the Parker Sub doesn't want those things. It likes simple. Plain. Which is why it's something a simple and plain man has to ask for. But I am a Parker. And I do want those: the pepper, the onions, the upgrades. That’s because I see our sub as a project, not a perfected object.
If we are going to care about the environment and preserve natural spaces in the so-called “rust belt,” then we must love rust. We must practice terranexus and accept and even love the chaotic intersection of civilized and natural worlds.
The cabin guidelines ask you to be courteous and not too loud for your neighbors. No one near us was loud, even though most of the cabins appeared to be occupied. There are rules about too many people gathering at one site, to deter parties. This wouldn’t be the place to bring a big group and play drinking games.
Notes on fatherhood and petroleum
Supposedly, it all started with an apple. In the beginning was the garden, the serpent, the woman—and “those fair apples,” as Milton writes in Paradise Lost. That was the beginning, or perhaps the beginning of the end.
Every time I moved felt like facing my entire life all over again.
On this day in end-times 1999, Jimmy Carter, the former president of the United States, that sweetheart, was on a flight I was working. It was a shuttle flight, D.C. to New York, maybe. No First Class, no fuss.
The concept and meaning of risk changed as we aged. As kids, the risk of our fathers losing their factory jobs never occurred to us. The notion that anything as large and permanent as the factories would disappear seemed ludicrous.
Now there's an ubiquitous phrase on the Plains: we excel at "putting down roots"...Growing up in Kansas there is quite the opposite idea. Less so roots and more so treacherous vines.
John was unbelievable with a trash bag. He threw the lighter ones from his hip, like an uppercut. The heavier bags were more like a hammer throw. You could tell he was accustomed to using, and needing to use, all the muscle he had left.
Yet part of what defines the Pittsburgh School, from Brackenridge onward, is the mystical kernel of something beyond mere matter that animates any consideration of this place: the transcendent in the prosaic, the sacred in the profane. An intimation of beauty amid a kingdom of ugliness.
Living without a smartphone in a smartphone world.