The heat of last week seemed like a good reason to stay inside and sort through junk. Amongst the piles of stuff, most of which ended up in the dumpster, I found a treasure, a true historical oddity, something you don’t find any more: A stack of letters, some hand-written, others typed. The stack was [...]
The drive from Ithaca, New York, at the southern end of Lake Cayuga to the old-and-new money town of Skaneateles at the northern end of Skaneateles Lakes takes a little less than an hour, but traverses two worlds, the one affluent (at least in parts) the other rural and poor. As a member of an [...]
I can’t say how many places lay claim to being “America’s Switzerland.” Like, while driving through Missouri, how many of Jesse James’ “famous hideouts” do you pass? Mosey up Chesapeake Bay and you’ll see plenty of signs proclaiming, “George Washington slept here.” Head toward the Trinity Alps and you’ll see lots of tributes to Big [...]
by Todd Walton
If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God place me in it; If I be in it, I pray God keep me so. — Jean D’Arc Various accounts of the life of Joan of Arc, or as they say in French, Jean d’Arc, suggest that when she first heard voices urging [...]
by Steve Heilig
“The Sierra Nevada is one mountain range, 430 miles long and 40 to 80 miles wide … a 25,000-square mile construction with granite cliffs as walls, wildflowers as carpet, and a star-studded sky as the ceiling.” So write longtime Sierra denizens Gary Noy and Rick Heide, editors of this collection of writings, destined to be [...]
Willis Haviland Carrier invented modern air conditioning in 1902. Although Mr. Carrier probably doesn’t deserve a national holiday, an occasional moment of silence in his honor wouldn’t hurt, especially after last week. Sure, we don’t live in Phoenix or Atlanta, hot places where air conditioning alone has been responsible for huge population booms after World [...]
by Todd Walton
“What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.” — Thomas Paine A mile inland from Highway One, the Comptche-Ukiah Road becomes a two-mile straightaway traversing rolling hills of pine and huckleberry and manzanita. There are no speed limit signs on this straightaway, no reminders of the legal maximum, and this absence of [...]
Contrary to Thomas Wolfe’s dictum, you can indeed go home again. It’s just that there’s no guarantee home will be anything like the way you left it, if in fact it’s still there at all. Nor, flying in the face of Robert Frost’s oft-quoted wisdom, that when you go there, they’ll have to let you [...]
When I got the news I was in Paris, sitting in the silver rain outside Notre Dame. We were filming a street performer dressed in flowing red robes and on stilts. Sort of like you, Charles: a giant from another world — out of place, intimidating perhaps, but as lyrical as a strange bird. This [...]
Last week, almost one year to the day after I purchased my latest vehicle, the odometer turned over to 30,000 miles. Well, it is a green display light that changed to 30,000 miles. Saying it “turned over” is no longer accurate. The car, a 2009 Ford Taurus, has done everything asked of it. It rides [...]
