EAST MONTPELIER – I see by the news that the Iditarod Race is in full cry up in Alaska. There’s a ceremonial false start right near Anchorage: kind of a parade, really, with celebrities everywhere. Then next day, safely out of downtown, the real thing begins: a roughly thousand-mile slog[Read More…]
A Yankee Notebook
Bread and circuses
EAST MONTPELIER – I had the experience, some thirty years ago, of sharing a canoe in the Canadian Arctic with a delightful child psychiatrist. Naturally, we talked all day long of shoes and ships and sealing wax, I suppose, and I remember a few of the things I learned. One[Read More…]
In case we survive it
EAST MONTPELIER – I’m writing this before this year’s State of the Union speech. As an old hand at backstage preparations, I can well imagine the excitement currently infusing whatever passes for a green room wherever the president is getting ready for his coming performance. And I can imagine the[Read More…]
Would-be Thomas Paines
by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – The so-called Founding Fathers of the United States of America were far from perfect. Compromised by various interests as they were, however, they were more aware of the various imperfections of the human character than might have been a band of starry-eyed idealists. Thus[Read More…]
Reminders of some of the happiest days
EAST MONTPELIER – I’m writing this during the afternoon of February 2. The sun is flooding the yard, raising the temperature to a dizzying 23 degrees, the snow lies deep in the woods, and there’s never been a bluer sky. Twenty-five years ago I wouldn’t be here; I’d be outside[Read More…]
Ranks up there with the stupidest
EAST MONTPELIER – The week just passed in Minneapolis, Minn., has been one of the most watched in perhaps all of American history. Aware that massive protests against the invasion of ICE were likely to occur, every news organization that could afford plane tickets for a film crew sent whatever[Read More…]
This stuff never gets old
EAST MONTPELIER – One of the advantages of a three-day weekend is that we get an extra day just to talk. It doesn’t matter what else we may be doing, there’s just more time to chat and share points of view on what’s happening around us. Thanks to the wild[Read More…]
Somewhere there’s an audacious reporter
EAST MONTPELIER – Political historian Heather Cox Richardson, author of the daily newsletter “Letters from an American,” opined the other day that the news of the past week has seemed to be breaking faster than ever. From the invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president and first lady, to[Read More…]
Miles were already adding up
EAST MONTPELIER – Normally, when I thread the stop-and-go traffic of Lynn, break out at last into seven breakneck miles of I-95, and then merge into the rocket-propelled caravan of I-93, headed for New Hampshire and Vermont, it’s with a feeling of regret. I’m leaving a lovely weekend behind, and[Read More…]
How very far I was from home
EAST MONTPELIER – The last few years, I’ve been traveling to my son’s house in Arkansas for Christmas. I’ll do the same this year. It’s such a treat, after rattling around alone in this house through the seasons, to be immersed in family life, children and grandchildren all over the[Read More…]
Chasing away the darkness
EAST MONTPELIER – As I write, it’s only a quarter past four in the afternoon, but I wouldn’t want to be walking in the woods right now without a light. Down at the foot of the driveway, the headlights of homebound traffic zoom past, and a soft snow sifts down[Read More…]
Will widows and orphans be left to their own devices?
EAST MONTPELIER – Around 1906, a young Harvard graduate student was browsing a used book store in Cambridge and came across a rare treasure: a prompter’s script used by Charles Dickens in his tour of the United States to perform readings from his work. It was an abbreviated version of “A[Read More…]
