Apple Slump: an American Tragicomedy
Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, housed and fed three generations of her family—shored up the walls and filled the pantry with her words—and she did it with fierce determination and ironic wit.
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Dark and Light at the Same Time
Or, Schrödinger's cat plots her revenge.
At the Heart of Common Ground
It's been a while since you heard from Bread and Stories...I think about this space daily, but free time has been hard to carve out from workaday life. As a freelancer with two separate areas of consulting, sometimes I have to keep many balls in the air
Food’s Best Friend: Greta's Magic Dog Mush
My wife Greta is viscerally wracked by the sight of a snake. Any snake, garden-beneficent or not. Her rectum spasms and her heart lunges into her throat as if to block the scream that could alert the snake to her bite-worthy presence. She screams anyway and flees. Unless
Momma's Thicknin' Gravy
It sizzled the moment it touched the iron, filling the little kitchen with the smell of salt-cured pork and hardwood smoke. I was probably no more than six or seven years old, but I already knew what came next. Thicknin' gravy.
When Everything Was Possible
Reminiscing about his childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, my friend Larry said, "Back then, everything was possible." That wistful statement resonated far beyond its context. Back then—however far back you want to plant that bright flag of possibility in your or the nation's history—
Tea Biscuits and Sympathy
A chance to cheer on —and cheer up — a remarkable family.
The Machine Stops
“Beware of first-hand ideas!”
In Defense of Gruel
It's such an odd little word: short but drawn out, comical yet faintly sinister.
Hope on a Plate: the Power of Comfort Foods
I had craved the warming spices of the chai, but someone smiling at me with genuine warmth was the comfort I truly needed. In a world that often feels numbingly cold, comfort food and human community are both essential sources of warmth, and they are best served together.
Bittersweet Spring
Spring is time for feasts and festivals of renewal and rebirth—Easter, Passover, and Iran's Nowruz (literally "new day")—but this year it was hard to get into the spirit. I don't know if my friends in Iran are OK. Their internet is down,
Tea Is Our Wine: Tea and Manners among the Tuareg of the Ténéré
Tea is our wine. We drink it morning and night.
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Don Quixote at the Market
“His fancy grew full of…enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies…no history in the world had more reality in it.” —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote The downtown EV charger hunches between progress and regress, optimism and depression. Across the street is the renovated market building, elegant but
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My Mother's Angels
“A person always exceeds and resists the limits of a story about them...” —Catherine Lacey, Biography of X When the angels came to my mother, they were not, as might be expected, wielding flaming swords to avenge all wounds. Mostly, they were singing show tunes. In her last few years
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Pilgrim's Progress
A revisited offering on the Thanksgiving story.
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The Road to Clarity
Or, conducting a quest on a trickle charge.
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Far Out and Close In
Thoughts on the Overview Effect, the power of stories, and the value of a single life.
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Making and Unmaking a Golem
I’ve been making a golem. This screen is the lump of clay; now I’m trying to find the right words to breathe life into it. Last week I stumbled across a post on AI that got me thinking about golems again. Then I fell into Alice Hoffman’s
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The Weight of Civilization
Driving south with a carful of books.
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Rereading Charlotte's Web as Charlotte
Thoughts on International Women's Day
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The Sailmaker's Daughter
170 years ago, a teenage girl wrote about the contrast between fine weather and cruel times.
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Rivers, Seas, and Trees
On shaping and escaping the frame.
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Sheltering the Soul of the World
Reflections on Rosh Hashanah and a Holocaust Memoir
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Lovers and Luddites
Reading Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley on Labor Day