For more than five years, I wrote a weekly opinion column for The Perry County Times and its affiliated papers in southcentral Pennsylvania. I saw this as a way to give something back to the rural community where we have a little farm called Pencil Creek, but the columns become an important part of my writing rhythm. In the world of novel-writing, where six months’ work can vanish in an instant and completion dates are reckoned in years, it’s not a bad thing to have a weekly deadline.
From time to time, when I wrote on a topic of regional or national interest, I published one of these pieces in a larger newspaper, but mostly they’re a reflection of my state of mind in any given week. Not to mention a launching-pad for my curiosity!
Here’s a complete archive of my Op-Eds. There are over 300 of them. Perhaps you’ll find one or two that agree with you…
On the Shortest Day of Heilagmanoth
This morning, at oh five thirty Universal Time – or twelve thirty AM, Eastern Standard Time – the sun reached its southernmost point below the celestial equator on its ecliptic. In other words, today is the Winter Solstice. The Winter Solstice means many...
2011: Another Year Up at the Creek
Writing on deadline is good way to get lost in the weeds. Every seven days, you stare at a blank page and try to set down what amazed you that week; what exasperated you; what filled you with hope; what filled you with rage. It’s only at the end of the year,...
Toyota Interruptus, and Other Winter Woes
It’s January, the season of New Year’s resolutions. One of mine is to spend more time in the truck. I love my truck, but in the dead of winter, I have to force myself to drive it. It’s not as good on slippery roads as the old Suburu; it guzzles fuel;...
Democracy and Other Long-running Experiments
The Clarendon Dry Pile at Oxford University is a strange, candelabrum-looking device under a tall glass dome. The Guinness Book of World Records lists it as the “world’s most durable battery,” and credits it with “ceaseless...
The Ghost of a Skulking Cat
I didn’t notice anything special about the brick as it was going in. It was just a brick, like the hundreds of other salvaged bricks I’d gotten from Ben King, compliments of the demolished County Home in Loysville. It was heavy. It was red. It was...
Episode VI: The Internet Strikes Back
It was the kind of transaction you’d expect in an open market in the heart of Baltimore. My supplier -- let’s call him “Produce Guy -- ” had just slipped a little something extra in the bag with the tomatoes and the fresh-squeezed blood orange...
A Fight to the Death Between Good and…Good
At the moment, I’m operating in a media blackout. No television; no newspaper; no Web. Why? Because about seven hours ago, halfway around in the world, two men stepped onto a tennis court to enact the latest chapter in one of the great sporting rivalries of our...
Voices Lost – and Found – in the Wilderness
Students of Otto von Bismarck, whose titanic personality and political genius were largely responsible for creating the modern German state in the 19th century, were surely thrilled last week to learn that the only known recording of Bismarck’s voice has been...
The Way They Mark Themselves Indelibly
First, a little bragging. Last week, my nephew, Clayton Krollman, of Burke, Virginia, was accepted into the honors architecture program at the University of Maryland. Go, Clay! This was huge news for him, the culmination of years of study and extracurricular work....
Chilling with Our New Robotic Overlord
Two surprises came in the mail this week. One was an oil bill for nearly seven hundred dollars. The other was a gift from an old college friend who’s been inventing things out in Silicon Valley. First, the oil bill. Seven hundred dollars is a lot to spend...
Nina Watanya Cicilla
On Monday, I had a preview of what it’s going to feel like the first time we give our little Nina the keys to a car. I handed her a loaded gun. In terms of teenage safety, a gun is a much better bet than a car. According to the most recent statistics from the...
Salamander Fur and Other Wonder Products
This winter has been unusually mild, but it still proved fatal to our fifty-year-old oil burner in Baltimore. We knew its days were numbered, but we were hemming and hawing, endlessly crunching numbers as we tried to decide whether to switch from crazy-expensive,...
The Outsourcing of Our Deepest Accomplishments
This is a golden time for anyone interested in the mysteries of the deep. A new space race has broken out -- in inner space this time, not outer. The goal is to be the first to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, a 1600 mile-long subduction zone off the coast of New...
A Quest to Be the Last Man Standing
Fifty years ago, when my grandparents built their dream house, they included a bonus room, a musty concrete shell under the porch, accessible only from the basement. When kids were around, they called it the “wine cellar,” but the adults knew it by its...
Here’s One of Me, Sitting at My Desk
In my experience, writing and vacationing don't mix. The point of a vacation is to leave your work behind. That's hard to do if you carry your office around in your head. It's not like you can trade in your work head for the vacation head in your closet, the one...