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From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

Studying a piece of old furniture is like venturing into the woods after a snowfall. With a fresh coating of powder, the previously invisible activities of the forest are put on full display. That squirrel that steals from your bird feeder? You can finally discover his path – this way, that way; he did some digging there, climbed a tree. You find that a pair of deer came by, a doe and yearling, browsing the firs along the meadow. Something startled them at the far end, and they fled to deeper woods. The information is everywhere, tracks impressed into the frozen crystals. With careful study, it’s even possible to identify particular animals based on their tracks, and to determine what...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

I happened again across Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Village Blacksmith” recently and took my time reading through it. Longfellow was from Maine (it was part of Massachusetts at the time, but we try to forget about that unfortunate era) and was familiar with the sights and sounds of the Portland waterfront and the shops of the tradesmen that lined the streets. His travels around the world gave him plenty to draw on for poetic inspiration, but he mostly returned to the stories and scenes of his beloved New England in his writing. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1868. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. I find this poem compelling. Not because it’s a lofty hagiography of some imaginary hero figure (it isn’t), not because...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch