“The danger of mythology—not just Classical myth, but all myth, from Norse to Japanese to African to Native American—is that it is so deep-rooted in the contemporary cultures to which it is ancestral…

“Perhaps, there’s a need to revisit another category of heroism: virtuous action and extraordinary bravery that arises out of something other than adherence to a personal code or ruined chivalric hierarchy, or to…

“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…

“We are one. We share one fate with other people and with non-human organisms. This essay provides additional evidence as I attempt to drive home this important point. A headline in the 26…

“After checking our IDs at three separate security points, being sniffed by dogs, and passing through two metal detectors, the hundred or so assembled for my tour finally walked up the steps of…

“The C-word has been around for centuries. The Oxford English Dictionary traces it back to 13th-century London, where you could find ‘Gropecunte Lane,’ a street name, whose modern spelling drops the extraneous e,…

“It is, for me, a kind of prayer. Digging in the soil, mixing with my hands old, dead, and depleted soil with new, dark and saturated, enriched with compost soil. It is so…

“I still have a number of keepsakes of her, my feminine me. When I open myself to being vulnerable and discover it’s not as awful as I’ve been told for most of my…

“Otto’s name for the corner of the basement where my desk is located was the German ‘Kabuff,’ but that word implies a dark, dusty studio, and my stateside kabuff is ‘a clean, well-lighted…

“On that day that now seems so long ago, I watched as Republicans and Democrats rose to sing Carter’s praises (among them the sons of former president Gerald Ford and former VP Walter…