The Barbershop 250
Solar’s Dirty Secret
In 2017 I moved back home to Livingston County after serving seven years in the United States Marine Corps. A father, a veteran, and a millennial, I spent the last…
Toward a Somewhere Suburb
In his 2017 book The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics, British commentator David Goodhart seeks to understand the recent populist moments that have shaped the…
The Power of Place
Review of “The Power of Place: KU Alumni Artists” at the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, KS. The exhibit runs through June 30, 2019. There is a line in…
Modest Proposal: Tobacco is Like Love
Among the legion of unjustly forgotten historical figures there’s an eccentric soldier and failed composer named Captain Tobias Hume. Unless you play the viola da gamba or you’re fond of Polish…
Rock the Block
It is a cloudless July day in Connecticut—the kind of day that keeps people rooted in this place despite its long winters and high taxes. From houses up and down the…
No Chairlift, No Spandex, No Problem: The Rustic Virtues of X-C Ski
During the fall color tour, we often drive to a ski resort near my home in southwest Michigan. It’s about the only time my family visits the place, which goes…
Monopoly House Rules
I love board games. Truth be told, I am a sucker for games of all types, but there are a number of aspects to playing a board game that simply cannot…
Smiling Prophet of Tape and Glue
If you watch a regional sportscast on TV, or some similar out-of-the-way cable fare, you’ll eventually see a commercial featuring a smiling, chubby man wearing casual clothes and speaking in…
Yellow Vests Run Out of Gas
When asked to share my thoughts on the recent yellow vests protests, I initially demurred, stating that is was simply another case of the French being the French (about benefits)…
Local Identity and Cities In-Between
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] 2018 has been a busy year for those of us who aspire to--or are at least somewhat animated by--localism here in Wichita, KS, the 50th-most…
The Appeal of a Well-Simmered Life
It’s 9 a.m. on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which seems like a reasonable, civilized time to make apple butter. Yet in my mother-in-law’s farmhouse kitchen, 9 a.m. might as well…
Funding College Graduates to Come Home
Sacred cows exist in almost every industry and sector in America, and the world of philanthropy is no exception. Within the realm of community or place-based philanthropy, one such powerful…
In Pursuit of Jimmie Ricker’s Farm
It was hard to resist. John Harrigan’s portrait of Great North Woods stump farmer Jimmie Ricker in our local newspaper compelled me to drive two hundred miles north from Manchester,…
Losing (Some of) the Local Commons
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The annual Prairie Festival at The Land Institute just outside Salina, KS, was held two months ago, but it's been much on my mind for…
The Local Game
The baseball season has ended. For fans just about everywhere outside of Boston, this will signal either melancholy or relief. Or possibly disgust. Melancholy if your season ended unsatisfactorily, relief…
Dirt Thick with Known Dead
While wandering in a used bookstore this summer, I picked up Donald Hall’s String Too Short to be Saved. I enjoyed Hall’s stories about his grandparents’ farm (the book’s title…
Food and “the job of getting it there”
In Charles Frazier’s 1997 novel Cold Mountain, a minister’s daughter decides after her father’s death to remain on their western North Carolina farm, rather than return to the genteel life…
Thinking and Writing in ¾ Time: A Few Thoughts on Jimmy Buffett
There are many surprising things about getting older. As I sit on the cusp of my late thirties, staring at that blinking cultural landmark a few years down the road,…
Mama Gets a Bugle
It is a mark of the middle class to maintain a low-grade prowl on eBay or Craigslist for some odd thing. My prowl was for a bugle. The desire was…
On the Beat in the City of Hospitality
On my way to work at the local weekly newspaper, driving down East Mansion Street and then West Michigan Avenue in downtown Marshall, I pass three people I know. One…
Messing About in Boats
In the nautical classic The Wind in the Willows, Ratty tells his new acquaintance Mole, “‘Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply…
The Facebookification of Local Politics: Extending the Wall of the Bathroom Stall
In 2014, Cambridge Analytica used an app called thisisyourdigitallife to surreptitiously obtain data from 50 million Facebook accounts. They then used all of this information in 2016 to help Donald Trump’s…
On Being Less than We Are
What you miss out on by not making the climb is too great a loss on such a morning as this.
