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...
Books That Moved Me – Part ll
Back in 2016, with a lot of time on my hands while recovering from a bone marrow transplant, I posted a list of favorite books after a friend suggested that we exchange lists of books that had “moved us.” With one exception, I get all the books I read from a small...
Subway Diary #1
A lot of people these days bitch about our New York City subways--with reason. The MTA’s finger-in the-dike campaign to repair our antique system continually scrambles the system and peoples’ lives: They’re late for work; they can’t get home when they’re weary after...