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…
Van Gogh for Winter Groundhogs
Is it wrong to pity the groundhog? I spent my first few years on St. Peter’s Church Road learning to hate the hairy, low-slung varmints. I armed myself against them. I reacquainted myself with the art of shooting. My practice targets were printed with enemy...
Ronald Reagan, Titan and Enigma
The one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan has been a moment for the celebration of a very popular president and conservative icon, but also for an assessment of the man and his legacy more than two decades after he left the White House. Unlike the...
Eternal Youth? Not So Much.
As the awkward demographic bulge known as the “Baby Boomers” edges ever closer to retirement and bulging old age, there’s been an acceleration in the science of longevity. It’s easy to see why. According to the latest studies, the average life...
Writers Without Borders
Back in the Dark Ages, when Shana and I were planning our wedding, we were often asked, “Where are you registered?” We’re not really fancy-china-and-napery people, but we understood that registering for wedding gifts solved a practical problem for...
A Thom Casey Schimpflexikon
First rule of journalism: draw your reader in with a catchy, but informative headline. Avoid difficult, foreign, or obscure words, such as “schimpflexikon.” Rule two: be straightforward, factual, and direct. Rule three: If someone says “Stop!”...
The Shape of Districts to Come
On a clear day, I can see the 9th Congressional District from our back porch. Actually, I can see it any time I care to look west, except for days when Shermans Creek is shrouded in fog. The 9th District may be a couple thousand feet away, on the other side of Route...
Things We Knew that Just Weren’t So
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has taken a lot of heat for his evasive explanation during a February, 2002 press briefing, in which he used the seemingly nonsensical phrase “unknown unknowns” to address the lack of evidence that the...
Gauging the Effectiveness of an Earmark
A few weeks ago, when Shermans Creek was already swollen with snowmelt, we had one of those big rainstorms that seem determined to wash winter right down the drain. We got about three inches in a single day. By early afternoon, the creek began to flood. An errand took...
Did You Find the Squirrel?
There are small mysteries of homeownership, and then there are large ones. A small mystery might be why, for instance, a kitchen sink chooses the night of a big party to start leaking, or why a particular nail in a particular floorboard keeps popping up, no matter how...
Many Laptops Make Light Work
In January, in my column “Beware of Greeks Bearing Spam,” I wrote of spam attacks, one of the perils of the brave new World Wide Web. The solution, in my case, was one of those “Captcha” filters, which makes anyone who wishes to email me from...
A Modern Captive of Native History
In 1808, when the freshly hewn logs in our living room on St. Peters Church Road were first starting to check and darken, a book was published just over Blue Mountain that would become a huge success. The book was Loudon’s Indian Narratives, and it boasted a...
Hugh Gibson’s Five Years Among the Indians
Last week, I wrote about Indian stories, a wildly popular genre of literature in Colonial times, and specifically about a famous collection of these stories entitled Loudon’s Indian Narratives, which was published in Carlisle in 1808. I mentioned that the editor...
Fewer Bugs, Less Greece, and Make the Jokes More Obvious.
Last May, when I sat down to write the fifty-second weekly installment of “Up at the Creek,” I reflected on my first year as an op-ed columnist. I tried to claim that the year-end review was about improving the work, but looking back on the piece, I seem...
“If You Ever Want to see Your Mushroom Alive…”
Chad Shuman had just dropped three tons of stone dust with surgical precision next to our catalpa tree. As the dust settled and the startled warblers burst back into song, we started talking mushrooms. Morels, to be specific. It was my favorite kind of Perry...
A City of Conscience on the Mississippi
It has been an unusually wet spring, and the creeks and rivers of Perry County have spilled their banks more than once, but we haven’t seen anything like the record-breaking juggernaut of the mighty Mississippi. The recent flooding in the Mid-West has been...