by Wayne Curtis

Posted 2 years, 6 months ago

Wayne Curtis is a freelance writer who's written for The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, American Scholar, Preservation, and American Heritage, and is the author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. He recently traded Maine winters for New Orleans summers.

Thursday, 24 May 2007

NEW ORLEANS, La

Someone once wrote that eating a tomato grown on a fire escape demonstrated the highest order of faith in civilization and technology.

To hell with the tomato. If you really want to show… Read More

Posted 3 years, 3 months ago  
The logistics of cleaning up New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina are almost beyond comprehension.

Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality says some 15,000 houses are slated to be torn down, and demolition is the likely fate of 80,000 more. As a result, DEQ estimates, the city will ultimately truck off and dispose of some 20 million cubic yards of waste.

Where will it go? To a number of landfills in the region, most of which are designed to handle hazardous materials. But to speed the process, the city converted a deep pit located amid the wetlands of… Read More

Posted 3 years, 9 months ago Beyond a set of granite gates on a hillside in Rumford, Maine, a lost city sits amid silver maples and oaks, just across the river from a sprawling paper mill.

It's called Strathglass Park, and it's a vestige of an experiment in corporate benevolence. Designed in 1904 by noted architect Cass Gilbert, who later designed the Woolworth Building in Manhattan and the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, this cluster of regal brick homes and boarding houses was built by a paper-company mogul for 266 workers and their families.

Posted 8 years, 10 months ago Try this little-known fact on for size: Approximately one-quarter of New England -- a region first settled four centuries ago -- is almost entirely undeveloped. Never mind images of East Coast overcrowding and sprawl; travel far enough north and east and you can drive for hours and see no Main Streets, no local fire departments, no permanent dwellings, no Wal-Marts. Just forests and lakes and beaver and moose.

About half of Maine (itself nearly the size of the other New England states combined) is… Read More

Posted 9 years, 7 months ago To catch an Atlantic salmon in the Machias River back in the 1940s -- and we're talking a legitimate salmon here, maybe 30 or 40 pounds -- didn't require a knack with rod and reel, nor even the wily patience of the angler. Mostly what you needed was decent aim with a rifle or pitchfork or jig hook.

Or for that matter, a good-sized river stone. "I remember schoolkids hitting them with rocks," says Nate Pennell, who grew up near the river in the village of Whitneyville in eastern… Read More