I must have been nine, maybe ten, when four guys and an accordion destroyed Christmas carols for me forever.

In the spirit of the holiday, and in defiance of the greater narrative, here are a few of the things...

Quitting social media means losing touch with friends and family and missing out on local news, especially in rural areas.

At this time of year, we pay for our shimmering green summers and picture-book snowbound winter days with long stretches...

If the risks of a constitutional convention are high, so is the prize: real reform of Albany’s notoriously corrupt system.

They’ll have a costume parade through town. Hundreds of kids, all brave and silly and hepped up on Twizzlers, with...

If a carbon tax of $40 a ton were levied, and every red cent of it turned over directly to...

A couple of weeks ago, somebody started duct-taping creepy white supremacist flyers over my wife’s campaign signs. “You will not...

Just about everything you can buy at the annual Cauliflower Festival in Margaretville is local, except the cauliflower.

I’ve discovered since then that Ivan is something of a Rorschach test for people. Sometimes they think it’s cute that...

The brave new world is here — and it has me doing all sorts of things I never thought I...

In disasters, there is helpful help, and then there is all the other stuff people do in a well-intentioned spasm...

Few places on Earth are as unfriendly to the carless as rural Delaware County.

The statues are in the south, but this isn't just a question for southerners. Up here — 500 miles north...

In lieu of achieving world peace, or even Catskills peace, I’ve always wanted to write a local parody of “Oklahoma!”...

Culturally, the Catskills are a bright mosaic of urban and rural mores and values. But scratch the surface and we...

Want to help the local bat population? Put up a bat house. It won’t save the bats from white-nosed syndrome,...

Disaster can strike in a moment, but nature is full of slow-motion letdowns too. You can work with optimism and...

It’s tempting to get distracted from the boring business of local government by the increasingly terrifying gyrations of the national...

Swordfighting has woken me up to the joy of battle like no sport has ever done. It has given me...