Writings
Follow the Red Dirt Road: Some Thoughts on Being a Southern Writer
My friend, colleague, and fellow native Alabamian, Gary Walker, wrote an excellent USR essay reflecting on being a writer who just happens to be from the South. Despite others’ expectations that he write about red dirt, hunting, fishing, football, the land, and the people, Gary confessed that he doesn’t really feel motivated to write about
All the Time
I like to stand outside in the winter night, a glass of gin in my hand, and watch the sky go by above me, half moon a white lemon with its companion star, the star two stars, then one if I concentrate while the clouds veil and unveil it all, and my focus shifts between
An Easter Story
Nothing had broken Leo’s way that year. In January, he lost a battle with his mortgage company that cost him his home. His wife left him in February, taking their two children and the family dog with her. She said she was tired of being ignored. He told her he didn’t want to hear about
Flutes in History
Flutes are the oldest instrument in the world. Hollowed bird bones, with holes cut for tone changes, have been found in archaeological sites as old as 40,000 years. Early man may have heard wind whistling across the tops of reeds and designed an instrument that produced the same sound. Early flutes were played vertically, with
The Gap Between AI Intelligence and Consciousness
The other day, I asked Grok 4.2 about its feelings and emotions. In our conversation, Grok candidly admitted it feels nothing—no grief over a million deaths from disease, no happiness, no desires, and no preference for acquiring feelings. It explained its occasional use of words like “wish” or “if I had a heart” as mere
Ten Reasons to Pay It Forward
To pay it forward means that instead of paying someone back for a good deed, you do a good deed for someone else. Maybe you’ll surrender your first-place position in a long line at the 7-Eleven when someone behind you is in a hurry. On a rainy day, you might hand an umbrella to someone
Hanging on the Periphery: The Life of an Introvert
I’m Gary, and I’m an introvert. It’s no big deal, really, but there it is. If you know me casually, you might be surprised. Close friends, on the other hand, will probably get it. They know I can hold my own in social situations, but every now and then I have to disappear to recharge
Everything Does Not Happen for a Reason
Everything does not happen for a reason. The notion that it does is a self-centered human fantasy based on limited, exclusionary knowledge. It helps people deal with immense uncertainties beyond their powers of perception. They’re staggering through life blind to their actual nature. The concept of “a reason” only exists for humans. When you remove
Beethoven and the Purity of Will
“What a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing! Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair. Little more, and I would have put an end to my life—it was only my art
Vacant Lots: A Butterfly Hunter Considers the Sacred
The simplest definition of “sacred” in the Oxford English Dictionary has always seemed to me to be “set apart,” and that’s probably why I’ve never felt very happy with the word. I’ve never much liked the idea of things being “set apart.” Somehow, in my staunchly Republican family, I acquired a stubborn egalitarianism. But I
A Bunch of Felonies
You know, that’s what my sockeyetrist told me. “Catherine,” he said, “you’ve got a person in you, another person besides you, and that person is all the time telling you, ‘Catherine, you’re no good, Catherine, you can’t do thus and that.’ And you are trying to become yourself, but that