The Barbershop 250

A person cannot multitask while performing it; instead, all else disappears, and only the person for whom one is caring in this physical way remains the focus for several minutes

If we are willing to listen, we might be able to learn what we are listening for. Not just a deeper connection to our humanity, or a meditative appreciation of…

The one observation on which all the Brothers focused with most interest, though, was what I might describe as the words beyond words. These poems are not just about a…

Perhaps most importantly, however, we need to return to encouraging each other to keep commitments,

There is not a lot of time for sentimentality when you’re in the final week of madly preparing to list your empty, but very much “lived-in,” house

There are still places that remember themselves. Whose inhabitants know them intimately and love them deeply.

anyone sharing my Germanic inclinations—pecca fortitor!—is likely to embark upon the challenge.

He seems pleased that he’s protected me and mine. Or maybe ours.

Here, then, is my homecoming of the imagination: to hold the past bright in memory, and to love also the saplings and the weeds of my exile.

This year I’m renewing my commitment to the sentence.

Older and wiser, I have long learned that for all the times I wanted to visit far-away places, there is no place like home.

The reflection looked like a vintage motion picture, only without those stilted movements.

No question about it: For writers like me, who would like nothing more than to do our own writing and thinking with dignity and intellectual honesty, it’s becoming harder to…

However, the widespread association of these events with the closing of the Hotel Harrington has overshadowed the preceding history of the hotel

Because of coffee’s popularity, coffee shops can draw people together like very few other modern institutions.

We are desperately in need of a collective vision of what it means to love our homes.

We can gain something from the Ike Carters and the student DJs of our communities: a human connection, a community connection—not to mention great music.

My addiction, rather, is of a more respectable variety.

College football is a local endeavor that should be enacted by those with a connection to that place.

Holding the letters was a delicate experience, noting the brittle nature of the paper, being careful not to let them tear at the aged folds, and yet the blue ink,…

I mourn the storm. It’s far from over. But I also do not mourn without hope.

Automobiles shield you from the outside world, its sounds, its colors. But on my bike, I encounter my environment directly.

In other words, knowledge and reason are no match for our gargantuan vices. The giants passion and pride cannot be held at bay by the ignorance that prevails in public…

But our culture’s celebration of Halloween suggests that we know yet more. We sense not only that we are dust and will return to it; we also sense that life…