Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to put the air cleaner in the corner of the dining room. It’s quiet, most of the time, and unobtrusive. That’s not a problem. But it has a sensitive “nose,” and that can be a problem. It works like this, you see: The unit sits and runs so quietly … More The Smell Test
They forgot to tell the weather app that it’s fall, but the mountain knows. The cool air flowing down from the high country each morning is liquid refreshment. The hummingbirds are feeding constantly and getting fat. The yellow jackets are in a permanent state of road rage and the snakes are irritable. The birds are … More Elbowing Out
“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” “And just like that — winter.” That was my brother’s weather report from Moreland, Georgia this morning, when their long tropical summer abruptly dipped into the 50s. Fifty is shirt‑sleeve weather in the mountains, … More Weather or Not
Mornings were cooler in the mountains, once upon a time. We still get summer nights in the sixties and temporary relief from the heat and humidity, but those mornings in the fifties — the kind that raised “goosebumples” when the wind rolled off the mountain — belong to another era. I remember them best the … More In A Pig’s Eye
As the midterm elections approach, most Americans already know how they will vote. Not because they’ve spent any time weighing policies or comparing competing visions for the country, but because they’ve sorted themselves into tribes. Red tribe, blue tribe, us and them. The lines are drawn long before anyone steps into a voting booth. Yet … More The Poisoned Well
I forgot to turn on the electric fence around the garden the other night, and something deprived me of at least one good tomato sandwich. I won’t make that mistake again, and I’m looking for a recipe for Lapin à la Tomate. I wonder if you can substitute groundhog… Parking arrangements around here are changing … More Another Cat Post
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
