Hiram Walker is a motherless young slave in Virginia, fathered by the lord of a plantation that is clinging to shreds of grace even as the land plays out from overplanting with tobacco, half-brother to the plantation’s dissolute heir. Read more
As the daily read of crucial issues — racial injustice, the pandemic, the political divide, the battered environment, the brutal economy — expands and deepens, I keep looking for those moments of insight and clarity that prompt a silent … Read more
It was the verb in this sentence in “Braiding Sweetgrass,” a reissued book of nature essays by Robin Wall Kimmerer, that captivated me. It’s a strong, active verb, so the sentence … Read more
In a work-related Zoom meeting recently, a colleague referred to Reddit as “lightning in a bottle.” I’m not entirely sure what that meant, despite her best efforts to explain it to my dial-up mind, but it made me want … Read more
When looking for advice, writers shouldn’t be picky; sometimes even a fictional cannibal will serve. When NBC aired a series about Hannibal Lecter, the psychiatrist who moonlights as a serial killer — or maybe it’s the other way around … Read more
It’s not possible for the everyday reader to know who wrote that sentence. The lead writer who was pulling feeds from several reporters in the field? One of the field reporters who had scratched it in theirs notes? An … Read more
They are no longer novel, these personal stories the front lines of the coronavirus. Reporters are barred from the kind of immersion that allows eye-witness accounts from that expanding front. We can interview people who are at the heart … Read more
My wife, Karen, and I happen to have for more than a decade a good Catholic pastor, Msgr. Robert Gibbons. Among his many gifts, he is a news junkie and is endlessly fascinated with language and literature. (He is … Read more
When I came across this line, it was in a recent interview between Esquire politics blogger Charles P. Pierce and U.S. Senator Angus King, an Independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats. The context, of … Read more
