When Peggy O’Neil became the executive director of WISE (Women’s Information Service) in 2003, the Lebanon, N.H., non-profit organization known for its work in assisting survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence, the organization was using a decades-old logo that showed a woman in silhouette, her face hidden from view. The image was consistent with society-wide attitudes toward the twin scourges of domestic and sexual violence – kept out of public view, and rarely spoken of.

“We know that secrecy and isolation breed domestic violence and sexual assault,” O’Neil said in a Zoom interview.

But shrouding these issues in secrecy and isolation is not the best way to combat a global public health problem. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 1 in 3 women, or 35% of women worldwide, have experienced “either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.”

So, in 2006, after consultation with the staff and the Upper Valley community, a new WISE logo and message were unveiled. No woman concealed in the shadows this time, but a simple declaration: end violence, share hope, change lives.

“It was more consistent with our intention to end domestic and sexual violence within our communities, including being more public about the issue,” said O’Neil.

This year marks WISE’s 50th anniversary. What began in Hanover as a career resource center for women has become a multi-faceted agency that provides services to survivors of domestic and sexual violence from 21 towns in New Hampshire and Vermont. Approximately 1,300 people annually turn to WISE for counseling and assistance. WISE offers safe housing for women leaving dangerous, abusive relationships, often accompanied by their children.

“Survivors don’t necessarily feel safe or comfortable in shelters or transitional housing. When you leave your home, you have to go someplace – and that place needs to be safe,” said Betsy Kohl, WISE’s communications and development director.

The WISE mandate is a broad one. WISE now owns three buildings in Lebanon: their offices at 38 Bank Street, a safe house (location undisclosed) and, most recently, they acquired an apartment building next to 38 Bank Street, which they are renovating for long-term housing.

WISE also provides financial and housing assistance, and support for people navigating the often intimidating, complex maze of law enforcement and the courts.

Since the early 1990s, WISE has brought educational programming into schools in the Upper Valley. With the hiring of a program director in 2008, WISE now serves four independent schools and nine public school districts in New Hampshire and Vermont, including Lebanon, Hanover, Thetford, Mascoma Valley and Windsor. The programs begin in elementary school and continue through high school.

The idea is to help younger people recognize the warning signs of not only physical abuse, but also, in this era of social media, the signs of bullying, stalking and coercive control.

“The prevention work they do is really unique. They’re trying to change the dynamics in young people,” said Tricia Spellman, a member of the WISE Board of Trustees since 2015, and Chief Financial and Administrative Officer at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College.

WISE’s expansion has continued in other areas. In 1982, WISE had 22 volunteers; today, it has 106 trained female and male volunteers who work the 24-hour phone lines or correspond online or by text, and act as court observers and ambassadors to the community at large, said Kohl. When O’Neil took over the directorship, she estimates that WISE saw about 600 people a year; that number has more than doubled.

Eugene Chabot, 102 Receives Lebanon’s Boston Post Cane

The day following Mr. Chabot’s birthday (Thanksgiving 2020), representatives of the Lebanon Historical Society called upon him at his residence on Lily Lane in the in West Lebanon to present him with the City’s Boston Post Cane in recognition of his becoming the City’s oldest resident.

Chabot was born November 26, 1918 in Paquette, Quebec which borders Pittsburg, NH. He was raised on his family’s dairy farm where he worked until 1936 when he moved to Berlin, NH as an employee of the Brown Paper Company mill for the next 24 years.

The next move brought him to the Upper Valley with his bride, Theresa Dube, whose Berlin family relocated to Hanover, then Lyme and Plainfield. Eugene and Theresa roosted in Hanover, where he landed a job as the baker for Mary Hitchcock Hospital while they began their family in 1948. They were blessed with three children; Delores, Lorraine, and Donald. They crossed town lines to settle on Peabody Street in Lebanon in 1949.

The ever-active Eugene decided he enjoyed mechanical work and commenced working in a series of local Lebanon garages (one was Thompson’s) before being hired by the Town of Hanover’s Highway Department where he worked from 1957 to 1981 and where he retired as a foreman.

What do you do when you’re youthful and active? Well, you walk (at least two miles a day) and grow food, leading him to the obvious solution: go back to farming at Edgewater Farms in Plainfield, a long-time source of the fresh vegetables that kept him healthy. He became a virtual member of the farm family till age 89 when he suffered major loss of eyesight. Several operations didn’t help. Not only did it curb the work in the gardens he so enjoyed, but hunting and fishing were out as was his other hobby of making quilts (some of which were sold in the Edgewater store). He proudly calculates that he made 117 quilts.

