I stumbled upon a delightful book in the stacks of the Jones Library in Amherst called Landscape and Material Life in Franklin County, Massachusetts, 1770-1860 by J. Ritchie Garrison. I At first it looks like a dry reference work full of charts and graphs of acres tilled, crops raised, orchards […]
Last night I attended a remarkable presentation by Charlemont Librarians Bambi Miller and Mary Boehmer at the Deerfield Teachers Center behind Memorial Hall. It was part of a series presented by the Pioneer Valley Institute. Miller and Boehmer, dressed in hoop skirts and other late 19th century garb, portrayed two […]
Deforestation is a political topic as well as an environmental one. The industrialized countries, having done all the deforesting they liked in their own countries, tell poor countries they cannot do the same. You’d think, considering what’s at stake, that the already-deforested countries would pony up some dough to save […]
I’m having a great time with my latest book, Conan Doyle’s Wallet by Patrick McNamara (Garvey Publishing International, Jupiter, Florida). McNamara is a psychic medium and he had been receiving messages from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for many years, but knew him only as “a man with a mustache and […]
Since the 15th century, and probably before that, travelers have observed crocodiles, caymans and alligators weeping as they devoured their victims, and the phrase ‘crocodile tears’ has become a symbol of insincere grief. Zoologist Kent Vliet has videotaped these three species while they are eating, and he concludes that they […]
Back in 2002 my cousin Max was thinking about buying a travel website called GoNOMAD and he asked me what I thought and I repeated some advice my friend Vernon had given me a short while before: “Be bold. Strong unseen forces will work in your favor.” I thought at […]
Whenever we sit down to dinner, my mom always asks, “Shall we have some music?” And my dad and I say, “Oh yes!” or whatever and we wind up the two music boxes, a unicorn that plays “Camelot” and a Santa that plays “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” And […]
I’m so proud of my mom. Her mind is disintegrating very rapidly, more rapidly than I have ever seen, in my limited experience of dementia, but she clings faithfully to love and laughter. “I think people who laugh are happier,” she told me today, and it makes me want to […]
Ernie Pyle and Dwight Eisenhower and Grace Metalious are the three main reasons I started this blog back in ought six. Their works were all showing up at flea markets and tag sales and I was getting a lot of enjoyment and erudication from them which I thought I might […]
When he began his presidential campaign, Barack Obama and his advisers were disappointed in his performance as a speaker. He experimented with different styles and was his own worst critic. I learned all this from a copy of Newsweek I found in the sauna at the gym. In South Carolina […]