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By WILLEM LANGE

With only about twelve weeks left in the current presidential campaign, we’ve entered what I call the nyah-nyah phase: the fourth-grade-level taunting about personal characteristics, idiosyncrasies, and each candidate’s past missteps. Almost none of...

By WILLEM LANGE

During the epic Southwestern drought of the 1950s (my boss, a retired Presbyterian minister turned rancher, declared it Biblical), I spent a few months in the central Texas Permian Basin as a ranch hand. It was a whole new world to me. Everything, it...

By WILLEM LANGE

So foul and fair a week I have not seen. It seems appropriate to paraphrase Macbeth talking about the weather and current events as he welcomes King Duncan (soon to be the late King Duncan) to his castle. He’d just had that kind of day, and was about...

By WILLEM LANGE

The claim by CNN that the presidential debate of June 27 would be “historic” turned out to be right on the money, but hardly for the reason they expected. As the curtain mercifully dropped on the scene, my friend Bea turned toward me and said — well,...

By WILLEM LANGE

For some decades I’ve tried to do something new each week: something I’ve never done before; something I haven’t done for a long time; or something I never thought I’d do again. I’m not always successful; and the something, whatever it is, isn’t...

By WILLEM LANGE

I talk back to the television quite a bit. I get away with it; there’s nobody here but Kiki to comment on either my behavior or my performance. My wife used to point out, sometimes none too gently if I was commenting upon an especially egregious line...

By WILLEM LANGE

I’ve been listening to sermons for over eight decades. At first, of course, it was because I had to. Next, because it was the thing to do. Now, occasionally, because I want to. And I must say that over those more than 80 years I’ve heard a few good...

By WILLEM LANGE

The great state of Louisiana, not content with labeling mifeprestone a dangerous controlled substance, has, in a move stunning for its chutzpah, just launched an attempt to vault its government backward between 1,300 and 3,000 years, depending upon...

By WILLEM LANGE

It’s just past lunchtime up here on the little hill, and I’m feeling extremely grumpy. This is not my usual post-lunch mood. Normally I’d collapse into my recliner, wait for Kiki to jump up into my lap and turn around till she found a spot, and begin...

By WILLEM LANGE

We started the kids out early, Mother and I. From summers working on an island and living in a wall tent off the coast of Maine, and little weekend outings, we progressed to a trip down the Allagash when the oldest, Virginia, was 11 and the youngest,...

By WILLEM LANGE

If we start down the driveway in late afternoon, Kiki knows it’s either getting the mail or going to the park. If I pass by the mailbox, she knows her dream is coming true, and climbs partway over the barrier that’s supposed to keep her in the back...

By WILLEM LANGE

Twenty-four hours of daylight starts tomorrow! That notice popped up on my Facebook page recently. It was posted by my dear friend Larry Whittaker in the Inuit village of Kugluktuk at 67.8º N, 115.1º W, on the shore beside the Northwest Passage at the...

By WILLEM LANGE

When my wife and I were married, back in 1959, our prospects were so grim that the priest to whom we went for our church-mandated counseling gave our union — “frankly,” he said — a one-in-10 chance of survival. She went to work in an S&H Green Stamp...

By WILLEM LANGE

Tom’s Taxi, of Lynn, Massachusetts, has been faithful as the sun for us. If you tell them that one of you uses a cane, they usually send a van. Which I do, and which they did. About half an hour later we pulled up in front of Portugal Airlines, paid...

By WILLEM LANGE

This is written in the last days of April. From my office window, the yard and the field and the woods beyond seem to be catching their breath before tackling what’s always come next. Out back, the air on this sunny day is alive with birdsong. So far...

By WILLEM LANGE

The dying day breeze stirs only the treetops, and an evening stillness descends upon the woods. I sit on a bench in the park, as quiet myself as our surroundings. Kiki, restless as ever, alternates between the bench and my lap and short sniffing...

By WILLEM LANGE

Living three and a half hours apart, as we do, my dear friend Bea and I get to see each other about every two weeks or so, on average. This is almost without doubt an ideal arrangement, as our lifestyles are quite different, and neither of us could...

By WILLEM LANGE

The sky has always been a source of wonder for us earthbound folks. For some of us who are, shall we say, more earthbound, it’s a source of portents, omens, and myths. What we call thunderstorms and explain as electrically charged clouds used to be...

By WILLEM LANGE

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s...

By WILLEM LANGE

Our cab arrived at 4:40 a.m. on the dot and deposited us at the entrance to United Airlines about 5:30. Check-in was amazingly easy, and the trek to our gate likewise. We took off from Logan also on the dot — it seems to be true that the earlier in...