 8. Open House at the Quimby Transportation Museum. See where history comes alive through the power of transportation! 16 Maple Street. [The vehicles on display include an elegant Concord coach, a mail wagon used by the rural mail carriers, and a winter hearse and a summer hearse.]

                Saturday, August 9. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. 50th Annual Bob Biddle Tennis Tournament Finals. Quimby Tennis Courts.

                Sunday, August 10. [The fifth and final performance of] THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

THE GREAT AMERICAN RECIPE

August 3, 2025

                Early one Saturday morning three weeks ago I turned on the TV and found myself watching a PBS cooking show I’d never seen before: “The Great American Recipe.” It WAS great!
                Afterward I Googled, of course, and learned that this was the start of Season 4, July 11—August 15, 9-10 p.m., “eight weeks of challenges celebrating American home cooking.” So I had got a morning rerun. I read on: “Follow talented cooks from different regions of the county as they compete weekly with their most memorable recipes . . . Each week, after two challenges, the judges determine who has the winning dish and in the final episode the top three cooks compete to win the national search for ‘The Great American Recipe.’” The prize? Being featured on the cover of THE GREAT AMERICAN RECIPE COOKBOOK.
                The next Saturdays I’ve watched the show amid my early-morning chores. I’ve relished (can’t resist that verb) the various categories of foods for these “home cooks” to make, such as “Grab and Go Meal,” “Bake Sale,” “What Dish Do You Celebrate With?”, “Holiday Recipe That Highlights Your Family Traditions.”
                And this one really got my attention: “Make a Dish for a Loved One.” Ideas were mentioned: a dish you had on your first date or the first meal you made for your true love.
Well, what I found myself remembering was peanut-butter toast. After Don and I had been dating a while, instead of saying goodnight at my door he’d come in to the kitchen. My parents and sister were asleep upstairs. We’d sit down at the wooden kitchen table, on which the toaster lived, and we’d make slice after slice, toasting Sunbeam bread, spreading Skippy peanut butter, talking.
                But that wasn’t cooking. We first made a meal together at Don’s parents’ house one weekend lunchtime. His mother, a telephone operator, was at work. His father, a boat salesman, was home. Don and I made grilled cheese sandwiches for the three of us, getting the bread somewhat scorched because we paid more attention to each other than to what was in the cast-iron skillet.
                One category on the show, “A Dish That’s Been Passed Down in Generations,” immediately made me think of my Grandmother Ruth’s Sour-Milk Blueberry Muffins, which I’ve written about here (and in my MUTUAL AID novel). Then I asked myself what, besides the muffins, had been my favorite dish she made. The answer came immediately: Scalloped Oysters. As I’ve mentioned, I lived with my grandparents in Lexington during two of Bennington’s Non-Resident Terms and the summer in between, taking the train in to Boston to work as a typist at Beacon Press, which had published my father’s second novel, AMOS JACKMAN. Each Friday on the train ride back after work I looked forward to the supper Grandmother Ruth would make from what she’d chosen when the Friday Fish Man came to the door. I liked them all but I always hoped for Scalloped Oysters. She served this casserole with a cooked vegetable on the side. (Later when I made it my choice of a side dish was an iceberg lettuce salad.)
                In my 1950s-1960s looseleaf-notebook collection of recipes I copied out the Fannie Farmer recipe she used:
Scalloped Oysters
1 pint oysters
4 T. oyster liquor
2 T. milk
½ cup bread crumbs
1 cup cracker crumbs
½ cup melted butter
salt and pepper
Mix bread and cracker crumbs and stir in butter.
Put a thin layer in bottom of buttered shallow baking dish, cover with ½ oysters, sprinkle with salt and pepper; add ½ each oyster liquor and milk.
Repeat, and cover top with remaining crumbs (never more than 2 layers).
Bake 30 minutes at 350.
                I didn’t ever have a Friday Fish Man but when Don and I were living in an apartment in Dover, New Hampshire, from 1968 to 1971, instead of buying fish—or oysters—at the supermarket I’d walk downtown to the very nice fish market with my shopping bag.

 

© 2025 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

PW FALL 2025 PREVIEW

July 27, 2025

         
          As you know, I usually balked when the PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Fall Preview issue arrived in the summer. This was too damn soon to think about autumn reading. I waited. But last year and again this year curiosity overcame me.
          On the June 30 & July 7 issue the cover drawing shows a young woman sitting on the front steps of a brownstone (I think), happily reading as red and yellow leaves drift down around her. Beneath the drawing: “Our editors highlight 678 forthcoming titles and pick their top 10 books in each of 13 categories.”
Here are my picks:

Art, Architecture & Photography:

THE MAKING OF WINNIE-THE-POOH: Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and Other Beloved Characters by James Campbell (Rizzoli, Sept.23, $29.95,) celebrates the 100th anniversary of the first publication of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories with a deep dive into the collaboration between author A.A. Milne and illustrator E.H. Shepard.

