I Believe

Sunday morning. Time change. I was used to waking up at five thirty in the morning during daylight saving time. We went back an hour, so now my body thinks it wants to wake up at four thirty. The dogs have the same problem. Their breakfast schedule matches my wake-up schedule, which means now they think they should eat breakfast at four thirty. They don’t care what the clock says. They know when t...

It’s been decades since I read Lord of the Flies , but here goes. A plane crashes on an island, and the boys who survive are there without adults. They try meetings. Rules. They need food, shelter, and rescue. But agreeing on what needs to happen is easier than getting everybody to do it. Some want to keep the signal fire burning. Others want to hunt. Fear spreads. The boys turn on each other. By...

Every organization exists for a reason. It has some purpose, something it’s supposed to achieve. And if we can’t measure whether we’re making progress toward that purpose, how do we know whether we’re doing a good job? We can measure how much money an organization spends. We can measure how many people it employs. We can measure whether its paperwork is turned in on time. But none of those things...

At Christmas in 1085, William the Conqueror had a problem. He’d crossed from Normandy and taken England’s throne nearly twenty years earlier. In 1085, England faced the threat of an invasion from Denmark. Having conquered a country, he had to defend it. At Gloucester, William met with his council and ordered a survey. Who held the land? What was it worth? What resources could the kingdom provide?...

Some oppose a woman’s right to choose, citing God’s law. I, too, am a believer. I offer a different perspective. When we brought our firstborn home from the hospital, they wouldn’t sleep unless someone was holding them. We couldn’t hold the baby twenty-four hours a day without taking shifts. So I took the night shift, holding our oldest in my lap and looking at the glowing computer monitor in the...

Snow covered the pines through the valley, aspens hanging on to their brown, gold, and yellow leaves. Many had already fallen. Cold air and heavy clouds clung to the mountains. Some white still falling, the snow on the ground reflected a little blue from the sky. The valley and peaks looked gray-blue. In Saratoga, a small mountain ranching town in Wyoming, a row of nice SUVs lined the fence at the...

Who should pay on the first date? People spend an enormous amount of time arguing about whether the man should pay, whether the bill should be split, or whether one person owes the other something because they paid for dinner. I’ve listened to people discuss this with a level of seriousness that I’d ordinarily associate with negotiating a peace treaty. But why are two people going on a date in the...

Imagine a little girl sitting in a restaurant with her dad. They order lunch. She gets a soda. It’s enormous, like a bucket of coke. The city is worried about obesity, diabetes, and what all that sugar is doing to people. In our history, New York City tried to limit the size of some sugary drinks. The courts eventually stopped the rule. But imagine the city had done something different. Imagine it...

We are a month away from the midterm elections, and the American people are poised to hold the party in power accountable. Republicans raised taxes on the American people. They called those taxes tariffs, but tariffs are taxes. Then they supported going to war in Iran, which created an energy supply problem. And whenever you have an energy supply problem, prices are going to go up, because as the...

Beautiful October day. I’m walking in the park for some exercise. The leaves on some of the trees have turned yellow, with small flashes of red. There’s a maple tree that has turned maybe a dark burgundy. Blue skies, white clouds, green grass. The park has quite a few people today. There’s an older guy and a younger guy tossing a football, maybe father and son. And there’s a white butterfly floati...

I was cooking the other day when I thought about a lieutenant I haven’t seen in years. I don’t know why. That happens to me sometimes. A memory will just show up. Nothing in particular brings it to mind. I’ll be driving, or walking, or standing in the kitchen cutting onions, and suddenly I’m back in some room I haven’t thought about in years. This one has come back to me a couple of times recently...

Everybody seems to be scared of artificial intelligence. Or maybe the press makes it seem like everybody is scared of artificial intelligence. AI is going to take our jobs. AI is going to replace artists. AI is going to manipulate elections. AI is going to become smarter than us. Eventually AI is going to destroy civilization. Why are we always doing this? Why do human beings always think civiliza...

Hey, this is Joel. I’m sitting next to a pile of flowers in the yard. I spent some time this morning taking hops vines out of our hoop house, and now I’m sitting on a bucket, picking the flowers off the vines. A buddy of mine brews beer. Sometimes he gives me some of it, so I’m going to give him a bunch of these. I grow several different varieties of hops in the hoop house. I’ve got some New Zeala...

