It was the trial of the year in Moab, Utah. The courtroom was packed full by Ten in the morning, November 18th of 1921. Tensions had been brewing a long time between the cattlemen of Southeast Utah and the encroaching…
“After twenty-six weeks of sunlight and stars, wind and sky and golden sand, I want to hear once more the crackle of clamshells on the floor of the bar in the Clam Broth House in Hoboken. I long for a…
It was early afternoon and the grocery store was bustling. The cashier’s name was Candy. Candy had her long white hair smoothed back into a low ponytail. Thin and agile, she wore blue jeans and her regulation-red vest. She cast…
You’re either a person who can sit still or a person who can’t. A person who loves what you can already see, or one who wonders what you might see around the bend. Probably the former type lives the more…
The main thing to remember about capitalism is that companies will always try to make you feel better about buying their product. It’s easy to be seduced by advertising—believing that buying one type of soda pop makes you a better…
What is the story we can tell about ourselves, to ourselves? Lewis Mumford, the 20th century historian and philosopher, said, “Every culture lives within its dream.” Like dreamers, we can’t know how–or especially why–we came to be here. Like dreamers,…
They aren’t called “Trailer Parks” anymore, I’m told. The phrase has negative connotations. “Mobile Home Communities” is better, though still not ideal. “Manufactured Home Communities” is preferred. Which is fine. But everyone I’ve known who lives in a Trailer Park…
When one speaks of hope in the middle of America, one tends to refer to it existing in “pockets.” The small population of family farms are pockets of hope. The few towns that have held onto their local hospitals, albeit…
I’ve spent most of my life on the edges of farm country. As a kid, in South Dakota, I knew the cadence of farm-speak, cribbed from the little 4H and FFA members who ruled the elementary school show-and-tell presentations, overheard…
What do we fear more—dying or being forgotten? My father, who was always a private man, died a little more than 7 years ago. I don’t know if he worried about being forgotten—that’s one of the many questions I never…