In 2012, Eugene and Theresa moved into a senior living apartment where she passed away in 2016. His pleasures in life were reduced to walking and spending time with his family. Slowly, the walking has been curtailed. But, his wonderful sense of humor, friendly banter, and fond memories remain. Heck, he remembers the day he was born – and his mother bundling him up and walking him over to the church to be baptized the next day – and then her going off to work and leaving him to care for a younger sibling when he was six. That’s when he learned to cook – she taught him and he’s loved it ever since.

They can’t take those recollections away. Nor can they remove that of which he is most proud: his US citizenship which he earned back in 1968. And that wonderful sense of humor.

 “Did you ever stray across the border into the USA before you became a citizen?” “Why, of course! If I were chasing a moose you don’t think I would let a little thing like a border get in the way!”

And when he was politely asked to relinquish the gold-headed cane he had just been presented so it could be returned for the safekeeping of the Lebanon Historical Society, it had to be teasingly wrestled from his hands. A man for all seasons doesn’t lose his grip just because he’s turned 102.

For sisters Laura and Cecilia Gonzalez, food is love, and family is everything. Even though they are separated by thousands of miles – Laura lives in Lebanon with her husband Jim, and Cecilia is in Mexico City – they have found a unique way to stay connected. Their new joint venture is a virtual cooking school that’s all about sharing the rich and flavorful culinary heritage of Mexican cooking and its central role in their family.

Laura is the second sibling and has worked as a Spanish teacher in the Rassias Center at Dartmouth. Growing up in the city of Leon in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, family gatherings revolved around sharing food. “We gathered for every birthday, every wedding, for everything. We all like to eat – my son Mario says that you are not a Gonzalez if you don’t buy something to eat while the food is cooking,” says Laura. “And everyone can participate; everyone brings something to prepare and the menu is never limited.” Sundays in Mexico are family gathering days, a practice central to Mexican culture. Food is at the heart of any meeting or family event, and if someone visits you at your home, food is a vital part of that experience. There’s an expression in Mexico – ‘Where one eats, two eat,’ which means that there’s always enough food for everyone; if there’s food for one there’s food for all.

Laura’s journey to the Upper Valley began when she was an English teacher in Mexico City and decided to train with the Inter-American Partnership for Education to learn to teach English with the Rassias Method® to Mexican public school students. Laura met her husband, Jim, through the program, who was based in Lebanon and traveling frequently to Mexico. Laura was able to emigrate to Lebanon two years ago after receiving her green card to become a permanent resident of the US.

Laura became a member of the Buena Gente Social Club in Hanover, a Spanish-speaking group founded in 2009. This led to teaching Mexican cooking classes to club members via Zoom at the beginning of the pandemic. The collaboration to offer virtual cooking experiences with Cecilia and her new catering business, Ki’ Sabores de Casa (which means Delicious Flavors of Home) was born when the sisters decided to share their Mexican culture and traditions with a wider audience. Jim has an important role in the classes as a translator and sharing local knowledge. He also helps Laura and Cecilia understand what American tastes can tolerate. Laura muses, “We want to make things very Mexican.”

The sisters are very happy to be working together on the project. “We saw each other at family gatherings, but now we see each other more frequently and in a different context. We have managed very well because Cecilia is the expert cook in our family, and I look for the ingredients locally and promote the classes.” Laura also shares the history and culture of the various dishes – like the fact that there are more than 500 tamale recipes in Mexico, prepared 4,000 different ways, and the Mexicas (a Nahuatl-speaking indigenous people and rulers of the Aztec Empire) used to prepare tamales as a community and filled them with the meat of turkeys, flamingos, frogs, rabbits, and fish. Laura notes, “When I lived in Mexico, I didn’t think about where the ingredients came from, and now, with the classes, it’s a necessity.”

In Mexico, each state has different culinary specialties and the markets feature regional foods, spices, and cooking traditions. Finding authentic Mexican ingredients in the Upper Valley can be a bit challenging, but Laura and Cecilia are becoming adept at making substitutions.

Cecilia, the youngest sister in the family and founder of Ki’ Sabores de Casa, was born in Mexico City and grew up absorbing the family food traditions. Cecilia remembers, “We all used to go together to the supermarket and everyone carried bags home. We had to buy something to eat while we were cooking because it takes so long that you have to eat something. Mexican food takes time.” But it took a while for Cecilia to fully embrace the family tradition of home cooking. “I have to admit that, as a girl, I didn’t like cooking, but I started to like it when I saw my mother, brothers, and sisters cooking. I gravitated to the sounds, smells, and sights of the food.”  After working in retail for many years, last year she left her job and followed her dream, starting with catering and delivering food to people’s homes. “The idea I want to translate is that of home cooking – food that you cherish – food that your mothers or grandmothers made.” 

