Newsletter

  • Sordid little stories: of class and living poor

    When I was 17 years old, my family’s car was repossessed. It happened at night, the Dodge sedan my parents had bought used towed away late one evening while we were watching TV. Cars get… Read more

  • Private property: bedrock . . . or shale?

    I recently came across a news story about the community of Lake Tahoe, California—a place known as a ski resort, as my town in Montana is also known but, also like my town, a place… Read more

  • Trespass against

    All wild waters have a different flavor. The North Fork of the Flathead River, the river near the off-grid cabin I stay at most often, is wide, and fast enough I wouldn’t risk trying to… Read more

  • When the world shut down

    Somewhere between 112,000 and 121,000 years ago, a person walked along the muddy residue of a lake that today is so long gone it might be found only in myth. And maybe not even there—the oldest known… Read more

  • Bound for hell

    My father recently sent me a photo from outside the apartment he and my stepmother share in Moscow. It’s a tiny one-room flat that once belonged to my stepmother’s grandmother, Anastasia Tsvetaeva. Anastasia’s sister, Marina Tsvetaeva,… Read more

  • Healing Long Covid

    Recently, I stopped at the county landfill to tip my recycling into their dedicated bins. The region I live in doesn’t have much recycling. Cardboard, paper, and aluminum cans. No plastics. We used to have… Read more

  • One truth to rule them all

    –or none Nearly two decades ago, I had a premature baby. “Had a baby” is a strange phrase, isn’t it? It sounds so simple, like having a loaf of bread, or an itch. Whereas even… Read more

  • On greed: how much is enough?

    A few days ago, I was sitting by this river, near a U.S. Forest Service cabin where I went recently for a sorely needed offline, off-grid, off-network recalibration. It’s been too long since I sat… Read more

  • How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich

    When I was in sixth grade, ten years old, my family moved briefly to Chico, California. My father, then an electrical engineer, had gotten a job there after being laid off from his firm near… Read more

  • Hope is the heartwood

    Some years ago when I still lived I upstate New York, I began working at a sawmill. I had two very small children at the time, and had never intended nor desired to be a… Read more

Welcome to On the Commons!

This is a mirror of the newsletter I write on Substack, On the Commons. Same writing, different platform!

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