New england

Tuesday

Matt Purple

Connecticut and the rise of blue-state MAGA Republicans

The year was 2006 and something unprecedented was happening: people were actually paying attention to the state of Connecticut. Senator Joe Lieberman, a long-serving moderate Democrat and Al Gore’s former running mate, had just lost his primary to a left-wing activist named Ned Lamont. Lieberman then jumped in as an independent and suddenly Connecticut had a real Senate race on its hands: two center-leftists plus a plucky yet overlooked Republican named Alan Schlesinger. Lieberman won in a rout. That the far-left Lamont is now governor of Connecticut should tell you everything you need to know about that state’s political drift.

Connecticut

Friday

Matt Purple

Long live the New England horror story

There is a spot, about a twenty-minute drive from the New England town in which I grew up, where the devil is said to appear to hikers. It isn't known why he does this or if he's ever decent enough to bring a six-pack with him. But the legend is such that a high school friend of mine once refused to go there, presumably out of fear that she'd come back with a hex. That's New England for you, where growing up you assume that every town has its eerie old house and every county its howling boarded-up insane asylum. That diabolical trail is just one of countless spooky yarns native to the region, catalogued in collections of ghost stories you can buy in bookstores and airports.

new england

Thursday

Calla Jones Corner

The chowder crowd

Cape Cod winters are brutal: they are long, freezing cold and windy. Cape Codders don’t know what spring is. The Pilgrims, having first touched terra firma in Chatham after months at sea, headed across Massachusetts Bay for Plymouth to more shelter. Days jump from those when Cape Codders think that Old Man Winter has played a nasty trick on them once again, to days of suddenly delicious warm sun which breaks through feathery skies, filled with what my father Bob called ‘unused air’. One of my dearest memories of spending a winter living in Chatham’s Old Village is of my father, Bob, in mid-May, appearing in his 10-foot skiff putt-putting out of the Mill Pond past our house, wearing his salt-laden floppy hat, heading for Stage Harbor to do some clamming.

clam chowder

Sunday

James Panero

Porgy and best

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed his esteem for a lifetime. There are few miracles greater than what rod and reel will conjure from the deep. So it has been for me as I cast away my cares in this uncertain year. In early spring, I delighted for the first time in the freshwater lake fish of New England. In the cooler months, bluegill, pumpkinseed, yellow perch and largemouth bass all swim close to the Connecticut lakeshore. Fishing from the shore in one such lake in Litchfield County, I found that a simple spinning jig or, better yet, a nightcrawler on a hook and bobber are all that is necessary for a strike. These frisky creatures can be as colorful as their names.

porgy