Thoughts from the week, in podcast conversation form. Joel: The watch is quiet. Dark. Day and night, you don’t know the difference. Joel: Every twelve hours, you set the clock. If it’s more than a second off, fast or slow, it’s out of spec. And you have to set all three clocks at once. Paige: Three clocks, one second. I hear that and feel like it’s important. I suspect you’re going to tell me it d...

The shovel rings. Every year a couple or three fence posts rot along the front lane. Enough moisture gets in the wood and maybe a beetle or two, and the Earth wants to retake what it will. Everything eventually, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She has a couple of spare fence posts in the barn. Not too many anymore. She shifts other posts to unbury them, and dust and soil puff up, catching in her nos...

Taking stairs down two at a time from the giant stone building, music thrumming in her AirPods. She rounds the corner and her pace slows to a walk. The Commuter Express is still there, leaving the city. Three-tone white and green and blue, blue cloth seats, standing room only, people in suits and dress shoes. Above the windshield, Backlick Three Ninety-Five lit up in yellow. A twenty-six minute bu...

College girl. Blonde in a bright green shirt holding a clipboard, asking names and questions. Welcoming committee. What’s your major? Chemical engineering. Oh, you’re one of the smart ones. The van pulls forward through the maze of cones and kids wearing shirts that say “Unpack Your Future” that stand ready with laundry carts to take your life’s treasure into the unknown. Who will you meet on your...

Moths circle the streetlights in the mostly empty lot. Blacktop. White parking lines. Road noise. Pickup doors slam shut. They’re supposed to park at the back of the lot. Nobody who would care is here at eleven, and they’ll be gone before Beth gets in. She’s at the door, counting heads. Everyone calls her Lou. “I need you to go get Charlie,” she says. “He was supposed to be here an hour ago.” No p...

The dogwoods are blooming along the edge of the great lawn, dark pink and brilliant white. Below the hill, Brush Creek runs slow and clear past the parkway that shares its name. Beyond, Spanish mission buildings catch the morning sun. Saturday in April. The collie comes loping back up the slope. She drops the ball at his feet and barks and backs up, ready. “What’s her name?” The girl from the dine...

May in Missouri. Warm, not hot like it will be in July. Humidity in the air, mist at the bottom of the hill hiding the green grass. Bright white gravel under tires. He opens the passenger door. He is fifteen. His grandma drove him. The Oldsmobile idles behind him until the screen door opens and a man comes out. Then she pulls away. The man is the rancher’s son. Sixty years old, maybe more. His tru...

Her eyes open at five twenty-eight. She lifts her head and switches the alarm off before it kicks on at five thirty. She’s up and moving. Chores to do. Coffee, dishwasher, shower, lunchbox. Their apartment is a one-bedroom in Lakewood, Colorado, on the west edge of Denver. Third floor. She starts the coffee maker and showers while it runs. On the refrigerator door, under a magnet, a printed listin...

A family, driving north out of Denver. They left before light. Mom’s driving. Yellowstone tomorrow. Lamar Valley and the bison and wolves and trout. Tonight, the Sheridan Inn. The car planned this stop in Buffalo before they crossed the Platte. It planned every stop. Dad has the atlas open on his knees, the paper kind. Nobody’s looking at it. Two kids in the back. A yellow dog between them with hi...

The agenda is one page. Somebody ran it through the copier this afternoon and the toner is going, so item six is fainter than item five. You can read it anyway. Outside the county annex, there are nine pickups, a sheriff’s Tahoe, and a Buick that belongs to a woman named Arlene who has kept the minutes of this commission for thirty-one years. It is a Tuesday in March on the high plains of Nebraska...

The shouts pass over the water to Lincoln. He sits there, silent. The man who, more than any other, overstepped his authority in a time of war. Habeas corpus suspended. A nation half at arms. And the question underneath all of it, whether any nation so conceived and dedicated could long endure. He broke the limit. But he never pretended he was above it. He answered to the Congress, to the ballot,...

The mess. Mid rats. He came in a couple minutes early. He ate fast, at a table that became a hospital bed for the wounded, and then he cleared his tray and dishes and moved into the narrow passage with the pipes running low overhead, ducking his head around them. Up the metal stairs to starboard. A couple of minutes with the sea before the watch. The deck was nearly empty. In a few minutes the oth...