The heirloom tomato problem
There’s something romantic about heirloom tomatoes. People wax poetic about them, write songs about them, pine for them. That’s one of the reasons I emphasized them when we started growing for market: I figured it was just good business to provide a thing...
The non-linear 2020 election
I just read an NPR interview with journalist McKay Coppins (thank you Lex Alexander), where the topic was what Trump and his campaign will do to win this fall. It covers the waterfront pretty well, with serial focus on the powers of incumbency, preparations for a...
Fix the cans, save the world
So: I’m a progressive, and I tend to support candidates that other people call “communists,” “socialists,” or just “too liberal.” What do they mean by that? Who knows? People believe all sorts of crazy shit. But here’s...
The Spoils of Empire
Some years ago, Janet gave me a used copy of Gore Vidal’s “Burr” as my Christmas present. Thoroughly recommended, but I’m not here to write a book report. What Vidal understood about America was what I refused to admit: Though we were founded...
Racing to the bottom
American hot rod legend Carroll Shelby is experiencing something of a cultural moment this month, thanks to the feature film “Ford vs. Ferrari,” which I hope to see soon. But last night I watched a new documentary called “Shelby American,” and...
Time Travel: A Star Wars Story
I was 14 when the first Star Wars movie premiered. I read about it in Newsweek and went to my dad and said, “Hey, would you take us to see this new movie called Star Wars?” He said “Absolutely NOT!” A few weeks later I asked again, and he...
O, I am deluded!
A funny thing happened to me in the fall of 2016: After the worst-case scenario on election night, I suffered through a burst of clear-headed perspective, writing several harshly honest essays here. Three years later, despite my post-debacle efforts at brutal clarity,...
Trump/GOP: No win on the board
I think it’s time to circle back to the most important point in the impeachment discussion: We now possess enough official documents and sworn testimony to inspire the average defense attorney — in the vast majority of criminal cases — to pursue a...
Enough with the bland liberalism
There’s a piece at TPM from a lawyer with a group called Protect Democracy, and while I’ve looked at their stuff and find it generally founded in common ground, reading her column crystallized, for me, my frustration with a certain kind of bland, generic...
The too-long edit
It’s been almost eight months since I finished the first edit of my new Chene trilogy, and I’m here to bear witness: No matter what anyone tells you about how hard writing is, it’s nothing compared to the months of not-writing that follow the...
Dan Conover
Howdy
Howdy! This is my current blog,