Looking backward at 2000

By Massachusetts law, Spy Pond is defined as a “Great Pond.” But to those who are well acquainted with the pond, it’s not as great as it used to be. […]

An environmentalist in the city Not so many years ago, Gregory Watson learned more than he ever thought he’d need to know about dairy farming. As commissioner of the Massachusetts […]

Home builders, highway planners, and hamburger vendors who have catered to America’s appetite for sprawl for half a century can’t seem to acknowledge why a growing number of their customers […]

As a native of the Midwest, I am often struck by the close, dense urban lifestyle of the Boston area. But density is only part of the New England landscape. […]

Sprawl. The subject is coming up everywhere from Al Gore’s presidential campaign to back yard barbecues in the state’s booming ‘burbs. Old-timers in just about any community in Massachusetts can […]

Jennifer Howard has long loved to hike along the Taconic Trail in the Berkshires, from the hollows to the lowlands to the ridge. The birds, the wildflowers, the views – […]

Even the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture admits that few residents realize there are 6,200 farms in Massachusetts. This spring, the agency launched a year-long advertising campaign to help […]

The Boston Harbor Islands have been used for everything from summer resorts to shipping ports to Civil War forts in their 16,000-year history. And the eclectic mix continues even now […]

For years Betsy Warren has made it her business to know about every new home popping up in the town of Sandwich on the north shore of Cape Cod. That’s […]

Bob Durand saw the leap coming. There he was, on the banks of the Charles River in August 1996, celebrating one of the sweetest moments of his life as a […]

Few people know the practical, ground-level challenges of land-use planning–especially in a place like Cape Cod–as well as Armando Carbonell. A resident of Barnstable, Carbonell was the executive director of […]

One of the most popular political ideas going around these days is that we can boom and bloom at the same time. We can have economic growth and development without […]

Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New EnglandBy Tom Wessels The Countryman Press, Woodstock, Vermont, 1999 (paperback), 199 pages.Stepping Back to Look Forward: A History of the Massachusetts […]

Trespassing: An Inquiry into the Private Ownership of LandBy John Hanson Mitchell A Merloyd Lawrence Book, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1998, 295 pages.In the 19th century to be called a “curious […]

Provincetown – “I guarantee you that we will be out of this marathon tonight,” says Roslyn Garfield dryly. Clad in blazer and slacks, Garfield is the no-nonsense moderator of town […]

Harwich -Under a lowering sky, voters make their way toward the gym at sprawling Harwich High School for the second (and final) evening of town meeting, on Tuesday, May 4. […]

Massachusetts has been known as an environmentally friendly state–often at the expense of the business community. But how much does the Commonwealth actually spend on environmental programs compared to the […]

On a cold Cape Cod Saturday night, as she was about to alert the Associated Press office in Boston to what was to become the most important single series in […]

Gov. Paul Cellucci and his old friend Bob Durand popped into the Beacon Hill headquarters of the Appalachian Mountain Club earlier this year for a brief ceremony celebrating Durand’s appointment […]

Michael opened his front door and stepped into the pre-dawn light, not to check the weather or get the papers but merely to express his stupefaction at standing upright at […]

This year, Democrats and Republicans in the Massachusetts Legislature and in the governor’s office have united around a plan to increase the state minimum wage above the current level of […]