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Notes From the Road: Getting Sick After Nearly Dying
February 16, 2017
“Roads We’ve Traveled” won’t always be long feature stories. Starting today, we have the first of series of shorter blog posts based on what’s current – the news, seasonal events, or relevant book or music releases, and so on. The new series will be called “Notes from the Road” and today’s post is about being […]
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Back to School, Part 2: Jeanne’s Story
February 2, 2017
CHELMSFORD, MA — Jeanne Marie Engels, the mother of a lifelong friend, sits in a Starbuck’s in Chelmsford, Massachusetts and explains how, many years ago, she found herself thinking about going back to school. At the age of 37, her marriage had ended. She and her four children left Germany where they had lived on […]
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Back to School: Part One
January 23, 2017
LEBANON, NH – When I called David Bouthillier, my best friend from St. Michael’s College, and pitched him the interview idea, he seemed surprised. Maybe even a little amused. “I just did what I had to do at the time to raise the family and try to get by,” David said to me as we […]
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Fighting My Way Back
January 19, 2017
“I’m tough, rough, ready and able To pick myself up from under this table Don’t stick no sign on me, I got no label I’m a little sick, unsure, unsound and unstable But I’m fighting my way back” —Thin Lizzy The Chelmsford Sports Club (now closed) was located in an old industrial building off the […]
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Society and Trauma: Or Why I’m Doing This
January 17, 2017
One weekend…. In October of 1995, while working at a small New Hampshire daily paper, I was given my first “weekend duty.” This meant that anything that happened between Friday and Sunday night, for all of the Lakes Region, was mine to cover. I was given a pager (it was 1995, after all), a police […]
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“Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason” Commentary on the Tim Lawrence Essay
January 16, 2017
A Tempting Thought Everything happens for a reason, some will say. God, it can be a tempting thought, can it not? Some terrible thing just comes from out of nowhere, rips you out of your current life and slams you into a new one where everything is recognizable but nothing is what it once was. […]
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Obstacles on the Course and in Life Part One: Knee Deep
January 8, 2017
MERRIMACK, NH – An obstacle course is usually associated with military training, not with something done for fun. And yet, a corner of Eric and Patti Pharo’s kitchen in Merrimack, NH, is covered in lists of schedules for obstacle course races and best times, medals, and inspirational quotes about community, and never, ever, giving up. […]
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