A severe critic of rationalism (and fervent Catholic convert who influenced CS Lewis of "The Chronicles of Narnia" fame), GK Chesterton extolled fairies and mysticism:  This elementary wonder... is not a mere fancy derived from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived from this. Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we need only tales ..read more

Readers will know I'm working on a book manuscript about life on Potomac Creek. Last year I acquired a literary agent. Work, kids, life... all have successfully conspired to make time for writing a commodity more precious and scarce than Trump's empathy gene. But this is a blog, and occasional updates are part of our social contract. After receiving initial suggestions from Leslie, my agent, I spent the Winter and very brief Spring breaks revising my manuscript. Our goal is a commercially-viable book proposal. An intro and four chapters are now reworked. I'm not completely satisfied with them ..read more

Nearly twenty years ago I completed a doctorate on authoritarian politics in the Arab World. I created a model that linked variations in opposition groups to ruling elites' certainty of the costs of unity or defection. I tested this model via field research conducted in various Arab countries, where by that time I'd lived for over seven years. In my dissertation's obligatory "Acknowledgements" section -- the last section anyone types up -- I thanked professors, family, and friends. I also added a heartfelt tribute to our family home: "The Unicorn Farm continues to bark against the creep of sub ..read more

I'm always noodling around with new story ideas about nature and place. Here's one I'll work up as work and life allow. Which they seldom do (I'm looking for a nice writing grant that will buy me that most valuable of resources: time. Let me know if you've got ideas). Thrush Credit: Alex Berryman, MacCaulay Library I'm struck by how humans and other animals relate music to place. Some areas I would like to explore include human folk music traditions, where songs are often a marker of place.  For example, I play with music with a friend who recently composed a ditty about the Pot ..read more

  The Facebook page of the Stafford Museum and Cultural Center often posts information of interest to local denizens and other curious souls. [Stafford County is the location of Potomac Creek.] Today's post is particularly useful since it addresses a topic that I -- as a helpless map worshiper -- have often wondered about but never bothered to look up (how many topics can we say that about?). To wit: When talking about local waterways, what's the difference between a "creek," a "run," and a "branch?" These terms are old but still commonly used in our area. Housing developers, for example ..read more

Visits to this blog have been increasing steadily since I started it in fall 2022. This is very gratifying, of course, especially since I really don't know what I'm doing! I don't try to make money off my blog. As it says in my bio, Potomac Creek is for trying out ideas for the book manuscript.  But there are others who would like to monetize my blog. I'm unclear on how the whole business works (advice welcome in "comments!"). And the pay-to-play aggregator service Feedspot is one of them.  For now, Feedspot has placed my blog in the #45 position on its list of "100 Best Nature Blogs ..read more

My diverse interests and areas of expertise sometimes lead to unusual -- bordering on weird -- discussions. That's not always a bad thing. I tended bar for several years while a grad student. Both vocations, serving drunks and impressing professors, reward the ability to sustain roaming conversations.  Unkind people call it the art of bullshitting. One such discussion happened the other day when I appeared on the World XP Podcast. World XP is a small, informal podcast that tackles a very broad range of topics, from sports to business to whatever. Eric Jennings, the host, initially invite ..read more

https://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet   I'm excited about a an essay I have coming out later this year in The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy. The Trumpeter is an established Canadian journal, run through Athabasca University, and "ecosophy" is defined as "wisdom born of ecological understanding and insight." The foundational figure in this movement was Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher who built on the work of Rachel Carson and others to give us "deep ecology." Only after reading about deep ecology did I realize I was a member of this movement before I knew what it ..read more

Gifts from the birds of Potomac Creek (Can you ID them?). Stay tuned! Work is keeping me busy, but future planned posts (both mid-term and long-term) include: A critique of the war on invasive species,  to be published soon in the venerable The Trumpeter: A Journal of Ecosophy.  Another essay on the Creek for the wonderful Pie and Chai magazine.  An essay (and maybe performance?) of the music of Potomac Creek.  Much more on the Native Americans of the Creek. And much, much more madness by humans and other fauna and flora... Patawomeck mask   ..read more

  Yesterday I listened to a moving talk by "Bootsie" Bullock, Chief of the local Patawomeck Tribe. The Chief described a Potomac Creek that I recognized immediately: a place where -- until sometime in the late 1970s, perhaps -- a kid could wander freely across property lines in search of fish or simply a good spot to while away the hours. People didn't care; we local kids were mostly invisible to adults with bigger things to worry about.  That Creek is gone now. Today, it's always a struggle to find access to fields, woods, and water, as property values have increased and landowners ..read more