What Your Brain Believes

I used to teach online English Composition classes at a community college. At the beginning of the semester, I would ask my students to introduce themselves—to say a little about their hobbies and families and how they felt about writing. It was a beginning-level class, so there wasn’t usually a Read more

Poet’s Corner

Last spring, I visited Westminster Abbey in London. I waited in a line that snaked the front of the building like some kind of Disneyland ride. It was a pretty impressive crowd for a church. To be fair, Westminster is one of the grandest churches in the world—an architectural and Read more

Wilderness Vigilantes

I majored in English, but the college course that has remained the most vivid influence of my life was a biology class. For four hours on Fridays, our Field Biology instructor took us into the wild. We canoed the Snake River, wore waders to fish out microorganisms from a local Read more