Thinking and Writing in ¾ Time: A Few Thoughts on Jimmy...
There are many surprising things about getting older. As I sit on the cusp of my late thirties, staring at that blinking cultural landmark...
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...
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...
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...
The Facebookification of Local Politics: Extending the Wall of the Bathroom...
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...
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.
Blowing Up the Bert: The Outside Story
Two years ago I witnessed the abrupt transformation of an old and distinguished literary magazine. For the people doing the transforming, of course, the...
AirSpace Colonizes the College Town
As a localist and a voracious reader, it is only natural that I would be deeply devoted to my local independent bookstore. Here in...
Naftzger Park, Planning, and the Problem of “Growth”
Naftzger Memorial Park was a small, pleasantly run-down city block of trees, grass, and benches, near the center of downtown Wichita, KS, just a...
“Anything Less than Ownership is Unacceptable!”
Many Americans do not need a data visualization to see that their places, especially their cities, are sharply divided along racial lines. Even so,...