The Front Porch

Donald Hall passed away at Eagle Pond Farm in Wilmot this weekend. Though not from the Granite State originally, the one-time U.S. Poet Laureate is widely accepted as a New Hampshire institution. Hall was  prolific in writing both verse and prose, and over the years, NHPR spoke to him about his work again and again.

Here's a selection of our favorite conversations with Hall from the NHPR Archives:

For more than 50 years, Beatrice Trum Hunter wrote about food and nutrition. Before there was Diet for a Small Planet, or Moosewood cookbooks; and long before supermarkets carries organic foods, Trum Hunter was an advocate of natural food and healthy living. Author of nearly 40 books including The Natural Foods Cookbook, Gardening without Poisons and The Great Nutrition Robbery. 

Carl Sandberg once defined a poem as an "echo asking a shadow to dance." NHPR’s Best of Public Radio celebrated National Poetry Month with some dancing in the form of three interviews from the NHPR vaults. All three interviews came from our former arts and culture program The Front Porch; it aired from 2001 to 2007 and welcomed many of New Hampshire’s finest artists as well as artists from beyond our borders.

The New England Patriots are getting ready for the Superbowl on Sunday, they’ll be playing the Seattle Seahawks for the championship. Eleven years ago they were in a similar position, gearing up for the match against the Carolina Panthers.

From the Archives this week we found this 2004 interview from NHPR’s The Front Porch. Host John Walters spoke with then (and current) State Senator from Manchester, Lou D’Allessandro. John spoke with D’Allessandro about his football career at UNH as well as his 1961 tryout for a new football franchise in Boston.

As Kansas City finds itself in its first World Series since 1985, its easy to think upon our own championship drought, which ended in 2004.  

It’s been a decade since Boston's boys of summer willed their way out of the American League Championship Series in unlikely fashion and finally put to bed the ghosts of Ruth, Dent, Buckner, Boone (and countless others).

George Herman “Babe” Ruth made his major league debut this week 100 years ago (7/11/1914) with the Boston Red Sox. He had just 10 at-bats in 5 games that season, pitching four, and earning $2,500

10 years ago The Front Porch (NHPR’s nightly arts program until 2007) went to Conway, NH to speak with Julia Ruth Stevens, the Babe’s adopted daughter. Stevens spoke to NHPR’s John Walters about living with the most famous man in America, “we never thought about it when we were all at home. He was Daddy and we were just like any other family.”

If you have World Cup fever, you’ll know Brazil and Croatia kick off the tournament Thursday. Even if you don’t have the fever; even if the brouhaha over Landon Donovan last month didn’t register; even if you have only the faintest understanding of who David Beckham is; you know that the U.S. has never been a favorite in the sport of international soccer.

Memorial Day is probably the most archives-centric holiday in the year. While many holidays are a flush of personal memories and family traditions, Memorial Day is more about our collective memory as fellow countrymen. And archives are a conduit to our collective memory. 

Bob McQuillen composed and performed contra dances for over 60 sixty years throughout New England. The Peterborough resident passed away on Tuesday after suffering a stroke over the weekend.

McQuillen spoke with NHPR's John Walters on the Front Porch shortly after being awarded a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.