Mask Up and Vote in Person
Call me stupid, as some of you undoubtedly will, given that I have the trifecta: “advanced” age, a compromised immune system, and a chronic lung condition. But I’m planning to vote in person, and hope that others who can possibly do so will too, especially in...
My Life in Music – Part l
It began on Christmas in Dobbs Ferry, New York when I was about six, which would have been 1958. I woke my sister Debbie before dawn to get a jump on opening presents. Ripping away the wrapping paper, I discovered a book around the size of a comic book: the Trapp...
Loon Shots
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a loon. She made a fool of me. It was August of 1978, on the first day of a 100 mile canoe trip with my college roommate on the iconic Allagash River in northern Maine--the same trip Thoreau memorialized in his Maine Woods...
A Merganser’s Master Guide to Homeschooling
6:15 am, June 17, 2020Poland, MaineWhoosh! A loud fluttering sounded over the chorus of chirping birds that had already awakened me. Turning quickly to my right, I looked out the large picture window and caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a duck in flight headed...
Are We Still Having “Fun”?
I spent a weekend in Manhattan back in the fall of 2018 with two old college friends: Leslie, a documentary filmmaker who’s lived in Paris for many years, and Bonnie, a recently-retired high school English teacher living on a cattle ranch in the Kansas Flint Hills and...
Watching My Trees Grow
I like to think of them as my trees, two sibling white birches rising out of the bank of Thompson Lake in Poland, Maine. They arch towards the water, just a few yards beyond the screen porch from which I’ve watched them grow since their infancy. I probably shouldn’t...
A Boomer’s Defense of Millennials
As far as I’m concerned, Millennials get a bum rap. The criticisms Boomers and Gen Xers heap upon them have been well-chronicled: They don’t have the same work ethic “we” did; they expect to be pampered and given only “meaningful” work; they flit around from job to...
Books That Moved Us – Friends Write Back
In my recent post listing a number of books I’ve read and loved over the past few years, I asked readers to recommend books that have moved them. In response I’ve gotten a bunch of recommendations, which couldn’t have come at a better time. Given that we’re all locked...
Subway Diary #3: Life Underground in the Age of Corona
This certainly isn’t an entry I could have imagined writing as the third installment of my Subway Diary--an ode to my love of the New York City subways. But what a difference a few weeks can make— and not just for Joe Biden and Bernie. The heretofore...
Subway Diary # 2: The Underground Banjo Player
This is the second in a series of Subway Diary entries: snapshots of life’s noteworthy experiences underground in NYC. The events described here took place in late January as I zig-zagged my way around Manhattan on crowded subways before COVID-19 restricted my ability...