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By DAN MACKIE

It’s been an exciting week in West Lebanon. The trees are almost done littering my lawn and the local weather has resembled anything you might find from Eastport, Maine to Key West, Florida. You start the day with long johns and end with shorts; I...

By DAN MACKIE

I am not the sort of person who suddenly bursts into song — or would wish for anyone else to (too startling) — but I have been feeling musical after experiencing the movie, “Wicked,” during Thanksgiving break.I was not there under duress; as a leading...

By DAN MACKIE

So here we are in late November and my fellow Democrats are looking for the lighter side of Armageddon.As in, at least there’s only Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Six would be a total bummer.But what if the sky really is falling? I mean, what if...

By DAN MACKIE

I don’t like to write too much about politics, just the occasional snide remark. But this being my last column before Election Day, I can’t stop myself. No, really, I can’t. Consider yourself a member of my Valley News Election Support Group. If you...

By DAN MACKIE

I think it means something that I have been tempted lately not by pots of gold or comely young maidens, but by shoes that don’t require you to bend over and tie them.I lust — almost sinfully so — during TV ads for sneakers you simply step into. They...

By DAN MACKIE

Halloween is already here. At least it is in West Lebanon, where little orange lights glow while little white ghosts sway in the breeze on certain porches. It’s better than Christmas decorations in September, I suppose.I don’t know exactly when All...

By DAN MACKIE

“If you want my advice” … is a dangerous way to start a sentence. People rarely want it, although not everyone flees when your personal wisdom dispenser is activated. The best counsel I’ve heard about advice is to offer it only when requested. That...

By DAN MACKIE

I’m not exactly Little Miss Sunshine, but I like to have a good time now and then. I couldn’t help but notice the party atmosphere of the Democratic National Convention, which didn’t entirely fit our so-called lifestyle.Good times are swell, but we...

By DAN MACKIE

Everyone is worrying about phones in schools. They are a powerful distraction, like slot machines for gamblers, or Cheetos for people addicted to enriched cornmeal and the color orange.If you’d been in a high school lately, you would have noticed that...

By DAN MACKIE

The last thing I thought I’d have to think about this year are childless cat ladies. You too, I bet.Many of us have funny ideas about who really is running things, you know, the power behind the throne. Is it the Trilateral Commission? George Soros?...

By DAN MACKIE

To distract myself from the presidential race, I’ve been obsessing lately about another drama, also of national import and urgency. I refer to former Patriots coach Bill Belichick, 72, dating Jordan Hudson, 24.24! 72! Hike? She is a graduate of...

By DAN MACKIE

Let’s try retirement again!Six years ago I concluded gainful employment at the Valley News, where I labored for some 30 years. I had originally expected to work there for two, maybe three years — five at the most.But I settled in like a rumpled office...

By DAN MACKIE

On Sunday morning there is a moment when I hesitate before I head out the door to scoop up our newspaper from the driveway. “Oh, that’s right,” I tell myself. The Sunday paper is no more.“I miss it,’’ my wife Dede tells me. She is a puzzle doer, and...

By DAN MACKIE

Have I told you about our granddaughter? Yes? Oh, well, let me go on about her anyway.Since July of last year, Dede and I have been grandparents to Vivian, a former preemie who has blossomed like the flowering trees that are plump and pretty and a...

DAN MACKIE

Spring is all a-bloom here in the Upper Valley, and we gallop from too cold to too hot too fast. It is a meteorological microwave.It sends me scurrying to find my summer shorts, which reveal my legs as shiny white as an airport beacon. They are...

By DAN MACKIE

The Valley News was born in 1952 and so was I. This is probably coincidence, but I like to think there is more to our association than the fact that we are both from the year of the water dragon in the Chinese calendar.According to the Internet,...

By DAN MACKIE

It was Traffic vs. the Eclipse on Monday, a showdown of celestial proportions. Would I risk everything like Marco Polo who bravely set out to see the world, or follow the example of his brother Rocco, who said their hometown of Venice was “plenty good...

By DAN MACKIE

The World Happiness Report is out, and America’s ranking might make you frown. The USA, where “the pursuit of happiness” is enshrined in the Constitution, just after “the Right to Taylor Swift Concert Tickets” and “Snacks on on Super Bowl Sunday,” has...

By DAN MACKIE

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, and I suppose in Ireland there might be a pub on that very corner. So there’s a little bit of sadness in knowing that my West Lebanon corner leads to a gas station with hot dogs spinning on rollers...

By DAN MACKIE

This inflation thing has gone too far. Not only are supermarkets working toward a $5 minimum for essentials such as cookies, the cost of something near and dear to my heart is inching ever higher.I refer to often overlooked old-fashioned oats. They...

By DAN MACKIE

The U.S. Postal Service seems to think it can get mail to us more quickly by sending it far away and hauling it back. It is hatching a scheme — for all I know named Project Hither and Yon — to ship mail from Hartford, Vt., to Hartford, Conn., where it...