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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...

By WILLEM LANGE

The other evening I pulled into the carport at the back of my house and before I turned off the ignition and opened the driver’s side door, I checked the outside temperature on the thermometer on the dashboard. Twenty-three degrees; cool enough. I...

By WILLEM LANGE

If you happen to live long enough, there comes a time in life when, facing an uncertain, but certainly fairly short, future, you may find yourself wondering what you’ve been waiting for. There are still mountains you haven’t climbed, and now you’re no...

By WILLEM LANGE

Whenever I take the ferry to the New York shore from Charlotte, Vt., I try to sit on the forward-facing bench on the upper level of the boat. Ahead of us rise the Adirondacks, one of the oldest ranges in North America. Most of the highest peaks are...

By WILLEM LANGE

On the penultimate weekend before the election, Bea showed up in the yard right around dark, having started from Nahant after her last Friday meeting. We were both ready for supper; so I fed Kiki, and we went out for Mexican and a beer. It was to be a...

By WILLEM LANGE

Sometimes, when the stars align fortuitously, everything turns out fine: your car stops burning oil, your wife’s Raynaud’s quits bothering her and your kid moves his drum set to the garage. Other times, when the alignment is bad, everything goes to...

By WILLEM LANGE

During the high summer the sun swings far enough north to flood the back porch with heat and light, especially in the afternoon at the hour for preprandials. But around Labor Day it retreats behind the northwest corner of the house, and it’s possible...

By WILLEM LANGE

It doesn’t seem possible it was that long ago, but it was. Seventy-four years now; my first autumn in New England. When you’re new to a place, you register everything completely, and with fresh eyes and ears. I had the incredibly good fortune to have...

By WILLEM LANGE

Of all the cultural commentary that floods in here daily on the internet, this little story is one of my favorites. A man standing in a checkout line in a supermarket is talking in a foreign language with someone on his cell phone. The woman standing...

By WILLEM LANGE

Bridget, the young Irish woman who lives in my dashboard, led us unerringly across the glacier-striated grain of New England for almost five hours and popped us out onto Main Street in Rockland, Maine, directly across from our favorite local seafood...

By WILLEM LANGE

But ’tis strange; and oftentimes to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence. The instruments of darkness, eh? It’s hard to believe in this scientific age, but lots...

By WILLEM LANGE

In the Adirondacks, the summer folks used to arrive by train, along with all their luggage for the summer. Their chauffeurs, who’d driven the family cars up from New York or New Haven, met them at the station to ferry them to their cottages (the men...

By WILLEM LANGE

Syracuse, N.Y., in the mid-1950s; a steamy Friday mid-afternoon in July. I had just climbed up for a water break from the manhole I was digging beneath the pavement when a little brown man approached — brown suit, brown shirt and tie, tobacco-brown...

By WILLEM LANGE

Reading and listening to the news as I do, and remembering my classes in American history (the best of which was taught by a delightful Englishman who still wore his Oxford varsity crew sweater), I can’t help but wonder if the United States is a...

By WILLEM LANGE

I once had a friend (now long gone to his reward) who seemed to take offense at the tag line I used in my radio commentaries. When I started out in radio, I was searching for a consistent way to end my weekly few minutes. “Why don’t you just use the...

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...