A man’s spirit requires attention, maintenance, and repair, and so much of what we now do—gazing at the glow, watching and listening to other people performing and pretending, the doom‑scrolling, the constant connection to the hive mind—interferes with that maintenance. We are a nation of addicts, and our drug is constant distraction, even those of … More In Better Company
“In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” — Judges 21:25 Modern education has drifted from the classics, yet few works sit closer to the core of Western civilization than the Bible. Beyond its religious weight, it’s a study in human nature — and one … More No Kings, but No Alternatives
You can’t give firewood away in eastern Towns County right now. Just about everyone we know has a storm story — a tree down, or a mess of leaves and limbs to clean up. As the storms approached, I watched the red boxes on the radar marching south Tuesday night. We put the rain gear, … More Storm Stories
If I’m not up by 7 in the morning, the bed shakes and a paw rakes my arm. The clock in Peaches’ stomach has gone off, and she is keen to alert me to that fact. If I wake earlier and stretch, or make any sound at all, she’s on me with the paw, and … More The Memory Garden
A friend posted a great idea for calming the jitters yesterday. She untangles jewelry. I had to laugh, because I practice the dude version of her method. On my workbench sits a box of assorted hardware — nuts and bolts, screws and washers, springs and odd little thingamajigs. I’m not jittery, but sorting hardware is … More Idle Time
“A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.” Two shrinking hamburgers at the drive through window for twenty bucks. The bag of chips is more than half air now, and nobody believes it’s because of “settling” anymore. There’s … More The Wallet Apocalypse
I think of my uncle in July. For several years after my aunt passed, he would “come down to Georgia” on the Fourth and spend a week or so at the old family home of my grandparents, where he joyfully set himself to the task of reanimating a beloved house that sat empty most of … More A Bridge Not Far Enough
We are never more than a glance away from answering the question, “What time is it?” The answer is on our wrist, in our pocket, glowing from the wall. There’s a clock beside the bed, on the dashboard, in the break room, on the phone, and embedded in every device we own. We can answer … More What Time?
“Salt.” Head down and tucked into his meal after a hard day, it was unusual for my dad to speak in monosyllables during the evening meal. Normally the man who once talked across the entire state of Ohio on a road trip would entertain us with his “Floyd Stories” while we ate. But when he … More Salt
What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple? My dad delighted in posing this riddle to us when we were kids. The answer? Finding half a worm. That was the feeling I got last week as I searched for the best price on a bottle of Ballistol. If you don’t know what Ballistol is, … More The Tax We Didn’t Know About
Outside The Box 