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Note: Will Pemberton was one of the three writers who founded Utopian Idiots. Will himself came up with the name, which was intended to lampoon and chasten our self-confessed idealism. He died this past Aug. 20. He leaves behind a wife, …

My father didn’t like winter.  Frozen pipes in the barn initiated a tedious process of thawing copper pipes with a blow torch where heating cables had let go their tight grip, seemingly on their own. We chipped away at water bowls, …

My first thought is about Berry’s language. Every sentence weighs heavily in the mind, as gold weighs heavy in the hand. How does he combine ordinary words into such weighty thoughts? It is a gift of his. Reading him invites …

One of my earliest memories is the realization that chickens are people, too. When I was still small, my dad set up a chicken coop in our backyard, built a pen, and headed off to various livestock auctions and hatcheries …

Just over a decade ago I started keeping track of most of the books that I read for fun. Though I’ve always been an avid reader, I’m also a relatively slow reader. A few days ago, a friend of mine …

In the years since, that little church has assumed typological proportions in my mind. The rough brick, the heavy beams, and the simplicity of the sermon have become for me symbolic, a representation of all ordinariness, and the richness of …

Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part series. Read the first part – The weird (but true) economics behind my $26,000 sweater – here. I would like to say that this is where the economic formula really …

There's this really weird thing about travel. Anyone who has travelled knows that there comes a moment - usually way sooner than you would have expected - when you suddenly get tired of seeing new sights.

The hurricane howls outside.     In by the fire it’s warm.The house creaks side to side     to the pulsing of the storm.By candle we sip our stew      while shingles flap and tear.The power is out since two—     yet still, no …

Note: The photo above isn’t actually a photo of me. But this is a dude who clearly knows a quality sweater when he sees one, and feels about it the way I feel about mine…or will feel, when it exists. …