For all of your days be prepared, And meet them ever alike: When you are the anvil, bear – When you are the hammer, strike. Edwin Markham by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – That seemed like a pleasant little nostrum when I was in high school,[Read More…]
A Yankee Notebook
They’ve Been Places and Seen Things
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – It’s for years irritated me that my fellow countrymen know so little about their next-door neighbor to the north. When my friends and I in the Geriatric Adventure Society first began traveling to the Arctic for our biennial canoe trips on the so-called Barren[Read More…]
That Love-Hate Relationship
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – A lot of us who live here have a love-hate relationship with leaf-peepers. On the one hand, their annual migration to look at our autumn leaves brings in millions of dollars, and our tourist bureaus, whose job is to encourage that sort of behavior,[Read More…]
Don’t be too Hard on Us
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – The calendar claims it’s the first of October. The thermometer claims it’s the first of August (and will, until next Saturday). The soft maple outside my kitchen window, always the first tree on the property to turn, already has turned so far that, like[Read More…]
We Sophisticates Tend to Smile at Such Nonsense
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – Creatures commonly called brownies have been with us for centuries, and have operated under dozens of names. In pre-scientific times they were thought to cause inexplicable domestic phenomena, like the curdling of milk, the reappearance of items thought lost, or a fresh cow going[Read More…]
We Spent Christmas Huddled in her House
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – Most of the time, living as we do at the business end of a climatological bowling alley, we watch our weather approach from the west. This time it was coming at us from the southeast. For over a week we’d been watching the progress[Read More…]
I Wasn’t Quite Ready for Idyls
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – During the 1960s I taught high school English in a riverside village on the west side of Lake Champlain. Looking back, I can see that the situation for our small family was idyllic. But in my early thirties, I wasn’t quite ready for idyls;[Read More…]
What Could Possibly go Wrong?
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – Wednesday, 7/30, 10 p.m. Cold, rainy, windy. Still wind-bound. Blew hard all day. Fished up and down the canyon with Baird, slept, read. Can’t move till the wind dies. Bob’s barometer still dropping. Half the fuel is gone, and we’ve seen barely a pencil[Read More…]
Mostly, Though, They’ve Just Stewed
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – “They’re a pretty sorry lot.” – Barbara Bush Mrs. Bush was talking in 2000 about the Democratic contenders for the presidential nomination. But her appraisal would fit the 19 alleged miscreants who’ve been showing up this week for booking at the Fulton County Jail.[Read More…]
This Can’t be a Good Sign
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – For decades I’ve preached the virtue of experiencing one new thing each week. This has resulted in an occasionally exciting life so far. But the one this past week was a bit more than I’d planned for or even thought about. After a series[Read More…]
The Reason Should be Fairly Obvious
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – Increasingly, as time goes on, I find myself less and less interested in the Facebook pages that purport to tell “the startling truth” of the breakup of celebrities: Was it his devotion to Scientology or hers to a wanderlust? Who cares? Just as frequently,[Read More…]
Like a Chimpanzee with an AK-47
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – At some point in the trip – maybe while plowing through rush-hour traffic on old Route 1 south of Portland; maybe dining on fettuccine and meatballs in an Italian restaurant in teeming Windham; maybe approaching my fourth toll booth on the Maine Turnpike –[Read More…]
