How difficult it is to describe what came over me right after hooking a hard right at the North Pleasant Street rotary onto Governors Drive, heading for Commonwealth Avenue, the UMass Parking Garage and an afternoon lecture at Bartlett 61. Yes, tough indeed to describe, uncomfortable, too. The place just isn’t for me. Never was […]

It always starts in slow-motion, like someone squeezing lightly on an eyedropper full of sweet wildflower honey. Drip … drip … drip. Tediously slow. Like Chinese water torture. Then all hell breaks loose. I always know when it’s coming, the bright sun heating frigid air and warming the black Guilford slates under a deep roof […]

Whew! What a day, week, month, fresh new year. Freakin’ incredible! Information’s been flying at me like angry white-faced hornets, all of it interrelated, interesting, dynamic and highly contagious. I told my wife the other day that all the details bombarding me have created such a bizarre, glistening labyrinth that I fear I’m going to […]

It’s truly difficult coming to grips with rare occasions when I wear conservative stripes in an argument. Yeah, I know. Fancy that! Me conservative? Well, in this case, yes. That’s right, the very same man who’s probed the principals of anarchy and individual sovereignty for 40 years, ever since those formative, seed-planting lectures by Robert […]

Standing lonely in its black cardboard slipcase to the right of the monitor on my cluttered mahogany desk is the Folio Society edition of what may well be late American scribe Ambrose Bierce’s finest literary contribution, “The Devil’s Dictionary,” which came into play this week. Hopelessly mired of late in the greasy mud of archaeology, […]

Friends of Wissatinnewag, Jehovah’s Witnesses, orange flames dancing, firewood popping, gasping, even emitting soft screams from the toasty Rumford fireplace. Just a little tease to an interesting weekend. Interesting indeed. It started early. A Friday-morning visit from three experts, among them the widow of the co-author of “Manitou: The Sacred Landscape of New England’s Native […]

Whew! A wild Wednesday morning indeed. No complaints. But the craziness kept on coming in the afternoon: the phone, a visit, all stacked atop a disorienting head cold. Oh well, how can a man in my line of work complain when you don’t have to leave the house for nourishing column fodder? I guess it […]