…Sometimes I Need a Witness

Peo­ple say, “You look younger.” Or, “Have you met some­one?” Or, “If you keep look­ing younger every time I see you it’s gonna get weird in a few years.” I don’t know what to tell them, except that it’s hard not to live a lit­tle more fully when you spend a lot of time with ideas that are beg­ging you to do so. […]

You Set Me Right: Favorite Songs of the Aughts

For most of The Aughts I com­piled my favorite songs onto CDs and gave them to a few friends as Christ­mas presents. My tastes skew sharply toward acoustic folk music so there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of any­thing that I like. A few of my peo­ple love it too, though, and they tend to be less dili­gent (obses­sive) about find­ing the new stuff than I am. That’s where I come in. I claim no author­ity. These are just the songs that opened my eyes the widest from 2000–2009. Because I’d never stop if I didn’t impose some kind of limit, I have picked songs that fit on one CD (plus some hon­or­able mentions). […]

The Better Edwards

I’ve met pre­cisely one per­son who knew who Edward R. Mur­row was and was also famil­iar with the Twi­light t-shirts. (Thanks, inci­den­tally, for pre­serv­ing my faith in human­ity.) The rest of you, use the box of wires and lights to which you are attached and edify yourselves. […]