Hubris
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Was Near-Term Extinction Unavoidable?
“It is not at all clear that humanity can be saved (or, for that matter, is worth saving). Evolution drives us to breed, drives to procreate, and drives us to accumulate material possessions.…
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Dogs in Snow
“Here is the dog planet at last where all is running/and sinking, rising and running again—/lessons in flight./To those mad glad beasts/all is cold and holy clouds/and certain sacred sky.”—Ashley Crout Speculative Friction…
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Legendary Beauty Across Rae’s Creek
“Rarely do the commentators and the golf writers remember to mention the source of that horticultural magnificence for which the Augusta National is rightly celebrated. When founders of the golf club, Bobby Jones…
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Is Tom There? Remembering My Brother
“‘Is Tom there?’ I can still hear my father mimicking the girls who used to call my teenage brother several times a day back in the mid-1940s. He would lift his own voice…
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Easter Eggs & The Spheres of Spring: Political Correctness
“Ravitch had gained access to a vast glossary compiled from ‘bias guidelines issued by major educational publishers and state agencies’ for any writer preparing texts or tests for K-12 students. Presumably, with this…
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Frogmore & The Gold Eagle
“I was, let’s say, witness to a number of amazing experiences during these months of recovery, of realignment, of rebirth. There were escapades of utterly insane, reckless high speed chases through farmers’ fields;…
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Two Poems by John Gallaher
“Any one of these days can be the new first day, Day One, where things seem to be going well. No problem. Any missed understanding can be beginner’s luck, it can be even…
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I Almost Left My Heart in San Francisco
“I, being a devout sensualist, looking for thrills wherever I may unearth one, have become adept at switching perspectives, a mental skill I practice in order to tolerate the occasionally intolerable. It occurred…
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James Dickey: The Toad in the Word-Garden
“He was old when last I saw him. He’d quit fighting the mirror. His hair was clipped short, unlike the Cinnabon concoction of the 70s. No more that hopeful objet trouvé swirling over…
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Sic Transit: On the Love of Portable Plants
“Cut flowers are often left at gravesites and at locations where sudden death has taken place. Their cutting and consequent wilting provides a symbolic parallel to the ephemerality of human existence and of…