What for a man to do? It’s mid March, cabin fever fading, that of spring ascending like sweet sap from deep-seated roots, yet winter still, snow too deep to drive or even park off-road, comfortable walking for snowshoers and snowmobile-trail hikers only. Soon, annoying mud will appear. But I guess we all have our ways of getting through it and staying content.

Me, well, I’m on my usual late-winter reading spree. You never know where these indoor diversions can lead, but for me usually to history, literature, politics or all of the above, most often the latter. Must be in my blood or core. Yes, idle time can be a treble-hook that snags and drags you through some wild, thought-provoking places, swallowing you to your chin in exploratory quicksand before you can escape. This winter, I’ve kept busy reading Hamsun and Didion and McPhee, a little Updike, some Kropotkin, Tolstoy and Goldman, then Orwell, of course. Seems I always come back to Orwell, that visionary British “New Journalist,” cutting edge.

Before someone suggests involuntary 30-day observation at the local loony bin, let me assure you I also read mainstream stuff, such as the biographies of Mantle, Koufax and Stengel. Could I get anymore mainstream than that? American heroes, no less. So, see, no need to worry. I still have both oars in the water. But then came the kicker: a biography of rebel American (or is it un-American) journalist I.F. Stone, to whose bi-weekly newsletter I was introduced as a boy by a man living in a radical little village tucked into southwestern Franklin County’s hills. Must be something in the water up there, because that pretty little slice of upland paradise had similar political leanings during Daniel Shays’ day.

I remember way back when being swept away by Izzy Stone’s courage to report truth when others in the media ignored it, printing instead government lies as unchallenged gospel. So, when I found Myra MacPherson’s 2006 biography cheap, in paperback from discount Daedalus Books, I snapped it up and couldn’t put it down. In fact, the book so captivated me that I told a couple of colleagues it should be required reading for all J-schools. We then revisited the subject after deadline and wandered to a place called Poplar Hill, where a “leftist” publisher once resided. As I dredged for memories of the man and tried to describe his literary journal, I realized that, despite having read his wife’s autobiography nearly 20 years ago, I knew little about the quarterly publication. So off I went … way off the beaten path, in fact, on a little discovery mission.

Cursory investigation (Isn’t Google great?) brought me to familiar names like Henry Miller, Anais Nin and D.H. Lawrence, all naughty artists who were banned in Boston and everywhere else in the country during the Depression era. Not surprisingly, all of their bylines appeared in the late Poplar Hill editor’s short-lived, later reincarnated journal, Lawrence’s stuff appearing posthumously in the late 1930’s when our publisher was living in Woodstock, N.Y. Our man and the mostly American authors and poets only he dared to publish were called “bohemian” and “expatriate,” both pejorative among the Windsor-knot, meetinghouse gang. No wonder that fiery little man with the trademark Navy-blue beret so intrigued me as a bright-eyed, impressionable teen observing him, his retinue and their philosophical shtick from afar. I remember the man as spirited, bright and articulate, talking, maybe even arguing about pacifism or protest or government lies when they were fashionabe subjects.

Over the years since, I have often viewed from faraway his classic, Federal, New England home — multi-paned rooftop cupola gleaming in the morning sun — while seated against a massive red pine, shotgun across my lap, hunting deer or turkeys. Sitting quietly there, my mind wanders back to my adolescence, when students and professors and gadflies like Stone and that irascible Whately publisher were peacefully protesting in the streets, raising a ruckus at town meetings or wherever they pleased.

That was long ago. The good old days to some, me included. I do not believe I will experience another American political climate like it. Preventative measures are now in place, Big Brother watching from traffic lights, rooflines and stylish street lamps.

Where are Izzy Stone and Jimmy Cooney when we need them? That’s the question I find myself asking these days, with our Gulf ecosystem poisoned as radiation hemorrhages into the Far Eastern sea and sky? Thankfully, I was around to meet these men before dissent was squashed and thought-police reigned.

Those men from my past taught me that “alternative” is not always undesirable, no matter what Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and the WEEI morning boys would have you believe.