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…
That intense little man in the hotel kitchen
It wasn't long ago that picking up my daughter from school involved car seats and juice boxes, but these days, the conversations on the ride home are getting interesting. Take yesterday, for example. She mentioned she'd had plenty to say in history class. “Oh,...
Two small hops for a lander; one great leap for Europe
The world watched in awe last week as ESA, the European Space Agency, successfully landed a probe on Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the comet also known as 67P. The landing didn't go exactly as planned. A retro-rocket failed to fire, as did the harpoons that were designed to...
Olshan’s Top Ten Gifts of 2014
Black Friday, that annual Olympiad of consumerism, is once again upon us. And once again, I'm fighting back with a list of holiday gifts plucked from the pages of the columns I wrote this year. All of them -- save one -- can be ordered from the comfort of your kitchen...
Joints of rubber, tendons of steel
When our daughter was very small -- kindergarten small -- she announced that she wanted to play the cello. This was a surprise to her mother and me, since neither of us plays an instrument. On the other hand, we did meet as singers in high school, and for both of us,...
The Nimrod in the next tree stand over
Once again, in my middle age, I'm finally catching up with something many children in Perry County experience by the time they're ten -- in this case, hunting from a tree stand. The stand in question belongs to my neighbor Buddie, who has hunted successfully from it...
Life with the dull bits cut out
Like many do-it-yourselfers, I find myself turning to Youtube fairly often when I embark on a project, whether it's replacing a solenoid in my freezer or butchering a deer. It doesn't matter if the footage is grainy, the sound fuzzy, or the accent nearly...
Out with the new and in with the old
In this season of rebirth, as we attend annual celebrations and ceremonies that can seem at once familiar and strange, I'm reminded of an ancient paradox: the Ship of Theseus. It's said that the Athenians, keen to preserve the famous ship of the hero Theseus for...
Unfolding the mysteries of science and art
Postal workers pose a special problem for end-of-year gift-giving: all sorts of rules govern the things they're allowed to accept. Carriers are allowed to receive gifts worth up to $20 at a time, but not cash or cash equivalents, like gift cards, and never more than...
Whatever you do, don’t break that TV
This is going to sound judgmental, but it really isn’t. The previous owners of our place on St. Peters Church Road used the property as a dump. We knew this from the start, and what’s more, we’d been warned that there was very limited garbage pickup service in the...
A message from Paul Rivoire, hero of the year 5795
In these days of talk-radio bloviators and tin-can patriots, it's easy to forget that the so-called Founding Fathers, a loose affiliation of brilliant, brave, flawed, and privileged white men who laid the foundations of our nation, were actual human beings. That point...
A space walk in the mountains of California
I used to think of rock climbers as thrill-seeking hipsters who risked their lives in ever more dangerous situations just to keep the adrenaline flowing. No more. Last week, I tuned into the coverage of Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, two Americans who were...
The crowd-sourced prosthetic
This has been a season of cautionary tales about the abuse of technology. Just in the last few months, Russian hackers figured out how to get ATMs to cough up stolen millions; North Korea malwared its way into Hollywood; and Syrian terrorists produced a series of...