Downsizing Pays off Big — With a Trip Down Abbey Road
Tuesday, February 10 2026
I don’t know exactly what I expected from my personal downsizing campaign, but something really interesting is happening to me.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
An Age of Disillusionment
Monday, February 09 2026
What Is our American Story as the Nation’s 250th Birthday Approaches?
- Published in Features
Reading Thoreau Again
Tuesday, February 03 2026
One of my friends contacted me not long ago and said, “Hey, you’re going to be in the Ken Burns documentary on Henry David Thoreau in March. I just saw you in the trailer. Are you going to do anything to be ready for when it comes out?” Truth told, I knew there was a Thoreau documentary coming sometime in 2026, but I wasn’t sure when.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
Solitude & Loneliness: Pondering Steinbeck While Reading Thoreau
Monday, February 02 2026
One of the great things about reading a lot is that it gives you the insights of triangulation. One book illuminates, interprets, and perhaps even disagrees with another, though the authors never met.
- Published in Books
When is Enough Enough?
Tuesday, January 27 2026
Do Jefferson's 27 indictments of King George III and the Parliament of Great Britain in his Declaration of Independence have application today?
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
A Struggle for the Public Commons: Buffalo, the Department of Interior & American Prairie Reserve
Tuesday, January 20 2026
Clay reflects on a recent announcement from the U.S. Department of the Interior to revoke bison grazing leases from American Prairie, an organization that has long been working to establish a buffalo wildlife reservation in Northern Montana.
- Published in Features
Running Out of Gas (And the Value of the Humanities)
Monday, January 12 2026
I nearly ran out of gas yesterday on a remote highway in the Bitterroot Mountains. It was a winding, narrow road with no shoulder to pull off onto ... but more of this crisis later in the story.
- Published in Features
Thoughts for a New Constitutional Beginning
Tuesday, January 06 2026
As the nation approaches its 250th birthday this July 2026, Clay suggests it might serve the country well to revisit details of our Constitution.
- Published in Uncategorized
The Great Downsizing Campaign
Tuesday, December 30 2025
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” — Thoreau
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
My Year in Review
Tuesday, December 30 2025
Last week, I reviewed the year 2025 by way of Time magazine’s Year in Review issue. Today I want to review my year as the traveling editor of Listening to America.
- Published in Features