A Yankee Notebook

“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” This gag is usually attributed to Yogi Berra, and he did confirm that he’d said it. But it was popular even before Yogi was born. It doesn’t matter; content is almost always more important than source; and this expresses perfectly the way I feel about Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard during holiday season.

There’s a distant sweet sound alive on the breezes coming from the south. It floats across the Florida Straits and is audible,

I started writing this week on a cool, soft, moist evening in central Vermont, with Kiki snoozing in the easy chair behind me, and the windows open to catch any breeze and let in the sound of the rain dripping from the eaves.

Yesterday, an approaching cold front announced the end of the late June heatwave.

Back in the 1950s, during a sojourn in west Texas hill country, I was shown the cyclone shelter, into which all of us who were able would tumble in the event of an approaching tornado.

“There are a sort of men, whose visages do cream and mantle like a standing pond, and do a willful stillness entertain…” Thus, Shakespeare describes men who take themselves too seriously.

by Willem Lange EAST MONTPELIER – “Life, you know, is rather like opening a tin of sardines: We are all

On a quiet, cool, gray Memorial Day, with occasional showers refreshing the thirsty earth and enlivening my view across the back porch, Kiki and I, also very quiet, pass the morning together in the office.

Just over forty years ago – in April of 1981; the late Marvin Midgette was the Valley News editorial page editor – when I began this weekly spasm, I still fancied that the only way I could compose an essay was the way I always had: on lined paper with pen and ink.

Years ago I had a fishing buddy who was also a history professor. We usually cast our flies from opposite ends of a large aluminum scow and, when fishing was slow, we just trolled around the pond and talked. I