Friends-a-Palooza
The Friends Program is taking over Keach Park in Concord to celebrate International Friendship Day on July 30 from 2 to 5 p.m. Friends-a-Palooza is a family-fun event filled with free activities for kids of all ages. We will have crafts and field games, face-painting, kids Zumba, giant bubbles, corn-hole, music, dance and a storytelling read-a-thon, snacks, prizes and more. Friends-a-Palooza is designed to raise awareness of The Friends Program services for youth and families. The event will be open to the entire community and include special outreach to the at-risk youth in the local area. 75% of the children served by the Friends Program live below the federal poverty level and more than two-thirds are from New American families. The Friends Program is a nonprofit agency located in Concord. Founded in 1975 as a social service organization, the agency recruits, trains and manages volunteers to meet community needs. Our mission is to build positive connections and solutions for at-risk youth, families, and seniors. We serve eight NH counties and work on behalf of the state’s most vulnerable populations. The Friends-a-Palooza event is free, donations will be accepted to benefit the Friend’s Program services for at-risk youth and families. To learn more about the Friends Program- please visit our website, friendsprogram.org.
Lunch author event
Gibson’s is hosting its first brown-bag lunch author event, with Kenneth M. Sheldon on Aug. 3 at noon presenting Deep Water: Murder, Scandal, and Intrigue in a New England Town, a true crime investigation into a brutal murder in Jaffrey in the early 1900s.
In the waning days of World War I, William K. Dean was brutally murdered, his body hog-tied and dumped in a rainwater cistern on his farm in the quiet town of Jaffrey. Suspicion quickly fell on Dean’s wife, an invalid in the early stages of dementia. Her friends, outraged at the accusations, pointed instead to a former tenant of Dean’s, whom many suspected of being a German spy. Others believed that Dean’s best friend, a politically powerful banker and judge, was involved.
Deep Water is based on extensive research into the Dean murder, including thousands of pages of FBI documents, grand jury testimonies, newspaper accounts, private correspondence, and the archives of the Jaffrey Historical Society.
Kenneth Sheldon is a freelance author, editor, and playwright. His work has appeared in publications ranging from Acoustic Guitar to Yankee Magazine, where he was formerly a columnist. He has written or contributed to books published by Yankee, Time-Life, Rodale, and others, and was formerly the West Coast Bureau Chief for Byte magazine. His book Welcome to Frost Heaves, a collection of Yankee humor, was published in 2015. He lives in Peterborough.
Bring a sack lunch, or show up early to order a sandwich or salad bowl from the Gibson’s Cafe, to eat while you listen.
