Primordial. Deadly by nature. Unsuspected. Relentless. And, preferably, repulsive. That’s how I like my horror-movie threats. The jellyfish, 550 million years old, has of late taken over vast regions of…
An eagle stealing a toddler? ‘No way’ was my reaction to N.C. Wyeth’s illustration ‘“Just as the baby’s feet cleared the ground Padfoot leaped into the air…
Yellowed newspapers and old readers reveal what preceding generations thought important, what shaped our ancestors’ perceptions and ours. At a farm auction in 1958 when I was 12, I found…
‘Why bother about winter?’ says Aesop’s grasshopper to the ant. Southern Vermont has enjoyed a stretch of days that half convince you winter can’t ever come. The…
In ‘Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences’ (1895), Mark Twain did in the literary reputation of the author of Last of the Mohicans (1826): [The rules of literature] require that…