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
Just when Tracey had managed to threaten, frighten and charm the FedEx driver into delivering our weekly box of groceries from Home Chef to the front porch instead of the barn, we got a new driver. We found our raw chicken on the ground, below the barn 200 feet from the house, full of ants … More A Spirit Of Discord
If you looked out your window early on a Saturday morning and the half ton of topsoil waiting to be worked into the raised beds in the garden made you feel good, or if you derived the same sense of well-being from a pile of wood chips or gravel, I think we could have a … More Common Interest
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” This exchange is from Hemingway’s book, “The Sun Also Rises,” and it anticipates the more recent use of “slowly, then all at once,” which is a concise description of the way we often experience change. Things that seem to happen … More Shelter From The Storm
Outside The Box 