Notes & Essays

Être fort pour être utile

Essays and stories on self-reliance, DIY, repair, tools, birding, walking, living well, and other bric-à-brac. Please, enjoy.

March 2023
Turn Your Own Wrenches

Repair as a way of life.
December 2022
Everything is a Practice

There is no finish line. There is no winning, no losing.
December 2022
Safety Third

Life first
October 2022
The Cavalry Isn’t Coming

It's just you and me and the rain.
August 2022
Rules for Screens, Part Two

Let's talk about your phone.
August 2022
Rules for Screens, Part One

You can have a television or you can have a life.
January 2021
Is This Water?

Walking, Cleaning, Walking some more.
November 2020
The Best Shoes I’ve Ever Worn Are Hardly Shoes at All

Let me tell you about my shoes
August 2019
Waffle the World

A waffle iron can do a whole lot more than breakfast
March 2019
Why Live in a Vintage 1969 RV?

The less you have, the further you can go.
February 2019
Life in Chains: Del Taco

Written for an Eater.com series on fast food chains.
May 2015
What’s Missing Is

A story (fictional) based on my grandparents and other bits of family history.
September 2010
Comeback Sauce

An Ode to JB's Sausage Cart, an Athens, GA Institution
March 2005
One Nation Under a Groove

Consider the iPod, destroyer, or perhaps protector, of worlds