Dig into history
Kathleen Bailey and Sheila Bailey visit Gibson’s Bookstore on Aug. 11 at 6:30 p.m. to present their book digging into the heartbreaking history and backstories of some of the statues and plaques dotting NH’s cities and landscapes, New Hampshire War Monuments: The Stories Behind the Stones.
A heartbroken Danish sculptor gives a gift without measure to the town where his late wife enjoyed summers. A daughter pays tribute to her father, killed in the War Between the States. A father’s mourning for his son, lost at sea in the Second World War, becomes a symbol of hope for all of New Hampshire. These are just some of the stories the book explores behind New Hampshire’s war monuments, memorials and other tributes to her war dead.
Kathleen Bailey is a native of Concord and has spent 35 years in journalism. She is the author of several historical fiction titles with Pelican/White Rose Publishing.
Sheila Bailey is a freelance photographer living in Concord.
Free concert
On Aug. 10 at 6:30 p.m., the Reveron Piano Trio, including violin, cello, and piano, will perform at United Church of Penacook as part of Avaloch Farm Music Institute’s community outreach. Additional information about the Reveron Piano Trio can be found at reverontrio.org. Directions to UCP, 21 Merrimack Street, Penacook, are available at ucpnh.org.
Book discussion
Laurie Stone visits Gibson’s Bookstore on Aug. 4 at 6:30 p.m. to share and discuss Streaming Now: Postcards from the Thing That Is Happening, a collection of hybrid feminist narratives that perfectly captures the many paradoxes of the COVID-19 pandemic, contrasting the seemingly never-ended public catastrophes we experienced as a collective with the isolated, often-mundane lives we carried out in private. Shifting effortless between social commentary and memoir, glimpses of history and threads of fiction, Stone, a lifelong feminist and longtime contributor to the Village Voice and NPR’s Fresh Air, unapologetically observes against the backdrop of a Zoom call the evolution of feminism over the years, the gendered sexual politics underlying Jeffrey Toobin’s public disgrace, rage and Rebecca Solnit-like hope on the heels of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death, and the way we continue to pot and maintain our plants amidst the broken narrative of our world’s future.
Stamp club
The Merrimack County Stamp Collectors monthly meeting is Aug. 9 at 1 p.m. at the Bow Mills United Methodist Church, 505 South St., Bow. We invite all who are interested in stamp collecting to attend, share their interest, buy, sell and trade. For more information, call Dan Day at 603-228-1154.
