Insight: Instrumental to my happiness

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Music is such an integral part of our daily lives that it’s hard to imagine what the world would be like without it.

Nancy Pierce, left, and her school principal Mary Jane Cooney,
right, meet singer Peter Noone before the Herman's Hermits
concert in Laconia, New Hampshire in September 2016.
PHOTO BY ED PIERCE

The people who create, compose and play music are observers of life, of possibilities, of tragedies and of joy. They inspire us and provide the soundtrack for each of our lives.

Here are a couple of stories about how I met several musicians whose songs are still remembered today.

In 1973, I was fortunate to be nominated to work for the Student Entertainment Committee at New Mexico Highlands University. The committee’s mission was to use fees appropriated during student registration to bring nationally known musicians and entertainers to perform on our campus. We booked bands and selected available dates for their performances.

After the dates were booked and confirmed, and once the performers arrived in town for their shows, committee members would assist them with transportation to and from the shows or locate area restaurants or other activities they requested.

Being a fan of progressive country in the early 1970s, I had both of B.W. Stevenson’s first two albums, once self-titled and the other called “Lead Free.” His music was powerful and ranged from singing about heartbreak to understanding the human condition. When I learned that the committee had booked him to perform a concert at our school, I volunteered to assist him and his band while they were in town.

They arrived by tour bus late in the evening the day before their show. I met Stevenson, who promptly instructed me to call him “Buck,” short for his nickname, Buckwheat. We made sure that the hotel suite he had chosen for his band was satisfactory and the next day I guided Stevenson and the band to the auditorium for a sound check prior to the concert.

While waiting backstage to be introduced, Stevenson pulled me aside and asked me if I knew of any parties or things to do in town after the concert. I told him that my fraternity was having a party with a keg of beer later and I invited him and the band to stop by. During the concert, Stevenson performed songs from his latest album, and I really liked one of them called “My Maria.” It was a smash hit for him and is the song he is most remembered for today.

After the concert, Stevenson and his band did indeed drop by our fraternity house and I had him autograph his albums in my collection. I found it incredible that I was standing and talking with someone whose music was all over the radio and it’s a memory that I cherish to this day. I was saddened to learn 14 years later that Stevenson had died at the age of 38 following open-heart surgery in Texas.

In 2016, I was the Editor of the daily newspaper in Laconia, New Hampshire and wanted to write about an upcoming concert there featuring Peter Noone of the 1960s band Herman’s Hermits. Event organizers gave me his cell phone number and I called him in California and did a phone interview with him while he was waiting to board a plane for the East Coast.

I asked him lots of questions about his career and his music and by the time that lengthy phone conversation ended, I felt like I understood Peter better and it was evident that his charisma, personality and talent were a major factor in his success. He had first started with the band as a 15-year-old lead singer and said he was proud of what he had accomplished in his career. He mentioned a fact I didn’t know that in 1965, Herman’s Hermits had sold more records worldwide than The Beatles did.

To me, Noone came across as down to earth, candid and humorous. I told him that I could recall dancing to one of his songs called "Listen People" with one of my classmates, Janet McGraw Howland, at a dance at Carlton Webster Junior High School in Henrietta, New York and he laughed and said, “Don’t we all wish we were young again?”

Before ending our conversation, I asked Noone if I could bring my wife Nancy backstage before the show to meet him and take a photo. He agreed to do so, and we got to his concert early and met up with my wife’s boss, Mary Jane Cooney, who was also attending the show. She was the principal of the Holy Trinity Catholic School in Laconia and when I told her we were going backstage to meet Peter Noone, she asked if she could go with us.

The three of us then met Peter and he graciously let us take photographs with him. He thanked me for writing about his concert for the newspaper and we returned to our seats. During the show, he dazzled the audience with some of Herman's Hermits' biggest hits such as “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter,” or “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat,” "I'm Henry the VIII, I Am," and “I’m Into Something Good.”

A week or so later, Noone sent me an autographed photo and a CD of Herman’s Hermits’ greatest hits. Without reservation, I can say he’s as genuine as they get and remains one of my all-time favorite entertainers.

As a journalist, through the years I’ve met and interviewed many singers, but these two really stand out. <

The Rookie Mama: A rolling milestone gathers no moss

By Michelle Cote

As technology evolves at full speed, it’s challenging at times to occasionally tap brakes, regroup, and consider what we’re dropping from existence as we gather new tech nuggets at the fastest possible pace, especially as we compare our kiddos’ day-to-day experiences to the lives we led at their age.

It’s a little different, right?

I mean, I learned about a googol in my classroom, and that was the extent of my Google Classroom.

But I digress.

There’s beauty in the quick share of a snapshot via social media or text message in the moment for the moment’s sake, but truly how great a job are we collectively doing to document our family’s lives and progress meaningfully in a way that’s captured for future generations to appreciate?

I can appreciate contextualizing the hairdos, clothing styles, and décor of my grandparents’ generation because I’ve seen photos to accompany the stories and traditions – finest crystal stemware at Christmas laid out on TV trays so all the relatives could gather and tuck in tight. The pink double oven peeping out in the background by the avocado fridge in the kitchen. I’ve seen it in living color.

We’re ages past 8mm film reels, VHS, and Polaroids, but they’re tangible, albeit fading in a corner pocket bin of your basement. They still exist for our appreciative purposes now.

My own childhood milestones were spared the social media audience commentary, but they exist in all their ‘80s and ‘90s neon scrunchie glory in carefully assembled photo albums, some lucky to be labeled by year. Tangible.

But it appears my own uniquely unidentified generation – sometimes we’re called ‘young Gen X’ or ‘elder millennial’; we’re really the early ‘80s-born group with an analog childhood and digital adulthood – may be the last one to have physical photo albums, unedited, unplugged, not kept alive by some remote server.

