Monthly Archives: July 2009

Family Ties

I spent a nice evening last week with about 25 members of the Whately Historical Society, people who share my interest in old homes, old barns, old taverns and old relics from a kinder day. Among my guests was the new owner of a home where my displaced ancestors once lived briefly after a July […]

Where are we Headed?

Sugar snow snakes through the forested highland crevices like frothy white streams flowing toward their summer delta as sugar shacks exhale plumes of steam dotting the horizon from damp pockets. Below, remnants of winter can be seen along the stream’s bank and the house’s northern perimeter; also where the plow has left the most impure […]

Sixties Rant

”Will you still bleed me, will you still mislead me, When I’m sixty-four?” Paul McCartney (lyrics slightly altered to fit theme) What do Sgt. Pepper and hippie freaks, neocons and fundamentalist Christian nutbags have to do with declining Atlantic salmon numbers? Just you wait and see. There is a connection. Trust me. As for salmon, […]

Hunting Buddies Never Die

I wish I had known, been able to reach out. But now he’s gone, too late to say goodbye. I remember the last time we spoke. It was brief, on my way into the Green River Festival a couple of years ago. His welcoming smile and warm brown eyes, same mischievous glint, were unchanged since […]

Solitary Contentment

Published: Thursday, January 01, 2009 It’s all coming back to me as I sit at my desk, space heater purring behind me, dog sleeping between it and me, noble, 9-point buck mounted above, between the windows. A steady rain splatters off the stone terrace outside as mellow gray light from the dense foggy air filters […]

The Painter

The sad news was fresh, the morning gray. I was backed up to a bluff overlooking the Green River, sitting on my tailgate, sipping coffee, watching my dogs romp up and down the bank, swimming after mallards, flushing them, returning to the plateau, shaking off, bounding through the shin-high hayfield … pure joy. My imagination […]

Chapman/Pierson highboy

Discovery is exciting, precisely what keeps people hunting through moldy cellars, dusty attics and decaying barns, yard sales and crack-of-dawn flea markets. Collecting’s a disease, one that can be highly contagious, a fever that grips you … which reminds me of a recent visit to my Greenfield, Ma., home, one that bore sweet, salubrious fruit, […]

Another skunk

What I didn’t write in my most recent column  because of space constraints was an incident that occurred the day before dog Bessie got sprayed by the backyard skunk I documented in print. It was around 4 p.m. and I was running my three Springer Spaniels — Ringo, Lily and Bessie — in a neighboring […]

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