NOTE: I had hoped to publish an earlier version of this post on Veterans Day, November 11, 2025, but I failed to meet that self-imposed deadline. This version is adapted and expanded from comments I delivered at my brother Bob’s June 7, 2025 memorial celebration in Bellows Falls, Vermont, where he was born on May…Continue readingOn the front lines of the Cold War: One young soldier’s “unusual perspective”
Category: US Politics
Fifty years ago, on December 11, 1975, Benton MacKaye died at age 96 in Shirley Center, Massachusetts, at the home of his friend, carekeeper, and long-time neighbor Lucy Johnson. To commemorate the semi-centennial of this mortal event, I include further below two substantial passages from my previous writing about MacKaye’s life and legacy. The first…Continue readingBenton MacKaye’s last days — and my not-so-funny 1995 alternative vision of a future Appalachian Trail
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Declarations
“Peculiar Work reflects some of my own varied interests,” I warned potential readers when I initiated this blog just over three years ago. “Posts, some lengthy, will appear . . . at irregular intervals,” I added at the time. If nothing else, I have stuck to those assertions. Violating every conventional rule of social media…Continue readingDeclarations
In 1977, I was working as a reporter and “associate editor” (a rather grandiose title, considering my modest responsibilities) for The Harvard Post, a weekly newspaper in the small town of Harvard, Massachusetts. Jimmy Carter, only two months into his presidential term, came to the nearby industrial town of Clinton, population of about 13,000, for…Continue reading“Your Man in Clinton”: Covering Jimmy Carter, 1977
Journalists and historians will soon set to work documenting the yet-unfinished story of Joe Biden’s consequential one-term presidency. (Some authors have likely signed book contracts already.) Their accounts should feature one of the first, and among the most notable, actions of his tenure: appointment of Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior. When President Biden…Continue reading“The problem of the race”: Interior Secretary Deb Haaland faces the tragic legacy of federal Indian boarding schools