Air Show to Feature Blue Angels, WWII War Birds

(courtesy photo)

By Larry Favinger

Staff Columnist

PORTSMOUTH – The sky will be filled with modern and historic aircraft later this month as Pease International Airport welcomes the Service Credit Union Boston-Portsmouth Air Show.

The annual aerial extravaganza will be headlined for the second time in three years by the United States Navy Blue Angels and will also feature some of the most renowned War Birds of World War II vintage. These planes include a Navy F4U-5 Corsair, a P-51 Mustang, a B-25 Mitchell bomber, and a TBM-3E Avenger.

The show is produced by the Daniel Webster Council, Boy Scouts of America, and the Brain Injury Association of New Hampshire, which, along with more than thirty other local not-for-profit groups, will benefit from it. The show is scheduled at Pease Saturday, June 30, and Sunday, July 1, and will be a fitting start to Fourth of July week.

According to a show spokesperson, the F4U-5 Corsair was a carrier-capable fighter primarily during WWII and Korea. Daniel McCue, who was born in Maine and raised in New Hampshire, will be flying the aircraft. McCue has been an air show performer for more than twenty-five years. The P-51 is an American made long-range single-seat fighter aircraft. This plane celebrates the nation’s armed forces. Each paint feature on it represents and honors those who have served our country and who have made the ultimate sacrifice. Father and son team Bill and Scott “Scooter” Yoak spent thirteen years working to make this Mustang a reality.

The Disabled American Veterans Flight Team brings the B-25  to this year’s show. The B-25, probably remembered as the plane used in the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo, Japan seventy years ago, shares a mission with DAV - reminding people of the sacrifices veterans make for freedom. DAV representatives will be on hand throughout the weekend to meet and greet veterans and answer questions about DAV benefits.

The Avenger is a torpedo bomber that made its debut at the Battle of Midway during World War II. These unique acts join the Blue Angels and the show’s second jet demonstration team, the Black Diamond Jet Team.

Other performers include the U.S. Army Parachute Team “Golden Knights”, air show legend Sean D. Tucker, aerobatic superstar Michael Goulian, Wingwalker Jane Wicker and the KC-135 Stratotanker. These are but a few of the attractions coming to the show. Fans can receive performer updates via social media on Facebook.com/ServiceCreditUnionBostonPortsmouthAirShow and Twitter.com/BostonPortAS.

Advanced general admission for the show is $20 for adults and $15 for youth ages 6-11. Ticket prices will increase to $25 for adults and $20 for youth the week of the event. There is a $10 fee for parking. There are several premium seating options and private chalets that include VIP parking passes available for purchase in advance. All tickets can be purchased at www.BostonPortsmouthAirShow.com.

Joan Didion Offers Straight Talk on Love and Loss

Joan Didion, author, and Margaret Talcott, associate producer of Writers on a New England Stage, at the Music Hall Tuesday night. (Photo by Tim Gillis)

By Timothy Gillis

Staff Columnist

PORTSMOUTH -

Renowned writer Joan Didion read from her latest work at the Music Hall Tuesday night. “Blue Nights” recounts the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo, from acute pancreatitis on August 26, 2005. That death came during Didion’s book tour for “The Year of Magical Thinking,” about the death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, and her daughter’s prolonged illness. The latter work won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction and catapulted Didion from accomplished author to celebrity status.

She was interviewed onstage after her reading by Virginia Prescott, host of New Hampshire Public Radio’s “Word of Mouth.”

“People came to know you through "The Year of Magical Thinking," Prescott said.

“And I got to know them,” Didion replied promptly. “A woman stopped me in the airport. She was with her two kids, and they were trying to twist away from her, you know - as kids do, and she told me how the book changed her.”

Didion’s “Blue Nights” started out as a book about her daughter’s death, but in many ways, became a book about her own aging and ill health. Always a petite woman with a powerful voice, Didion was escorted onto the stage and sat to read from her memoir. Her wit was as sharp as ever, however, especially as evinced in the interview.

Blue Nights is a myriad of styles - part F. Scott Fitzgerald, with glittery summer nights recounting the high-profile life the family led as Hollywood screenwriters, and part Allen Ginsberg, with repetitive lists of punctuated pain. Didion was asked if this style was intentional.

“It’s always intentional,” she said.

Didion admits that, despite her world travels and intelligent writing on topics as diverse as Miami’s Cuban expatriate community to fictional romantic thrillers, she didn’t know anything about raising a child.

Her mother tried to help her, she said, but “she didn’t know much of anything besides washing bottles.” When they adopted Quintana Roo, in 1968, they were planning to just go ahead with plans to travel to Saigon, despite the violent political climate.
“If you knew me, you’d know how clueless I was about being a mother,” she said.
The narrative of her child's adoption, as a chosen child, was often a difficult one to tell.

