FEATURES COLUMNS
Rick's List - Scholarly Personal Bookshelf Edition
You've heard of Rick's Bookshelf Arrangers, right? No? Well, it's my very successful new company. Y'see, if you're one of the 72 percent of the general population regularly called as a panelist to provide analysis on one of those CNN, Fox News or MSNBC networks,...
Friends in high places: The region’s top overlooks
Everyone loves a view. Beyond the inspirational benefits, you can’t get much more socially distant during a pandemic than standing atop an overlook.
Spirits ran high at colonial taverns
Churches and taverns were the first public buildings erected in new settlements; sometimes taverns went up first.
Rick's List - Tertiary Propoganda Consultant Edition
For over three years now, I've been a "Tertiary Video Propoganda Consultant" to President Donald Trump. Truth told, Trumpo — as he likes to be called because "it makes me feel like a cartoon elephant everyone loves" — almost never requires my services. As he...
To ducks, I am Godzilla; to cormorants, a target
I paddle this route several days a week, and EVERY time the mallards panic, even though I never so much as veer in their direction or stop to chat.
The uncommon sight of common night hawks
Night hawks have declined by 60% since the '70s. Where I grew up, along the Connecticut River, they were especially abundant during migration.
MORE FEATURES COLUMNS
Rick's List - Great Debates I Have Known Edition
As a former and thoroughly humiliated college debater who quit after one practice, I have some thoughts about articulate conflict. 1. Throughout a very happy marriage to my wife Eileen, we have had relatively few arguments. The...
Seeking solace on a busy Connecticut River
A Jet Ski’s piercing whine shattered the air one sunny afternoon last week as our group of paddlers approached Selden Island on the Connecticut River in Lyme.
The joys of 'vigorous debate'
My friend Dick Humphreville and I tend to argue often for the sake of arguing. Not hard to do with a guy who talks as much as Dick — though he prefers to call it “vigorous debate.”
Rick's List — Desperate Times for Sharp-Dressed Man Edition
You can't see it, of course, because I write for a newspaper, but as I type this I'm wearing a dove gray jacket and slacks by Alexander McQueen; a V-neck T-shirt with a likeness of Kenny Rogers from ATM Anthony Thomas Melillo's "Ironic"...
Stalking the wily swallow: Patience pays off
It's one of nature’s most astonishing phenomena: hundreds of thousands of migrating tree swallows swooping and swirling before landing on the 75-acre Goose Island.
Rick's List - Autumn Check List Edition
Though meteorological autumn started at the first of the month, the first day of fall — according to the folks who make calendars — is Sept. 22. Either way, it's time for some fall foliage, about which I have some...