Katherine Dalton
Katherine Dalton has worked as a magazine editor, freelance feature writer and book editor. She started in journalism in college, working at The Yale Literary Magazine during most of its controversial few years as a national magazine of opinion based at Yale. She then worked briefly at Harper’s magazine in New York, and more extensively at Chronicles magazine in Illinois, where she was a contributing editor for many years. She has has written for various publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the University Bookman, and was a contributor to Wendell Berry: Life and Work and Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto. She lives in her native Kentucky.
Articles by Katherine Dalton
No National ID Tags for Buttercup–Yet
Since the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) has been discussed on this site by Jerry Salyer and Susan McWilliams, I want to mention that last month the program (after a $120+…
Some Children Must Be Left Behind
Will raising the legal dropout age teach troubled kids anything? Probably not.
On Friendship
Most of us require an extended social network to keep us mentally and morally awake, and for a laugh, too, and if these friends are people we can weave in…
The Roots of Originality
It is only our own town or neighborhood that is specific enough, and someday knowable enough, to enable a capable writer's imagination to imagine it clear and whole.
Going to Bethlehem
Henry County, Kentucky. Most families who celebrate Christmas have their own favorite Christmas traditions. We like to go to Bethlehem. Bethlehem (Kentucky, six miles from us) is a place too…
Localism with Teeth
“I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing one another by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting one another.” --Thomas…
Two Degrees of Separation
Henry County, Kentucky. Last week here we buried our 97-year-old neighbor, a woman named Thelma Chilton Moody Clark. Until this spring she had never been sick, “and I don't know…
Back to School (Two Centuries Back)
Ah, September. The enervating heat of August is less, and school starts up again with all the hopefulness and energy of a new academic year. I still feel the year…
Beewilderment
Henry County, Kentucky. When the massive dieoffs of commercial bees first became evident a little less than three years ago, what is now called Colony Collapse Disorder was national news. …
Nomen est Omen
Henry County, Kentucky. If your name is your fate, what does the future hold for Rylynn Shikaela Novaleigh? There she is in the paper, age one, wrapped in the…
My Own Little Corner of the Right
Rome, Kentucky. This week my dear Cousin Kate is otherwise occupied Marie Antoinetting around that patch of pigweed and thistle she calls her garden, and has decided not to post…