I know it sounds impossible, Your Honor, but I swear it’s the truth My lawyer is also a dear friend, so when he gives me advice, I trust he’s truly trying to keep me out of jail. He and I like to meet at either his house or mine, and meeting in prison would be far less convenient. He has advised me that defamation is a crime, so I should not defame anyone. No false malicious statements. I’m limited to true malicious statements. Which severely cramps my style. Unfortunately,

“And they gave unto him gold, frankincense, and mortgage-backed securities” Dear Trevor, You’ve announced your impending departure, ending your brilliant stint as editor of the Ipswich Local News, and you must know your leave-taking is horrible for me, not to mention the rest of the paper’s contributors. And the paper’s entire print-edition readership here in on the North Shore. And the online edition’s worldwide following, which has to be tens and possibly even twenties of p

A columnist may love a clam, but where will they make a home together? I love clams, but to the clam, it doesn’t feel like love. If you really loved a clam, you would treat it well, you would check in on it from time to time, you would send it a card on its birthday. You wouldn’t steam it or fry it and eat it. That’s not love. Nor would you cook it and sell it to someone else so they could eat it. That’s not love either. That’s crass, heartless profiteering. At least from t

Crows build their nests at 60 feet and up — wonder why? I sympathize, I truly do, with lovers Of helpless, darling little birds called plovers. But frankly, I am so completely over This endless, slavish passion for the plover. To tell the truth, I’d like to call the movers And pay the guys to relocate those plovers. If only we still had late-night Colbert To take a stand against the darn plovert! Lost miles of beach! Our sacrifice is steep. These birds are cute, but the

A little Dove Original Deep Moisturizing with one-quarter cleansing cream and my hostas are in heaven There was rain this week, a little, anyway, but don’t let that fool you. We’re in a drought, a real drought, not one of those wimpy droughts that can be scared away by a little rain, no, this is a major drought, a let-your-garden-thirst-to-death drought. This is a serious drought, and we need to get serious about it. So let’s start with your bathroom habits. Which do you ta

Turn, reverse, straighten, reverse, turn, reverse, turn, forward — what’s so hard? Welcome to our tour. I’m so glad you chose to be with us today. I can assure you, you’ve never taken a tour quite like the one we’ll be taking today. We’re going to walk the length of Central Street in downtown Ipswich, and I think you’re going to be amazed by what you learn. Of course Central Street wasn’t always here. Indigenous people lived in this area for eons before Europeans arrived, and

After the service, join us in the fellowship hall for low-fat refreshments It’s a terrible moment when the doctor removes his glasses and lowers his face and wipes his eyes and says, “We did all we could.” You know you’re going to have to go forward and learn to live life without that person. But when it’s the refrigerator doctor, it’s even worse. Because you can’t just learn to live life without that fridge. There are no fridge widows. You have to get another fridge. I shoul

Where should I put this? But be nice about it. Ipswich has no small number of antique homes, some approaching 400 years of age. Mine, turning 209 this summer, would be listed by an Ipswich realtor as “new construction.” It follows then, that Ipswich has precious little storage space. The colonists were too busy scrounging for food and navigating relations with the area’s previous residents to spend time building big, complicated houses. So it was slam-bam — floor, walls and

I’d call my lawyer, but he’s already signed with the squatters My home is going condo. I’m none too happy about it. I had no say in the matter. At first, it was just one couple. The very first spring I lived here, they arrived unannounced and moved into the rafters of the breezeway between my backdoor and my garage. “House sparrows,” they’re called. I guess that’s because they take over your house. When I was a kid in the Chicago area, we called them “English sparrows.” I did

Yup, I saw the whole thing, and make sure you spell my name right Of course I want to think of myself as a good person, always hoping the best for everyone. It’s not realistic, however, because the best doesn’t always happen — it’s only “the best” by comparison to other things that aren’t “the best.” If you got your wish and everything that happened really was the best, we wouldn’t even need a word for “best.” Instead of saying “Wishing you the best,” we’d say “Wishing you th

