In a good year, the wild rice grows thick on the lakes and rivers in northern Minnesota toward the end of August. The rice stalks multiply into such dense thickets that the waters become nearly impassable—to everything but the sleek canoes that glide through for harvesting. This job takes two people: one to knock rice … Read more
In a floating restaurant, with buoys hanging from the ceiling and the full complement of other nautical trappings, I ordered my first lobster. I was eight. Not a big seafood fan, I hemmed and hawed over the menu, which was crammed with clip-art renderings of comical sea creatures, until my Uncle John leaned over and … Read more
Why do people admire Napoleon? I don’t mean the French—they have reasons of their own for boosting Bonaparte, such as a dearth of more recent political heroes. But what inspires so many ordinary Anglophones in their cloying fascination for the great dictator? It’s not just the sticky puff-pastries and the Napoleon brandy (but what has … Read more
In the heady days of summer, it is particularly easy to gaze out the office window and dream the Raspberry Dream. In the Raspberry Dream, you walk to your raspberry patch in the warm morning sunshine. The dewy grass brushes your lightly tanned skin as thrushes and cedar waxwings herald your arrival. The encumbered bushes … Read more
The other day a student asked me to name my favorite building. I had no hesitation. “Exeter Cathedral,” I said. There is plenty of magnificence: creamy, glowing stone, the longest medieval Gothic vault in England (possibly in the world), a forest of columns branching upward. But this place also has an unintimidating intimacy; while it … Read more
What is it about cows and cowboys that make us wax rhapsodic? It seems they beget legend and lore, or at least they did in the days when the sight of a herd breaking over a hill, with unshaven, grizzly men on horseback driving them in, could bring a tear to any Pappy’s eye. Maybe … Read more
I have never been a big fan of Chenin Blanc. If grapes were people, this variety would be your alcoholic uncle, all hail-fellow-well-met as he comes through the door, but a bit bland, short on attention span and interesting conversation, and liable to leave behind him a sensation somewhat different from the initial affable salute. … Read more
Don’t let the imposters win. You are encouraging their success when you order a rum and Coke and settle for Shasta. When you allow people to offer a cup of java, then serve up Folgers crystals. The worst offense is to say “pass the Parmesan” as you’re looking at a rotund shaker of a fluffy … Read more
Greeks and Romans thought the world looked like a fried egg. There was land in the middle, wholly surrounded by Ocean, with a sea (appropriately called the Mediterranean) bisecting the land. Even in the early Middle Ages, fishermen in what is now Normandy are said to have heard at dead of night the boats putting … Read more
During a lecture to a Harvard class, philosopher George Santayana happened to glance out the window and spot a burgeoning forsythia in a patch of snow. Heading to the door, he declared, “I shall not be able to finish that sentence. I have just discovered that I have an appointment with April.” She’s a sassy … Read more