Category Archives: Columns

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

This & That

Whew! What a whirlwind week. I feel like a dark funnel cloud has swept me away. Maybe I’d best just go limp and let it drop me where it pleases, totally at its mercy, hopefully depositing me in a freshly harrowed field. But first, as I brace for the landing from this dizzying spin, a […]

Understudy

The mellow yellow glow from empty sunlit seed-heads glistening over a dense, light-green, chest-high timothy field makes it all the more beautiful to watch Chubby doing what Springer Spaniels are bred to do — locate and flush bird or beast with blissful enthusiasm from tangled cover. The furious sight and sound of thrashing brush highlighted […]

Godstones

What a difference a day makes. When I first sat down for this weekly chore Tuesday afternoon, my intentions were good but the mood was wrong, a gray and somber day, windows closed to seal out moisture, downpours splashing loudly off my hidden flagstone terrace. I found it difficult getting started, my mood dark and […]

Cats and Rats

The days are shorter, the air is cooler, and falling acorns are rattling through sturdy oak limbs as distant peaks display faint harbingers of a brilliant fall finale. Soon there’ll be frost on windshields, smoke exiting chimneys, and beagles baying through upland matshes. Yes, the best time of year is near, and here I sit, […]

River Rage

Late start, full plate, probably way more than I can handle in one sitting. No problem. I’ll just save the leftovers and nuke ’em next week. Maybe I should start writing two columns a week. Anyway, the signs of fall that started creeping onto the edges weeks ago are now everywhere. Soon the leaf-peepers will […]

Photo Evidence?

Yep, another cougar tale. What can I say? They just keep coming at me. This latest report immediately piqued my interest for a few reasons: first, the southwestern New Hampshire location; second, an interesting photo; and third, I knew the man who wrote the front-page New Hampshire Sunday News story. I was first alerted to […]

Seafood Platter

One of those days, I guess. Maybe it was the clear, cool air that greeted me at 6 a.m., perhaps the strong, black coffee, possibly even lingering effects from that red-hot, spicy marinara sauce I concocted in a flash Tuesday afternoon, then devoured in the evening over a thick bed of linguine. Whatever the impetus, […]

Close Encounter

It’s really starting to get wild here in cougar country. First, sightings, then related follow-ups and safety concerns; now shiny green eyes and a guttural grumble that’s difficult to describe, even from close quarters … real close, like, say, five or six feet, if you can believe it. Yes, folks, it looks like these cougar […]

Another Cougar

Uh-oh, here we go again. Buckle your chinstraps. Fasten your seat belts. Looks like another flurry of cougar sightings — four legs, distinctive long tail — the latest one close to home. But, first, a little background. This most recent surge began quite inauspiciously more than a month ago, when an envelope on my Recorder […]

Full-Moon Ramble

Blame that waxing Sturgeon Moon; it cleared the air, brightened the stars and sharpened my perspective, a cool, gentle midnight breeze through the bedside window whisking away the dust and cobwebs, a tiny drop of  grease setting the cranial wheels free for silent pillow probes. Sleep? Hell no. Not on moonlit nights. So here I […]

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