The Dangerous Lie of “That’s Just How I Am” (And How to Break Old Habits)
When the work quiets and we have a moment to ourselves, old habits sometimes stir. They lie low in the grass, just beyond our sight, waiting for a familiar thought to bring us close. Following that thought home feels natural. We lived there a long time.…
AI Isn’t Evil, Humans Just Have a New Tool: Why You Should Ignore the Latest Tech Panic
Just when I thought the latest round of “the sky is falling” had begun to wind down, somebody found a fresh box of matches. Artificial intelligence is evil, they tell me. To demonstrate this, they have thoughtfully supplied an…
Appalachian Folk Remedies, Jalapeño Cold Cures, and the Hilarious Mystery of How I Survived Childhood
I came home from work with a nose that had apparently decided to irrigate East Texas. After some sleep, I began considering my grandmother’s ten-minute cold cure: jalapeño, onion, and thyme, boiled briefly and left to steep before being served as broth…
Organic vs. Conventional Produce: The Truth About Pesticides, Nutrition, and Parent Guilt
Somewhere along the way, buying vegetables became an examination of character. A mom picks up ordinary carrots, looks at the organic ones beside them, and wonders whether saving a few dollars means letting her children down. Meanwhile, Dad is calculating…
Faith Beyond the Thunder: Why Picking Up the Hammer Is Sacred Work
“From dust you came, and to dust you will return.” For years I heard that mostly as a sentence about endings. Lately, I hear something else in it. Dust is ordinary. Soil. Stone. Wood. Water. Bread. Hands. Maybe that is why so much of life is ordinary…
The Hilarious Joy of Language: Dangling Participles, Misplaced Modifiers, and Neobombeckianism
I have recently developed an interest in grammar. There. I said it. At my age, I suppose there are worse things a fellow could become interested in. I could start collecting porcelain frogs, arguing with the television, or wearing socks with sandals.…
The Bureau of Aging Has a Sense of Humor: Where Did All My Hair Go?
There comes a point in a man’s life when the hair on his head apparently receives a government relocation order. It does not disappear. It transfers. Some of it moves south into the eyebrows, where it immediately abandons all respect for zoning laws. One…
Outrage Travels Fast, Context Takes Time: Why the Internet’s Scariest Claims Are Half-True
There are certain words on the internet that can make a man sit upright before he has even finished his coffee: Congress, corporations, eminent domain, profit. Put all four in the same sentence and you hardly need punctuation. The blood pressure will…
When the Past Returns Uninvited: Why Remembering Isn’t the Same as Remaining
There are moments when the past returns without being invited. A song.The smell of rain on warm pavement.A particular kind of afternoon light.A voice remembered so clearly that for a second the years between seem unreasonable. Memory does that. It does…
Finding Peace in a Loud World: The Power of Turning Down the Noise and Living Small
There are mornings when the world seems to gather beyond the windows like a great weather-beaten house upon the moor, every chimney breathing warnings into a gray sky, every unseen room harboring some fresh quarrel, calamity, prophecy, or grievance,…