In 2016, I couldn’t fathom a Trump presidency. When it happened, I found relief in Clinton winning the popular vote by two million. The outcome, I thought, was more a product of an archaic electoral system than a reflection of national disposition. That changed on November 5, 2024. Trump won the popular vote, drawing votes from demographic groups across the board and picking up support in nearly every part of the country. All this was done as he stumbled, fumbled, fumed, blustered, and...

There are people in our lives whose influence is significant but fleeting. They’re there one moment, often at an opportune one, then they’re gone. Their presence and absence are a sequitur to something more lasting.

Coach Jim Petty was one of those people for me.

I read the news of his disappearance on Facebook. A FB friend had posted a link. Coach Petty’s truck, swept away by “swift-moving water,” was gone, with him in it. It wouldn’t be found for another week. He was still in it, submerged...

I’m not sure when I read Raymond Carver for the first time. I know he was he was still alive. I looked forward to new stories in Esquire and The New Yorker. Then he died of lung cancer. He was only fifty. I suspect he lived as his protagonists did—antsy, struggling, hoping for a break, smoking and drinking heavily, life never what they wanted.

I was twenty-seven when Carver died. By the time I turned thirty I had read all his stories, many two or three times. I tried reading Carver’s poetry...