The notion of cherishing food as well as its preparation was introduced to Laura’s husband, Jim, an American, when he began joining Gonzalez family gatherings. “By the time I joined the family, the tradition was to go either to Cecilia’s home or sometimes their mother’s. Cecilia is the family cook, which I think comes out when she is teaching the classes. She is often saying, ‘What does it smell like, can you hear the sound, you can tell when it’s ready by how it feels, or when you see the color of the tomatoes change.’ She really experiences cooking with all of her senses.” Jim quickly became an eager participant in preparing meals with the family, including the practice of eating along with cooking. “By the time the meal was ready, I was already full.”

Both sisters and Jim agree the virtual classes have been successful. In a recent session on making tamales, part of the class involved 15 minutes of mixing the masa (dough made with corn flour) by hand, an important traditional Mexican technique. Laura shared the wisdom behind this practice, “When you use your hands to prepare something, you transmit to the food your feelings. That is why Cecilia was saying during class, ‘Smile and be happy – the energy is going to the food that you are making with your hands.’ You get into a state of happiness and concentration to get it well made and it’s a challenge and a pleasure.”

So how have the classes been received in the Upper Valley? Participant Jill Fisher says that “…seeing Cecilia in her kitchen in Mexico with its gorgeous bright pink wall and demonstrating the cooking process in Spanish is like being transported through the screen. Jim and Laura also set a warm, friendly tone that creates a delightful experience even apart from the learning to cook Mexican dishes.” 

Alex Medlicott appreciated discovering new ways to understand Mexican food from Chef Cecilia. “The more subtle flavors found in sauces made from roasted peppers, peanuts, and sesame seeds replaced our misconception of Mexican food, probably perpetrated by the US fast food industry, that it’s all about salt, cheese and picante.”

Cecilia notices that the classes seem to be evolving as a catalyst for family gatherings. “One of the things I like about these classes is that you can see the whole family cooking together which is something we do in Mexico. From people initially taking the class by themselves, now entire families are joining the class from around the country. What started as an extension of learning Spanish has now expanded to not having to speak Spanish, but gathering families together to enjoy learning how to cook.”

The classes have also served to broaden awareness of Mexican culture. Laura notes that people are seeing a different perspective of what Mexico is like. “Seeing Cecilia in her home may give people an idea of the richness of Mexican food, and the Mexican people. It’s not that we are teaching anything specific. Most of what we learn is about the experiences that we have in life and specific relationships between Mexican food and culture.”

Jim agrees. “The sisters have talked a lot to me about the ‘slow food movement’ and trying to transmit part of that culturally. You can break down stereotypes when you get to know people from different cultures; I used to think that the experience had to be with people in the same place, but you can have experiences that create the same kinds of bonds virtually.”

Future Ki’ Sabores de Casa experiences may include guiding beginners through the process of choosing ingredients – what things should feel and smell like, to coaching students through the cooking experience. After the pandemic, Cecilia may journey to Lebanon to offer an in-person class. Another option to enrich the experience is to show the sights and sounds of a food market in Mexico City, including the street vendors selling tamales by bicycle, calling out “Tamales!” as they ride the streets.

For now, the Gonzalez family is continuing to gather on Sundays via ZOOM, with many of the family’s seven siblings participating at once from their respective homes. Laura is grateful for this renewed family time, and as Cecilia likes to say, “Cooking is love. If you cook with the feeling then that’s what you are going to give people through the food and sharing time together.”

For more information on Ki’ Sabores de Casa upcoming cooking experiences, visit www.kisaboresdecasa.com.mx.

Hi, I’m Devin, and I’m a community organizer. That’s how I usually introduce myself these days. If someone had told me when I first moved to Lebanon that I would soon lead multiple local organizations, plan various independent political advocacy demonstrations and actions, and serve on a housing board, two task forces, a commission, and (hopefully soon) Lebanon City Council… well, I can’t say I would have believed them. Nonetheless, less than a decade later, this is my volunteer résumé. I share this not to brag, but rather to encourage everyone with an interest in community – the way it functions, the opportunities to be found therein, or simply the people to meet – to get involved. The process is simple, the barriers to entry are impressively low, and the insights and connections I’ve gained are absolutely worth the time.

