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A Yankee Notebook: Among the crowds on vacation out West
03-27-2024 9:30 AM

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...

Displaying articles 1 to 20 out of 21 total.
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A Yankee Notebook: Languages open new windows to the world
10-11-2024 4:05 PM

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...


A Yankee Notebook: President Biden's action isn't unprecedented
07-31-2024 8:59 AM

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,...


A Yankee Notebook: Old stones and new vitality in a European city
05-17-2024 2:53 PM

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...


A Yankee Notebook: What will karma have in store for Trump?
04-24-2024 2:36 PM

By WILL LANGE

Many of us are familiar with archy and mehitabel (more of us ought to be), a collection of essays, stories, and poetry written by archy, a cockroach with literary instincts and talents who’s been condemned to a life as a cockroach for the crime of...


A Yankee Notebook: Our fixation on age is getting kind of old
03-13-2024 1:54 PM

By WILLEM LANGE

It’s likely the unavoidable fate of both teenagers and golden-agers that most news reporters and writers are aspiring 20-somethings eager to make splashes. Thus, if a young person with a newly minted driver’s license loses control of their vehicle on...


Column: Blessedly uneventful holiday travel 
01-03-2024 10:32 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

The narration, a modern version of the second chapter of Luke, began the old familiar Christmas story. Mary and Joseph shuffled down the church aisle on cue, Mary cuddling a bundle clearly intended to be the baby Jesus, and Joseph strangely...


Column: Christmas season starts with familiar music
12-06-2023 3:44 PM

By WILLEM LANGE

My friend the late Walker Weed, of Etna, was the oldest member of the Geriatric Adventure Society, and easily the most experienced. When he offered an opinion or a pronouncement, I listened. He opined one day that if you ever have had an especially...


Column: A weekend escape to the mountains
11-15-2023 10:32 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

A few months ago, my companion Bea (a very charming widow of whom you have heard me speak previously) was chatting with a divorced friend and happened to mention that she was keeping company with an elderly widower.“Does he live near you?” the friend...


Column: A weekend road trip with some improvisation
11-01-2023 9:51 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

What would you have done? I was committed to a Friday-Sunday weekend down by the seashore in Nahant, just north of Boston, and I had a fund-raiser commitment Thursday at a senior living community in Peterborough, N.H., sort of halfway there from...


Column: Jeepers creepers, look at all the leaf peepers
10-11-2023 10:07 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

A lot of us who live here have a love-hate relationship with leaf peepers. On the one hand, their annual migration to look at our autumn leaves brings in millions of dollars, and our tourist bureaus, whose job is to encourage that sort of behavior,...


Column: 2020 election sideshow to be a long, boring ride
08-30-2023 10:41 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

“They’re a pretty sorry lot.” — Barbara Bush Mrs. Bush was talking in 2000 about the Democratic contenders for the presidential nomination. But her appraisal would fit the 19 alleged miscreants who’ve been showing up this week for booking at the...


Column: A man for all seasons, especially spring
05-03-2023 10:02 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

I spent a couple of weeks in Costa Rica a few years ago. Lovely place. But by the time we were due to return home, I found I could hardly wait to get there.The weather had been lovely, and the bird-watching spectacular. Each day was much like the one...


Column: Even here, we must push back on restrictionists
03-22-2023 10:07 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

Most of us, I daresay, learned the story of Bluebeard as children (though, apparently, it’s too frightening and thus off-limits to some modern children). The wealthy, but grotesque nobleman, before leaving on a trip, gives his new wife the keys to all...


Column: One thing at a time, including me in my house
03-15-2023 10:24 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

The switch from nursing home to personal home went off without a hitch. The multiple family members here to help effect it then left one by one, till I’m down to: Kiki; Herschel, my four-wheel, silk-smooth walker; and Hagar, the hybrid SUV parked 2...


Column: Looking up after a month of ups and downs
03-08-2023 9:08 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

January 2023 was a month of Sundays, ending abruptly on the 29th with a fourth and final Sunday fall on ice underfoot. My friend Bea and I left my house for church that morning, and that was the last time I saw the house till the day after yesterday,...


Column: Anticipating sweet release from rehabilitation
03-01-2023 9:06 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

The one crucial item for a stay in a nursing home is — and I’m sure this will surprise you — a back-scratcher. That may sound weird, but think about it. When you’re lying on your back for unaccustomed long periods of time, it itches. Seriously itches....


Column: Recovering with Herschel, mobility sidekick
02-22-2023 9:32 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

I just bought a brand-new candy apple red four-wheel-drive sport model, big-wheeled walker. Its name is Herschel, and it will replace my old walker, which features two small wheels and two pierced tennis balls. In him I am currently terrorizing the...


Column: Forced to learn a bit about living life as a lefty
02-15-2023 10:20 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

During the 1950s I had a friend who was kind of quirky. We were both aspiring mountaineers and did some really nice hikes and climbs together. But there was this about him: He took the label off all his possessions because he didn’t want to provide...


Column: Adjusting to existence circumscribed by injury
02-08-2023 10:44 AM

By WILLEM LANGE

With apologies to T.S. Eliot: Here I am, an old man in a cold month, waiting for spring, dictating to a young lady.It’s hard to grasp the difference in perspective between what I was doing happily — living alone at home in the company of a small dog —...


Yankee Notebook: After the falls
01-31-2023 10:02 PM

By WILLEM LANGE

This piece will be perforce much shorter than my usual exhalation. I’m writing it flat on my back in a hospital in Berlin, Vt. My lovely daughter Martha is typing this as I attempt to pull together the events of the last four weeks.In my never-ending...

Displaying articles 1 to 20 out of 21 total.
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