“All my life, in any place,/ for no reason, my grandfather’s 280 acres call out my name. Free and clear./Sister Gary, Gay, Gaynette. But all those stale breaths have gone somewhere/else. Cool dirt,…

“Conventional oil peaked in the United States in 1970. It was clear the US was no longer the world’s swing supplier in 1972. Shortly thereafter, OPEC was formed to ensure that political power…

“Back in the late 1970s, I landed what seemed the perfect job for one who likes himself better when hanging out with wild things in wild places than when with others of his…

“Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in the spring of 1949, less than a year before its author’s death, in January 1950. In a statement published in Life magazine, addressed to the head of the…

“Does your life feel like a microcosm of what’s going on in the greater world? That everything that could go wrong is going wrong? Nothing as dramatic or appalling as being targeted by…

“For me, the most evocative human sense involves what comes in at the ear. And one sound in particular has the power to conjure up my entire, sweet childhood, from my first moment…

“Have I described to you, Dear Reader, the perfect, summer sweetness (that of a warm berry, fresh-picked from the bush, in July) of many of Addison’s cartoons? I believe it is the single…

 “Most of the Athenians I know won’t even look at these people. They just ignore them until they go away or, if they don’t go away, yell at them, so I feel like…

“These days, though, I leave the lavender alone./I prefer brushing their velvety leaves accidentally, releasing/    their soapy scent, summoning the bees/whose hind claws are so compacted with pollen/they appear to wear tiny…

“I’ll cut to the chase. The gist of Becker’s short essay is contained within the latter half of a single paragraph: ‘All human systems are enormous trash fires. Every single one, no matter…