I love the hardware store. That is where they keep the lumber. And aside from chocolate and a few other delicacies (all of which are, coincidentally, chocolate), there are few smells more satisfying than freshly cut lumber. Especially if you arrive at exactly the moment they’re sawing boards to order and the entire building smells like ambition and sawdust.

We’ve been trying to decide what to do about Valentine’s Day.

Lying awake in the dark, I realized I wasn’t thinking about dating or marriage so much as adaptation. About what happens when a species wakes up in an environment it didn’t evolve for and begins improvising in real time.

His target market is more likely to have opinions about wagon wheels. His book involves history. Weather. People who would find modern plumbing suspicious.