A fresco by artist Cesare Maccari (1840-1919) depicting Roman Consul Cicero (63 BCE) denouncing Catiline's conspiracy to overthrow the Republic in the Roman senate.

America at 250: Echoes of the Roman Republic?

America’s Founding Fathers drew heavily on the last years of the Roman Republic in crafting our nation’s founding documents, foreseeing both the promise and the frailties of a Republic. 
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American poet Robert Frost received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times. In 1961, at the age of 86, he recited his poem

Encounters With Those Inescapable AI Generated “10 Best Lists”

Can Artificial Intelligence reliably rank the 10 greatest poems of all time?
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Teenager selling WW II memorabilia. Rzhev, Russia. July 2023. Cover image for the book Volga Blues by Marzio Mian with photographs by Alessandro Cosmelli.

Book Review — Volga Blues: A Journey Into the Heart of Russia

My friend, the Italian journalist Marzio Mian, has just published a remarkable book on his monthlong underground journey along Russia’s sacred Volga River. Part travelogue, part Russian history, and part exploration of the dense, tragic Russian soul in a time of brutal war, the book is a powerful read when America’s place in world affairs is significantly unsettled.
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Downsizing Pays off Big — With a Trip Down Abbey Road

I don’t know exactly what I expected from my personal downsizing campaign, but something really interesting is happening to me.
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A birds eye view of Walden Pond, near Concord, MA. (Photo Nolan Johnson)

Reading Thoreau Again

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.
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Author John Steinbeck at work.

Solitude & Loneliness: Pondering Steinbeck While Reading Thoreau

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.
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Clay behind the wheel of the Caddy with the late Senator Alan Simpson in the middle and author Jack Kerouac riding shotgun.

Running Out of Gas (And the Value of the Humanities)

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.
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About 40 boxes of books culled from Clay’s massive personal library sit ready to be taken to their new home.

The Great Downsizing Campaign

“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
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John Carey, an early and influential mentor of Clay’s, was the Merton Professor of English at Oxford University. Professor Carey died recently at the age of 91.

Remembering My Beloved Oxford University Mentor

Clay remembers an early and influential mentor, Professor John Carey of Oxford University.
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Are We Rome?

Answer: we are Rome … but are we doomed to suffer the Republic's fate? Clay parallels the Republics (Rome's and our own) considering ways to avoid Rome's calamitous end.
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