Michael Lind

Like many Texans who reach their seventh decade, I find myself thinking a lot about the armadillos in my life. Many a time I have been with a ’dillo at its demise — or, to be precise, a short period after its demise, swerving in my car to avoid its remains after it was hit by a truck or car and … Continue Reading

Of all the authors I have known, James Wakefield Burke (1906-1989) was the most memorable. He was not a great writer, or even a good one. But J.W., as he was known, was a quintessentially American type: the bullshit artist. I met him in 1985, when I was 23 years old and finishing graduate studies … Continue Reading

It is a place from the nightmares of America’s elite metropolitan progressives. A place where there is a steakhouse in every neighborhood. Where the favorite drink is called “the little redneck.” Where new Ford F-150s sell out as soon as they are offered by dealers. Where crowds gather to watch … Continue Reading

“Down in Starr County, we throw out every third Republican vote.” The time was the 1970s, and the speaker was a slight acquaintance of my father who at the time was an assistant attorney general assigned to the state highway department. The visitor to our house in Austin laughed as he recounted how … Continue Reading

The first and only time I ever saw a squirrel without a tail was at the home of Edmond Decatur Harrison, the county judge of Blanco County, Texas. In the 1950s, before my brother and I were born, my father, fresh out of law school, had been elected county attorney in the thinly populated hills west … Continue Reading

Mount Monadnock is the highest peak in southern New Hampshire. It is also the occasion of a poem by the greatest New England intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson. In “Monadnoc,” the genteel Boston Brahmin explains that he expected to find heroic patriots among the mountaineers of the neighborhood. … Continue Reading

I nearly drove the car off Interstate Highway 35 when my grandfather told me, “I have discovered that our family might be related to Jesus of Nazareth.” I had been paying little attention to what Granddaddy had been saying, up to that point. We were nearing Selma, a tiny jurisdiction and notorious … Continue Reading

Turtle sex is as weird as you would expect it to be. In the case of the ornate box turtle, terrapene ornata, courtship begins with the male pursuing the female and bumping into her. When the male mounts his mate, he locks his legs into her shell. Several hours can pass before the male slides off or … Continue Reading