“There is a dark side with adoption: if somebody chooses you, there's somebody else who didn't choose you,” Didion said. She was aware of how vulnerable her daughter was, but she is still critical of her own manner of motherhood. “I tried to protect her by ignoring it,” she said.
“For a writer who tours through disaster zones, and stood in for us all, it's hard to imagine that,” Prescott replied.
A recurring image through the memoir, and in Quintana Roo’s childhood, is of the “Broken Man,” this haunting specter of a man who wears a gas station shirt with his ordinary name on it, leering at her in the bedroom.

“Was it a symbol?” Prescott asked.

“I didn't think it was a symbol. I thought it was a real man, trying to harm my daughter,” Didion said. “But we outgrew him.”
The author is famous for having said she didn’t know what she thought about something until she wrote it down. What does she know now, about the deaths of the husband and daughter, and her own declining health?
“The Year of Magical Thinking was about coming through, about surviving," Didion said. "Blue Nights was about not surviving, about aging. That's the experience. I may not survive."

Hilltop School Holds Fundraiser for Future Community Center

(courtesy photo)

By Sydney Jarrard

Staff Columnist

SOMERSWORTH –

The vacant Hilltop School in Somersworth is undergoing renovations to become a community arts, culture, and education center, with the anticipated opening in the spring of 2013. There is a fundraiser coming up on June 23 - a concert featuring folk, rock and roll, and jazz bands, with all proceeds going to the Hilltop School revitalization. The fundraiser is at the Somersworth High School pavilion at 6:30 p.m. with a raindate of Sunday, June 24.

As it stands now, the Hilltop School is an empty building in the historic district of town, which has turned the heads of many local residents in the past several months.

After a vote by the school board to build a new elementary school in a new location, the Hilltop School ceased operations in 2011. The people who came together as the Friends of Somersworth group saw the potential in the building and the historical significance of the structure, knowing that if left alone, it could be left abandoned or sold for next to nothing.

Realizing that many people in the area were traveling out of town to engage in arts and culture, the group began the initial phases to support the development of a creative community in the city - through the use of the Hilltop School - and to help with downtown redevelopment, the quality of life of the citizens, and to improve the town’s image. They sought to restore the building and bring it back to the community as a center for education and culture.

Starting with just a few residents living by the hill, the Friends of Somersworth group became a state-recognized organization in July 2011. The group includes residents of all ages and now has more than 100 active community members from town including Somersworth, Dover, and the Berwicks in Maine.

From those members, an official board was established earlier this year with thirteen members, and it meets once a week to hash out any new or persisting issues with the plan for the school.

The group began its extensive outreach in September 2011, delivering a business plan and petitioning the city to establish a public-private partnership with the group.

The 21-page business plan proposed a dreamlike vision of a community center, complete with blooming landscaping, an outdoor amphitheater, the sounds of music lessons and someone learning Chinese, the smell of paint from an artist’s studio and coffee from a communal kitchen. The plan states that the center will be “the start of something amazing; the start of a partnership; the extension and connection of a community; the establishment of creative placemaking in the city; the first words in the story that tells future generations that Somersworth is something more today than it was in 2011.”

Knowing that the plan will change and adapt as they encounter obstacles and opportunities, the Friends of Somersworth group was thrilled when the Somersworth City Council unanimously approved the initial proposal in February 2012. The group is now working with the city to secure grant money to begin the redevelopment of the school. As Emmett Soldati, the board’s chair, explains, “Arts and culture are alive and well in the Seacoast region.”

Fundraising for the project is in progress, both for short-term needs and then for long-term, but the Friends of Somersworth group knows they are not in this alone. “That’s where it’s going to become a community project,” says Soldati. The plans are in place to draft an artistic map of downtown Somersworth, with proceeds from ad space to help fund the school, in the hopes of branding Somersworth as a destination.

The biggest challenge the group has faced since gaining approval by the city is keeping track of all of the ideas. “It almost seems like we’re constantly in the brainstorming stage,” says Soldati. “At the end of the day, no building renovations have been made. Until that time, it is very open and last minute changes can be made. The big challenge were working with right now is taking what we have and just running with it.”

In addition to the planning, there’s much to be done - fixing the heating, installing fire doors, and wading through the many inspections - but the work is underway. “It’s been a pretty exciting project for us,” says Soldati.

The hope is to phase the building into progress in stages, as each section or floor of the building becomes ready for use. If the cards fall right, residents of Somersworth and towns nearby will be visiting the space for music lessons or a group meeting or a painting class by next spring.