catching up on local news

Michael Jackson and the speed of information

On the afternoon of Thursday, June 25, Michael Jackson’s fame peaked with the sharp spike of fascination that comes moments after the death of a celebrity.

First reporting the story was TMZ.com, the Jerry Springer of entertainment Web sites. While Fox News, CNN and MSNBC were starting to post news of the singer’s collapse, TMZ had already declared Jackson dead. (For the first 40 minutes, CNN listed the singer as suffering “serious cardiac arrest.” Well, yeah. It’s always serious when your heart stops beating.)

piercing the budget

Fairness was in the eye of the beholder at the State House last Wednesday when the N.H. House and Senate grudgingly approved the 2010-11 budget. House Bills 1 and 2 contain the state’s general fund spending and revenue, respectively. Earning few cheers, the legislation has been called everything from a legitimate compromise doing the “least possible harm” to an illegal “dung heap.”

With demand for services up and revenue down, legislators faced a $500 million projected shortfall in the general fund, which comprises about one third of the state’s $11.6 billion biennial budget. The other two thirds come from federal funding, dedicated funds, and a host of one-time monies like the federal stimulus package. Use of short-term dollars is not new in the budget balancing act, but neither is criticism of the technique. Detractors say it fails to address a “structural deficit” that always leaves budget writers with problems.

Everything about singer-songwriter Slaid Cleaves’ new album, from the title and cover art to the lyrics and melodies, gushes with pending tragedy. Released in April, “Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away” suggests the infirmity and transience of the fleeting things we take for granted. Cleaves tried to make that theme inhabit every aspect of his record.

“I just learned early on that in order to make an impression on people, in order for people to remember my songs, I had to really strike them in the heart and really move them,” he said. And striking the heart means stoking the tragic.

The Tommy Gallant Jazz Festival

One of the Seacoast’s long running cultural events, the Tommy Gallant Jazz Festival will take place on Sunday, July 5, at Prescott Park. The festival runs from noon until 6 p.m. and will once again feature an array of local and regional talent performing over four 75-minute sets. Sorry, fans of vocal jazz—the emphasis of this year’s event is purely on the instrumental side. The list of performers includes Billy Novick’s Blues Syncopators, and saxophonist Fred Haas and guitarist Dave Newsam leading a segment titled the “LA4 Tribute to saxophonist Bud Shank.” Then there’s The Press Room Trio of Ryan Parker, John Lockwood and Les Harris Jr. performing with guests Trent Austin on trumpet and David Wells on saxophone, plus the Seacoast Big Band, directed by Dave Seiler.

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is the most American movie ever. To be more specific, it’s an expensively, maybe even carefully constructed meta-prank about America, pop culture and other topics best left unaddressed by giant talking robots. “Revenge” can only be a goof. That it would make a boatload of money was a given, and with that goal out of the way, director Michael Bay, stars Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox and the rest of the people responsible for this travesty must have had some other endgame in mind. Laughing with and at everything that is great and stupid about modern life in America seems as reasonable an explanation as anything presented in the movie, though that’s damning with faint praise indeed.

108 Sound Studio, 1988
starring: Barbara Anne Constable, Christopher J. Hart and Claudia Angelique Rademaker
written and directed by: H. Tjut Djalil (Jalil Jackson)

Taste of the Nation sets fundraising record in fight to end childhood hunger

When Bill Shore and his wife Debbie founded Share Our Strength in 1984, they knew success would hinge on their steadfast belief that everyone is capable of making a difference in the fight to end childhood hunger. 

Twenty-five years later, people around the nation continue to reaffirm that belief—including the 1,000 guests gathered on the lawn of Strawbery Banke Museum on the evening of June 24. The 15th annual Taste of the Nation Portsmouth raised more than $115,000 for the fight against hunger, a new record.

Trade paperback publisher Picador chose a big personality to anchor “Violence,” the first entry in its “Big Ideas, Small Books” series. Slavoj Žižek is referred to as the “Elvis of Cultural Theory,” and like any good rock star, has a model for a wife. A self-described Marxist Communist, Žižek has run for president in his native Slovenia, written several books that marry sociological theory with pop culture, and continues to teach and lecture all over the world. 

Sometimes loyal customers of the Portsmouth Fabric Company get stuck in a sort of sewer’s block. Owner Gretchen Rath said they walk through the high aisles of colorful and patterned fabric bolts to the Brick Wall Gallery in the back of the shop to find inspiration.
“They’ve got ideas they need to get out,” Rath said. “It’s just very satisfying to be creative and to know that what you’re doing is not anything anyone else is doing.”

This month, the Portsmouth Fabric Company is hosting a textile art exhibit, sales and charity events to celebrate 30 years of providing sewers with materials to create quilts, garments, home decorations and art.

The Brick Wall Gallery and the upstairs studio will feature a retrospective of works by regional fabric artists who have shown at the company over the past three decades. The exhibit will run through Sunday, July 26.

Children’s Museum hosts textile arts exhibit

Dover was once known as one of the textile capitals of the nation. The Children’s Museum is revisiting the city’s legacy in Gallery 6 with a summer exhibit called “A Continuous Thread,” on display through Sept. 6.

The new art display complements the museum’s recently completed Cochecosystem exhibit, which shows visitors the natural life on the river as well as its industrial past. In contrast, the museum’s Gallery 6 showcases three fiber artists with a contemporary take on the medium.

Someone played a piano in the rehearsal barn while people waited for the show to start, sitting on benches under shady trees. Children worked the concession stand offering homemade strawberry shortcake.

The Hackmatack Playhouse in Berwick, Maine, is an old red barn with a faintly dusty smell, antique farming tools and exposed beams. It’s the perfect setting for “Our Town,” a play about the simple life. The first show of the season, it runs Wednesday through Saturday until July 4.

rain, rain, go away

It hardly seemed necessary to check the weather forecast during the month of June. A glance out the window almost invariably indicated that it was rainy, drizzly, cloudy, foggy or a combination of all four.

“We have an abundance of rainfall this month. Everybody knows that. It’s pretty amazing,” said meteorologist Butch Roberts, of the National Weather Service.

As of June 28, 5.15 inches of rain had fallen in Concord during the month of June, and there had been 19 foggy days. Average rainfall for the first 28 days of June is 2.88 inches in Concord—2.27 less than this year. Last year’s rainfall was also above average, with 4.70 inches falling by June 28.