Raised in and around Laramie, Wyoming in the almost exclusive company of geology professors, I now reside a few blocks away from Graumann's Chinese Theatre and hang out with a wide variety of lowlifes. I have lived in New York City, in Northern Virginia and in the Deep South, where I developed a passion for fried okra, Charleston-style barbeque, and breakfast grits. I've held a couple of professional writing positions, but like most of us, I've been employed in a variety of jobs unrelated to writing, the majority of them unmemorable, awful, or both.

I am as plain as dry toast, so I let the gorgeousness of my boys, Archie and Waldo to the right, represent my inner matinee idol looks.

I know too much about ...

the dead at Antietam

My parents always told me ...

not to depend on the arts for my livelihood, to get "another arrow for my bow." They never imagined I would simply give up archery.

My childhood ambition ...

was to get out of Laramie and become rich and famous. So far, I've gotten out of Laramie.

My favorite memory ...

is lying on the top of a hill overlooking Jackson Lake in the Tetons listening to a cassette of the Adagio of the Shostakovich 6th and being transported out into the universe, only to return and find I'd been eaten alive by mosquitos. No drugs were involved by the way.

Why I write ...

Because I can't sing and dance.

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Just started re-watching all of "Absolutely Fabulous!" It's even funnier the 2nd time around. I want Jennifer Saunders.

My first job ...

Junior assistant to the University of Wyoming groundseeping staff. I was 14, and the old timers let me drive the sod truck around and taught me how to swear.

Arts & Humanities > 19th Century US History The legacy of Abraham Lincoln

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Abraham Lincoln's honored place among America's most revered icons is assured. In his memorial at the western edge of the Washington Mall sits his stone effigy, massive and humbling like the fabled statue of Zeus at Olympia. Etched in marble on the walls behind the great figure are the stirring and magnificent words of the Gettysburg Address, words made necessary by the tragic war of aggression he waged against the breakaway states of 19th Century America. Though there is much to admire in Lincoln, serious questions about him linger.

Lincoln rose to the presidency as the result of a ha...

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