The wreck of the ‘USS Inaugural,’ October 21, 2021
Every few years the Mississippi at St. Louis drops enough to reveal the wreck of a WWII minesweeper, the USS Inaugural, lying in a few feet of water, next to the Missouri shore. How it came to be there…
Photo by John Griswold
Of course a city garbage truck—big, dangerous, smelly—was the big hit at the local Touch a Truck event today, and both kids and parents enthused over it. My younger son had volunteered to help staff the event, and it was one of our first…
Photo by John Griswold
“How far, in any case, must one go back
to find the beginning?”
—WG Sebald, After Nature
I know someone who used to say, at key life-moments: I’m going to just [do this one thing], and we’ll see what happens. If you looked…
Photo of an exhibit in the museum, by John Griswold
Ms. Charlotte Davis wanted to show me everything.
I was standing on the porch of the log cabin next to the museum, and when I turned she had appeared on the steps, an older local lady with tight…
A crowd of thousands at City Hall in Houston. Photo by John Griswold
A would-be participant in the Houston Women’s March for reproductive and voting rights stood in a line of three dozen people waiting to pay to park on Saturday morning, in a lot next to Minute…
Anton Chekhov’s home and garden south of Moscow. Photo by John Griswold
I live with a blessed patch of pines between me and the main road, so I do not think about traffic much until the screaming sirens fly past, quite close, and I have to wait to see…
Photo by John Griswold
Maybe you too have the 2005 edition of The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, illustrated by Maira Kalman. It is one of those books that seems to rise to the surface of piles of books and present its…
Southern Illinois was my first biome, and I still know it intimately, but summers can be miserably humid and hot. Before every major thunderstorm, people in the St. Louis area keep saying this will be the one to break the heat for the year, but today it was in the 90s with 83 percent humidity.
“Flags of Valor,” a memorial outside the St. Louis Art Museum, September 11, 2021. Photo by John Griswold.
When 9-11 happened I was teaching at the University of Illinois. My wife was six weeks pregnant with our first son. We were getting ready for work but stopped to…
Photo by John Griswold
Start with small seats on the aircraft, smaller all the time, it seems, and the expectation that flights will be full, and no room in the overhead bins, so your bag goes under the seat in front of you, and your feet get pinned…