The other day I got an email from a high-school boyfriend, which drove me headlong into remembrance of a time in my life I’ve tried to forget. My husband is the only person I know who enjoyed high school, so I don’t harbor any delusions that my unhappiness made me unique among teenagers. In fact,…

The irony is lost on no one—except, of course, for Elder Beck himself. He’s in full fire-and-brimstone mode, locked into a trance-like cadence and sounding a bit like a man possessed, even as he busies himself decrying the demonic nature of rock and roll. It’s the devil’s music; it’s leading the young people astray; it’s…

Until I get to the middle of the process—it’s horrific. It’s like I don’t know what I’m doing but I know how to do it, and it’s very strange. —Belgian painter Luc Tuymans, on the artistic process As I’ve noted before, I often struggle with writing, as I labor with the new life I’ve undertaken…

“Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it.” —Simone Weil For most of my adult life, I’ve been resistant to allegiance—to people, to places. The latter may seem strange, since I’ve lived in northern New England on and off since 1972. In many ways, Maine’s iron…

I was twenty-three and living three blocks from the dome of the U.S. Capitol—or, as my dad soon took to calling it, “the Bull’s Eye of the Western world” —on September 11, 2001. When the plane hit the second tower, I watched the impact on a scratchy analog TV from my desk at my first…

Last week, the New York Times carried a story about President Obama on vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. Not hard news—far from it—the story offered assembled tidbits of press coverage as reporters hung out at local bars and T-shirt shops and golf courses hoping for views of POTUS. Two tidbits in particular struck me: Obama, unlike…

My father is a therapist. This has made for an (how should I say this?), ummm, interesting life. Yes, that’s it. The word I want here is interesting. When my father wanted to provoke me growing up, he would say things like, “I’m sensing some hostility from you. Let’s explore that” or “Kelly, how does…

There’s one thing these days that it seems you can get everyone to agree on, whatever their political or cultural stripe: They all hate Washington, DC. One of my brothers is a stockbroker and a free-market conservative; the other is a reliably Democratic art director (who has donated to the local ACLU auction), and yet…

With a pregnant wife, a high school chemistry teacher’s salary, a sinkhole of debt, and a teenage son suffering from cerebral palsy, Walter White is pushed to the limits of composure. The focus of AMC’s original series Breaking Bad, Walt (Bryan Cranston) must also abide insolent students and obnoxious in-laws. It’s enough to make anyone…

Nobody stops in Bucyrus, Ohio unless they have to. Columbus, the big-city capital, is an hour and a half to the south. Cedar Point Amusement Park, the preferred destination for roller coaster enthusiasts, is an hour and a half to the north. The Lincoln Highway, US 30, which bisects the country from New York to…