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…
Wandering in the Hall of the Giants
There are things you should never do in New Mexico. For instance, get thrown from a horse in the middle of the Gila Wilderness, the way Shana was on the second day of our trip. Even if you land well, you're liable to twist an ankle. Or step heavily on the rocks as...
Coming Soon to the Heavens Near You
Tonight at 8:41, something interesting is going to happen in the night sky. If the weather’s good, you might want to step outside a few minutes early, find a comfortable spot away from the light, and let your eyes adjust. Look to the north northwest. The object is...
Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises: art or propaganda?
These days, Japan seems to be in freefall. An aging population; decades of economic doldrums; an energy policy in chaos after the Fukushima disaster — it's no wonder Prime Minister Abe is indulging in regional saber-rattling. You could say that the country has entered...
Five years before the masthead
It's rare to be able to trace the birth of an idea to an exact date, but in this case, it was April 13th, 2009. I was flying home from a family trip to Portugal, wedged in the center seat of the middle row of the airplane. The flight was noisy; there were wailing...
Welcoming Big Brother into your home
A few days before our daughter was born, we learned that our home security was woefully inadequate. This was the late Nineties, in Baltimore. We'd owned our house for less than a year, and the hard-wired system we'd inherited from the previous owners seemed like a...
Bad for business, but good for the soul
Whenever I start moaning about the writing life -- which happens a lot -- my friend Garret is ready with a mantra: “You're entitled to the work, not to the fruits thereto.” It may sound vaguely biblical, but the origin of this saying, which encapsulates so much wisdom...
From homophone to homophobe in one easy step
Typos bother me -- a lot. But there are worse things. You don't have to be a professional writer to be a stickler for the grammar that used to be called “correct” or “proper,” but that now goes by the much less judgmental moniker “normative.” “Normative” suggests that...
Sir Wilfred Thesiger and the roots of Marshlands
I've recently been asked: where did my novel Marshlands come from? In 2008, when I first began to think seriously about writing a novel about the excesses of modern empire, we were 5 years into the military occupation of Iraq, with no real end in sight. We were also 5...
This does knot knead two bee pane full
In the past, I've been known to apologize to Susan Marcus, who reads these columns out loud for Vision Resources of Central PA. There was the time I used a late medieval Hebrew term without providing any guidance on pronunciation. Susan was forced to guess how to say...
Slow progress on the road to fitness
In early February, I started a sweaty experiment in the privacy of my own home. Three times a week, without exception, no matter how I feel or what's happening in my busy day, I change into t-shirt and shorts, strap on a pair of old sneakers, and slink upstairs to the...
A modern caliphate in name only
War in Iraq is in the news again, although minus the definite article. This isn't “the war in Iraq;” i.e., our war there, George W. Bush's disastrous military adventure that started in 2003 and ended, at least officially, in December of 2011, having cost nearly 5000...
Is this a game, or is it real?
We weren't terribly surprised -- although we were a bit disappointed -- when our daughter slunk out of the family room. We'd stumbled on a golden oldie: WarGames, the 1983 science fiction thriller starring an absurdly young Matthew Broderick. The futuristic wonders...
The gravitas of certain summer games
It's summertime, the season of lawn sports. As anyone following the World Cup, or Wimbledon, or the PGA Tour can tell you, there's magic in the trajectory of a humble sphere, be it kicked, slammed, or driven. Sport gives us a vision of world where human agency goes...
The primacy of matter over thought
It's a scorching July day in Baltimore, but here in the back offices of the Baltimore Museum of Art, where climate control is practically a religion, the air is cool, crisp, and smells of ozone. My elbows are resting on a chilled black slab of a table. Propped in...
She picks the fruit, then becomes the harvest
After weeks of waiting and speculation, it finally happens: the wild black raspberries are in. Plump ripe berries dot the landscape from St. Peters Church Road all the way down to Shermans Creek. We ready the kitchen for jam-making, and Shana suits up to go picking....