Each year, a growing number of country villages across Italy cordon off their downtown areas and host open-air street festivals dedicated to...

It will come as no surprise to those who know me and follow my word-ramblings that I cannot hide for long my special love for coastal New En...

Sometime in 1831, and probably on a South Carolina railroad, a local postmaster in a hurry got the idea of asking a locomotive engineer to h...

Returning to historic events along the road to secession in America’s first century, it can quickly be seen why the U.S. Congress of 1850 co...

Their wings folded to catch the last breath of the day’s air currents, a pair of Canada Geese hold themselves aloft over waters whose exact ...

In the year 2011, our nation marks the Sesquicentennial of the beginning of “The War Between the States”; “The American Civil War”, or what ...

With my feet planted solidly here on a speck of canyon country in Southern Utah, in the intense dark of a mid-winter night, I can see “forev...

Among my neighbors are several hundred who recently were forced to evacuate their homes on very short notice by a set of circumstances few w...

My great, great Uncle, Rueben Coyte, was a figure of iconic proportions in our family, and for me, born into a world without a surviving gra...

While there is something to be said for the biblical admonition to enjoy each good food “in the season thereof”, I find something especially...

Because I am a serious reader of books on an eclectic range of subjects, it would ordinarily be difficult to select a single “Best Of” for a...

(Here is a Christmas treat worth indulging. I first heard of it living in Vermont and working in Quebec, and then Donna Cooper made one for...

The tradition of gift-giving runs long and deep in our history and reaches across almost every social and economic border. As we approach th...

In far northern Alaska there is a small village on the Bering Sea with the ancient name of Shaktoolik. At one time that word meant simply “...

It is with a certain amount of conceit that we assert that something is “as American as apple pie”, and any patriotic Englishman cannot be b...

Sometime around 1792, Mary Anne Brailsford transplanted a seedling she had started from a pit to a sunny spot in the backyard of her cottage...

A color postcard from the 1930s depicts one of several river boats that plied the Hudson in an earlier day. The author’s interest in river ...

Among a number of personal resolutions I made for myself many years ago was a determination to do a better job of writing down the important...

It is a good time to give some thought to preserving the harvest – whether home-grown or off the store shelf. Potatoes keep best if unwashe...