My father used to pay me a penny for every dandelion that I dug up out of his lawn. He was a post-war suburban homeowner, anxious to remove those blights from the carpet of green he worked so hard to create. His penny could not be had without the entire root of the plant. Just […]
I went last weekend to a high school reunion — a very unusual reunion which I will write about at a later date. This event, which was to span three days, was planned last fall so when my little puppy, Harriet, came to live with me, I already knew that the middle weekend in May […]
Last Friday, five poets gathered at the Chesham Church, the place of the art show, the place where the jazz concert would be held the following night. The church, which slumbers through the winter, had been the center of activity for the past week while the congregation held a work party to clean it inside […]
Almost twenty years ago, I started putting on art shows to raise money for my church. The church, known as the Community Church of Harrisville and Chesham, is actually two churches, a Baptist church and a Congregational church both in the same town and unable to survive on their own. As a result, many years […]
Maine’s ripe berries find a sweet home in our best cook’s kitchen, when Ruth’s Feeney whips up her recipe for blackberry jelly. On a warm August day, Ruth Feeney’s kitchen is fragrant with fresh blackberries. She’s making jelly from the berries she picked this morning over at the old family farm in Bryant Pond, Maine, […]
It has been more than 11 years since I bought Mary’s farm. You, readers, have been patient listeners of its progress, as I’ve reported sporadically in this column. Work was so slow at times that the project moved more in the tempo of evolution. Money was always an obstacle, and the will of an old […]
Yankee classic from June 2001 The faint scent of sheep manure drifts up into this otherwise spotless kitchen in Northborough, Massachusetts. Pulling on well-worn brown duck coveralls, Mark Fidrych is on his way to the barn, where one of his ewes is about to give birth. On the island counter, beside a bottle of Gatorade, […]
We are all excited about the passing of this winter in particular because of an ice storm that paralyzed us in many more ways than just the absence of electricity and the comforts of home. It came in December, before the first snow, but we are still talking about how it affected us. And so […]
Yankee Classic from January/February 2005 It is early evening, and in the basement of Saint Joseph the Worker Roman Catholic Church on Maquan Street in Hanson, Massachusetts, a small group of people sits around a table, discussing their cancers. Phyllis, a fragile-looking woman in her forties, is a newcomer to the group. Her lymphoma has […]
A long winter often gives up some of our friends. February and March tend to be particularly rough months for the elderly. A glance at the obituary page in the daily paper confirms this — much more space taken up by death notices in these months than, say, in April or May, such hopeful months […]
Last Friday evening was a fine one with a hint of warmth and the sun sinking into a good pink sky. I was on my way to a party at a friend’s house on one of our more remote dirt roads, also known at this time of year as mud roads. She lives way off […]
There are many benefits to my work, which is, primarily, journalism, a line of work not always thought of in the same moment as redemption, but perhaps the most continually satisfying and enriching part of it is the people that I meet. Often, there is not only inspiration from their works but in their beings. […]
