We live in curious and confusing times, as have pretty much all our ancestors throughout all of recorded history. Some lines that once seemed clear are always starting to blur, and that is always going to make us uncomfortable to some extent, although we all have varying degrees of tolerance for such unease, especially when …
Author Archives: McCutcheon
I always skip the Oscars
Okay, so I have very little to say about the Academy Awards tonight (or ever, really), but what little I do have I will say now. I have nothing against awards ceremonies per se, and while I know rather little about the film industry aside from what is common pop-culture knowledge (which feels like knowing a …
Messing up the blank page
Of all the many many terrors which life seems to hold for me, few are as paralyzing as a new blank notebook. That is why I have so many of them: I love notebooks, I am drawn to almost everything about them, and I purchase them almost (but not quite) compulsively. But most of the …
A Moan about a Meme
I fully realize that this is an odd thing to feel strongly about, particularly with all that is going on in the polis right now, but I really hate the latest viral meme that is making the rounds on Facebook (and perhaps elsewhere) in seemingly tireless iterations. You’ve seen the one I’m talking about: four …
“I know the name”
I am, as many of you know, a whole-hearted embracer of social networking, or at least the version of it that happens on specially-designed websites dedicated to some aspect of that purpose. Facebook, LinkedIn, Academia.edu, even Goodreads: I’m on them all. I am remarkably diligent in scouring up persons from various eras of my life, …
Baby sister no more, and yet always
I remember the first day of December, eighteen years ago. It was a soft, snowy morning on our farm on the western edge of Minnesota, and my two sisters and I had finished feeding the goats and chickens, and had somehow wandered down to the end of our short driveway, where we were engaged in …
Unspreading
I attended a doctoral defense yesterday at my school. Ours is not a huge faculty, so there are less than a handful of these exciting events each school year. I try to make it to all of them that are in languages I can comprehend (so, the ones in English). After three years of this, …
Blocked? Busy? Either way, still blank
The blank page. Staring back, no matter how long I stare at it. Waiting, without the slightest hint or notion of either patience or impatience. Merely waiting to receive any words, any words at all, that are placed upon it. But no words are placed, day after day, week after week, month after month. The page stays blank. I keep …
Will we have a farm?
My family and I have spent a beautiful weekend on a working “vacation farm” in rural New York. Growing up as I did in a almost-entirely agricultural region, the idea that city dwellers would pay good money to drive several hours out of the urban bustle so they can wake up early and feed some …
Until the music stops
There will be no way of knowing when my heart will stop working. But it will: I am quite sure of that. Not soon, don’t worry. I imagine I have a solid twenty years left that I can more or less count on. After that, though, I will be foolish not to regard each day …
