Todd Balf

An outdoor adventurer refuses to give in to disability.

In a famed Revolutionary War town, a darker history comes to light.

From the ashes of a fire that destroyed a Massachusetts city’s lone synagogue arose a symbol of community across different faiths.

Behind its picturesque facade, this little red building in Rockport, Massachusetts, holds meaning and memories.

When an athlete and adventurer can no longer even stand up, what can he do? A memoir of fatherhood, losing hope, and finding it again from Todd Balf.

Harvard medical researcher Irene Davis, Ph.D., believes that our knees hurt because a lot of what we understand about running is wrong. She also believes something else the world might not be ready for: that a person can be retrained to run differently to lessen the chance of injury, not to mention ridicule. Dr. Davis, […]

On the top floor of the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Massachusetts, is a once-secret room soaked in the legacy of the sea and the ships’ captains who sailed into history. [slideshow post_id=”554455″] On Columbus Day weekend 2013 my friend John Wigglesworth meets me in downtown Salem, Massachusetts, outside the historic Hawthorne Hotel. He’s taking me […]

When the family of artist Oliver Balf combed through a lifetime of paintings, they discovered truths about the artist’s passion, and themselves. October 2010: I remember his being tired but relieved after a long day of international travel. The spare kibbutz “guest house” that we arrived at in advance of a family wedding amused us […]

Longtime Yankee contributor and Massachusetts native Todd Balf, who has ridden mountain-bike trails from New Zealand to Venezuela. We asked him to share his picks for the best 5 mountain bike trails in New England. Great Brook Farm State Park (Carlisle, MA) Twenty miles of trails beyond the red farm buildings at the entrance to […]

Sometimes a miracle happens–a parent can become a hero again.

The 20-mile Blackburn Challenge, “the East Coast’s premier open-water human-powered boat competition,” is named for a Gloucester fisherman who famously froze his fingers to his oars in order to row back from God knows where in the middle of winter in 1883. The good news is he survived. The bad news is he lost enough […]

I recently visited my father’s art studio in Rockport. He had a show with a Cape Ann theme going up soon, and for some reason I asked him whether he’d ever painted Motif No. 1, the iconic red fishing shack on Bradley Wharf. I thought I knew the answer, that being no. But my dad […]