Janet Reynolds

When she’s not playing in symphonies, cellist Laura Cetilia leaves melody behind to explore improvised, experimental sound. Ask many of today’€s classically trained musicians to improvise, and you’€™re likely to be met with fear and anxiety. Not so for Providence, Rhode Island, cellist Laura Cetilia. She revels in living in the musical in-between. Cetilia still loves her Mahler and Britten—she plays in the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra—€”but

New York State is the epicenter for invasive species in North America. Battling the aquatic invasive species successfully is critical to the economy and lifestyle of the state's pristine Adirondack Park. Here's an update on how that war is going.

Living civics the Exeter way.

All parents worry about what will happen to their children after they die. Parents of adult children with a chronic disability have an additional concern: whether the child will have financial security. The good news is that an option does exist to help provide some security for your adult disabled child, and you don’t have to cut into your own retirement savings to take advantage of it. You also don’t have to risk alienating your other children by naming this child a favored beneficiary in you

Maine photographer Sarah C. Butler photographs her mother’s dilapidated home and rediscovers their relationship amid the chaos. When photographer Sarah C. Butler first visited her mother after getting a call from her mother’s husband that he was concerned about her health, she agreed to the trip with trepidation. She and her mother had had a tumultuous relationship, and she had not visited her mother in eight years, a time during which her mother had purchased her “dream” home not far from the

Joanne Francis of Portsmouth Brewery in New Hampshire creates a new beer for women who don’t give a fuck. At first glance it sounds like a joke. A craft beer aimed at menopausal women? With herbs and spices designed to possibly help symptoms? Cue the laugh track. But Joanne Francis, co-owner of Portsmouth Brewery, is serious in the way that only a woman of a certain age can be serious, as in she’s been around enough to know what she’s doing — and if you don’t get it, well then, your loss. (See

Kristina Newman-Scott, Connecticut's director of culture, talks about why a healthy arts and culture environment is critical to the state's economy.

Metalpoint artist Susan Schwalb is a obsessive about this Renaissance art form that she's taken well into the 21st century.

Maine photographer Sarah C. Butler photographs her mother’s dilapidated home and rediscovers their relationship amid the chaos. When photographer Sarah C. Butler first visited her mother after getting a call from her mother’s husband that he was concerned about her health, she agreed to the trip with trepidation. She and her mother had had a tumultuous relationship, and she had not visited her mother in eight years, a time during which her mother had purchased her “dream” home not far f

I created a workshop through Mental Health Connecticut for young adults with mental illness to learn how writing could help them in their recovery and in the hopes that in sharing their stories they could help end the stigma around mental illness. I've taught the workshop, called Write On!, three times. At the end of this last session, WNPR interviewed me and two of the students, who also shared their stories. This link is that interview and gives a sense of what this writing program, which I plan to do in other places, can do to change lives.

A profile of actor Jack Gilpin for Exeter Academy's alumni magazine

Rick Reyes of Bridgeport, Connecticut, shares love of his native music via his Puerto Rican songbook project. Musician Rick Reyes may have been born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but his heart and his music lie in Puerto Rico. Which is one reason he’s created the Puerto Rican songbook project: It’s his way of sharing a piece of Puerto Rico with the world. Reyes, who refers to his Connecticut hometown as “Bridgeportorico,” moved back to Puerto Rico when he was a young child. He lived there until

At Miya’s Sushi in New Haven, the usual is unusual. On the menu? Killer bees, poisonous vipers, and stingrays. When I interview chef Bun Lai of Miya’s Sushi in New Haven, Connecticut, he has just wrapped filming a TV series in which he travels the world creating new dishes from exotic invasive species. Think a hot, Asian Andrew-Zimmern-of-Bizarre Foods-goes-green kind of thing. On the menu? Killer bees, poisonous vipers, and stingrays. “It’s really about having us open our minds to other ways

Jamie and Claire epitomize this in spades. We watch them fall in love gradually. They are the perfect couple once they do fall in love. Not because they don’t fight or have issues, but because they work them out. Claire is a strong, savvy woman who knows — and says — what she wants and thinks! Jamie is an evolved man! He says he’s wrong. He makes changes. For God’s sake, he tosses away centuries of men owning women and telling them what to do and holds a dagger to his chest saying he won’t ever

Hartford’s art museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum, invites you to step into the MATRIX. No choice of red or blue pill needed. Housed in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, MATRIX was the first gallery space in a traditional art museum dedicated to a changing series of contemporary art exhibitions. It is an idea that has since been replicated by more than 50 museums across America since MATRIX launched in 1975. MATRIX has also been home to the first solo exhibitions for m

It took less than 48 hours for America’s new #PredatorInChief to show his true colors. We didn’t really doubt this was coming. As Maya Angelou noted, when someone shows you who they are really are, believe them. Still it was fascinating to watch him unravel as he realized an entire gender across the world was protesting his arrival to power. He did what narcissists do in these circumstances. He frantically tried to control the message and make it very clear that actually EVERYONE ELSE WAS LYING

“For me, fiction is a way of accessing the sense that the universe is the possible, not just the actual.” Some folks, like one of the main characters in New Hampshire writer Tim Horvath’s short story collection Understories, live life from the proverbial canopy, standing at the top and looking down and far afield at the vista. Others, Horvath included, prefer the understory. In a forest, the understory comprises those shrubs and small trees that live beneath the larger trees, or canopy. Forced

Berkshires composer and former MoMA music director gives voice to three silent films from the mid-twenties Berkshires composer William Perry has made a life’s work composing for silent films. The Museum of Modern Art’s music director and composer-in-residence for 12 years, Perry spent that time composing and performing music for the museum’s extensive silent film collection. “I created a large number of scores for silent films and performed them on piano in the old tradition,” he says of his t

Taxidermy has come a long way from the days of stuffed deer heads and fish on 19th-century wood-burnished library walls.  Which is precisely the point behind a new exhibit at the David Winton Bell Gallery located on the Brown University campus in Providence, Rhode Island. No longer delegated to dioramas in natural history museums, taxidermy is an art form now featured in contemporary art museums around the world. In Dead Animals, or the curious occurrence of taxidermy in contemporary art, which

How many shawls and cowls and capelets can a woman have? The answer is A LOT. What are the signs that you're an Obsessenach? I'll take selected ones from the comments and make them into memes to post to our Outlander Clan Facebook page. In the meantime, which of these rang true here for you? Time to fess up. You're among friends!