Miscellany

Still life, Monastery of Christ in the Desert, Abiquiu, New Mexico (January 1988)

On this page I will post, as downloadable PDF files, miscellaneous pieces I’ve written over the years.

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Personal Archeology in the Time of COVID-19 (2020)

In May 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic tightened its grip on the United States and Donald Trump used inflammatory rhetoric to incite his supporters and inject chaos into the Presidential campaign, I found myself considering our country’s fragile state, my generation’s ambiguous (to put it politely) place in history, and my own life and legacy. This essay was the result.

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For Ed Abbey, In Memoriam (1990)

This is an homage to the writer Edward Abbey that I wrote after he died in Tucson, Arizona, in March 1989. Abbey was an important figure in my life and personal development—as I wrote in the piece, he was the closest thing I’ve ever had to “a larger-than-life, honest-to-goodness hero.” I’m somewhat embarrassed when I remember the adulation that I, then a young man, burdened him with. At the same time, I smile when I remember the day in 1971 when I discovered Desert Solitaire in my high school library and recall the visceral response that Abbey’s crisp prose and contrary persona excited in me. For good or bad—and at this point in my life it doesn’t really matter which—he changed me forever. Rest in peace, Ed.

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