The Conscience of a Chief

Yankee, September 2016

(full story)

It’s been nearly nine months. the flowers and beer cans and scrolled farewells (“Smoke a bong for Joey”) are long gone from the roadside now, as is the ghostly white racing bike—white-painted tires, white seat and handlebars, hung with white wreaths—that stood somehow upright, for weeks after all the rest was gone, in the field just off the turn, on Route 116 in Hinesburg Vermont, where the Honda Civic left…

The Night the Bandit Dog Came In

Yankee, March 2001

(full story)

The night the Bandit dog won for me must have been in March or early April — there was still old snow on the ground. I don’t remember the odds he went off at, or the race distance, or even the exact year. Just that his name was Bandit-something (or something-Bandit), that he had the longest odds in the last race of the night at the Wonderland dog track in Revere, Massachusetts, and that he came out of the pack like a car in the stretch…

Searching for Alexander

Yankee, July-August 2018

Near the peak of Mount Mansfield on a sunny July morning, Nate Launer cradles a small gray-brown bird in his hand. He has just released it from a mist net, and will soon wrap its tiny pink leg with a wafer-thin band before letting it go. It is a Bicknell’s thrush, the rarest and most secretive of North America’s breeding thrushes, and is now under threat as its natural habitat—the coniferous alpine forests of northern New England, the Adirondacks, and Canada…

A Break in the Family

Yankee, September-October 2011

Matinicus Island lies 23 miles out to sea, the most remote inhabited island on the Atlantic seaboard. Its unique culture has been little understood by the outside world. When a moment of violence “crossed a line that had never been crossed before,” the islanders were caught between a precious past and a precarious future…

Caught Between Two Cultures

Yankee, January-February 2004

Within the past three years, hundreds of Somali refugees have started new lives in Lewiston, Maine. The city, and the Somalis, will be forever changed.
The first Westerner Said Mohamud ever met was a young American named John, who came to his village—Dhusa Mareb in central Somalia—in the early 1960s, when Said was 6 or 7 years old. John was a Peace Corps volunteer. He had blond hair and blue eyes, and was often funny. With the help of…

Inferno: The Worcester Fire of 1999

Yankee, October 2000
[view as PDF]

It was late afternoon — somewhere around four-thirty — on December 3, 1999, and it was already more dark outside than light. On the corner of Franklin and Grafton Streets in downtown Worcester, a block from the I-290 overpass, Bill McNeil of Bill’s Place Diner was getting ready for the early-supper crowd. Across the street from him and one flight up on a mattress in a corner of the second floor of the abandoned Worcester Cold Storage…

A Question of Life and Death

Yankee, September 2001
National Magazine Award — 2002 Finalist

When technology can keep  almost anyone alive—at least technically alive—it is increasingly difficult for patients, their families,  and doctors to know  where to draw the  line. In Boston, at  the leading edge  of medicine and ethics, here’s who is helping them decide. The meeting begins usually at one in the afternoon, always on the last Wednesday of the month. Attendance is not required, though that seems not to matter—the room is always full….

The Double Life of Laura Shaw

Yankee, May 2000
Best American Sports Writing — 2001

She is middle-aged, buck-toothed, and homely, with thick, gold-rimmed glasses and frizzled blond hair she wears in a ponytail. She rarely bothers with makeup. Her clothes are cheap, dowdy, and mostly out of style. It’s unlikely she cares. She has no one to dress  for: no husband, no boyfriend, no friends. There is only her mother — whom she lives with — and a son by a man she says she never married and hasn’t seen in years….

Death in the Home Stretch

Yankee, August 1997

For the first three furlongs, he ran cleanly. Unblocked, near midpack, a yard or two off the rail — a patient, ground-saving ride. His mount, Highblast, a five-year-old brown gelding with six wins in 52 lifetime starts, was moving easily, barely four lengths off the lead. Rounding into the stretch turn, he had to be feeling pretty good about things. A win would bring him $180. That, plus another $180 for the win aboard Stage Manager…