Lifestyle

BERLIN — When Dr Jeff Michael and Terri Street inaugurated the Berlin Holistic Health fair last year at “The Ray” in the Worcester Youth and Family Counseling Services building they were able to convince about 10 other companies to participate. On the heels of last year’s success, this week the event was held at the Berlin Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Center drawing more the 20 health-related companies and at least 300 attendees. Michael, who is a chiropractor, said the event was originally conceived as a way to begin dispelling myths and misconceptions about his and other less-conventional approaches to health and well being. While it is true, for example, that a chiropractor can help a person who has suffered a back injury recover, a person need not wait until they’re back hurts to begin chiropractic therapy. It is an often misunderstood and under-used method to treat more ailments than most people consider including foot pain, some kinds of arthri...

BERLIN — While the visual artists are putting the final touches on the works they expect to display during next weekend’s Spring Arts Night event, the performance artists don’t get to finalize anything until the show is over.  Visual artists co-exist with a different kind of pressure, a front-loaded one if you will.  A painter or a sculptor will reach a point in the next few days when there is no longer the time to improve upon or tweak the work they intend to show for the event. The pressure of production can then give way to the anxiety of acceptance. For Taylor Hawkins, the 14-year-old musician who will perform at j.j.Fish next Friday, practice is the order of the day. Or, more properly, of the next seven days. As a performer, she had the fortune of being able to improve her style and selection even as the event is going on, changing the song selection to better suit the crowd and even reworking things she has already performed to better suit the ro...

OCEAN PINES — The only thing that makes the truth boring are the words that a person uses to tell it which is why the non-fiction genre has seen a revival in recent years.  Although it dates back to before Truman Capote, when that writer took a gruesome news item and turned it into what he termed “a non-fiction novel” he initiated a debate about what, exactly, can and should be done with the facts. More than five decades later the verdict has pretty much been decided in Capote’s favor.  Color and ancillary details have made non-fiction worth reading in a way it never has been before. The non-fiction novel has morphed into what is currently being called “creative non-fiction” but also spent some time as the new journalism, long-form journalism and narrative non-fiction.  The genre's attraction for both readers and writers is the fact that it paradoxically allows for poetic license — liberty with the facts is still banned but i...

OCEAN CITY — Seeing the inside of the Roland E. Powell Convention Center when it is completely empty and then again once it has been completely filled can be a bit mind-boggling, especially once you’ve seen the set up process. For many if not most events professional planners mark off and design the various conferences and conventions the place houses but for the Seaside Boat Show, sponsored by the Ocean City-Berlin Optimist Club, the place is marked out, set and coordinated by volunteers who just do it the one time per year. Of course, they’ve done it now 29 times and are beginning to get the hang of it. A number of the volunteers are also ex-military which can account for both their ability to organize and the occasional colorful word as they tease one another, keeping the excruciatingly exacting process fun. Setting the Convention Center for the annual event is literally a fame of inches. Armed with industrial tape measures, the groups goes row by row, marking o...

BERLIN — Even though the threat of frost hasn’t completely passed, Christie McDowell of The Good Farm, has decided to gamble a bit and begin planing hardy, cold weather spring crops. After the success of last year’s Buy Local Challenge, McDowell hopes to be able to expand her CSA and wants to make sure, as the only CSA farmer in Worcester County, that she can amply meet whatever demand there is. CSA stands for community sponsored agriculture and means literally that — members of a community paying a farmer to grow food specifically for them.  It’s a notion that has continued to gain traction over recent years as people have become more open to the prospect of fresh organic food and therefore driven demand.  The way a CSA is structured is the farmer establishes how much food they expect to grow and divide the anticipated harvest into shares. Participants then purchase the number of shares one share is usually plenty for a family of four and pic...

OCEAN PINES — Although we often think of it as a passive idea, “ambience” is an active one. It suggests how our surroundings make us feel and deepens our general experience. Ambience is the “it” that is a kind of Holy Grail for restaurateurs. In an age where the dining public is better educated and in an area where only high-quality chefs can find work, the feel of the restaurant is what can separate it more effectively than any other from the rest of the competition. It is no real surprise then that when Bill Herbst decided to take over the old Village Inn and open a second La Hacinda at the South Gate, local muralist John Iampieri was one of the first on the scene to help with the transformation. Restaurants in the building have struggled in recent years, even though there is a wonderful view. Eateries with all sorts of different price ranges have come and go and — and this is likely a critical difference — menus aside one wasn’t re...

BERLIN — There are a thousand schools of painting and Shirley Eppard subscribes to every one. Well, almost every one. Over the last four decades, Eppard has taken just about every class she could and as a result has become a student of technique. Some painters, she said, aren’t particularly interested in the technique, focusing instead on the finished product. But while it might work for some, to her it seems as if it is a way of trying to attain an end without a means.  In the late 1960s some friends who were going on a plein air excursion and the notion of a painting trip captured her imagination. She went along and never looked back.  Later, Eppard attended the National Institute of Interior Design and in 1979, founded Butterfly Interiors, specializing in residential and commercial interior design. As an interior designer, finding ways to bridge the gap between the available materials and the final vision calls for an overarching creative thrust. Being able ...

 OCEAN PINES — Ray Unger’s neighbors don’t really even bat an eye anymore when they see one of his planes taxiing along in front of their homes. The remote control (RC) airplane enthusiast has been using the street as a practice runway for his scale model bombers and jets for years and the sessions have become something of an expected occurrence.  A former pilot, Unger said that learning to fly the plane from the ground as opposed to the cockpit was a significant challenge. From the inside left is always left and right is always right; from the ground it is not as clear cut and navigational mistakes were the bane of his first years of integrating into the RC style of flying. “It’s not just me,” he said. “I’ve talked to a lot of pilots who kept having to bring home the pieces of their planes in boxes.” Crashing is still an issue but as the planes have become more realistic, they’ve also become better designed to co...

 BERLIN — One of the great Christmas myths is that traditions have to be inherited. At first, the term tradition seems to demand that whatever the holiday practice happens to be it must have always been. This, of course, cannot be true. Traditions are inaugurated by families, individuals and cultures all the time. In the case of family tradition in often has to do with a person suggesting the family try out some new practice and that practice becoming part of the way the season is celebrated. In the end, traditions are about making the general more specific. They are a  family’s or a culture’s attempt to distinguish themselves in a way that says they are participating in the wider celebration but that they have something to bring to the table that is particular to them. Traditions are also something a group can begin to recognize even though they did not originate it. They can see the sentimental value in the practice of someone else and begin to consider...

OCEAN PINES — The country music coming from the Community Center gym on any given Monday and Wednesday morning doesn’t sound, upon first listen, like workout music. It lacks the driving beat that tends to mark official exercise.  And, strictly speaking, exercise is a secondary aim for the Ocean Liners, the line-dancing club that occupies the gym at those times. A significant number of members, however, are holdovers from the Shape-Ups exercise group that meets an hour earlier, so Mondays and Wednesdays are a heavy workout day for many of the participants, weather they are doing traditional exercise or getting their heart rates up to the strains of “Boot Scoot Boogie”. Lynn Gibbons is one of the group leaders. Her responsibilities tend to include making sure the group’s music is ready and the CD player is working properly, and that there is, for lack of a better term, a song list of appropriate length and variety to keep the day’s dancing bo...