The Walk the End Alzheimer’s, the largest fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s Association, is an annual autumn event in more than 600 communities across the country. This year, on October 2, the Walk is back with teams and individuals walking together in person and in purple. 

Why purple? Purple is the color of the Alzheimer’s Association, but other colors have significance too, as represented by the flowers people carry during the walk. A purple flower means you lost someone to Alzheimer’s; yellow means you are a caregiver to someone with Alzheimer’s or dementia; blue means you are living with Alzheimer’s; and orange means you support the Alzheimer’s Association. … Read More

When two local companies team up to better our community, magical things can happen. JAG Productions based in White River Junction is partnering with King Arthur Baking Company in Norwich. While a theater company and baking company seem an unlikely pair, together they are co-producing a beautiful series of performances, “Theatre on the Hill.”

“Theatre on the Hill” will take place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings between August 13 – September 12 on the grassy hill behind King Arthur Baking Company in Norwich. Preceded with food and drinks provided by Upper Valley favorites such as Munchie Rollz, Griddle and Groovy, and Wolf Tree, “Theatre on the Hill” is an outdoor theater series featuring an array of performances from workshop productions to concert musicals, to staged readings. … Read More

In October 2018, Nick Krembs, a retired carpenter and builder from Norwich, traveled to the United States border in El Paso, Texas. That year marked a huge surge in migrants seeking asylum from their home countries. Due to the drug cartels, corrupt police, torture, oppression, gang violence, and abuse, as well as the devastation and destruction of farms and their livelihoods from hurricanes – they fled.

Krembs’s sister, Jane Greiling, a retired nurse, had been volunteering in El Paso with the Annunciation House: a faith-based nonprofit organization that provides shelter, clothing, and food to migrants predominantly from Mexico and Central America.… Read More

Four years ago, a group of area poets was offered the opportunity to explore the collections of the Norwich Historical Society to find inspiration for an original poem to present at an NHS event “Poets and the Past.” Phyllis B. Katz, a Norwich resident at the time, and a professor and poet at Dartmouth College, asked if there were archives about medicine. With the help of local historians, Nancy Osgood and Judy Brown, she was introduced to Norwich’s first female doctor, Edastina Bush, and guided to the Bush family archives. The poem she wrote, explained Phyllis “was triggered by things visible…in the Historical Society’s Lewis House… And inspired by things missing about Edastina that I wanted to be there but could not find.”… Read More

Over half a century ago, three idealistic musicians joined forces in New York, and proceeded to lend their time and talent to the civil rights movement, protests against the Vietnam war, and countless campaigns for human rights over the following decades. Peter, Paul & Mary became icons – “the gateway drug to the folk revival of the ’60s” in the words of one critic – with their renditions of songs like If I Had a Hammer and Blowin’ in the Wind.

A generation later, from her home in Wilder, the daughter of Paul Stookey carries on her father’s legacy of using music as a tool for social change.… Read More

To see Norwich Bookstore owners Liza Bernard and Penny McConnel in action, you would think they are fraternal twin sisters. The pair move and speak in harmony; finish each other’s sentences, encourage, laugh, compliment, and prod – the way only the best of friends can do.

One would never guess McConnel and Bernard’s ages of 82 and 67, respectively. Perhaps bookselling is a tonic that keeps people young, witty, and vibrant. But every story has an eventual ending, and thoughts of retiring have crossed their minds, especially in the past three years.

And so, through the bookseller’s industry listserv, they sought new owners.… Read More

A side effect of the world being upside down for a year is the unexpected beauty and wit that the universe continues to throw at us. My oldest son, 10, has blossomed into an avid collector of ski trail maps, the origami squares you kept jammed in your parka to look at on the lift before smartphones changed our world. Occasionally, I look up a resort and see if it is easy to contact customer service or the ticket window. Most times, corporate America thwarts my efforts. (Calling Vail and hoping for a quick answer instead of getting trapped in an endless labyrinth of “press 1” options is a little like standing in front of the White House thinking Joe is going to come out and say hello just to you.)… Read More

This spring issue of the Norwich Times happens to coincide with the time of greatest change in the Upper Valley.  We go from cold nights and snow covered ground in early March, to the warm (sometimes hot) days, spring rains, and long hours of light of late May.  In between there are ice events, spring flooding, mud, and the long awaited greening of trees and lawns…oh, and the flowers – who can forget the flowers.

Is there a greater boost to morale after many months of icy roads, snow covered driveways, and dirty snow piles than the seeing the colorful spring blooms of the hyacinths, crocuses and daffodils? … Read More

While the digital revolution, well, evolved, Norwich resident Nora Jacobson still preferred to show her movies to – and to attend other filmmakers’ works with – a bunch of other people in a theater.

Shoulder to shoulder.

Knee to knee.

Face to face.

“People don’t watch as carefully, I think, if they’re watching on a device, by themselves, especially at home,” Jacobson says. “They’re distracted by the phone or texts. You don’t get that same sense of people zeroing in on your film, especially if you make films that are complex, like I do.”

Jacobson’s complicated fictional tales range from 1998’s My Mother’s Early Lovers and 2004’s Nothing Like Dreaming to 2016’s The Hanji Box (look up these titles on www.imdb.com),… Read More

Long before white settlers came to live in the Upper Valley in the mid-1700s, the Native American Chief Mascommah hunted and fished all along the Connecticut River Valley eventually settling in Northfield, Massachusetts. The name ‘Mascoma’ appears in many places throughout the Upper Valley, so it must have been a logical choice for the founders when Mascoma Bank was established 122 years ago in 1899 as a mutually-owned bank.

How has this Upper Valley institution maintained its community and local-first banking principals amidst so many technology, economic, and social changes over more than 100 years? According to current President and CEO (and former Norwich resident) Clay Adams, Mascoma Bank was intentionally designed to be locally owned and to support community philanthropy, and the bank has simply stayed true to its original mission.… Read More