Home feels emptier now. Not just because your cat box and extra supplies are gone, or that your pillow and food dishes are put away …

I watch a documentary featuring four young convicts who commit murder as teenagers and are sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Excited, I wake early, eager to break from an ordinary day at the office to attend a conference promising friendly colleagues, interesting…

Midwestern prairie strikes me inconsolably barren when I first visit: vast swaths of flat earth, featureless corn fields, incessant wind, brutal heat.