Cooking & Food:
THE ART OF GLUTEN-FREE BREAD: Groundbreaking Recipes and Innovative Techniques for Artisanal Breads and Pastries by Aran Goyoaga (Artisan, Sept. 23, $40). The three-time James Beard Award finalist offers 100 gluten-free recipes for baguettes, boules, croissants, naan, and more. [If I were still baking, I’d want to do gluten-free.]

Lifestyle:
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO HURT: Your Smart Guide to a Pain-Free Life by Sanjay Gupta (Simon & Schuster, Sept. 2, $30). Unpacking research on how the mind processes pain, Gupta evaluates interventions ranging from over-the-counter analgesics to psychedelics.

Memoirs & Biographies:
BACKSTAGE: Stories of a Writing Life by Donna Leon (Atlantic Monthly Press, Aug. 26, $27). The crime novelist compiles short essays about her writing process, artistic inspirations, and world travels. [I’ve enjoyed traveling to Venice in her Brunetti series.]

Mysteries & Thrillers:
THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTUNE: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery by Richard Osman (Viking/Dorman, Sept. 30. $30) finds the gumshoe retirees hopping back into action when a wedding turns deadly at the hands of a mysterious criminal. [And I’ve enjoyed their sleuthing in the previous mysteries.]

Poetry:
THE SINGING WORD: 168 Years of Atlantic Poetry, edited by Walt Hunter (Atlantic Editions, Sept. 9, $25), collects poems from the magazine’s first issue in 1857 to the present. 50,000-copy announced first printing.

Politics & Current Events:
THE NEW AGE OF SEXISM: How Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates (Sourcebooks, Aug. 19, $28.99) surveys ways in which cutting-edge tech, from AI to metaverse, is also at the cutting edge of misogyny, and warns that backsliding on women’s rights will be baked into the internet without an intervention.

Science:
THE ARROGANT APE: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters by Christine E. Webb (Avery, Sept. 16. $32). The belief that humans are superior to other animals has led researchers to overlook the sophistication of prairie dog communication, chimpanzee culture, and other nonhuman life, according to the Harvard University primatologist.

           And in the usual reviews section I read and reread the review of THE UNEXPECTED JOURNEY: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path by Emma Heming Willis (Open Field, Sept., $30).
           The review begins, “Willis, cofounder of Make Time Wellness and wife of actor Bruce Willis, details in her compassionate debut how caregivers can better care for themselves.”
           The review concludes, “Admirably vulnerable and openhearted, this will be a balm for readers grappling with a loved one’s recent diagnosis.” [I found balm at the Alzheimer’s Support Group meetings at Huggins Hospital in Wolfeboro.]

 