In 2015 I lived in a condominium in West Lebanon with a few friends and worked in a small office in Hanover, and I generally only interacted with those two communities or the ones I had developed in school or in previous jobs. When a friend-of-a-friend invited me to join a now-defunct volunteer project, I resisted but eventually relented, albeit without much expectation. My typical assumption had been that most people involved in these projects already knew one another and knew what they were doing, either through their work or through some long-standing commitments.

That assumption could not have been further from the truth. What I found upon joining that project was a welcoming, enthusiastic community of former strangers, often transplants to the Upper Valley, brought together by a common cause. They shared information, sought ideas from one another, and invited me in whenever I felt I could contribute, even by sharing my opinion. Through that group, I learned of an opening in the leadership of Lebanon’s Democratic Committee that introduced me to the City’s State Representatives and county officials. I also learned about the needs of a local community for volunteer board members, overseeing such tasks as economic development, cemetery maintenance, expanding walking and bicycling routes, and improving energy efficiency.

One of Lebanon’s valuable and often-overlooked assets to community education is its Citizens Academy. The twelve-week course is free to residents and provides tours of and information on the City’s resources, from municipal government to public safety to public works. Though the course is cancelled for 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, outlines and CATV video are available on the City’s website for anyone interested in a brief overview. Among other topics, the session on boards and commissions caught my attention when I attended in 2017: there seemed to be a volunteer group for nearly any municipal interest to be found. The opportunities were broad, but I didn’t know how to access them.

Later that year, I found an opportunity to put my newly-acquired insights to use. When Lebanon’s City Council began reviewing an ordinance the content of which I felt was not representative of the community in which I wished to live, my volunteer comrades and I mobilized. We reached out to our friends and neighbors. We held signs. Perhaps most consequentially for me, we wrote letters to the Councilors in question. I learned that these decision-makers, whom I had previously perceived as some great “other” acting in predetermined capacities as part of their professional experience, were in fact members of the community just like me. They were volunteers who wanted to help their community to flourish, and they were happy to talk and to listen to our thoughts and concerns.

In 2018, Lebanon established an Arts & Culture Task Force, for the purpose of considering an arts district and more generally evaluating the City’s involvement in the arts. This fit in perfectly with my personal interests and my work as a book publisher, and I hoped to contribute a literary perspective alongside the valuable interest in visual and performing arts that the topic generally attracts. The process was simple and painless: I visited the City’s website and filled out an application listing my basic contact information and reasons for applying, and before long I was contacted to set up an interview. The task force came together quickly, and after a fun and informative summer of meetings and discussions, the Arts & Culture Commission (now called Lebanon Artways) resulted, and I had become a member.

Community involvement can happen intentionally or incidentally; in the summer of 2019, as international students were moving in to Dartmouth College, the US federal government planned and executed a border patrol checkpoint in Lebanon, about 100 miles from the border with Canada. The community was outraged at this action that served no clear purpose, and disappointed that the Lebanon Police Department had known about the plan beforehand and had not shared the information with the community, but had been present at the checkpoint nonetheless. Very quickly, a group of community organizers, churchgoers, and service providers gathered to discuss this concern. Though we could not prevent the checkpoints from happening, we could ensure the City, including police, acted quickly to share news of the plan and to support the community. After hours of collecting hundreds of signatures and a City-wide vote, we passed the Welcoming Lebanon Ordinance and I found myself on another task force, this one joining members of the public to hear input from all involved parties before providing a version of the ordinance that could be accepted widely. Though a few years ago I had no idea how municipal government functioned, I found I was able to engage enthusiastically and work effectively with the rest of the task force and other members of the community, and I am proud of the consensus recommendation that emerged from our deliberations and went into effect on January 1 of this year.

As I recall the trajectory of my involvement in municipal government, I do not see anything particularly outstanding. I have had the privilege of free time to join these initiatives, but I had no specific training or access. Though there are still some barriers to access for a few members of our global community, many of us are working to erode those barriers, and already it has clear effects. Mine is a path that I believe many others can and should follow to become engaged in the decisions being made around them that will affect their lives significantly. When Lebanon Times publisher Jen MacMillen asked me to write this piece without knowing I was planning to run for City Council, I worried it might be seen by some as a campaign speech, but upon discussing this, we decided that the value of encouraging others to get involved outweighed that risk. Tip O’Neill once stated that all politics is local, reminding his listeners that an engaged populace can have a powerful impact on all levels of governance in their community; from my experience, I know this to be true.