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Story Archives of 'History'
Marketing the Irish Brand
By Stephanie Hughes on Wednesday, March 17, 2010.
Most Americans have an idea of what it means to be Irish. That may be partially due to the fact that the Irish Government and Tourist Board have done such a fine job of branding the country overseas.
Reporter Stephanie Hughes tries to summon the wind at her back and the sun upon her face for a look at how the Irish brand scores on St. Patrick's Day, a holiday famous for its pub crawls, sentimental songs and green beer.
(Photo by pawelbak via Flickr/CreativeCommons)
Remembering Irish Song-Singing
By Song and Memory on Wednesday, March 17, 2010.
For Brooklyn native Kathy Napoli, St. Patrick's Day is a time to remember her father and her irish heritage. Napoli hears “Harrigan,” from the Broadway musical Yankee Doodle Dandy and is transported back to the railroad apartment where her father invited the neighbors in for a drink and a song.
Listen to this piece at Public Radio Exchange.
The Godfather of Ambient Chamber Music
By John Diliberto on Tuesday, March 16, 2010.
Harold Budd started out as a jazz drummer in the 1950s. But he soon rebelled against his traditional background by making a political statement, creating what he called "pretty music" and clashing with the supposed wisdom of avant garde music at the time.
Strafford Rivers Conservancy
By Deborah Schachter on Saturday, March 13, 2010.The Tuttle Farm in Dover is the oldest family farm in the United States. When Bill Tuttle and his family, the 11th generation to farm this land, decided to conserve it, they turned to the Strafford Rivers Conservancy.
Remembering Doris Granny D Haddock
By Laura Knoy on Thursday, March 11, 2010.The New Hampshire activist got politically involved later in life with a 3000-mile walk across the country championing campaign finance reform, which brought her national fame. Granny D died Tuesday at the age of 100. We’ll talk about her life, her legacy, and her challenge: to find your own voice and do something about it.
Guest
- Dennis Burke, political organizer and co-author with Haddock of two autobiographies chronicling her life and work
We'll also hear from
- John Rauh, founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Americans for Campaign Reform
- John Lynch, Governor of New Hampshire
- Jim Rousmaniere, publisher of the Keene Sentinel
- Jeanne Shaheen, Democratic US Senator from Madbury and former governor of New Hampshire
Pondering Mesofacts
By Elaine Grant on Wednesday, March 10, 2010.
We learned in grade school that facts are those indisputable tidbits of knowledge that might as well be written in stone. They’re never disputed, and they’re never going to change. For example, Mount Washington reaches an elevation of 6,289-feet. That’s definite. But what about the recent news that the surface of the moon – once believed to be a dry desert – could actually hold icy patches of water near its south pole? Did the facts about the moon just change in light of the new lunar discovery?
Sam Arbesman is a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and a regular contributor to the Boston Globe’s Ideas Section. He would call the lunar ice a Mesofact – or a slow-changing fact. Mesofacts sneak up around us all the time, but schools don’t tend to like them.
The Boston Globe: Warning: Your Reality is Out of Date
(Photo by Mykl Roventine via Flickr/CreativeCommons)
A Young Saudi Filmmaker Stars in IMAX Arabia
By Katrina Ingraham on Thursday, March 4, 2010.
From Hollywood’s worst to Saudi Arabia’s first. Saudi Arabia is home to nearly 29 million people and five times the size of California. It’s the world’s top oil producer and the birthplace of Islam, but not a source for cinema. In fact, movie theaters are banned there. Yet the new IMAX film Arabia, was made there to introduce viewers to the rich culture and history of a society in transition.
The film is now screening at the Museum of Science in Boston and our industrious intern, Katrina Ingraham, went there to talk with one of Arabia’s filmmakers, Hamzah Jamjoom, who became its star.
IMAX Arabia is at the Museum of Science from now until April 1st.
(Photo by © MacGillivray Freeman Films)
The One-Man Orchestrion: Pat Metheny
By John Diliberto on Wednesday, March 3, 2010.
Orchestrions are mechanical orchestras that play drums, cymbals and pianos without live musicians. Orchestrions were big a century ago, but the mechanical players lost popularity to human ones.
The Folkway Remembered
By Kate McNally on Sunday, February 28, 2010.Kate looks back at The Folkway in Peterborough with David and Susan Lord, longtime friends of the Folkway, and Jim Van Valkenburgh of the Peterborough Historical Society, which is putting on a concert series and exhibit about the space.
On The Routes of Man, With Ted Conover
By Virginia Prescott on Wednesday, February 24, 2010.
Ted Conover lives his writing. The journalist made a name for himself over 20 years ago, when he left college to ride trains out west with hobos. That journey became his first book, Rolling Nowhere. For his book Coyotes, Conover worked among Mexican migrant workers and paid human traffickers to help him cross over the U.S. border. In Newjack, he recounts working as a guard at New York’s notorious Sing Sing Prison.
Now, Conover takes a new road. In his newest book The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing The World and The Way We Live Today, Conover crosses the globe and travels along six roads to tell the stories of how those roads connect and affect the lives of people living along them.
In Africa, he hops in among truckers, a population blamed for carrying aids across the continent. In China, he whizzes along busy freeways where car culture is all the hype. And in Northern India, he traverses a frozen river which is the only path connecting remote Buddhist enclaves to the modern world. He also goes to the West Bank and Lagos and brings us back to the Odyssey and Ancient Roman roads to look at the history of roads and the things they carry.
Conover will be reading at Gibson's Bookstore in Concord on Friday, March 5th at 7 pm.
The New York Times: A Collector of Road Trips, Just Passing Through
The New York Times Book Review: Ted Conover’s Roadside Attractions
The Washington Post: Jonathan Yardley reviews "The Routes of Man" by Ted Conover
National Public Radio: On The Roads: The Cartography Of Us
(Photo by yewenyi via Flickr/CreativeCommons)
