Dreamers Rise

Something for me to look forward to: this Spanish translation of a book by the Italian writer Leonardo Piccione. The publisher's descri...

We're lying in bed and there's a rap on the window glass. I get up and open the window. A middle-aged couple are standing on the sid...

Two hundred pages into my second attempt to read Middlemarch I've thrown in the towel. I went into it with high hopes, having recently ...

We're in the process of completing our second relocation of the year, having most recently moved from temporary digs in Portsmouth NH to...

Sarah Orne Jewett was known for her portrayals of the lives of the farmers and fisher-folk of her native state, but she wrote at least one s...

Brad Fox, paraphrasing William Beebe's "final, disorganized notes on marine subjects," here describing the fate of shipwrec...

Here's a little object lesson in the compartmentalization of modern life. One afternoon we went out for a drive and as we headed to our ...

I've always enjoyed this Ewan MacColl song, which I first heard on Planxty's eponymous debut album, but this gentle version (featur...

About six weeks ago we moved out of the house where we had lived since 1990, leaving the town where we had roots stretching back much longer...

A cemetery, New Hampshire.

Miscellaneous sightings from June wanderings. From top: self-portrait with kodama ; white morph of pink lady's-slipper ; trailside sh...

Over the past few weeks we've been in the midst of major preparations for an upcoming relocation, but a few days ago I realized that I h...

It's morning Nobody's up but the crows Memphis Minnie and Joe McCoy are singing "Can I Do It For You?" as if they were...

A lovely and curious turn of phrase with a story behind it almost slipped my notice when I was re-reading Rafi Zabor's novel The Bear Co...

Songwriter Peter Case has a new record just out from Sunset Blvd Records . Entitled Doctor Moan , it's his first album of original songs...

Dard Hunter: Legend has it that Emperor Wu (A.D. 1368-98 ) tried to procure a suitable paper for the printing of money and to this end con...

In an era of computer animation wizardry it's nice to see older technologies like stop-motion animation being reinvigorated and put to u...

"Sometime in March last, a gentleman who lives in Portsmouth N. H., being on a visit to Boston, was induced by a friend of this city, t...

The writer and publisher Alastair Brotchie has died, according to social media announcements by the Atlas Press , of which he was the propri...

One summer evening about twenty years ago I left work at rush hour and joined a line of backed-up traffic using the on-ramp to merge onto th...