I was sitting at the counter of a local dining establishment waiting for my order. I had relinquished the menu, and having forgotten a newspaper I was at a loss for reading material, until I noticed some instructions taped to a refrigerator door. It was a list of how to make various beverages, and it started:

“Latte: 23 ounces of a full new gallon of milk and 20 ounces of latte mix”

It’s an established convention in the food industry that a place that makes a decent cheeseburger is probably not going to excel in the exotic coffee department. And the cheeseburger (with fries) was why I was there: it was a chilly rainy day and I needed some comfort food. I guess I always knew that there was some kind of short cut to making coffee beverages, but I never realized how short a cut it might be.

Having never made a latte myself, I wasn’t totally sure what was involved, so I called my friend Jeff Petrovitch, a noted barista from Keene, and he explained the process. It begins with espresso – a “well pulled” espresso. The beans should be freshly ground to just the right consistency, and tamped down (he recommends about 40 lbs of pressure) evenly. Then milk is steamed to between 130 – 140 degrees, and poured gently (he does his down the side of the cup) so that it does not break the “crema” the slightly foamy surface that has a somewhat oily finish. Finally, just a small topping of foamed milk that sets over the crema. This is an abbreviated summary – it took Jeff five minutes to describe every little detail, and he noted how shortcuts at any step of the way would reduce the quality of the beverage.

I enjoyed my cheeseburger, paid the bill, and went back to work, but I couldn’t get this latte thing out of my head.
My first experiences of coffee were from my grandmothers percolator, and at various diners on Cape Cod, where I spent summers working for my grandfather on his cranberry bogs. The only variation that one sometimes heard about was Sanka. Some years later I had occasion to visit Seattle where coffee was just beginning to come out of the closet, as it were. What a revelation! It’s a mixed blessing to discover such things, since one’s standards tend to become more demanding, and not always met.

Technically I have always been a New Englander. I was born in Newton, Massachusetts. My family soon moved to Alfred, Maine, for three years, and then on to Middletown, Connecticut, where I grew up in the rural southern part of the town next to a dairy farm. We made frequent visits to see my mother’s parents who lived near Cape Cod. Perhaps it was the reliable presence of Yankee magazine as the standard bathroom reader, or the generally more rustic environment; when I look back on it, things seemed to be more New-Englandy at their house. To me as a child, it felt a little bit foreign, though compelling.

My grandfather was a cranberry farmer. He owned a bog in Carver, Massachusetts (near Plymouth) and another in Mashpee, out on the Cape. Both bogs had rivers running through them. In Carver there was a pump house, with a mysterious and somewhat frightening belt-driven pump that would pull up water from the stream and cascade it out onto the bogs which, when appropriately gated, would be flooded, either as protection against frost, or for irrigation. Later this became useful when the technique of harvesting the berries in water become popular. Down on the Cape the water was put out by means of a vast sprinkler system. I have vivid memories of both rivers (though I don’t recall their names). When I was a young boy I would go with my grandfather to the bogs in the early evening. Sometimes we would fish, catching hornpout and eels, or sometimes we were tending the large garden he kept a the Carver bog.  The more exotic adventures were when I got to go with him in the middle of the night, after the frost alarm had gone off. I’d fall into the car half asleep, but by the time we arrived at the bog I’d be buzzing with the thrill of the mission; adjusting the flood gates, waiting anxiously while my grandfather would sometimes descend into the well of the pump house to make some adjustment, and feeling just a twinge of fear when that 10 foot, 12-inch wide belt would begin to whirr from the big gasoline engine to the top of the pump shaft.

Many years ago I knew a guy named Alan. We were both regulars at the Nelson Coffeehouse, where he would often play the banjo. In spite of that we become friends. For his day job, Alan was a minister in one of those pristine white churches that characterize our small New England villages. He seemed to enjoy his work, and I suspect he did okay at it. At the time he was also going to graduate school, to become qualified as a therapist, and his rationale was thus: he was on the threshold of being forty, and he was predicting that some time in the next decade he was going go have a mid-life crises which would, among other things, create a desire for a career change. He wanted to have alternative credentials in the bag so that when that happened, he could just turnkey into his new line of work.

It was the quintessential Peterborough experience: dinner at Harlow’s, a walk up Vale Street and around several little side streets, through a wooded path alongside the Nubanusit and emerging back into town via Putnam Grove. Then up to the Peterborough Players to see Our Town.

. . . and put up a parking lot.

Curiously, I thought of these Joni Mitchell lyrics not when driving by the latest big box store in what used to be a cornfield, but during a concert of Irish fiddle music. The performer was Denis Liddy, a renown fiddler and teacher from County Clare who, with pianist and accordion player Elvie Miller, recently did a concert in the Nelson Town Hall. It’s customary for Irish fiddlers to either forget or not know the names of the tunes they are playing (and understand\able, since there are so many), but they usually go to great lengths to say who they learned the tunes from, where (what town and county) they were from, and possibly the circumstances (i.e. pub locale) of the transfer of knowledge. Denis did a nice job with this, and in the course of the evenings narrations he also told us that during the 1950s, the traditional Irish music nearly died out there. It was a difficult time, economically (as has often been the case in Irish history), and so many musicians had emigrated to America, that there were simply neither the resources or the energy to keep it going. Meanwhile, over here, some Irish fiddlers had been recorded, and those records were selling! After a while some of these recordings drifted back over the ocean, and the Irish pride was awakened: “Well, if it’s good enough to record, and these fiddlers can make a go of it, then there must be something to it.”

A similar thing could have happened here with New England fiddle music, most commonly used for contra dancing. Both the music and the dance have waxed and waned over the last couple centuries, and while it may not have been in total danger of dying out, the popularity that eventually developed outside New England caused a focus back to the source, and musicians who were still here felt both a sense of pride, and perhaps responsibility to keep things going.

