Author’s note: I write about work, travel, and the tiny catastrophes that make a life interesting. This one’s not political — it’s proof that sometimes the absurd wins out before the practical ever gets a shot. I haven’t been deployed since my ride-along in July, which, given my line of work, makes me the most non-traveling virtual catastrophe adjuster in the world. That’s a great thing for the family, not great for the blog — unless you like following one man’s slow descent into stir-crazy. So when a team meeting gave me a story-worthy excuse to write something else, I took it. When Jamie and I moved to North Carolina we ended up with enough land to indulge my part-time farmer fantasies: horses (check), a parade of rescues courtesy of Jamie (check), and at one point — because of course — over a hundred chickens. Somewhere in that glorious nonsense I decided I needed a tractor. Not a fantasy tractor, a real, honest-to-God, plow-your-field, push-your-brush, get-your-hands-dirt...

  Author’s Note Most of the time when I sit down to write, it’s stories from the body shop, family life, road trips with Jamie, or memories from upstate New York. This post is different. It’s political, it’s heavy, and it’s personal. But it’s also a part of my life, and pretending it didn’t happen—or that it doesn’t matter—wouldn’t feel honest. What follows isn’t about taking sides. It’s about telling the story as I experienced it, and about what I think it says about the world my kids and yours are inheriting. The World We Live In Yesterday, my daughter Alida’s college, UNC Wilmington, went into lockdown for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. The first lockdown was for a bomb scare. The second was because of reports of an active shooter. Both turned out to be false alarms. But the chain of events, the way rumors snowballed online, and the political heat that flared up around it all… it tells us a lot about where we are as a country right now. And to be honest, I d...