“Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I love to have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the...

 At three o’clock in the morning a great horned owl hooted outside my bedroom window. Moonlight laughed in the forest. The rain had stopped and the weather had cleared up and I had to get up to pee but I didn’t want to leave my warm bed. I felt like that owl who had...

 I’ve had a number of friends say they miss me on social media.  But, when I ask if they’ve read my blog, my novel or my book,of short stories, the answer is often “it’s on my list.” I can’t help but think of the essay Literature and Life by Mario Vargas Llosa.It...

“Si tuviera que salvar del fuego una sola de las novelas que he escrito, salvaría esta.”(“If I had to save from the fire just one of the novels I have written, I would save this one.”) — Mario Vargas Llosa referring to Conversación en La Catedral. In his novel,...

 In my 1890 edition of Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics, the great economist defines economics as “a study of man’s actions in the ordinary business of life.” Too often we only see the highlights: the pivotal conversations, the dramatic turns, the “act...