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Two of my favorite writers on their garden benches, a tree over each of their left shoulder, and their heads tilted slightly rightward…as if they share one of As It Is On Earth‘s character’s poignant tendency “to see the slant of things better that way.” In AIIOE, I

“Back and forth I paced, probing the floor with seamless and well-constructed arguments. Then, rearing back, I would thrust irrefutable conclusions into the ceiling. Chalk crumbled in my hand and flew through space as I struck broad decisive strokes across the lecture hall slate

Firstly, a shout out: to Mark Mathew Braunstein whose photograph of Mamacoke Island graces the cover of As It Is On Earth, and to Andy Carpenter who found the photo, and then designed it into AIIOE’s lovely book jacket. Mamacoke Island plays a big role in the story. Its more than a pl

In his essay, The Origin of the Work of Art, the philosopher Martin Heidegger made an important distinction between the Earth and the World. Roughly, the “Earth” is the biotic entity that precedes humanity, and the “World” is what humans make of the earth when

If it is true that we as individuals are actually the sum of what has gone before us, i.e.,  the historical context within which we find ourselves (living at a particular time, in a particular place, from within a particular family) – or as my narrator Taylor Thatcher suggests:  “It w