Grants and Donations

During 2008, we gratefully received a coveted Moose Plate grant from the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources, for historic preservation and moisture-abatement measures; a grant from The Corporate Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation for marketing; the Knox Family Fund for general operations; the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance for a preservation consultant; the Samuel P. Hunt Foundation for restorations and repairs on the house, with an emphasis on Frost’s work room; the Adolph and Virginia Dehn Foundation; the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts; and the final installment of a multi-year grant from the New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program.
The Frost Place also received very welcome gifts to fund financial aid for conference participants, including the Murray Alboher Scholarship for Teachers, the Anne L. Fitzpatrick Fellowships for Festival and Seminar poets, Donald Sheehan Fellowship from the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) Program at Dartmouth College, two conference scholarships from the Creative Writing Program at Dartmouth, and two Designer Gold scholarships for a young poet and a teacher who were finalists in New Hampshire’s Poetry Out Loud recitation competition. And we’re grateful for generous donations from many individuals, whose 2008 contributions will be listed in our winter 2009 newsletter.

Dartmouth Fellows and Interns

Matthew Ritger's Summer 2009

A special thank you to our 2009 Dartmouth College fellow, Matthew Ritger, who did wonderful work last summer as a conference assistant and museum docent. Matthew's internship was made possible through the William Cook Fellowship from Dartmouth College.

"Am I homesick for a ghost house? I miss my rabbit family nibbling next to the barn each afternoon; I miss my bear family terrifying the Hasidic tourists from Bethlehem; I miss my phoebe family and scraping their crap off the porch every other day; I miss most of all Robert's turnpike acolytes and the straight face with which I'd field the question "So which one of these is the road less traveled by?" over and over. Did I say ghost house? I meant zoo.

The summers are places," said Robert Lowell in a poem I fell for this summer, and in all sincerity, my summer at The Frost Place was one of the most significant of my life. Physically, intellectually and even spiritually, I don't think I've ever been more at home. I hiked every mountain within biking distance (biking distance being a 50-mile radius) by the time the summer was out and actually finished everything on my annually over-ambitious summer reading list. I even finished a manuscript of my own poems, which can soon be found in recycling bins all over the English department of Dartmouth College.

It was a season of transitions for The Frost Place, but the changes seemed only to uncover the loyalty and resilience of those who love this farmhouse and what it stands for. Working and living in Franconia, sans internet, landline, cell service, or car was truly an experiment in living -- but one I'd relive in a heartbeat (and many thanks to Betsy Baker and Bob and Anita Craven for their hospitality when I couldn't be living at The Frost Place. Though the state of mind my life in Franconia produced can seem to exist only in a parallel universe, I know I can always return, and that The Frost Place will endure, just as it is: quiet and somewhat quirky, surrounded by critters and maybe even inhabited by an esteemed ghost or two.

So I am: Homesick for that summer place, but also glad to take what I learned there back to school and to my friends. The Creative Writing department is planning a field trip to The Frost Place in the next week or so, led by yours truly. I'm looking forward to seeing the stars in their eyes when they stand on that porch for the first time and watch the clouds pour through the Notch."