When I was a kid normal was both a state of being and a place. The place was easier to define. It was a town, for one thing, and it could be found on one of those folded (paper!) highway maps that could be acquired at gas stations: there it was, smack-dab in the middle of the great flatness of Illinois. Corn and soybeans, soybeans and corn; there wasn’t...
Read MoreEmporiums
emporium n. Pl. -iums, -ia. [L f. Gk emporion, f. emporos merchant, per- to journey.] 1 A centre of commerce; a market. 2 A shop, esp. one that sells unusual or fancy goods. Chiefly joc. Of all the impacts of the COVID pandemic, one of the most enduring is—in my eyes—an increased awareness of the churning of stuff in the world or the way material goods do...
Read MoreBeing Local
It was almost on a whim that we decided, propelled by the latest bout of COVID claustrophobia, to spend a week this summer on the California coast. A day’s drive, no air travel, a rental within earshot of the surf: it was the easiest means we could manage for getting to a dramatically different ecosystem. At intervals I could not predict the fog rolled in...
Read MoreCurrant Time
Surely you know some irritating over-achiever—for who hasn’t?: the annoying person who shows up in the classroom or kitchen or conference room, or on the athletic field, and seemingly without any effort at all pulls off a perfect meal or project or performance, showing up everyone else who has been working so very hard to accomplish at a lower level. The...
Read MoreThe Red Hot Blues
Slickrock domes and washes of cream-colored sand, groves of tall pinon, blackbrush meadows—the long trail to Rainbow Bridge had not changed much, as far as I could tell, in the intervening more than 30 years. Not that I remembered it in much detail. When I first visited the place I was a newbie to the Southwest, gobsmacked by the scale of mountains and...
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