My Turn
Boys who grew up with strict fathers can usually remember long periods of disaffection and resentment before some adult epiphany revealed the affection and wisdom that underlay paternal stringency. I don't remember exactly when that revelation struck me, but I do recall savoring the realization for long hours on warm March days in the 1970s, while my father and I tended the fire…
March 25, 2007
My Turn
The worst thing about winter was always the driving. For nearly a decade we lived on Davis Hill in Conway with a collection of two-wheel-drive cars and trucks, and the dogleg turn before the steepest portion of the hill left us perennially wondering whether we could maintain enough momentum to take us over the crest. Despite several bolts of beech thrown in the back of his pickup,…
December 27, 2006
My Turn
The statue of Daniel Bean stands in Brownfield, Maine, where the roads to Hiram and Denmark diverge. Of all the Civil War memorials erected by Maine towns, this remarkable monument was the only one cast in the image of a real person. The absence of weapons distinguishes it even further. The boy stands as he would have on his last day at home, holding his cap in one hand and waving…
December 17, 2006
My Turn
This is usually the time of year when I worry about my water supply. The spring on this property has supplied water to at least three successive houses since about 1788, and supplied it in abundance. During the height of the drought in the summer of 1963, several families from farther down Davis Hill came here daily to draw a supply for cooking and drinking, and we never came close…
November 24, 2006
my turn
Last week I had to drive to Tamworth, and six days after the election dozens of Jeb Bradley's campaign signs still littered Route 16. Except for one stray sign for a county commissioner, Bradley's were the only candidate residue on the road: Perhaps he hoped to leave them up long enough for his 2008 attempt at a public sinecure, or maybe he's just too busy wondering what he's going…
November 18, 2006
My Turn
Strange weather we've been having lately. Death Valley heat follows tropical monsoons, right here in the north woods. Bad weather prevails almost everywhere, though, and the air isn't the only unbearable heat. According to some neoconservatives, World War III has begun, and they don't seem all that unhappy about it. That may be because launching wars is the only way the right wing…
July 23, 2006
At the suggestion of a friend, we bicycled into town last weekend for a matinee showing of Al Gore's environmental-alarm film, An Inconvenient Truth. I saw no real purpose going, for we are both already convinced of the deadly global effects of greenhouse gases. Even my jumbled understanding of our delicate atmosphere includes the notion that fossil-fuel consumption now produces…
July 8, 2006
My Turn
Among the numerous and sometimes conflicting doctrines we try to observe in my household is that of treading lightly on the Earth. That is difficult to accomplish in a society that seems dedicated to waste and self-indulgence, where the only feasible means of long-distance travel is the automobile and the only way to feel good about oneself is to buy something new.
July 5, 2006
My Turn
I lacked health insurance until my 40th year. Until then I had declined workplace packages because of relentlessly good health and because chronically low local wages left me unable to afford my share of the premiums.
It was understood among veterans that the Veterans Administration would take care of catastrophic ailments, and all male Marvels were veterans, so I paid the small…
June 11, 2006
My Turn
My mother once told me that if I believed something strongly enough, it would be true. I suspect now that she was referring to philosophical or metaphysical concepts, but I always thought in specifics, and what I wanted most in the world was a horse.
May 20, 2006
My Turn
Memory is a fascinating thing. Mine has always served me well, especially in the matter of details. Although my grandfather died when I was barely 3 and I saw him but a few times, I can recall the scent of starch and cigar smoke that permeated his shirts. I have to consult photographs to remember what he looked like, but those odors still remind me of him.
May 14, 2006
My Turn
In our extremely fortunate society, I suppose that each of us addresses our sympathy for the world's underprivileged populations in different ways.
April 16, 2006
My daytime hours are largely consumed in studying the thoughts and actions of people who died more than a century ago, and this winter I've been immersed in correspondence from the final months of 1862. By the waning days of that year, Union armies had suffered far more numerous and devastating defeats than their Confederate counterparts; despair had begun to afflict soldiers and…
March 18, 2006
My turn
If I live to be a hundred, I will never be ready for winter when the first snow comes. Through September and October I'm usually trucking the previous year's firewood harvest up out of the woods, or cutting next year's while my cohabitants tend to the hauling with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
November 21, 2005
