Feature Story

By Anita Rafael  

Forty-three years ago, American auto manufacturers had every reason to celebrate. It was 1965 and that year Detroit rolled a whopping half-million convertibles off its production lines, hot new cars that blue-jeaned young buyers snapped up the minute they hit the showrooms. In addition, U.S. dealers tempted motorists even more by importing record numbers of hip roadster "ragtops" from England and Europe. America's love affair with the convertible car had begun. » read more

By Geoffrey Norman
Photography by Hubert Schriebl

In the entire history of the American field trials for the Brittany breed there has never been a dog like Tom Ettinger's Roy.

When he was growing up around Weston, there were plenty of places where Tom Ettinger could hunt birds.  His father, Churchill Ettinger, was a well-known artist and a sportsman whose Golden Retriever named Troubadour, was one of his subjects and a fine, close-working grouse and woodcock dog. Troubadour was what is known among upland hunters as a "flushing dog."  Meaning, that the dog does not go motionless when it picks up the scent of a bird.  That would be a "pointing dog."  One that waits for the hunter to come in and force the bird to fly.  » read more

By Betsy Shaw Mackenzie
Photography by  James H. Schriebl

We pulled into the SolarFest parking lot, otherwise known as a horse pasture, at Forget-Me-Not Farm with minutes to spare. Theater in the Woods, a traditional highlight of the festival, was due to start in five minutes. And we still had to get to the woods. 

I jogged across the meadow as fast as a mother with a child bouncing up and down in a backpack on her back dares. We arrived at the site of the first scene-the play moves around to several different "sets" while the audience follows-threaded our way through the audience and found a mossy stump on which to sit. There, in the middle of the forest, the green, leafy canopy leaking strands of golden sunshine onto our faces, we were richly entertained.    » read more

by Susanne Washburn
Photgraphy by Hubert Schriebl

Who doesn't love a Vermont parade? Drums and horns and stand-out costumes, imaginative floats and siren-winding fire trucks, bagpipers in kilts, Shriners driving tractors, the American Legion sporting flags, kids on decorated trikes, pounds of candy tossed out in fistfuls. And every year a different theme. 

For Rupert Old Home Day last summer, it was-counter-intuitively-Christmas in August. Signs on the sides of a float carrying a bearded Santa in swim trunks seated in a beach chair under a sun umbrella proclaimed, "Closed 'Til December 25th." On board too: a number of other North Pole denizens dressed for a dip. Rolling the route also was a 10-foot-tall snowball propelled by someone labeled "Old Lady Winter"-with the look and air of a petite polar bear. One girl paraded on skis (on wheels). Another young winter sportsman did his snowboard act (via skateboard) on a broad, steep, snow-capped mountain slide pitched from the back of a truck. To be sure, an Arctic Cat ATV was on the scene, pulling another chilly-temp-time float. » read more

Fred & Pat CarmichaelBy Susanne Washburn
Photography by Hubert Schriebl

"I  think our wives are seeing too much of each other," says Fred Carmichael, on meeting an acquaintance in Manchester. "It's all about the Dorset Historical Society, isn't it?" replies the interlocutor. "That's what they s-a-y," is Fred's rejoinder. He's a bottomless source of such impromptu lines-this author of forty published plays, most of them in the comedy-mystery genre. He delivers his characteristic banter in the local supermarket, on the Northshire's marble sidewalks, and to Meals On Wheels clients. At a late afternoon reading of verse by an historic Dorset poet, he announces to those assembling in the large circle of chairs: "I want you all to know: We are free for dinner."

Pat, his wife of 55 years, may seem the straight man to his comic antics, but she can deliver a good laugh line just as well. Actress, songstress, stage director (both in Dorset and on tour), she is equally of the essence of theatre. Recalling one early aspect of her career-a stint as a cabaret chanteuse-Fred reports, "I married a nightclub singer." » read more

By Ellen Ecker Ogden
Photography by Hubert Schriebl

Chris MorrowChris Morrow is looking to do more than merely sell books. He wants his locally owned Northshire Bookstore to be a placewhich can act as an underpinning of a better world.

Chris Morrow may well have the most coveted job in the world among people who love books.  Sure, it's a desk job, and his desk is a makeshift affair; with two tables squeezed together to form an "L" piled with tall stacks of books, and a laptop computer balanced on an old typing table. "I love books," admits Chris Morrow, president and general manager of the Northshire Bookstore, which his parents, Barbara and Ed, started in 1976, "But they have never been my sole focus."

The peacock blue walls contain an eclectic mix of paintings, weavings, prayer flags and sculptures; all are evidence that his interests clearly go beyond just books; there is Tibetan Buddhism, world travel, family and the community, all evidence of the untraditional path he had taken before deciding to return to » read more

By Frederica Templeton
Images courtesy of The American Museum of Fly Fishing

PleisnerThe land between Green and Taconic mountain ranges is a place of small rivers and streams, charming old played-out farms, fields and pastures that have gone by, crumbling stone walls, and abandoned orchards.  Still, it is our land and we love it. It is also iconic country to legions of fly fishermen and upland hunters even though most of them have never been here.  But they have seen this country painted superbly and with undeniable feeling.  Have, in other words, seen it through the eyes of a great artist who fished and hunted this little corner of the world, loved it intensely, and put that love into his paintings.

Ogden Pleissner never thought of himself as someone who did "sporting art."  He was not, emphatically, one of those hacks who turned out stylized stuff for the covers of catalogues and the numbered print racket.  He considered himself, with absolute legitimacy, a "painter of landscapes who also liked to hunt and fish."  His work has been compared, with justification, to that of Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth.  » read more

By Kristin McDonald
Photography by Hubert Schriebl 

Habitat CrewThis past fall Happy Valley on Lewis Road in Rupert got a little happier. It used to be that to visit the George Lewis family there, you'd go to the 1970s-era mobile home in the middle of the bucolic dairy farm land that has been in the Lewis family for 13 generations.  But now that home has been gutted and in its place is a bright, open, much larger stick-built raised ranch with plenty of space for the Lewis's: George, Kelli, son Tyler, 20, and daughter Savannah, 15.  "The trailer was home," says Kelli, "but as the kids got bigger, we wanted more space. We wanted more for ourselves as well.  We prayed for years for our longtime dream of a new house. But on the salary of a dairy farmer and my job as an elementary school paraprofessional, it wasn't going to happen."  Until the day that Kelli saw the flier at church seeking applicants for Habitat for Humanity. » read more

By Peggy Shinn
Photography by Hubert Schriebl 

In the cycling world, Andy Bishop has been where most of us only dream of going. In a 17-year cycling career that began in Tucson, Arizona, he has raced on five continents and in the Tour de France four times, finishing three. He has raced alongside men with the names of LeMond, Rooks, and Theunise and up the 21 turns of the legendary Alpe d'Huez in France with more than a half-million rabid cycling fans screaming in his ears. When he switched to mountain biking in 1996, he took to the woods, racing single-track loops that many of us have only read about in magazines. » read more

Phebe Ann LewisBy Susanne Washburn
PhotographY by Hubert Schriebl

Through changing chapters, with myriad talents, and amazing energy…

Now in her tenth decade of life, Phebe Ann Lewis does all her own yard work, climbs ladders to shovel snow off the roof, and with equal agility, plays the foot pedals of the organ for her own amusement and for numerous churches in the area. At the start of the weekly Precision Walk in Manchester, she takes off in sprightly fashion and is immediately in the center of the group that stretches out ahead and behind. As the speediest walkers move out, she never flags, keeping a steady pace, an occasional step verging on a run. » read more