There was nothing unusual at the start of our telephone conversation last week, me at my Recorder desk, he his New Salem home, after dark. Pretty typical for my rambling chats over the years with Peter Mallett, brainchild/promoter in chief of the Miller River Fishermen’s Association. An affable sort, he’s always been upbeat and enthusiastic […]

Yes, the brook’s roaring, the songbirds’re singing, the snowbanks’re shrinking, and my last load of cordwood’s drying ever so slowly, stacked under the eaves of the sunny carriage sheds. No, it isn’t time for stream-fishing here in the northern tier of Franklin County. Too much snow, way too much, in fact; even worse, annoying mud […]

They’re raising a ruckus in the sleepy Hampshire County hilltown of Chesterfield, where officials are threatening to shut down a longtime camp on a Boy Scout reservation in a dispute over a temporary summer shooting range. Although I don’t intend to research and devote a lot of time to the case — surely, much to […]

Another evening phone call at my Recorder desk that got my wheels spinning. Gotta love it. The caller was a dear old friend, one I see far too little of now that we’ve “grown up” and gone our separate ways. That’s life. But he touches base now and again, usually at my workplace, to rattle […]