Magazine Articles

Featured Articles
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Treehouses Take a Bough
Smithsonian, August 1997
I remember looking up. It is summer, and my father is kneeling on a platform pounding nails, each hammer blow echoing in the silent woods . . . . When it is finished, our tree house is perfect.
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Defending Your Turf
Attaché, May 2001
It was during the early months of our marriage that the shocking truth became clear: My new husband zig-zagged. With the lawn mower, that is . . . I was horrified . . .
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Hog Island
Yankee Magazine, August 1993
Ten days is not so long, really. In a lifetime, that is. But when you're a kid and it's summer and you're on a small island in Maine, time stretches on and on, spinning out like an endless reel of fishing line cast in a perfect arc . . .
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Back on Track
New Hampshire Profiles,
July 1989
It's their eyes you notice first. Eyes that peer with watery brightness out of coal-smudged faces . . . These are the eyes of men who know trains . . .These are the coggers . . .
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Other Selected Articles
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Quiet Hero
UNH Magazine, Spring 2003
An unassuming researcher embarks on a courageous quest that changes his life forever
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Embracing this Imperfect Life
Hope, March/April 2002
On a Sunday morning in late August, sunlight slants through the tall paned windows of the Quaker Meeting House . . . Phil Simmons sits, unmoving in his wheelchair . . . . He is describing what it is like to confront the limitations of the flesh.
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Saving the Biggest Old House in
New England
UNH Magazine, Winter 2001
My son Gabe, 22 months, is jumping and spinning in the October sunlight, chortling at the wide-open space that is his alone. Watching his antics, my husband and I glance at each other, remembering another afternoon when we stood on this very spot . . . The south veranda of the Mount Washington Hotel is, after all, our veranda. It was here, on May 28, 1994, that we recited our wedding vows.
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A Rugged Splendor
Attaché, September 2000
There are days along the coast of Maine – when the light is slanting just so, when breezes bend the saltmarsh grasses, and pointed firs cut sharp shadows into a sunlit sky – that you could swear you were standing inside an Andrew Wyeth painting . . .
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Flights of Fancy
Attaché, March 2000
It looks like Joanie Forge is going to have to redecorate her birdhouse. After all, she and her husband are painting the exterior of their home – and it's critical that the birdhouse match. The Forges and others like them, are proud owners of a custom-made creation from Zarlis' Birdhouse Art by The "Knotty" Nuthatch Birdhouse Company . . .
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Science on Ice
UNH Magazine, Winter 2000
The screaming roar of the engine on a Hercules C-130 military cargo plane blows the sound of your voice into oblivion, shoves your breath back down your throat, leaves you gasping, eyes watering against swirling snow. And then it is silent . . . . This is Antarctica – the quietest place on Earth.
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Star Light
Attaché, November 1999
The rambling Hollywood mansion looked deserted. Suddenly a shrill voice called out from somewhere inside: "You there! Why are you so late? Why have you kept me waiting so long?" So begins the ill-fated meeting between Joseph C. Gillis, struggling writer, and Norma Desmond, former silent movie star in "Sunset Boulevard," the 1950 film starring Gloria Swanson and William Holden . . .
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Home Grown
Attaché, June 1999
Tomatoes taste best on a late afternoon in August, warm soil underfoot, dragonflies weaving spirals above the garden. The little cherries are my favorite, plucked warm from the vine and savored . . .
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Up Against the Mall
Hope Magazine, Summer 1999
When Jesse James and his gang galloped into Northfield, Minnesota, in 1867, they were headed for the First National Bank. And they weren't expecting a fight. But the citizens of Northfield rallied together and ran the thieves out of town. Today another feisty band of citizens is fighting to protect what they believe is rightfully theirs – the character of the town they live in. This time they face a corporate giant – the Target discount department store . . .
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Portraits of the Deep
UNH Magazine, Spring 1999
When Sir John Murray shoved off from the shores of Scotland's famous Loch Ness in 1897, he took with him a lead weight, a notebook – and a fellow to row the boat. While his assistant held the craft on course, Murray pedaled . . .
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Life on the Edge
UNH Magazine, Fall 1998
Fred Short wields a wicked hook. Bending across the port side of his skiff, one early morning in May, he peers into the murky depths and digs around to see what he can dredge up. A few skillful twists of his long-handled tool and up comes a dripping green mass . . . .
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The Quiet Side of
Mount Desert Island
Yankee Magazine, July 1998
From the porch of the Claremont Hotel, where I sit in a green high-back rocker, the lawn stretches to the edge of Somes Sound. Across the water pointed firs cover the rounded mountains of Maine's Acadia National Park, familiar spires against an ever-changing sky . . . .
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Spindle City
Boston Globe, February 6, 1995
Philadelphia Inquirer, December 19, 1993
The sprawling red brick buildings that cling to New England's riverbanks loom as a shadowy presence of my childhood. I remember driving past them on car trips, their endless rows of windows catching the afternoon light, a bell tower poking up here and there into the sky, buildings whose only purpose, as far as I could tell, was to provide wall space for giant, peeling billboard advertisements . . .
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In Search of Seals
Boston Globe, March 28, 1993
Cape Cod in winter is harsh. The wind sweeps across empty beaches, the water temperature drops to a brisk 30-something degrees, and ferocious storms tear out huge hunks of coastline. But Cape Cod in winter is also beautiful: sand dunes carve graceful outlines against the sky, the air is clear, the silence is tangible. There are no crowds. This is a good thing if you are a seal. Or a watcher of seals . . . .
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A Community of Friends and Classmates
Equity and Choice, Fall 1991
When Andrew Dixon laughs, giggles come bubbling up from somewhere deep inside him, crinkling his eyes into gleeful half moons. It's Friday afternoon, school's out, and the third grader from Concord, New Hampshire, is sprawled on the floor watching a cartoon. Something just struck his funnybone. In the kitchen, his mother, Beth Dixon, pauses to listen. "I love that," she says, smiling . . . .
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Hands that Brought Forth Blooms
The Christian Science Monitor, May 3, 1989
I can see him now, cupping the sweetness of a blooming yellow rose in the palm of his brown hand, bending it toward him, the stem running down between his middle and fore fingers into the soft black earth flecked with silver. It was summer. Pop was in his garden and I was at his heels, a trowel clutched in my fist . . . .
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Magic Mulch
Yankee Magazine
Ever been fooled by a melon? It can happen to even the most vigilant gardener. During one of those weeklong stretches of cool, cloudy spring weather so common in New England – the kind where the temperature never gets above 60 degrees – your melon plants will sit there looking like they're surviving. Then the sun comes out. Boom. You've got yellow, wilted melons . . . .
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