Insider note: Traditional food cans have paper wrappers and paper is made of wood pulp and wood pulp IS something goats eat.

Blank pages can be scary things, just as are blank canvases. There is such fear in getting something wrong. Omission is far safer.

There have been traditional Christmases past, full of bright sun and icy snow and kicking the ice from boots, coming into a warm...

The strength of myth is not in its falsity, but rather its truth hiding in plain sight.

I remember how cold the air was in the lonely hospital garden that Saturday evening in late November. Winter arrives early on the central...

The rest of my short drive to the gym, my thoughts were occupied. What did I just see? A later drive down my street yielded no strange...

On social media, photos of a vaunted city mall pop up on my feed. The theme is nostalgia. Back in the good old days, the post suggests...

In-between spaces are dark and magical things. The in-between of mountain rock and prairie grass, the in-between of fall and winter, day...

The back patio overlooked the park, both careful cement and proper green a testament to aging suburbia. Maples and fir frame the sky...

Our forest was still scarred by bulldozer tracks, now mostly overgrown. A crew had felled several of the old growth oaks on that 22 acres of

Kindling fires smell different, all dried branches of elm and box elder. Neither are popular trees, especially box elder, as they scatter...

Few know my own wrestling with the holiday, how I loved it as a child, how I feared it as a teenager after one of my cousins was gunned down

Cold night rain beats hard against the clapboard siding, peeling blue and faded behind autumn-dead hydrangea. The hydrangea was planted...

Hallmark autumns are a time of fashionable flannels and hearty pumpkin carving, chilly, cozy nights and crisp, sunny afternoons.

The kitchen was dark, the evening uncharacteristically warm and blustery for so late in the season. Not a good night for a fire...

The day is dying. Late evening sun traces over top tree rafters of the grand old maples in the yard, the day's hazy orange light...

Rain is the bane of festivals and I sweated that whole Friday, day before StateoftheOzarks Fest '24. Also, sweated literally.

As in Appalachia, the Ozarks were largely settled by the Scots-Irish, resourceful, independent people who had left the British Isles...

Dust devils inspire all sorts of world folklore, some more hellish than others. I have, however, always loved them ever since my mom...

It is fair to say there's not another arts-and-crafts festival in the Ozarks quite like StateoftheOzarks and I like it that way.