The plan was to walk across the living room. I never made it. Read more

All right, students, take your seats. As you know, our subject this semester is the ecological history of northern New England. Specifically, we will be studying the events that led to the creation of the Vermontshire Toxic Quarantine Zone, which of course extends from the Canadian border to Massachusetts and from Lake Champlain to Maine. Read more

The hungry human being sits down on the grass, and places an American flag flat on his or her lap.

Plop goes the potato salad — onto the American flag. Read more

On Sunday, January 16, 2000, the driver of a Toyota 4-Runner traveling along the serpentine coastal highway that hugs the west coast of Cape Breton Island swerved to avoid a pile of salt in the middle of the road.

The vehicle veered off the edge of that craggy coastline, plunging 75 feet into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. John Morris Rankin was no more. Read more

What has as many people as California, almost as much land as Russia, is 133 years old today, and shares with its fortunate next-door neighbor the longest undefended border in the world? Read more

To the casual observer, this might pass for wilderness — big trees growing thick as thieves, no sign of human habitation.

But look closely: two crumbling stone walls cut through the shadows, running parallel 40 feet apart as they recede into the undergrowth in the hills above Norwich, Vt. Read more

"I don't know what it is that's kept my music from being more universally celebrated," muses James Lee Stanley, who has been recording since he was 14 and has 17 albums to his credit. "The people who like what I do recognize it as something with enough depth that it doesn't go away like last year's rap hits." Read more

Roger Payne's handsome, comfortable home is high on a hill in Woodstock — several miles from the nearest paved road, at the end of a steep driveway.

It's a long, long way from the ocean. Read more