There’s an old saying that goes if you find a job you truly love, you’ll never work a day in your life. Nothing could be truer for Norwich’s Jay Avis. He is a mechanical engineer by training (although he’ll tell you that he’s been “fighting it all along”) and has managed to couple those skills with his interest in primitive living and passion for helping others. From working as an outdoor educator and leading wilderness expeditions, to volunteering for Hospice and providing compassionate respite care, Jay has never lost sight of finding problems and helping people solve them. “It is a labor of love,” he says.… Read More

When I was a student, I avoided history. Both my brothers and my dad are dyslexic, and sometimes I feel like I am, too, says Heidi Fishman of Norwich. “I never aspired to be a writer.” So how did she come to be the author of a compelling historical novel about surviving the Holocaust? The story that so strongly moved her beyond her experience as a student, and her practice as a psychologist, was the tale of her mother, Ruth ‘Tutti’ Lichtenstern Fishman, a child survivor of the Holocaust. The result of Heidi’s work is Tutti’s Promise.  Heidi gathered the anecdotes her mother had told her and her brothers as they grew up, and conducted research in Holocaust archives.… Read More

Editor’s Note: For a few years now, the Norwich Times has been featuring our young people thinking, doing, and living outside the box. Rather than follow the traditional four-years-of-high-school onto four-years-of-college route, these adventurous souls are recognizing that there are many paths, and that some may lead to a whole new world to explore. Read about Ebben Whitehair, Gabrielle Alexandrescu, and Sarah Bibeau as they tell us about their exciting travels to distant lands and about their humbling experiences back home.

Ebben Whitehair

I don’t plan anything in advance. Just ask my Mom. I started out my gap year knowing that college immediately after high school wouldn’t work for me.… Read More

Publisher’s Note: The Norwich Times’ mission is to uplift, inspire and build positive community through the printed page. We do not publish anything pertaining to national or even local politics or any other sensationalist or potentially divisive content.

While running this article, seemingly about the Women’s March, could be construed as political, my intention is not about politics at all. What inspired me to walk this fine line, and to tell the stories of local people who attended one March or another, was the overwhelming takeaway for each was peace and love. No matter which side of an issue one is on, it’s hard not to agree that peace and love are common values among all humans.… Read More

John Pepper is living proof that even during these turbulent times in which we now live, the American dream of achieving corporate success is alive and well. However, spending time with Norwich resident John Pepper will quickly convince you that even with his history of

overwhelming corporate success, he has broken the mold for a top executive. No fancy board room for John. His Norwich home serves as his corporate headquarters, as well as a single desk in shared office space across the river.

John serves as CEO and cofounder of Boloco that was once described as “A Boston-based family of 22 restaurants and over 450 team members that serves globally inspired burritos, bowls, salads, smoothies and shakes with locations in MA, VT, MD, RI, DC, and of course, Hanover, NH.”… Read More

On September 24th of this year, a beautiful thing happened.

Close to 350 kids of all ages (2-40+) gathered at Riverside Community Park in West Lebanon to celebrate the renaming of the skatepark and to commit to its revitalization. As with most successful endeavors, this was and continues to be a joint effort between dedicated individuals and public and private entities.

As is often the case, it seems that when tragedy occurs, magic soon follows. Thus is the case with the new life and energy being poured into the recently named Rusty Berrings Skatepark. Yes, “Rusty” knew how to spell “bearing” but being more than a little unconventional was how he rolled (no pun intended!).… Read More

Over February break, twenty American kids, mostly from the Upper Valley, will spend two weeks in Zambia, developing their circus skills alongside kids from Chibolya, an impoverished section of the Zambian capital of Lukhasa. For many of the kids from the U.S., this will be a return trip after their first journey there last winter.

The seeds were sown for this unlikely pairing of circus-loving kids from far ends of the earth during a snowstorm in New York City on Valentine’s Day of 2014. Norwich resident Brooke Ciardelli, who had recently ended her tenure as Founding Producing and Artistic Director of Northern Stage, was directing for a short play festival in Greenwich Village.… Read More

In the autumn of 1765, John Hutchinson tramped over the trails from Ashford, Connecticut to Hanover, New Hampshire with little more than a horse “upon which rode his wife and babes, some clothing and bedding and also another necessary animal to a growing family – a cow.”* From Hanover, the family paddled across the Connecticut River in a log canoe, with the animals swimming alongside, to a clearing that was soon to be part of the town of Norwich. Jerome Hutchinson, who was three at the time, “was fond of relating when an old man, his distinct remembrance of the appearance presented of the old white-faced cow as she struggled bravely to keep her head above water while swimming the river.”… Read More

Everybody needs a friend who can lend a hand in time of need. And if you’re a building – patiently abiding and not seeming to change – it may be hard to find such a pal. Beaver Meadow Chapel, located eponymously at the intersection of Beaver Meadow Road and Chapel Hill Road in West Norwich, found its friend in the nick of time: Donna Wheeler has become the champion of the charming building and has led the drive to raise funds for a highly necessary new roof.

The roof is truly in wretched shape, with shingles missing and eroding away. The building was last roofed in 1999, says Donna, and the company that made the shingles has since been sued for substandard product.… Read More

I think today it’s easier to have the label lesbian than feminist,” says Claudia McKay Lamperti. She and her partner, Beth Dingman, are now retired from owning and running New Victoria Printers and Publishers. Founded as a print shop in Lebanon in 1975, New Vic embodied the strong feminist political convictions of its founders, and the belief that “the power of the press belongs to those who own it.”

Claudia grew up on the west coast. She met and married John Lamperti in California, and moved to the Upper Valley in 1962 when he came to Dartmouth to teach mathematics. Two of Claudia and John’s four children live in Norwich with their families; the other two live in California.… Read More