John & Lorraine Merrill dairy farmers L: I sometimes think of how this herd of cows that we have today, that we’re taking care of and milking—they are descendants of the same cows that supported my grandparents. These families have literally taken care of each other. The cow family and the people family; for many many years and for five generations. I think that’s something that people who don’t have animals and don’t farm can’t be aware of. Children have the opportunity to be part of something real and actually contribute to their family’s well-being, contribute and take care of animals, help with growing crops, that makes them feel like they have some value and role beyond just being children, and I think that’s something that’s also of real value. J: Kids growing up on a farm see a whole continuum of life constantly, from a very early age, and a recognition that there’s a beginning, a middle and an end. I think that maybe you value yourself, your existence more with that kind of knowledge.

Mamadou Diabate Kora player Your inspiration does not come if you don't love your instrument or if you don't love what you do. Everything come for the love. You have to love what you do. I say, if you love your instrument, your instrument will love you. If you don't love it, it not going to love you. When you love your instrument, there's no sad, there's no happy moment. When you are sad, you like playing; when you are happy you like playing. I get up everyday. I play everyday. I’m sad, I play; I’m happy, I play.

Gerry Williams potter, pacifist I spent a year in prison as a result of not registering for the draft. The reason I became a pacifist was to a large extent due to Gandhi’s philosophy…In addition to the non-violence, there were the social ethics that Gandhi represented and taught – that social ethics had to do with providing objects that came from the environment for people to use. This led me to want to make pots… Gandhi explained how making things by hand and serving the community is where it’s desirable. My wife died two weeks ago, and left me with a sense of not knowing exactly where I am, and who I am, and where I am going, but we’re okay on the whole. She and I traveled around the country, and we would interview people. Print them in a magazine. Almost always potters – find out where they lived, get in the car, see them, talk with them. We spent our time well, I think.

Fred Lavigne conservationist One reason I became a tree hugger was because I became frustrated with what people are doing in the woods, to the woods, and just not thinking about the future of the forest, and cutting it so hard. Out of that frustration, I wanted to see land protected as Wilderness, or as Forever Wild Land on private land…They don't make it easy. You have participate in this long process, a forest planning process. You have to go to a lot of meetings. You have to have a group and keep pushing. They don't give it away. But the process is there. That's amazing. The process is there that citizens can propose these things, and actually have them implemented through Congress. And it’s been wonderful to walk in those areas knowing that it's happened. It's like, okay, these trees here are just gonna be here forever. They're living as a little happy family here. They get to be here every day. Lucky them; I only get to go visit once in a while. Not only the trees, but everything else that's out there. That's nice.

Dudley Laufman musician, poet I've always liked the shape of things. And to some degree, some color. Like for instance, the shape of Fenway Park and the color - that green. That's always fascinated me. Or the shape of a hockey rink. Boston Gardens. But also the shape of a poem on the page. And then, smell. Wood smoke. When I was a child - we grew up outside of Boston and summered up on Lake Winnipesaukee - there was a man, Bob Brown, who lived in a camp like this with his wife and four kids. He made his living doing odd jobs around the lake, like mowing for people, and he cut wood, fixed leaky roofs - that sort of thing. But he smelled of wood smoke and kerosene because he had a kerosene stove in the house and he was very sinewy. So it's a mixture of shape, smell, and sound that has influenced me. The things that make my heart swell are certain rises and fall of music in the major key. That's it. I can't think of anything else.

Genevieve Aichele theatre artist I never had that dream like a lot of people do that I’m going to become an actor and be on the stage. It wasn’t that. I had this dream of wanting to create a place where artists could feel safe to explore – not just artists – but anybody. That was always a piece of it. Fast-forward thirty years, when New Hampshire Theatre Project was invited to become part of this space at West End Theatre and actually have a home, I realized how much I did want this safe space here.

Aya Itagaki calligrapher My husband was only one child. In Japan, a child is expected to take care of their parents. So both came to Hanover. We all lived in Hanover, together. I married to him, but more like I was married to his family. I lived together with his parents for twenty years. In school, I studied the tea ceremony, and flower arrangement. I was obedient. I just did it. When I do, I do my best. Still I can do it. Everything ran from my body. I am telling young children, “If you have a chance, do it.” We have a general saying, “Whenever you stay somewhere, you are a master.” You are at the center. If you do cooking, you focus on cooking. If you clean your house, you focus on cleaning. This particular time is only this time. My grandmother would always say, “There is god everywhere, watching you, so do your best.”

