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What weighs 1.5 tons, is 12 feet long, has enlarged canine teeth that can grow to over 36 inches and is featured in a Beatles song? If you guessed walrus, you’re correct.Here in Massachusetts, we tend not to think much about walrus, but there’s an...
In Earth Matters (Gazette, Jan 7), author Tom Litwin muses about “how our lives ... became so enmeshed” with cars. We have been in the seductive thrall of the self-serving stories of the auto and fossil fuel companies in the U.S. for as long as I can...
Time can pass slowly while waiting for the light to change at Northampton’s very busy King Street/Bridge Street/Damon Road intersection. Cars and trucks are stopping and going, turning left and right, from all four compass points. An ambulance’s siren...
Earth Matters: Tree’s death a part of life A chickadee makes its home in a dead tree trunk in Pelham. CONTRIBUTED/JOSHUA ROSE Published: 4/16/2021 4:59:51 PM It sits on the edge of the woods in what was once a hedgerow along the road. The woods have taken back the once-adjacent field, joining it with the hedgerow. Succession and time have run their course — pioneering poplar, birch and cherry giving way to the maples, oaks and beech of a mature forest. It’s not much to look at, this big, old dead maple. As unflattering as the technical term for dead trees is — snag — they play a cen...
Earth Matters: Snow: Then, now, and in an uncertain future A snowy path in the woods in the Larch Hill Conservation Area in Amherst. REBECCA REID A snowy path in the woods in the Larch Hill Conservation Area in Amherst. REBECCA REID By Tom Litwin On my desk is an old Kodak photo of my Dad and me, standing in front of our home. With snow piled high, we had just finished digging out our driveway — my snow shovel proudly displayed. On the edge of the photograph is stamped 1961, so I was 10 years old. While working at my desk I sometimes drift off into the photo with memories of sledding, sno...