I don’t have to ask Maud if she wants to go outside. All I need to do is zip up my coat, and to Maud it may as well be the starting pistol at the Kentucky Derby. She appears at once, as if conjured. Whatever she was just doing—napping, lounging, or conducting high-level squirrel surveillance […]
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Christmas may still be months away, but at NBCC St. Andrews, the holiday season has been top of mind all semester after building two new wooden cabins. As students grin inside the handcrafted structure, instructors Eugene Gowan, Brent Dunn, and Chris Hartford stand in the rain at the edges of the photo, letting their students […]
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On Grand Manan, time does not so much pass as it settles. You feel it the moment the ferry pulls away from the mainland, when the shoreline softens and the horizon opens, and the world you’ve left behind—its noise, its urgency, its fluorescent insistence—begins to feel faintly theoretical. Here, there are no chain stores, no […]
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There are many ways to measure the quality of a place. Some people look at property values, school rankings, or the price of a decent latte. I look at how dogs get on. By that measure, Saint Andrews is one of the finest places on earth. Our love of dogs is immediately apparent to even […]
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Inside the Heather Curling Club (HCC) in Saint Andrews, the signs of an approaching championship are everywhere. Chairs are lined up with care. The dining room is set to play host. The ice has that unmistakable look—tuned, tested, ready. Moving through it all is Roger McNabb, president of the Heather Curling Club, taking a final […]
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On one of his final nights at the Kennedy House, Maurice “Moe” Basque approaches a familiar table carrying two coffee pots. The group has kept the same reservation, on the same night of the week, for years. Moe pours as if following a choreography only he knows—regular, then decaf—switching without looking, skipping the cups that […]
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Maud sniffs longer in the winter. Not casually or politely. She lowers her nose to the snow with the intensity of a detective who has just stumbled onto the one detail that explains everything. Her body tightens. Her focus narrows. The rest of the world disappears as she inhales with purpose, tugging me toward snowbanks […]
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Anger has become the background noise of modern life. It hums constantly, sharpens easily, and corrodes quickly. Outrage travels faster than context. Certainty is rewarded more than curiosity. If the 1920s were remembered as the Roaring Twenties, the 2020s may well be recalled as the Raging Twenties—an era shaped by algorithms, saturated with distortion, and […]
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Warning: This story contains a discussion about suicide A white heart framed in black and filled with pale stones rests in the ground at Langmaid Park, just off Water Street in St. Andrews. A few blocks away, another punctuates the landscaping at Salty Towers Inn, a gathering place beloved by locals and visitors alike. Farther […]
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We bought a dog bed for Maud when she was a puppy, which in hindsight was very optimistic of us. It was immediately clear she would never use it. Instead, she installed herself in our bed like a permanent fixture, often wedged directly between my husband and me, her head on the pillow with her […]
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