By Dr. Robert Thorson Bird-watchers are an interesting bunch. They do it in the rain, the snow and the dark. They do it on hot prairies, foggy islands and alligator-infested marshlands. I’ve never understood them until this year, during which highly credentialed bird scientists have been debating — like lawyers in a courtroom — alleged […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson My New Year’s resolution was not to write a single column about global climate change. I hereby break that resolution. “God is Great. Beer is good. And People are Crazy.” That’s the chorus of a country-music tune that played on the radio as I drove toward Narragansett Bay, R.I., for a […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Rachel Carson (1907-1964), and Sam Dodd (1921-) shared a love of nature. Sam who? Unless I misunderstood what he told me last week during lunch, Sam grew up in in rural New Jersey, moving to Mansfield in the early 1960s. There, he had a medical career, raised […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson ‘Property Values Drop, So Do Town Grand Lists.” This was the subhead on a story this month by Kathleen McWilliams in The Courant. Normally such stories are about rising crime, neighborhood blight or corporate closings. But in this case it’s about disintegrating home basements in northeastern Connecticut that can cost up […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Ahhh! Summer vacation. Time to relax and go fishing. Not quite. Fishing has become so high-tech and scientific that I sometimes wonder why it’s still so much fun. Answer? Because there’s so much learning going on. Fishing technology is fascinatingly complex. There’s high- resolution underwater acoustic imaging. Global positioning systems. Bathymetric […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Snow. Snow. Snow. Snow. Snow. Snow. Snow. That’s how many times Connecticut received at least 6 inches of the cursed white stuff in January. As I write this, I’m watching new snow accumulate, with no end in sight. The grand sum on my deck rises toward its source. Beyond aesthetic beauty, […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Look! Up in sky! It’s a bird? It’s a stationary hang-glider? No, it’s a private suburban home perched on a mountainside. Ridgeline development has struck again! This has always been a bad idea; in the 1960s planner and social scientist William Holly Whyte urged Connecticut to protect its traprock ridges. Some […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Connecticut was lucky on Wednesday night, and then lucky again. The east-west bullet of tornado destruction merely grazed the top of our state, and wind damage was restricted to its woodsy, rural towns. In southern Massachusetts, however, several tornadoes lined up between Westfield and Sturbridge, taking direct hits on downtown Springfield […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson To drive or not to drive; that used to be the question when it came to ice-glazed roads. Today, however, lots of us have quit asking. We assume that we can drive no matter how miserable the winter driving conditions are. We know we can count on vigilant, even heroic, road […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson It was a pleasant summer evening in New England, a backyard barbecue with friends. In the background was the mellifluous sound of water cascading down the face of an old mill dam. On my neck were mosquitoes, sucking my blood and possibly exposing me to West Nile virus, a disease detected […]