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By WILLEM LANGE

Our cab arrived at 4:40 a.m. on the dot and deposited us at the entrance to United Airlines about 5:30. Check-in was amazingly easy, and the trek to our gate likewise. We took off from Logan also on the dot — it seems to be true that the earlier in...

By WILLEM LANGE

I’ve looked out the windows quite a lot this past week, and each time the thought sweeps across my mind: Now, this is the way it’s supposed to be. Snow everywhere, and not just transitory, but settled in to stay a while. Thermometers at 10 degrees or below. It feels as though a cherished friend has returned home.

By WILLEM LANGE

One of the greatest cultural changes during my lifetime has been the democratization of air travel. In my early years it didn’t exist; travel itself was the privilege of the upper classes (a family opinion disapprovingly implicit, rather than...

By WILLEM LANGE

I was checking out at the supermarket the other day, and as usual fell into conversation with the checkout person, an elderly woman. She was sharing a bagger with the next lane over. When the bagger — another elderly lady — joined us, I noticed a...

By WILLEM LANGE

There are certain phenomena you can count on here in northern New England. Most are pleasant — migrating birds, the first snow, the aroma of boiling maple sap.Some are not. I’ve kept track of my first black fly each spring: average date, May 5, and...

By WILLEM LANGE

A couple of days ago I had to make an afternoon run a few miles east to the Health Center to pick up a fresh supply of one of my life-extending pills. Driving home, a few minutes after 4, I watched the sun disappear into a cloudy horizon. Erik the...

By WILLEM LANGE

Traveling from Nahant, Mass., to Montpelier, as I often do, requires working my way west through the stoplighted streets of Lynn, passing Hispanic churches, tire warehouses, convenience stores, discount gas stations, liquor stores and at least one...

By WILLEM LANGE

The other evening I pulled into the carport at the back of my house and before I turned off the ignition and opened the driver’s side door, I checked the outside temperature on the thermometer on the dashboard. Twenty-three degrees; cool enough. I...

By WILLEM LANGE

If you happen to live long enough, there comes a time in life when, facing an uncertain, but certainly fairly short, future, you may find yourself wondering what you’ve been waiting for. There are still mountains you haven’t climbed, and now you’re no...

By WILLEM LANGE

Whenever I take the ferry to the New York shore from Charlotte, Vt., I try to sit on the forward-facing bench on the upper level of the boat. Ahead of us rise the Adirondacks, one of the oldest ranges in North America. Most of the highest peaks are...

By WILLEM LANGE

On the penultimate weekend before the election, Bea showed up in the yard right around dark, having started from Nahant after her last Friday meeting. We were both ready for supper; so I fed Kiki, and we went out for Mexican and a beer. It was to be a...

By WILLEM LANGE

Sometimes, when the stars align fortuitously, everything turns out fine: your car stops burning oil, your wife’s Raynaud’s quits bothering her and your kid moves his drum set to the garage. Other times, when the alignment is bad, everything goes to...

By WILLEM LANGE

During the high summer the sun swings far enough north to flood the back porch with heat and light, especially in the afternoon at the hour for preprandials. But around Labor Day it retreats behind the northwest corner of the house, and it’s possible...

By WILLEM LANGE

It doesn’t seem possible it was that long ago, but it was. Seventy-four years now; my first autumn in New England. When you’re new to a place, you register everything completely, and with fresh eyes and ears. I had the incredibly good fortune to have...

By WILLEM LANGE

Of all the cultural commentary that floods in here daily on the internet, this little story is one of my favorites. A man standing in a checkout line in a supermarket is talking in a foreign language with someone on his cell phone. The woman standing...

By WILLEM LANGE

Bridget, the young Irish woman who lives in my dashboard, led us unerringly across the glacier-striated grain of New England for almost five hours and popped us out onto Main Street in Rockland, Maine, directly across from our favorite local seafood...

By WILLEM LANGE

But ’tis strange; and oftentimes to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence. The instruments of darkness, eh? It’s hard to believe in this scientific age, but lots...

By WILLEM LANGE

In the Adirondacks, the summer folks used to arrive by train, along with all their luggage for the summer. Their chauffeurs, who’d driven the family cars up from New York or New Haven, met them at the station to ferry them to their cottages (the men...

By WILLEM LANGE

Syracuse, N.Y., in the mid-1950s; a steamy Friday mid-afternoon in July. I had just climbed up for a water break from the manhole I was digging beneath the pavement when a little brown man approached — brown suit, brown shirt and tie, tobacco-brown...

By WILLEM LANGE

Reading and listening to the news as I do, and remembering my classes in American history (the best of which was taught by a delightful Englishman who still wore his Oxford varsity crew sweater), I can’t help but wonder if the United States is a...

By WILLEM LANGE

I once had a friend (now long gone to his reward) who seemed to take offense at the tag line I used in my radio commentaries. When I started out in radio, I was searching for a consistent way to end my weekly few minutes. “Why don’t you just use the...