Summer 2009

from the editor

Don’t buy it

Buy, buy, buy. Being frugal, and especially in these tough economic times, those are precisely the words I don’t want to hear. So the day my husband David came up with a plan to construct a much-needed hay shelter out of recycled materials, I was game. Read more

back porch

The Way of the Eco-Warrior

By D. CAMERON LAWRENCE

Growing up in southern New England in the 1960s and ’70s—pre-sprawl—I had what many children today do not have: a birthright of outdoor adventure. We opened our doors to a huge, undivided landscape of green fields, tumbling brooks, hummocked marshes and quiet woods. My little brother and I roamed the outdoors like young Balboas, discovery around every bend in a stream. It seemed to us then that our landscape was without boundary and unowned, a freedom that gave us the chance to explore nature and develop a lifelong affinity for the outdoors. That is, until the day we learned what “progress” could take away. Read more

fuss

GOING BROWN
While the rich go green, the rest of us can jump on this bandwagon
By MICHAEL VAN HALL

dog-eared

UP-AND-COMER POETRY
Small Saturday Poem and Waking Me
By CHRIS SHAFER

FICTION
The Gold Star
By G.C. COMPTON

FICTION
Growing-Out Jericho
By WILLIAM R. WOODARD

POETRY
Katrina’s Voices
By JENNY ROOT

POETRY
Miss Lizzie’s Kitchen
By EVE HOFFMAN

NONFICTION
Chilaquiles
By MICHELE NIESEN

HALF-EMPTY MASON JAR
Why—and other questions that get us out of bed each morning
By LESLIE SMITH TOWNSEND

BOOK REVIEW
‘At the Breakers’ by Mary Ann Taylor-Hall
By MARY POPHAM

BOOK REVIEW
‘In the Heaven of Never Before’ by Carine Topal
By LAUREL ANN BOGEN