Category Archives: Columns

Published pieces I’ve written, primarily in The Recorder, Greenfield, Mass.

Blueback Trout Mysteries Deepen

I’ve found a new second-favorite native fish — one I’ve never touched, laid eyes upon or, for that matter, even knew existed before last week. No. 1 is still Eastern brook trout: our New England fish. No. 2? Well, that would be the native fish few know: the blueback trout. So let’s take a deeper […]

Archaeology Conference A Feather In Eaglebrook’s Cap

Arctic char in our prehistoric Connecticut Valley? Yes indeed, if you read the hidden information contained in ancient sediments (or varves) left behind by glacial Lake Hitchcock, which filled from south to north as the Wisconsin Glacier receded over approximately 4,000 years — beginning some 18,000 years ago. At its peak, the lake of various […]

Ali, Columbus Revisited

Scurrying to meet a last-minute, early-deadline mandate necessitated by printing-press issues, the desk phone rang at 3 p.m. It was Tobias Houpe, son of late, great Columbus, Ohio, Police Athletic League boxing coach Roy Houpe, Cassius Clay’s 1959 AAU and Pan-Am Games teammate who groomed young boxers at the long-ago bulldozed inner-city gym on the […]

Muhammad Ali Blast From The Past

Where do you begin a story like this, one that unfolded 41 years ago, faraway, a generation before many folks who’ll read it were born? I suppose the best place to start is with “The Thrilla in Manila,” which I watched with friends and colleagues on a closed-circuit broadcast in an old Wilmington, Del., theater […]

A Spring, A ‘Fridge, And A Rattlesnake Lair

I think of it as dry, buoyant flotsam, tiny pieces of bark or twigs, maybe dried leaves, slowly circulating around an eddy. In such a scenario, the floating objects often make the same circle more than once before catching an alternative drift and disappearing downstream to a new eddy that momentarily traps them in a […]

Upstream Fish Migration past Turners Falls Pathetic

The query came from Lynn Stowe Tomb of Gill, where, as editor she is leading a dedicated collaborative of local historians and town officials to put the finishing touches on a new, comprehensive book focusing on the history, deep and shallow, of Riverside — that small village butted up against Barton Cove’s tail before the […]

It’s Been A Wild Spring Thus Far On Shad Front

An unusual spring it is, a peculiar winter it was in the Happy Valley, where haywire harbingers seem to be the rule. Take, for instance the lilacs now sweetening local neighborhoods. Do they not typically bloom a little later, when mornings are warm enough to allow the pleasant fragrance to enter homes through screen doors […]

Rock Dam’s Most Important Component Is Long Gone

A hectic five or six days it was. Yes, a bit of a whirlwind leading up to and culminating this past weekend. In-laws converging from here, there and everywhere. Places like central Maine, the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and Guatemala. A strong hint of NYC in the air emitted by the Northeast Kingdom-ites, Sixties back-to-the-earthers […]

Blooming Shad Bush A Reliable Harbinger

As the annual fiddlehead-picking season fades into its brief overlap with that of asparagus this week, vocal word arrived in the Upper Meadows of Greenfield that a shad bush down road not far from Greenfield Community College is in bloom, signaling the real start of the Connecticut River shad run. Yeah, yeah, it’s true that […]

Enchanting Power Of Place

Nice spring day. Bright sun, powder-blue sky, refreshing cool air circulating in variable, gusty west winds, at times strong enough to sweep off your hat toward wet, flowing oblivion. All in all, a splendid day for a Connecticut River stroll, following shortnose-sturgeon experts and advocates Boyd Kynard and ubiquitous Karl Meyer. So there we were, […]

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