Gioia Timpanelli writer, storyteller, broadcasting I’m looking at a Vermeer one day and I see that Vermeer has painted a pearl on the woman’s ear. I look at it and all of a sudden I see that it’s almost infinitesimal strokes of gesture. He’s made this pearl out of something that I see his working at it. All of a sudden I understood that this thing that he made, had in him created a way of doing something, of making this thing. And the way was the secret of it. And I couldn’t believe it. I had not understood about art before. It was that pearl, the making of it, that made me say, “I want to be an artist. I want to make magic out of nothing. I want to understand something out of nothing and something. And I want to understand how it goes through your fingers, and how that could happen or not."

Ani Sangye Chödrön Buddhist monastic I don’t know why I chose Nepal to go to from Thailand. I like mountains. Something about it was like a magnet. I really wanted to go there. So I bought a plane ticket to Nepal. I studied yoga and Thai Ayurvedic massage, at a healing center just outside Kathmandu. I had not done yoga other than classes here and there. I really got into it there. The teacher was excellent. He was Hindu. One day he said, “There’s a particularly fantastic Buddhist teacher giving teachings at the White Monastery in Boudha.” He kicked us all out for the day. He said, “There aren’t many teachers left like that in this world, so you should go listen to him.” We had a hard time finding it, but eventually we showed up at the White Monastery. That is now the monastery where I am. I don’t remember so much about the talk itself, or even who it was who taught. But that seed of going to that monastery and really liking the talk, even though to this day—it’s helping me to get to where I’d like to be.

Mary Azarian woodcut printmaker I began doing prints in 1967. I feel like I’ve pretty much done all I want in that area…Now I’m ready to do something different. It’s a big transition year; I mean in the material sense. It’s been going on internally for the last five or six years. It’s all part of getting older, I think. You just start paring down and going for the essential. Forget all these extra trappings. I’m so delighted to leave all that stuff back at the old house. Oh, I don’t want that. Oh I don’t need that. It’s great. I’m amazed that things that I thought were really important to me, I realized I didn’t really want when it came time to move them up here. Fine. Let it go.

Jane Yolen Writer My parents were both writers, so books, writing, reading was modeled all the time. All my parents’ friends were writers. It seemed to me that when you became a grown-up, you became a writer. And it wasn’t until I was 12 or 13 that I realized, “That’s crazy. Not everybody writes.” But by then, there was in me something that says, you’re going to grow up, and you’re going to be a writer. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I became a writer when I grew up. But I work hard at it. There’s no question. It’s like exercises. You get up and do it everyday. My husband was a birder, well known in the birding community as a lucky birder, because he always seemed to find rarities no one else did. I asked him about that once, and he said, “I’m out there before I go to work in the morning, after I come home. And on the way home, I’m birding. On weekends, I’m birding. I’m always looking. You’ve got to be where the birds are.” And that’s what writing is. You’ve got to be where the words are.

Zoe Lirakis therapeutic riding instructor Having always lived on a farm I learned the importance of supporting and helping one another at an early age. As I grew up I was introduced to the discipline of horseback riding and I found my release, my love, and an activity that mimicked in some ways the way I was raised. Horse and rider must work together recognize each others faults and strengths and work together towards a common goal whether it is simple trail riding or something more advanced in the show ring. It takes great discipline, patience and an ability to recognize yourself. Teaching individuals with physical, developmental or emotional disabilities has given me a sense of assisting people that many think are unable to learn and build attachments. There is nothing more rewarding then seeing a bond formed between horse and rider. To see them begin to recognize themselves as an individual who is capable of doing great things.

Donald Hall writer I’m 81, and 81 is a mortal disease. I have nothing particularly wrong with me at the moment, but when somebody asks me about what I’m doing, I often say, to jolt them if for no other reason, “I’m working on my posthumous book of poems.” Poets tend to be more elegiac, or more erotic. I have lots of erotic poems, but surely I’m mostly elegiac. When I was a kid, it was at a time when New Hampshire was at its lowest population, and a very elderly population. I was writing constantly about a quickly decaying rural civilization and that continued in a major way when I came back here to live in 1975. I was trying to preserve, to hold together a civilization - well, not a civilization, a society - that had died out, that’s all. I began by loving old people. It is weird to become one as well. Losing mobility, the ability to climb stairs and so on - it turns from the observation of others to the expression of what remains of your own intelligence and your own emotion. That’s where I am right now.

