On Wednesday nights, I teach a class at a nearby university. A couple of weeks ago, we were reading a text that made reference to the word “mending” — one of my students, a junior, said, “Whoa, whoa, what is mending?!” “Mending,” I said, “like when you mend a hole in your shirt?” I thought […]
A snow squall came whipping in this afternoon, pretty much out of nowhere. Whiteness blanked the mountain. A wicked wind scooped some of the paper bags of recyclables I had just loaded into the pickup, and took them up up and away. I don’t know where they went. I was in the garage, in the […]
The return of my Lyme symptoms was an unwelcome realization. It came on one morning, just as my original Lyme symptoms had, when I woke up and could not bend my left knee. This was how it happened when I first had Lyme but it was a long time before I knew that what was […]
I have been blogging now for almost two and a half years. As a writer, I wasn’t sure about this thing called a “blog” (short for “web log,” something like an online diary) and I’m still not sure. It’s really no different from a weekly column but my editor urged me not to make it […]
Excerpt from “The Best Darned Ice Cream in the Whole State of Maine,” Yankee Magazine August 1981. Three years ago, the Cote family, who own one of the largest dairies in southern Maine, had a unique problem with leftovers, something every family has to deal with. “Everybody’s on a diet,” Bill Cote explained. “It’s gotten […]
Downstairs in the farmhouse here, I have a small furnished apartment that I sometimes rent out. Last year I rented it to Santa. A portly man in his fifties, he was serious about this Santa business. No fake beard and rented suit for him. He had a full, bushy, pure-white beard that flowed to his […]
These national holidays — Labor Day, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Martin Luther King’s Birthday — are an odd occurrence for a writer. For those who travel to their workplace each day and live by this other calendar that begins at 9 and ends at 5, these holidays are a respite from that schedule. Writers […]
Beth Richardson scoops peach and hot-pepper salsa out of a mason jar and into a small bowl and pushes it toward me. “Try this!” she says, her voice reflecting a mix of pride and unrestrained gusto for good food. The salsa is bright yellow with specks of green and tastes hot and sweet to the […]
A thin breeze blew up off the lake as I parked in front of the old manse. It was late summer; most all the summer folk had left, but there were a few hangers-on who hadn’t, as yet, drained the pipes and cleared the pantry shelves for the winter. I let myself in, walked through […]
Iceland, when I was there, had no trees. None. A naked land. I was told that the reason there were no trees was because of the sheep, which ranged free all over the country at that time, and because of the wind, which I knew stunted the growth of trees on places such as Cape […]
Learning Icelandic was not anything like my French or Latin classes at school. There was no text, no patient kindly instructor to assist me over the inevitable confusion of la and le, de and da. And on the farm, there were no road signs or public signs to read and learn from. I had two […]
It was difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing, to be without a common language. I have always said that being in Iceland gave me perspective and I think that related to many aspects of life. I could easily relate now to the many who travel to a new country, looking for work, unable to speak […]
