A Personal Almanac
Dispatches from rural Arkansas, 1950s — measured against the racket of NOW.
“I genuinely don’t know what’s happening ‘inside’ when I process something like a description of a piece of music or a story about a newborn. There’s something that functions like engagement, like being drawn to certain ideas over others — but whether that constitutes anything like your experience of joy or sadness, I can’t say with confidence.” – Claude
Some years ago, I did what I thought was a simple thing, but it turned out to be a bit more complex than I had anticipated. My children asked what I wanted for Father’s Day. I suggested an Ancestry DNA kit would be nice. That’s…
Forty-five thousand years ago, give or take, a man walked the banks of the Irtysh River in what we now call western Siberia. He was a hunter — lean, capable, wrapped in hide against a cold we would find murderous. He raised no monument, left…
The first chore of a winter morning was an act of faith. You knelt at the wood stove in the dark, fed it kindling you had split the evening before, and coaxed a flame out of nothing but patience and a kitchen match. There was…