Chris Schadler Wild Canid Ecologist If there was an animal that was emblematic of dichotomy, it’s the coyote. You either love it or hate it. You either fear it or accept it. There is very little gray room in people for this animal. In part because of the way that it’s portrayed, but I think in larger part, because it’s not a wolf. It’s a sub wolf. It’s a scroungy dog. It’s a skulker. You know. There’s nothing noble about it. All of these adjectives that are either used to defame it or compare it to the wolf or whatever, have been used on the coyote. It struck me deeply, that here’s an animal that is also a wolf that we don’t call a wolf, but it is a wolf. It’s a wolf. But it’s not as good a wolf. Here’s where it got really personal for me. I thought about in my life how my family was not considered as good. It brought back all this stuff for me. This is probably nothing you want to hear. But it’s so real for me. It gets to the nexus of how I feel about this animal.

Amy Carter & Bob Streeter Farmers Bob: I found that whole concept of providing for your own needs really fascinating. At first it was sort of a homesteading vision for myself, just gardening, and cutting all your own firewood, and not having electricity, and having an outhouse. I always loved making yogurt, so I thought, 'Well, let's get a cow.' So we started with one and now we have a few. Now we're making part of living making lots of yogurt and other dairy products. Amy: That whole idea of the living by the seasons is so satisfying. It begins for us with maple syruping. That's the beginning of getting busy. We're out watching the season change. When you start and when you end, there's different bugs that come out during the maple syruping process. There's always something that's the next thing that you're seeing, whether it's the bird song, or everybody talks about the frogs singing, or that these birds are back. Or the trees are buzzing because the bees are here. There's always something that's coming next, that after you've done this for a long time, that you look forward to, and you know your season is passing.

Sister Louise Carmelite nun It’s hard to talk about prayer, because prayer is difficult. It's not easy to just go and be there. It’s not all sweetness and light. I remember a priest saying to me when I was talking to him about leaving the Little Sisters to go to a life at Carmel, 'If you’re picturing yourself walking around in a rose garden, don't go there for that, because it's not like that.' I remember him clearly saying that. Fortunately I wasn't thinking of Carmelites as walking around in a rose garden. I wasn't. But I was surprised at how often prayer becomes difficult. It's staying with it out of love for the lord and love for god’s people. Most of the time for us it should be a listening. It is a time for personal growth. We have a saint, St John of the Cross who is more into the aspect of prayer, that prayer is difficult, and prayer is a journey. That it's a journey up Mt Carmel, or a journey across a desert, which helps to give the feeling of what can be prayer can be like for some people. A difficult journey up the mountain.

Carol Leonard writer, midwife I’ve been a midwife all my life; I was indentured into service of women at the young age of twenty-four. I apprenticed with an old country doctor for several years to learn my trade. I practiced for over three decades and had a wonderful, illustrious career but now I want to move on to the next phase of my life. Unfortunately, I don’t know what exactly the next phase is just at the moment. I know I’m in a “gestating” period, I’ve been here before, it’s like being on Sabbatical from anything deep and meaningful. I know the next phase is getting ready to unfold…I’m preparing for it. I guess I’ll have to say right now that my heart’s desire is to finally know what is my true heart’s desire. In the meantime, I’ll just be hanging out with my chickens, awaiting The Answer.

Laura Waterman writer, conservationist I think that when you’re young and trying to make decisions or decide your direction, that’s hard, because you don’t have that life experience yet. You haven’t had the chance to see how it can play out. If you let it take over, if you let your vision move forward, it’ll work itself out for you. You haven’t had a lot of experience letting that happen, it gets easier, letting things evolve as you get older. We’re more faced with choices. We’ve had a lifetime of working up to making intelligent choices. You tend to trust the negatives, or whatever is happening in that direction. I think you trust your instincts and your intuition better because you’ve had the experience in seeing that it’ll work out. I would say, basically I lead a very quiet life, intentionally so. The things that interest me are writing, gardening, walking, friends, some travel, not driving my car, or driving my car as little as possible.

Jenna Darcy Forager It feels when I’m doing it, I can feel the generations and eons of people doing it before me. This is not new. This is not something that I made up. This is something the human body is evolved to do. You see how plants evolve to almost cater to human needs, and you wonder, who’s serving who. I look at it sometimes, and I’m like a bee. I’m propagating this plant by means of getting my food but really what I’m doing is helping that plant reproduce, unbeknownst to me. It’s a win-win. I’m getting the healthiest food and medicine that I could hope for, and I’m promoting the health of the environment that I live in. I’m becoming intimate with my surroundings. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. And that’s the only way I hope to live. There’s so many ways of living a modern life where we’re just taking, and not being aware of what we’re taking or where we’re taking it from. This is one of the ways that I know to be conscious about giving something back, even if that means I’m gaining something, though I am benefitting. That makes me feel good.