Category Archives: Columns

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

Mar
26
2014

Cougar Leftovers

by Gary Sanderson

Though cold indeed, spring’s in the air, and judging from his morning song, the scarlet cock cardinal knows it. Perhaps he too hears the brook rattling as it snakes through dirty, dwindling streamside ice shelves. Maybe he even realizes that my once-bloated woodshed is emptying, the end near, and my taxes are e-filed. Yes, for […]

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Mar
19
2014

Denial Games

by Gary Sanderson

I can’t say whether the short introductory note topping an email sent my way this week was fueled by exuberance, defiance or relief. Does it really matter? So let’s just call enthusiastic cougar-researcher Ray Weber triumphant indeed, and leave it at that. OK? “Well,” he wrote in a delayed, victorious response to a five-month-old email […]

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Mar
12
2014

Whisperin’ Winds

by Gary Sanderson

Sights, sounds and smells: hourly stimuli awaiting a well-placed flick of the forefinger to set the pinwheel into a blurry gyre that can flitter off to enticing places, if you let it. If you don’t dare, well, you probably spent too much time in church or school, where free-thinking and free-play is discouraged, maybe even […]

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Mar
06
2014

Attic Treasure

by Gary Sanderson

Whew! This prehistory stuff is attacking like rogue waves, one after another — wild, powerful and quite exciting. No, I’m not bellyaching. I won’t allow this stubborn winter that’s clinging with a white-knuckled grip to get me down as spring tiptoes in and I lug heavy armfuls of cordwood in from a disappearing woodshed mound, […]

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Feb
27
2014

Whims and Whispers

by Gary Sanderson

I really should know better than to read Henry Miller. The bad-boy American novelist disrupts a bunkered spot in my consciousness that likes to be roiled, stirred to a tumultuous boil, its riotous bubbles bursting violently through the surface into a belching, spitting, steaming, scalding mele. Yes, that’s what Henry Miller does to me, and […]

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Feb
19
2014

Twists and Turns

by Gary Sanderson

It wasn’t the oh-so familiar yet faded scene — a dark, dingy basement classroom in the bowels of UMass’ Bartlett Hall — that left an impression on me. No, no, no! It was the Coppertone man, a long, thin and tidy braid splitting his back between the scapulae. The man’s name was Doug Harris, preservationist […]

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Feb
13
2014

Divine Intervention, plus

by Gary Sanderson

Cabin fever? Nope, not me. It’s true the dead of winter is upon us, the temperatures frigid indeed. Yet for some reason, it doesn’t seem to matter this year, news swarming like black flies, the brittle carcasses piling up on chests of drawers, tables, chairs — you name the piece of furniture in rooms where […]

posted in Columns, Indians, Local history, Tavern Tidbits, The Dogs | No Comments

Feb
05
2014

Splashy Spin

by Gary Sanderson

Yeah, yeah, I know. We’ve all cleaned up from one storm, with another looming large, so the early-week slate’s been wiped clean, the stage reset so to speak. Yet still, sometimes a man who does what I do has to capture the moment, which for me occurred before the storm, on Tuesday morning, when, following […]

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Jan
30
2014

Oxbow Island

by Gary Sanderson

The task now confronting me appears at first glance as a steep hill to climb on many levels. Where to start? That’s my first dilemma, because you must understand we’re dealing with a complex subject in a place familiar to few, except maybe by distant observation out the car window. Plus, it all makes such […]

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Jan
23
2014

Fearmongers

by Gary Sanderson

Gripped by severe cold, I blinked Wednesday morning. Well, sort of. Nothing serious, mind you. Just that I foolishly decided before testing the elements that I’d feed the dogs, humor them briefly out by the brook, put them in the box stall for the day with fresh water, and forego our daily walk. Yeah, right! […]

posted in Columns, Grandkids, Musings | No Comments

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