“Thanks for getting me out here, babe.” My voice is excited but gruff. “I didn’t get much sleep at all last night.” I’m feeling the effects of our 2021 all-day New Year’s celebration. Despite some muscle aches, moderate anxiety, and a tad bit of brain fog, I’m happy to beContinue Reading
Joel Agee, the son At age 41, Agee had suffered the first of two heart attacks, the second of which would kill him when he was just forty-six, having recently completed his novel A Death in the Family before his death. Agee was contemptuous of moderation, insisting on living lifeContinue Reading
James Agee, the father I’ll start with a blanket statement: Most, if not all, writers are SOBs (including women authors). Take William Faulkner, for example, whose drinking bouts were legendary and whose daughter, on the occasion of her tenth birthday, begged Faulkner to stop drinking for just one day. ToContinue Reading
“All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.” from Orlando by Virginia Woolf Love can be extreme. We labor over deep affections, encourage hopeful prospects, and bend over backwards. Passions rise, hormones rage, and dopamine surges. Eyes are star-filled and grins are wide and heady. Sometimes, love incurs disastrousContinue Reading
Appalachian Spring by composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990), is one of, if not the most iconic and recognizable pieces of American music. Full Stop. The vast majority of people these days don’t know the proper title and may just think of it as the old Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.” Which, asContinue Reading
My son and I sometimes meet a friend at the park and have lunch together. She’s as cute as a button. Here she is: We named her Chippy because the first time we saw her, she came to our picnic table and we fed her chips (baked, no salt).1)For futureContinue Reading
One fine autumn day, a few months after my father passed away, my mother and I sat at the old cherrywood dining table and waxed nostalgic over old photographs. Like always, I soaked up every word and story, relishing even the stories I’ve heard over and over – about soContinue Reading
. . . Climate change, by the very nature of the problem, is global in scale. Global change is the most complex issue facing humanity as a species – not as a system of government, not as a national debate, but as a threat to the future of organized humanContinue Reading
The loss of wild spaces happens slowly. An acre here, a hectare of deforestation there, is hardly noticeable day by day. As decades roll on, however, the loss of wilderness is vivid. Further, the global implications of this loss, as evident from the climate irregularities of this 21st century, areContinue Reading
James Agee’s “Knoxville: Summer 1915” may arguably be the most beautiful prose poem in English. A prose poem is a hybrid sharing characteristics of both prose and poetry. A striking example would be the Old Testament book of Psalms found in the King James translation of the Bible. “Knoxville: SummerContinue Reading