Every family has one. The black sheep, the misfit, the weird uncle no one wants to talk about.
In the Human family, Neanderthal Man takes this role.
For years, we denied that we were related. He wasn't an ancestor, just an “evolutionary dead end.”
Then the DNA test came back. We are all descended from Neanderthal Man, whether we want to admit it or not.
You could, if you wanted, get up one morning and drive across the country. You could start out in Brattleboro, filling your tank in the shadow of the underpass and head out into the unknown. You could tell people, if they asked, that you were a road scholar, that...
Somewhere near you there is a junkyard. You may have never been there, which is a shame, because a junkyard is something worth seeing. Each one is a world unto itself, a monument to the American spirit. Like people, junkyards have their own personalities. Some are neat and organized,
It happens every year. They start out in the fall, leaving the Canadian arctic, heading south. They trudge across miles of frozen forest, wade through icy streams, and climb barbed wire fences. They have to cross the border illegally, because governments don't issue passports. Some of them get busted and melt in overheated holding cells waiting for lawyers who never show up. Once they make it into the United States, the problems of snowmen have only begun. They have to...
Many people have predicted that the world will end in 2012. We are more than halfway through the year and, as far as I can tell, the Earth is still here. But there are some bad signs on the horizon. The ice sheets in Greenland are melting, Texas is baking in the heat, and gas is pushing four bucks a gallon. The more you think about it, the worse it seems. It's enough to drive you crazy. Fortunately, we all...
A river flows through the center of the city. The water is dark and mysterious, murky and deep. There are eddies and small whirlpools, miniature falls and tiny bridges. But no one stops to look. They hurry past, and the river flows on. Once the river powered great factories that helped defeat an unspeakable evil. The Germans wanted to destroy the city, to bomb the factories and shut them down. They failed, but today the factories sit idle. The city...
Walk to the highest mountaintop and listen. Somewhere, off in the distance, you will hear one singing its song. Its lone voice drones on, rising and falling. Somewhere, someone is using a chainsaw. Its sound is so common that it should be the state bird. Long ago, people used hand saws and axes to fell, limb, and split their wood. It was slow and tedious. Today, only cranks cut their cordwood by hand. The chainsaw is too useful to be...
They slumber beneath the sea; they sleep under 30 feet of concrete. Ready at a moment's notice, they wait. One would be enough to wipe out a whole city. Despite the fall of communism, there are still thousands of nuclear weapons in the world, enough to destroy the world. We came close a few times. I used to know a guy whose father was a crew member on a B-52 bomber that ran fail-safe return flights. The plane, loaded with...