Fiddling While It Burns

The homes and desks of famous writers intrigue me, even if future tourists will never pay twenty-eight dollars to see the IKEA chair where my writing happens. So on a recent free morning in Connecticut, I visited the Mark Twain House. The mansion is sprawling and beautifully preserved, and the

On an evening ten degrees colder than it should have been, I stopped by a new-to-me Irish music session. I was in the neighborhood to have dinner with one friend and attend the book launch of another, and the session was just a few blocks over. Walking around a corner

Two minutes before sunset, a man in a top hat appears on the sidewalk in front of me. Surrounding him are a dozen people carrying electric candles and wearing sweatshirts, ballcaps, and lots of plaid. They gaze up at a looming facade of hundred-year-old brick with forbidding windows and spooky

What trans people are going through in our country right now breaks my brain.   In Kansas, there are transfolk who can’t drive, because the state abruptly declared their driver’s licenses invalid if they don’t indicate the person’s sex assigned at birth.  In Idaho, it’s about

As a kid, I’d do just about anything to get mail – apply for rebates as small as a dollar, request tourism brochures from Canada, clip UPC symbols from cereal boxes for Matchbox cars. So back when 3M was first trying to get the world hooked on Post-It notes, I

A few years ago, when a politician – let’s call him Mark Dwayne Mullions – challenged the Teamsters president to a physical fight during a hearing at the U.S. Capitol, I wondered, who is this guy? Google answered, and soon I understood that he was a far-right first-term senator who

I didn’t know what I was getting into, pulling up to this bar I’d never been to. My violin sat on the back seat, and I’d grabbed a music stand, too, in case there was a chance to use it. Through the plate-glass windows, I could see