Dreamers Rise

Gillian Welch: About a month ago, my eye was drawn to a book that has sat mostly unread on my shelf for some time, ‘The Book of Disquiet’ ...

"Paean" isn't exactly an everyday word, but it's amusing to find it being confused with an even more obscure word, one tha...

The poet Donald Hall was born and raised in suburban Connecticut, but he spent many of his summers at his maternal grandparents' farm in...

Henry David Thoreau: I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their vario...

About six weeks ago we moved out of the house where we had lived since 1990, leaving the town where we had roots stretching back much longer...

Thomas De Quincey: Of this at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind; a thousand accidents m...

Charles Dickens: I had no thought that night — none, I am quite sure — of what was soon to happen to me. But I have always remembered sinc...

Herodotus: The Carthaginians also tell us that they trade with a race of men who live in a part of Libya beyond the Pillars of Hercules. On...

Herman Melville: All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swi...

There's a strange calm today, with some cloud cover but no wind, and the street outside has been largely quiet all day. We're keepin...

We've had no face-to-face contact with other people for nine days now, and in New York State, where we live (and which now has the highe...

Major disasters, natural or otherwise, have a way of forcing one not only out of one's routines but out of mental patterns as well. They...

Ambrose Paré: The first is the glory of God. The second, his wrath. The third, too great a quantity of semen. The fourth, too small a qua...

Charles Dickens: The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of th...

Sunday afternoon. Close enough to shake a stick at to fifty years ago, in my lonely and melancholy youth, Joni Mitchell's Blue was th...

Sally Mann: At its most accomplished, photographic portraiture approaches the eloquence of oil painting in portraying human character, but w...

A Mr. Warner, photographer, on reading an account of Emma Jackson in St. Giles's, addressed a letter to Detective Officer James F. Thomp...

The Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca recounts an incident that was related to him by Native Americans he encountered during his l...

"The history and œconomy of these vary curious Insects are (I think) not well known — they appear to manage all their Affairs, with as ...

"As the lodges afforded so little shelter, people began to die, and five Christians quartered on the coast were driven to such extremit...