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…
Ignore that gentle rapping. It’s just the raven.
Do you know where you were the night of January 28th, 2001? I can tell you where I was: walking south on St. Paul Street in Baltimore as the city erupted in fireworks, the powerful concussions punctuated every now and then by the clatter of celebratory gunfire....
A CSI Moment at the Dining Room Table
Any contractor worth his salt will tell you: when floors and walls are open, take plenty of pictures! This is especially true in an old house, where stud and joist bays can hide all manner of sins: frayed knob and tube wiring; cracked cast-iron waste stacks;...
The Power of a Family Maxim
What kind of family has its own maxim? I remember asking myself the question as I flipped through my high school yearbook in 1984. There, among the senior pages, with their absurdly posed photographs; the long cliquish lists of “likes” and...
Cashing in on a Great Scientific Discovery
It’s been 60 years since James Watson and Francis Crick had their groundbreaking insight into the physical structure of DNA. Their model of the DNA molecule established its now-famous double-helix shape, and proposed, for the first time in history, the precise...
What to give the camel driver who has everything
Suddenly, we were on the hook for nomad gifts. I’d opened the door for it in one of my emails to Youssef, who was arranging our tour in Morocco, by writing, “I think we have everything we need, but we’re open to suggestions for any special items you...
A Letter from Our Man in Merzouga
Before we came to Morocco, I did a little homework -- too little, for someone visiting such an ancient and complex place as this, but as much as I could manage as I went about the business of detaching from my everyday life. As usual, my self-imposed assignment...
Getting the Royal Treatment in Fez
It was our last night in Fez. The next day, we’d be leaving Morocco, and we wanted to do something special for our superb guide, Youssef, and our stalwart driver, Mohammed. Youssef had booked us all a table at a fancy restaurant, the Palais la Médina,...
Note to self: write better notes to self.
I just finished up a note to my future self. I did it with an Extra Fine Point Sharpie, the tool of choice for such things, since Sharpie ink isn’t likely to wear off over time, and any Sharpie, even the Extra Fine Point version, makes big bold letters. This will be...
You Say, “Recession,” and I Say, “Depression”
In recent weeks, as the stock market has logged all-time highs, and leading economic indicators have suggested that the U.S. has nearly recovered from the Great Recession of 2007-2009, I’ve been thinking back to another recession -- my recession -- the recession of...
From the Annals of a Writer’s Distraction
When I was a young man, I suffered a young man’s distractions. An example: the year is 1990. I’m driving my beater of a Ford cargo van through the parking lot of a Star Market in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s summertime. The van is an oven, even with the windows...
Can you hear the frogs? How about now?
Of all the things I imagined doing on a starry spring night on St. Peters Church Road, Skyping with China wasn’t one of them. There we were on the back porch, under a pristine canopy of stars, the peepers going full tilt in the little pond, the glow of Harrisburg...
The Home of the Free and the Bomb
The night of the Boston Marathon bombing, Wenrui (“When-Ray”) our Chinese homestay student, got a worried phone call from her mother. This was perfectly understandable. The bombing was big news in China, and not just because one of the victims of the blast was a...
Arise sleeping lemons, for thy stew has come.
The gift had been sitting in a forgotten corner of the refrigerator for two and half years. And no, this wasn’t a case of poor kitchen hygeine. The refrigerator had been cleaned out several times since that long-ago Christmas. Countless containers of moldering...
“For country, mail, and Genevieve!”
On Tuesday morning, at midnight plus one second, somewhere in the labyrinthine switch matrix of the Amazon.com computing cloud, a zero became a one, and my new book, The Mighty Lalouche, officially went on sale. This is my first picture book, a collaboration with the...
The Timeless Song of the Unsung Hero
I remember monopolizing the office hours of one of my professors in graduate school, a well known British author, by filling the time with pretentious talk of the literary life -- as if we were somehow peers. Perhaps “monopolizing” isn’t the right word. There was...