This morning I’m sipping a Starbucks Italian Roast coffee. I could have chosen Peets or something else. I’ve grown lazy in my coffee habit. I have coffee beans and could have ground them using my hand grinder, poured them into a French press and savored the rich results. Brewing coffee is a ritual. Some days…
I live in Southern New Hampshire in a town that used to be part of Massachusetts. Borders changed a lot back in the day. The area I’m likely saw many turf wars between the Pennacook and Abenaki over the centuries. Both tribes were part of the Webanaki Confederacy. Webanaki means “People of the Dawn Land”…
New England in winter is a land of ice and snow. Sure, there’s all that other stuff here, but when you live here you’re always aware of these two things that encroach on your daily routine more than anything else. Want to double or triple the time it takes you to get to the office?…
Winter brings seclusion to the beach. After all, who’s really lingering on a beach in January anyway? Well, I am when the opportunity presents itself. I’m not a beach person in that I don’t see any point in lying on the sand while the sun cooks your skin. And yet I’m a beach person in…
Standing watch at the Mouth of the Merrimack River is Red # 2. Red # 2 is a navigational buoy that rides out some of the most violent conditions on the East Coast. Red # 2 is not as well known as MR, which is the first red navigational buoy on the approach to the…
Started strong on this blog, then petered out as the realities of a job spiraling downhill combined with an irony-filled sales kick off meeting in Portugal left me with not much to say. Which of course is not the case at all with all that going on. I’ll work to be more consistent. The sales…
Don’t Cry About the Weather The day after the “bomb cyclone” storm that dumped a foot of snow in my area, and wreaked havoc on the coastal areas. It’s a day when we all take a breath, finish cleaning up the mess and get on with living. The weather, and the seasons in general, are…
Surviving Winter Bomb cyclones and polar vortexes, blizzard conditions and brutal cold. That’s 2018 weather so far. I think about the first settlers to this region when the weather gets like this. Depleted food stores, meager heat thrown from the fire you had to feed all year to survive. Threats from the native population that…
Fogtown A few weeks back, with time to kill before my flight home from Newfoundland, I drove to the top of Signal Hill and walked out to North Head. Signal Hill offers stunning views of St. John’s Harbor and The Narrows, and East to the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a place I’d love to linger at…
Alexander’s Map A new year, and a new pursuit; this blog. So why the name? Alexander’s Map is a rare map published in 1624 to encourage colonization of the lands granted to William Alexander. The map gives an early, if inaccurate, glimpse at this region that I’m so fascinated with. Alexander’s Map stretches from present-day…