A harried commuter buzzes along the highway. A field rises up to the right. At the top of the knoll stands a simple brown barn, its gambrel roof outlined against the early morning sun. Ah, a fleeting visual respite from the modern world, a journey back to the agrarian past, a simpler time when...
Newspaper Articles
Place section, The Hartford Courant
written for Blue Ridge Press
In the 1960s my three brothers, sister, parents, and I used to visit my Uncle Woody, who lived in Levittown, Pennsylvania, one of the most famous suburban developments in America.
Uncle Woody was visibly proud of his little house. It was immaculate inside and out. He put a bowl of fancy...
written for The Washington Post
On October 25, 2002, schoolchildren in the Washington area emerged gleefully from locked classrooms and ran out to the playground. “Recess is back,” proclaimed The Washington Post. But had the snipers who shut down ordinary life for weeks chosen to attack in Chicago, or Atlanta, or...
The Connecticut Mirror
It’s not often that civilization is demolished to make way for wild birds, especially within sight of Connecticut’s largest city. That’s what’s happening on a long barrier beach between Bridgeport and Stratford.
On the Stratford side, a yellow excavator crashed its...
written for The New York Times
YEARS ago, I decided to take my two young daughters backpacking on the Appalachian Trail. If it went well, I thought, we would go again the next year. We would hike girls-only, without their father. He and I had hiked from Georgia to Maine before they were born. I was sure that Elizabeth, who...
Patch.com
It is a killing combination: Connecticut’s developed coast bumps up against Long Island Sound, a quiet body of water with few exit points to the open ocean. Each summer, a dead zone forms at the western end. Oxygen levels in this 101-square-mile area kill marine life and acts as a sign of...
Patch.com, July 9, 2011
Despite many sightings over the years, it's doubtful Connecticut has mountain lions
For 25 years, Connecticut residents have reported seeing mountain lions. Out of hundreds of sightings, only one time could they prove it actually was one.
That happened in the...
Patch.com, May 20, 2011
An annual report on the Connecticut environment tells of a worrisome trend: residents used more electricity in 2010 at home than in the three years before that.
The increase was due to the sweltering summer, when air conditioning units turned on more often and worked harder.
Even...
The Connecticut Mirror
The logic seems sound: If more of Connecticut's goods were moved on freight trains instead of trucks, diesel fuel emissions would be reduced, traffic would be lighter, and the state would save money on highway widening and repairs.
But in the last two rounds of federal transportation...
written for The New York Times
MARGARET DEEGAN SLYWKA knows painfully well what happened 33 years ago, the last time the clocks changed to daylight saving time in the winter. Then a 14-year-old sophomore living in Seymour, Conn., she was hit by a car while walking to high school on Jan. 7, 1974 -- the day after President...
written for The New York Times
FOR 43 years, Joan Brainard has been hanging laundry twice a week in her backyard in Deep River. All she requires is dry weather above 20 degrees.
Her routine is so established that if neighbors do not see wash pinned to her two 50-foot clotheslines, they ask if she is all right, said her...
written for The New York Times
SCIENTISTS who have been studying the sudden decline of the lobster population in Long Island Sound in 1999 are still months away from releasing their findings, but they said they have narrowed down the likely causes.
For the first time, lab tests prove what has long been suspected, that...
written for The New York Times
AS soon as beach season started, I set out on an odyssey to test the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling that municipal beaches must be open to the public, not just to residents. In the family van, my two daughters and I sought out beaches from Greenwich to Madison. Our plan was just to ask if we...
written for The Hartford Courant
One Monday at 12:55 p.m., I parked my car and walked inside a McDonald's on a busy stretch of Route 1 in Groton. Exactly five minutes later, I returned with a Big Mac and small Coke.
At 1:02 p.m., I began timing a blue Toyota Corolla that had just pulled behind eight cars in the drive...
written for The Hartford Courant
Each summer for one afternoon, a giant fife-and-drum parade comes to my quiet town. Thousands of people come to watch the bands. Selling ice cream at the Deep River Ancient Muster had always seemed like a sure way to make a bundle.
It’s not.
I broke basic business rules. I...
