Houseplants have been keeping a lot of us company during the pandemic, and the good news is there’s a plant for any home, big or small, well-lit or not. There’s also a virtual jungle of stylish containers in which to show them off. “I love incorporating plants into our interior spaces,” says designer Mel Bean […]

For decades, I drove by Middle and Peaked Mountains near North Conway, New Hampshire on my way to taller peaks. I remember thinking they looked like interesting potential climbs and wondering if there were hiking trails that led to the bald summits. My curiosity was insufficient to motivate further inquiry. A couple of years ago, […]

GEMELLI WITH TOMATOES, SALAMI AND FONTINA Talk to the best cooks in Italy, and they’ll tell you the secret to great pasta is an ingredient many American cooks throw out — the starchy pasta cooking water. They always reserve a cup or two to stir into the skillet with al dente noodles to help the […]

Topsham’s Energy Committee is set to present the second webinar in their energy webinars series aimed at educating residents and businesses on energy conservation, renewable energy options, beneficial electrification and more, this time with a more personal take. On Wednesday, Feb. 2, from 6-7 p.m., three members of Topsham’s Energy Committee will present their personal […]

  Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” We have seen magical technological developments in a short time. Even before the pandemic, we stayed in contact with distant relatives online via video chats, watching our families grow through the screens of digital devices. While still lagging behind […]

If you look along the coast of Maine, you will find many places bearing the name “Quahog.” These are the hard-shell clams that live in the intertidal along our shores. They have much thicker, stronger shells than their soft-shell compatriots and bear a purplish tint that has made them valuable as jewelry and as currency […]

I decided this week that we should reconsider these because so many of them are being just tossed on the ground. In addition, most of those are the single-use so-called surgical type masks that we get at any medical or health care facility we visit these days. Those single-use disposable masks are the most common […]

When recently going through a refresher course in SCUBA diving, I was reminded of just how poorly designed, in many ways, humans are for staying underwater. That hasn’t, however, kept people from coming up with complicated apparatuses to compensate for their natural lack of appropriate adaptations. From early diving bells to modern submersibles, humans have […]