© 2025 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

   PLYMOUTH TRAVELOGUE

July 20, 2025

         Hazy, foggy. Last Tuesday at 8 a.m. as Wanda and I began our trip to an appointment at Speare Memorial Hospital in Plymouth, we needed windshield wipers on and off, on and off, wiping away condensation. The scenery along the road into the Sandwich village center came and went, brooks, mountains.
          Then we turned onto Route 113 and the day grew clearer. I saw the sign for the Transfer Station driveway; the dump!
          This would be about a forty-five minute trip and once it had been very familiar. But I hadn’t been farther on the road to Holderness—or indeed to Plymouth—in more than five years. I’d almost forgotten how the Holderness road was such a green tunnel through woods with many 25 Miles Per Hour signs along its curves. Narrow side roads led to hidden summer cottages on Squam Lake.
          There was the parking area for West Rattlesnake Mountain! The hike up to the 1,243-foot summit of this western peak was the first hike I wrote in entirety when I was updating editions of my father’s 50 HIKES IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS; I’d needed to substitute a new hike for one that had problems. I was reassuring about rattlesnakes: “Because New Hampshire’s only rattlesnake, the timber rattlesnake, is rare, it’s assumed that the Rattlesnake Mountain name came from a mix-up with the northern water snake.” And I advertised the view: “An easy climb leads you to one of the most beautiful views in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region.”
          Sign on one of the side roads: Finisterre Road. The “end of the earth”!
          We reached Holderness: more Squam with marinas, boat rentals, and Cottage Place with its cabins and beach. Thane and Penny had once stayed there. Earlier, Thane and son Hamish had stayed there when they’d come to join me in Sandwich for the 2011 “Appreciation of Daniel Doan,” talking about our father/grandfather/great-grandfather’s hiking books at a workshop meeting of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project celebrating the hundredth birthday of the Weeks Act, which created the White Mountain National Forest.
Sign: Turtle Crossing. No turtles doing so. Wanda and I murmured how good it is that we’re seeing more and more of these signs.
          We took Route 3 to Ashland and stopped at a gas station. While Wanda pumped, I watched two dog-walkers on the sidewalks on either side of Main Street; the guys were ignoring each other but the dogs greeted each other noisily. Very entertaining! Across the street was an old gray-brown stone building with a date, 1907, the year my mother was born.
          We’d already encountered and stopped for some roadwork and as we left Ashland on Route 3 (not I-93, which runs alongside here) we were stopped for a while at some serious bridge work, but we had a view to enjoy, deep down into a river ravine. Wondering if these stops would make us late, I remembered how in OFF SHORE I mentioned the Scottish excuse for being late, “sheep in the road.”
          When we drove on into Plymouth we passed the Italian Farmhouse restaurant, where I’d dined once with Don and once with the Over-the-Hill Hikers after a hike. It’s part of the renowned Common Man “family” of restaurants.
          Being in Plymouth always makes me think of the two years in Keene with Don and our apartment in the married students’ barracks. Back then both colleges were called teachers’ colleges. (Don remembered that some of the dining hall’s silverware still said Keene Normal School, which had opened in 1909.) Then they became state colleges. Keene is still Keene State College. Plymouth is now Plymouth State University.
          We drove up a hill to the hospital and my appointment in plenty of time.
          After, on our way home we had a car picnic at the Ashland Dunkin’ Donuts. Wanda chose an Apple Cruller and I chose Bagel Bites. We looked at the view of Green Grove Cemetery and distant mountains but I was also seeing the 1950s Keene Teachers’ College campus with its small building called The Campus Club and I was reminiscing about how sometimes between classes Don and I stopped in there to revive ourselves with coffee and—oh, decisions, jelly doughnut or honey-dipped doughnut?

© 2025 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

DINGWELL DOG TRIALS

July 13, 2025

         
          While sorting some of my journals last week I came upon my notebook for “Scotland Trip.” This was our 1997 trip, our second of two trips; when Don and I were living in Britain we had devoted Don’s 1965 spring-vacation week to Scotland. In The Snowy Series I gave our 1997 trip with its Isle of Lewis destination to Snowy and Tom.
          After visiting Lewis, Don and I took a ferry back to the mainland and drove from Ullapool to Inverness. In those pre-Internet days (for us) I’d subscribed to a British working-sheepdogs magazine, bought a Sheepdog Trials guide, and done really long-distance phoning about sheepdog trials; I’d learned that there was one near Inverness with the right timing for our schedule. (As you know, we had had a border collie and in later years we continued the interest by going to New Hampshire sheepdog trials.)
          On Saturday, September 20th, after our first night in the Brae Ness hotel on the River Ness riverbank we had breakfast in the dining room, grapefruit juice, porridge, poached eggs, brown toast, jam, and coffee. It was served by John Hill, our host, who commented that the morning was “chilly, even a bit of frost, but it was bright.” Then we set forth to Dingwall. As I wrote in the journal:

