The second in a series of articles about Plymouth’s open spaces. When Lewis and Clark, at the behest of President Jefferson, left St. Louis in 1804 on their two-year journey to the Oregon coast and back they packed a lot of stuff, including 400 pounds of lead, three bushels of salt, 193 pounds of portable […]
Author Archives: Peter Zheutlin - Independent Correspondent
Posted inEnvironment & Health
Into the great wide-open spaces of Plymouth
With the summer months upon us, my efforts to become acquainted with my new adopted hometown have turned increasingly to the outdoors. Plymouth has an abundance of riches when it comes to places to soak up the beauty of nature, appreciate the quietude, and decompress. I expect to follow this column with more that will, […]
Posted inEnvironment & Health
A ride to simpler times on remote Saquish
In 1955, Ed Conathan made the decision of a lifetime. After serving on a supply ship in the Pacific during World War II, he had returned home to the South Shore, took a job with Regal Shoe Company in Whitman, got married, and started a family. By 1955, he and his wife Helen had six […]
Posted inEnvironment & Health
Manomet Conservation Sciences is still for the birds
From the North Slope of Alaska to Argentina, from Patagonia to Paraguay and places much closer to home, Plymouth-based Manomet Conservation Sciences is working to strengthen bird migration routes and protect coastal ecosystems across the Western Hemisphere. In Alaska, for example, it “conducts research to unravel the mysteries of shorebird migration and track changes in […]
Posted inCulture
Downtown discoveries: From art making to axe throwing to wood carving
When your correspondent was last seen wandering around downtown Plymouth, he hadn’t made it north of Town Hall and realized his job was not yet done. There was much more to be explored, much more for a newcomer to discover. But before we head beyond Town Hall, there’s at least one gem south of there […]
Posted inCulture
Nathaniel Philbrick’s ‘Mayflower’ takes on new meaning for this newcomer
In January 1621, 14-year-old Francis Billington – who arrived on the Mayflower the year before – scrambled up a tree atop Fort Hill in Plimoth, known today as Burial Hill, and gazed to the west. He claimed to have seen “a great sea.” The sea, it turned out, was a 269-acre pond, known ever since […]
Posted inCulture
The wanderer: A newcomer discovers some of what downtown has to offer
When I moved to Needham in 1988, I took a walk downtown to familiarize myself with the place and wandered into Harvey’s Hardware, an absolute miracle of space utilization. It seemed to have every widget and doodad even vaguely hardware related in a space about the size of a broom closet. If you were looking […]
Posted inCulture
‘We’re the last part of Plymouth anyone thinks about’
My last column detailed an ill-advised and unsuccessful mission to drive to Saquish with two large dogs in a small, two-wheel drive convertible. Saquish is a small, orphaned piece of Plymouth at the southern end of Duxbury Beach, accessible overland only by a rudimentary road. Though it can take as long to drive to Saquish […]
Posted inEnvironment & Health
Saquish: So close, yet so far away for most
As a newcomer to Plymouth, I’ve been studying maps of the town as I try and get my bearings. I’ve long been fascinated with maps, and especially geographic oddities. For example, only two counties in the United States have discontiguous parts. Norfolk County, Massachusetts is one. Brookline and Cohasset are both part of Norfolk County, […]
Posted inCulture
A retired lawyer walks into a comedy club…
Gary Levine wants to make you laugh. “I woke up the other morning and Sue was sitting on the side of the bed, staring at me,” he says as he, his wife Susan Htoo, and I sit down in their Pinehills apartment with a pitcher of Cape Codders. “I said, ‘Good morning, what did I […]