So therein lies the need for continued meaningful documentation.

And I’m not trying to start an archival rival; digital and print photos can –and should – co-exist.

About a decade ago, when my first two boys were babies, my husband and I felt it was important that they each have tactile photo albums of their own beyond a baby book with day-of-birth news clippings, first haircut golden locks, and hospital bracelets.

A little bit of a high five and fist bump to my future daughters-in-law, if you will, so they have a bit more to our boys’ origin story than a hairy baby book to show for it.

My husband and I were thrilled to learn that physical photo albums – you remember, the leathery-looking binder ones with magnetic sheets – still, in fact, exist and are super easy to order online.

And although young adults today don’t know the agony of sending out film overnight and taking a gamble whether that 24-shot roll is worth ponying up for the duplicates, one can still print photos to their heart’s content at many places, easily.

And so, we began a tradition of scrapbooking with our kids at each summer’s end – Each boy has a photo album with clean, blank sheets and is given a big ol’ stack of printed photos reproduced from uploading digital snaps.

We give them scrapbook scissors to make crafty edges for prints, paper, and markers to illustrate favorite memories and quotes of summer, ticket stubs, bits of maps, and over-the-top supervision by us.

Did I mention there’s scissors and precious photos involved?

Theoretically, we sprang into this tradition so the boys could have some autonomy into their own photographic journeys over time.

What we didn’t expect was their intermittent nostalgia for occasionally pulling albums off the shelf to flip through, laughing and reflecting fondly at past summer core memories.

Because my kids aren’t on social media, they can’t swipe through old memories the way we adults do.

How will they document their memories to share with their own future humans if we don’t facilitate this?

How will they memorialize people, events, their own versions of the pink and avocado color schemes and crystal stemware on TV trays, 21st century version?

We want them to remember.

Everyone should have the opportunity to really remember these milestones that took place as they rolled on by.

So put it in print.

Keep documentation in mind as you plan your next family adventure with your camera ready at the quick draw.

Enjoy this scrapbooking activity that’s inclusive, generally frugal, endlessly crafty, and strengthens memories and family bonds.

The neon scrunchies are optional.

What story will your kids tell?

­­– Michelle Cote lives in southern Maine with her husband and four sons, and enjoys camping, distance running, biking, gardening, road trips to new regions, arts and crafts, soccer, and singing to musical showtunes – often several or more at the same time!

Insight: Memories frozen in time

 By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Each day millions of photographs are taken around the world and stored as images to be viewed later. These pictures are captured as moments in time and reflect joy, sadness, splendor, sorrow, majesty, and beauty. These snapshots can depict significant occasions or a person’s desire to save an image of a child’s first steps, a wedding or from a cherished reunion. 

Whether taken on a cell phone or by a sophisticated digital camera, none of those images can compare to the ones captured forever and stored inside your brain by your memory. Throughout our lifetimes, every one of us when healthy can vividly recall the moments that have made us who and what we are today, and we all possess the ability to relive the backstories, recollections and events leading up to what makes these remembrances so special to us.

Someone recently asked me to choose three moments in time from my life that have profoundly affected me, what would they be, and why did I narrow the list to these three? Here’s what I answered…

May 19, 1991: It was a Sunday, and I was living in Florida after having moved there three months before. I was staying in my parent’s guest room while saving up money to get my own apartment. About 2:30 a.m. the doorbell rang and knowing that my mother was a sound sleeper, I got up to answer the door. I still recall what I saw when I turned on the porch light and opened the front door to my parent’s home. Standing there was a state trooper in uniform who asked me to step outside for a second.

I did and he told me his name and he asked me my name and if my mother was at home. I answered yes and he then told me that my father had been involved in an automobile accident earlier Sunday evening near Orlando. My father had gone to visit his elderly sister for the day about an hour and a half away and had driven his station wagon there. The trooper informed me that a drunk driver had crossed the center line of the highway and struck my father’s car killing him. At first, I thought the drunk driver had died, but the trooper told me my father had done nothing wrong, was doing the speed limit and had his seatbelt on when he was killed.

That ringing doorbell changed the course of my life and left me without a father, who I had just gotten to know again as an adult after living thousands of miles away for years and service in the military overseas. So that’s one frozen moment in time I’ll never forget.

April 22, 2004: It was a Thursday evening in Florida, and I drove to meet an elementary school teacher named Nancy after getting off work. I had been corresponding with her online on a dating website. We agreed to meet over ice cream at a Friendly’s Restaurant and that date changed the arc of my life significantly. She was beautiful, humorous and the conversation flowed easily. Without a doubt it was the best date I ever had, and we agreed to see each other again soon. Around 14 months later Nancy and I were married, and I will never forget that first date or laughing at her homemade sign around her neck that read “Hi Ed” as she stepped out of her Ford Bronco and into my life forever. Another moment frozen in time.    

June 10, 1977: It was a Friday morning, and I walked into a conference room in the Federal Building downtown in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I joined a group of people in the room who stood silently at attention when a judge wearing a black robe entered the room.

 

We all raised our right hands and proudly repeated the following oath. “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the president of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

 

The members of this group were then congratulated for enlisting in the U.S. Air Force and a few hours later we were all put on a flight to San Antonio, Texas for six weeks of basic military training at Lackland Air Force Base. That morning at the Federal Building in Albuquerque remains stuck in my memory and is another one of those occasions frozen in time that changed the direction of my life and made me who and what I am today.     

 

The collection of the most meaningful photographs in the world are not contained and displayed in some posh museum in a faraway country or flashing on some gigantic screen in Times Square in New York City. Instead, these indelible images are readily accessible whenever you want in your own mind.

 

What precious memories do you hold sacred that are frozen in time for you? <