          Round a roundabout, onto the A862, into Dingwall, a town of pinkish stone, out to a turn where there was a little cardboard sign saying, “Trials,” up a narrow lane, trees touching overhead; a sign with an arrow: “Dog Trials.” The lane passed a farm and suddenly needed four-wheel drive but Don forged onward in our rental, straight up across fields. Scared, I thought how I’d been through this a million times at home, nerve-racking suspense on gullied dirt roads.
          We made it. We saw cars parked over to the right on the hilltop and drove across the field to join them. It was 9:30 a.m. The day was sunny, the view beyond our dreams. There was snow on Ben Wyvis. Cromarty Firth spread out pastel blue into haze. Patchwork fields below. The clotted houses of the town.
          A yell. “Let them out!”
          We couldn’t see that far but we assumed sheep were released above on the next hilltop. A handler across the fence in front of the cars stood on a small stump of wood, whistling and shouting. His dog took off on the outrun, racing flat out away to the left, thudding, then was just a speck on the hillside in a moment. I reached into my shoulder bag and grabbed our binoculars.
          The handler yelled, “Come bye!”—i.e., move left.
          “Way to me!”—move right.
          The dog “lifted” the three sheep, a maneuver sometimes impossible to see without our binoculars, which we were passing back and forth, and brought the sheep down between gates for the fetch.
          “Look back!”
          Another dog ran forward from our area to crouch and stare at those three sheep while the first dog ran back to lift and fetch three more. This was a double lift!
          “Way to me!” There was a problem. “Oh shit!” said the handler. Then, “Come bye. Steady now.”
          The drive was to the left between two trees. Next, a crossdrive around a tree on the right. Then the penning, which was difficult.
          The trials continued, other handlers, other border collies. The judges sat in chairs.           The handlers wore deerstalker caps, sweaters, tweed jackets. For signals they sometimes used mechanical whistles that either sounded piercing like a bosun’s pipe, said sailor Don, or like birdsong.
          Shouts: “Look back!” “Lie down!”
          We spoke with Robin Watson, the owner of Brigend Farm, and when he had a moment a couple of times he came over to be host, explaining the layout of the course, which is so big it’s great preparation for international trials. He told us there’d soon be tea in the tent and later, while talking with us about our border collie and trials in the States, told us to go get some tea.
          We did. Inside the tent, a long table was set up with tea kettles, offerings of buns filled with venison or salmon, cakes. Amongst the drinks were bottles of whisky, which we’d gathered was part of the occasion. Had a good chat with a woman serving who apologized for her orange cake—she’d tried a new recipe and it was a bit crumbly.
          After our tea we went back to watching.
          At 1:15 we decided to leave and had an exciting descent from the hill, the car’s underpinnings brushing the lane. The view was like looking down from an airplane. The squares of fields were green and pale rust. We found ourselves in the village of Fodderty and drove between hedgerows back to Dingwall and then to Inverness.

© 2025 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

CENTER HARBOR

July 6, 2025

         
           I’ve lived near Center Harbor, New Hampshire, all my life and in my younger years I read poems by John Greenleaf Whittier (“The Barefoot Boy”! “Barbara Frietchie”!) but not until a few years ago did I realize that he had written a Center Harbor  poem.
           Center Harbor’s Heath’s Supermarket has a display rack of cards from Hanson Studio in Charlestown, NH. The cards are created from Tim Hanson’s New Hampshire photographs. One day as I browsed through them looking for a Lakes Region photo to send a friend, I stopped at a familiar Center Harbor scene, blue waters of the harbor—with, across the road in the foreground, something unfamiliar: a boulder on which a plaque had been set. On the plaque were these verses:
 
Should you go to Centre Harbor,
     As haply you some time may,
Sailing up the Winnipesaukee
     From the hills of Alton Bay,
 
Into the heart of the highlands,
     Into the north wind free,
Through the rising and vanishing islands,
     Over the mountain sea,
 
To the little hamlet lying
     White in its mountain fold,
Asleep by the land and dreaming
     A dream that is never told,
 
And in the Red Hill’s shadow
     Your pilgrim home you make,
Where the chambers open to sunrise,
     The mountains, and the lake . . .
           Underneath the verses I read, “Excerpt from ‘A Legend of the Lake’ by John Greenleaf Whittier.”
           The boulder in this photograph must, I thought, be in the bandstand park; I’d never walked around there. And, I wondered, why hadn’t “A Legend of the Lake” been read to or by us kids in Laconia schools?
           I remembered first seeing Center Harbor in the 1940s. I’ve written here about how a nice sale of my father’s novelette (which later became his first novel, THE CRYSTAL YEARS) to COSMOPOLITAN magazine made our parents buy a “lot” on Lake Winnpesaukee in a new development on Moultonborough Neck. The Lot became an escape from our Laconia life; my father pitched a tent, we camped out, we swam.
           To get there from Laconia we drove to Meredith to Center Harbor to Moultonborough. In those days in Center Harbor the main route didn’t run alongside the lake, bypassing the center of Center Harbor. It went right through and Penny and I watched eagerly for the fountain in the center of this center. I’ve Googled to refresh my memory about the fountain’s history and learned on the Center Harbor website and in an article in FOSTER’S DAILY DEMOCRAT newspaper that the Kona Fountain was presented to the town in 1907 by “Herbert Dumaresq, a Boston merchant who called his Center Harbor retreat the Kona estate.” The sculptor was “Richard Gerry Cook (1869-1955)” who was “reckoned one of America’s foremost artists in the salt-glazed stoneware medium of decorative pottery.” And what Penny and I stared at was “an Indian boy clutching a wild goose. The water rises in a graceful jet from the throat of the bird struggling to take flight.” The fountain is still there after a 1997 restoration.
           Of course I bought the Hanson Studio card and when I got home I Googled Whittier’s “Legend of the Lake” to read the rest of the poem.

© 2025 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

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