In spite of the fact that New England fiddle music is alive and well, it still has a relatively small audience. It includes Irish music (though it tends to be rendered somewhat differently to accommodate the dancing), as well as French Canadian, Scottish, and Cape Breton music, and there is a lot of history and musicology for each genre, as well as the mixed genres that are emerging, with jazz, rock, and African influences.

But my point here is neither scholarly, nor confined to music.
“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”, can take on a somewhat different meaning. Sometimes we loose the things that are important to us, but when they become important to other people who are seeing them from a different perspective, our interest can be renewed. If we do things just because they are a tradition, it can eventually be a dry experience. But if we rediscover why something became a tradition in the first place, then it becomes, simply, fun and satisfying.

I live on the watershed of the Merrimack and Connecticut river valleys. Out for a country stroll at the crest of the Old Stoddard Road, the processed early morning coffee may, with proper aim, be directed to both the Atlantic Ocean north of Boston, and to Long Island Sound, between New London and Mystic. This is not a daily ritual to be sure, but I must note that the rural isolation that accommodates such roadside relief is changing, and I am increasingly cautious about listening for the sound of a car coming up the dusty road, or worse – a jogger!

Nelson once housed over 1,500 citizens. After declining to just a couple hundred in the early part of this century, the population is now about 650. City Hill, which graces my view to the south, is said to have had , in the 1840’s, over 50 farms and homes, as well as at least one small “factory” (a clothespin mill), and a school. Sheep farming and the need for fuel had created mostly open fields – this was the case throughout southern New Hampshire. Population declined to under 200 in the early part of this century.

When I first moved here in the early 1980’s I expect I was cited as an example of a population explosion that was threatening the rural values of the community. Like most newcomers, it didn’t take me long to want to shut the door behind me. I helped to shape the town’s Master Plan (1984), and did a term on the Planning Board. In 2001 I was asked to come back onto the Planning Board, with a very specific agenda: folks felt that there should be a growth control ordinance, and having an updated Master Plan was a prerequisite to that. For several years I pursued this, reading, going to workshops, conducted a community survey, and started drafting the new Master Plan (which remains a work in progress).

Last Thursday I had the great pleasure of being engaged as a “spotter” for four women friends of mine who had the ambition to swim across Spoonwood Pond (and back). My job was to paddle a kayak, counting heads occasionally and potentially, to be of some assistance in the event of an emergency (which did not transpire). The pace was casual – enough to allow for conversation, which resonated with amazing volume across the pond and echoed off the surrounding hills. While speed was not the goal, the feat of swimming a couple of miles is commendable. Youthful spirit might still prevail, but all of the women have lived long enough to not be driven by either the prime or foolishness of youth, and I admire their determination and perseverance.

Come across something written about Mt. Monadnock, and there’s a good change you’ll also find the names Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Now, we’re glad that Mt. Monadnock was good for them, but why is their endorsement so important? Anyone can see that this is a great mountain – beautiful to look upon, rendered so distinctly from so many different perspectives, relatively easy to climb, and yielding a magnificent view from the summit. But, drop these names, and suddenly “oh, Thoreau and Emerson spoke well of Monadnock – must be an even greater mountain”.

I have warm, if somewhat faded, memories of my first wading into the pool of folk music in the mid 1970s; American ballads, their Scottish cousins, and of course the fiddle music: gradually learning to hear the differences between the Scottish, Irish, Cape Breton, French Canadian, and New England styles. And of course the “contemporary” songs – those attributed to a living composer. The pool became an ocean, and it comes pleasantly washing back over me now when I listen to the debut recording from Annalivia.

Titled, simply “Annalivia, this album has a bit of everything, from the opening southern ballad “A Sailor Being Tired”, followed by a stately medley of newly composed fiddle tunes: Goon Castle and The Groton Session Jig, contemporary songs composed by Richard Thompson and Mark Simos, a powerful “Cape Breton Set”, and so on – a wonderful variety of styles and genres reflecting influences which include Pentangle, The Bothy Band, Anne Briggs, Fairport Convention, Altan, Jimmy Page, XTC, Steeleye Span, Bill Monroe, Jean Ritchie, Alison Krauss and Union Station, and Emmylou Harris. From such fertile ground Annalivia has build a sound that stands on its own for originality, on a foundation of stellar musicianship.

The band is largely local to the Monadnock Region, with guitarist Flynn Cohen and singer/pianist Liz Simmons currently residing in Peterborough, and fiddler Brendan Carey Block being born and raised in Antrim. Bassist and banjo player Stuart Kenney hails from the Pioneer Valley, but he has been a mainstay for contra dancing throughout New England for many years. Each of these musicians has made a name for themselves either solo or in other configurations; they are not strangers to the New England folk music scene.

Liz is the primary vocalist for the band. Her voice is exquisite – pleasingly timid, in a “come-hither” sort of way. Flynn Cohen can break out the pyrotechnics when he wants to, but most of what we hear on this album is solid backup, with the innovative chord voicing that is characteristic of the Celtic players. He can also sing quite nicely, as he does in “Lazy John”, a song of bluegrass origin. Brendan Carey Block was the 2000 - 2001 US National Junior Scottish Fiddle Champion, and he has built out from the Celtic platform with jazz and rock explorations. His playing on this album stays fairly close to traditional styles, providing eloquent backup on the songs, and rendering the tunes with the kind of vigor that defines Cape Breton music. Stuart Kenney on bass and five-string banjo is a solid as they come, inconspicuous yet essential. The resulting combination is truly a band: each of these musicians has the capability of showing off a lot more than they do here; instead they have chosen to demonstrate the power of teamwork. Listen to the precision of “The Holly Bush Reels” – this is a band that really knows how to be a band.