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Appalachia’s Accidents report here. Click on link at the bottom.
Accidents Summer Fall 2020 Appalachia Journal
Testing Poop is the Future
Above, from the Yale study: The red line represents the rise and fall of the COVID-19 outbreaks as detected in New Haven sewage. The darker line, seven days later, represents a similar curve of the outbreak as tracked in human testing. A new study by Yale University...
Manage public outdoor spaces the way we manage grocery stores: like essential spaces that should never close
People need to get outside, breathe fresh air, move around, and fix their eyes on some actual distant shore. The coronavirus pandemic is rising toward its peak in the Northeast. Cities, towns, states, and the federal government are closing access to public parks...
Mountains in a pandemic: a call for submissions
I am the editor of Appalachia journal, the country's oldest journal of mountaineering and conservation. We take a literary approach to wilderness and adventure. We are living through an unprecedented pandemic, something no one alive today has ever seen. This will go...
Announcing a one-day Writing from Nature workshop on February 15
Join me for my local, one-day version of a workshop I've given very successfully in New Hampshire. For the second year, Incarnation Center in Ivoryton has graciously given me space to run the workshop from 9-4 in their adorable, waterfront building known as the Tumble...
News
Welcome! I am a writer, editor, and college lecturer based in New England. I explore people’s relationship to their landscapes. I hope you will stay here a while and get to know my work.
My next book is a memoir of my evolution as a wilderness trekker, from following others to taking my daughters to going alone. It comes out next year from Appalachian Mountain Club Books.
I always wondered about my grandfather who decided to leave farming after his family had done it for 200 years. I am researching and writing a long piece and I hope a book about what would have happened if Grandpop had stayed. I have contributed a chapter in a book for Rutgers University Press (coming out soon) about New Jersey’s environmental past. The chapter explore struggles of small farmers in southern New Jersey at the dawn of the industrial age.
I am the editor in chief of Appalachia journal (submit button at the bottom of the page).
I teach at the University of Connecticut.
Libertarians on the Prairie, my book about the lives and collaboration of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, has established itself in scholarship of the mysterious and gripping “Little House” books. I talk about limited government and the Little House books in this episode of Sean Braswell’s podcast, “Flashback.” Libertarians on the Prairie is available in hardback and a paperback edition with a Foreword by Stephen Heuser. Order one today.
Going back in time a bit: I appeared in Don Bernier’s 2005 film, “In a Nutshell,” about a brilliant, eccentric artist who found herself homeless in her 90s. A clip here.
Book Excerpts
Libertarians on the Prairie
by Chris Woodside read more
Libertarians on the Prairie
Laura Ingalls Wilder, left, and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, as they looked in the 1930s, when they worked on the "Little House" books Now available from your favorite outlet. Coming out in paperback in October 2017 Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the...
Dead Fish, Condoms, Brown Foam: Sewage Has Chokehold On Black Rock Harbor
On April 25, 2018, Patrick Clough walked onto a dock at Fayerweather Yacht Club on Black Rock Harbor in western Bridgeport. He looked down. Swirling around the dock was a brown, foamy slick. Women’s sanitary products and other objects floated in it. He...
Testing Poop is the Future
Above, from the Yale study: The red line represents the rise and fall of the COVID-19 outbreaks as detected in New Haven sewage. The darker line, seven days later, represents a similar curve of the outbreak as tracked in human testing. A new study by Yale University...
Long Island Sound to Lobsters: Is This Farewell?
A lobster from southern New England is offered for sale at the Fulton Fish Market in New York City in 1943. Source: Library of Congress archives Twenty years ago, Long Island Sound was home to a thriving fishery of the American lobster. Hundreds of lobster boats...
How Much Plastic is in Your Body? Scientists Turn to Oysters, Mussels for Clues
Marine scientist J. Evan Ward checks on oysters he and his colleagues cultivate at the University of Connecticut. They examine them for the presence of microplastics. Photo by Christine WoodsideJ. Evan Ward knelt on a dock jutting into Eastern Point Bay at the eastern...
