The Coffee Table

I Hate it When…   I hate it when I start a sentence with “I hate… ” as in “I hate it when Walmart rearranges things,” or, “I hate people who...

The Pursuit of Happiness

Are you a good person? Please, if you will, pardon my impertinence. And rest assured I don’t expect an answer; the question is for you...

The Dirt on Nicky

The turmeric year One year ago, a well-intentioned, curious, daring gardener was snookered in by the glowing commentary in a famous seed catalog and ordered...

The Nature of Eureka

Perilla: A weed to know This time of year, one annual weed starts to dominate the landscape in my backyard, in open woods, and all...

The Pursuit of Happiness

An early memory is of my mother handing me over to a scary bearded man dressed in black and wearing a skullcap. The man...

Dropping a Line

Andre Hill from Forest, Ky., with one of many teenage stripers we have been catching this year. It’s good to see this fish growing...

Free Parking

We are not the first society with corruption so deep it threatens its very foundations. The Greeks coined the word “kakistricy” and the English...

HavingREELFun

Has anyone ever worn a shirt that says I love my girlfriend more than spearfishing? 18-year-old Chris Cantrell started diving and spearfishing a couple of...

The Nature of Eureka: Boneset – A forgotten herb

Here in the woods of northern Maine, I see a plant that I also see alongside ponds in the Ozarks. It is called boneset....

The Nature of Eureka

The High-Handed Poinsettia The palace of the last Aztec king, Montezuma (1466-1520), was adorned with a gift from the gods – Cutetlaxochitl – “the flower...