In human culture — I suppose in life itself — there is a centrifugal force towards multiplicity and then an opposite centripetal force towards unity which means dissolving or engulfing those multiplicities.  So the terrible forces of war, whether you consider the second World War that created the baby boom or the Vietnam War that splintered society, both...

Archibald Strachan, my great-grandfather, born in 1850, was a successful Finnish carpenter in Scotland with three children.  He gave it all up to come to South Dakota to homestead.  Why?  It wasn’t in pursuit of money.  He was a great admirer of Thomas Jefferson and believed that land ownership was freedom.  Once arrived, he built a house full of windows so...

FROM PAUL: Won’t be long now, the geese will arrive, thought I heard some yesterday, but it was only exuberant chickens. Even before there’s any open water on the creek, they’ll be entertaining and serenading me as they crash land, slide and tumble on the ice, to scout out and lay claim to the choicest nesting area. I have to think these are the same geese or offspring...

One of my great pleasures is raggedy old paperback textbooks in arcane fields like Cultural Anthropology.  It used to be that people told stories about other people without dragging a lot of analysis and politics into it.  They just laid out the givens of the ecology, some history, and then gave you vignettes.  “Other Fields, Other Grasshoppers” (1977) is edited...