Visually Similar Images
I don’t much follow the news, but sometimes it follows me. This morning an unsettling picture showed up on my Facebook news feed. You never know what’s going to turn up there. In this...
Monthly Archive: June 2015
Office of the Dead
News from far away. None of it good. A walk through empty streets. Light begins to fade. A long-shuttered restaurant. Something happened to the owner. Sign over the door says: “The Area’s Best Kept...
Self-Guided Tour
I stop by to pay a visit to the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. I’m early. Visiting hours don’t begin for another half hour. I sit on the porch and look at the view....
Looking for Robert M. Coates
The collie and I were on the trail of some literary ghosts. We were following directions provided in a letter written sixty-five years ago by Robert Coates to Malcolm Cowley. Along the way we...
The Town Tomb
It’s a beauteous Dour Hour, calm and free, down at Pandora’s Tavern. The early June sun is sinking low in its tranquility. The windows of the tavern are thrown open wide. I sit near...
Called Back
Around back of Emily Dickinson’s Homestead. Lots of visitors but they are very quiet. All of them are on the phone, just listening. Apparently there’s a number you dial for an official recorded guided...
Visitation
Here is where Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick. And Pierre. And Israel Potter. And The Confidence Man. And Billy Budd. The docent at this historic home in the Berkshires is a college student. This...
Seeking Roots
An email in my box from one of those genealogy sites, with this subject heading: “John P., experience a whole new Ancestry”. Okay. I take the bait and open the message. It’s blank. Nada....