On your left, you can see the oldest continuously oper-glub-glub-glub I was at a party with quite a number of local people, persons of good repute, and I’m glad of that because it means I have reliable witnesses. Minding my own business, noshing on shrimp cocktail and little cucumber sandwiches, I was outrageously accosted by Ipswich resident J. Bradley Schell. He wanted to take me to task for a recent “Outsidah” column — my rant about the Ipswich select board taking a pass

A car this fancy should have a built-in stupidity alert Ah, the sound of scrunching sheet metal in the springtime. It’s that magical moment, behind the wheel, when you feel a certain feeling you don’t typically feel behind the wheel, a feeling you’ve never felt before, or at least not in a long time. A sort of a bump? Or a shudder? An awkward vibration, perhaps? A peculiar movement, anyway, that no automobile is designed to make — No, this is special. This is impact. It’s you

Things got ugly long ago, so why should today be different? You have to pity my dear wife, on a number of levels. When we first met and I told her I was a writer, Kristina immediately assumed I was a novelist. This would have been terribly glamorous, but it was utterly untrue. In my defense, she didn’t specifically say “Oh! A novelist!”, so I didn’t have to decide between pretending to be a novelist or fessing up. Later, it dawned on her that I wasn’t a novelist but rather

Live long enough and the old becomes new again The good old days? No need to pine for the good old days. They’re back. Go back in time to my good old days, when I was nine. That’s when the clever Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin said, “Look what I invented! Plastic shopping bags!” (I’m paraphrasing. And he said it in Swedish. But you get the gist.) Sten unfortunately didn’t foresee the 33 billion pounds of plastic we’d be dumping into our oceans, rivers, and lakes every

The opening bouquet of gym bag gives way to a whisper of lighter fluid I’m a hard-drinkin’ guy. Straight tap water for me. Room temperature? No problem. Ice is for sissies. Lemon? Never touch the stuff. Yeah, we bought a Brita, a hifalutin pitcher to filter our tap water. I don’t trust the thing. The Brita company is German, but here in the U.S., it’s operated by Clorox. Do you want the Clorox people messing with your drinking water? I grew up in the Chicago area, with drin

Whom the gods would destroy, they first give a trophy The goal of the “Outsidah” is humorous commentary on life in smalltown New England from the standpoint of a newcomer, which my fellow Ipswich residents tell me I shall forever be. There are basic truths about writing such a column, certain subjects you should certainly avoid discussing, because they’re inherently boring. ® The weather? Deadly dull. Anyone can talk about the weather, and everyone does, so why do another

That howling? Coyotes celebrating a low pollen count Sure, it’s allergy season, but you probably won’t die from it. Because you’re human. You can take Claritin. Up to 10 mg every 24 hours for what feels like the rest of your life. Actually, you can maybe finally lay off the Claritin at the sign of that first hard frost, probably October. Although there is that little matter of possible kidney or liver damage from too much of the stuff. “Ask your doctor,” I would say, becaus

Sure puts a new spin on “Waste not, want not” My garage is literally falling down. Not all at once, but definitely bit by bit. Some folks have been stopping by on my driveway for periodic deterioration checks. I hear there’s a pool on when the roof will cave in. So we’ll demolish the garage and build a new one. Curiously, the Town of Ipswich has a few things to say about this project. It seems if I want to build a garage on the east side of my house, they need to inspect the

I draw the line at touchscreen toilet paper dispensers The robots are destroying us, artificial intelligence is taking our jobs, automation is killing us. But you already knew all this. This wave of mechanization — the phenomenon of machines doing things that we humans ought to be doing for ourselves — is not really new. It’s just that it’s getting out of hand. Sure, we’ve had washing machines since 1907, and car washes since the 1950s. Who wants to go back to the days before

There’s snow business like dough business Okay, officers, everybody take a seat and we’ll get started with this morning’s patrol briefing. Of course the big issue when you’re out there on the beat today is going to be the snow. Even after some sunshine and a little rain, we’ve got huge snowbanks in some parts of town, which creates serious visibility issues for drivers and pedestrians. And certainly we’re concerned about health and safety — but on a practical level, let’s k