Michael Shay's Hummingbirdminds

 Let's get the preliminaries out of the way. It's hot and humid here. It's more crowded than I remember. The college football se...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the intersection of writers and gardening . I mentioned that Flannery O'Connor's Andalusia in Milledg...

A viral plague kills thousands and forces millions to hunker down at home and practice social distancing when out in public. Black America...

People are struggling. They are sick and dying; their businesses are shuttered or they are unemployed, either for the duration or for good. ...

"That's some catch, that Catch-22.  "It's the best there is." Those lines stuck in my head in 1969 and never left...

George Saunders ' novel "Lincoln in the Bardo" is eerie and hilarious. The novel is written by an experienced short story writ...

It seems that arts education can be a wonderful asset in standing up to bullies. That was on display last week at the CNN town hall meetin...

I read Adam Johnson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about North Korea last spring. "The Orphan Master's Son" is a humorous...

Republicans are aghast that someone would be so angry as to take a shot at Congressional reps practicing for a baseball game in Alexandria, ...

My 19-year-old daughter was at the midnight showing in Cheyenne of "The Dark Knight Rises" on Thursday night. When I awoke Friday ...

The film that accompanies Nicholas D. Kristof's New York Times story makes me incredibly sad -- and pisses me off. Why isn't more...

As always, the arts were front and center during this morning’s televised tenth anniversary of trying to make sense of 9/11. Performances ...

It was a week marked by savagery and bravery. A disturbed young man shoots 18 people in front of a Tucson grocery store. Six of them die, ...

Sean R. Heavey/For The Billings Gazette From the Billings Gazette: Sean Heavey of Glasgow tracked a storm that hit Valley County and Ph...

Wyoming teens still engage in risky behavior. That’s not really news for teens living anywhere or at any time. I must admit that I engaged...

My wife Chris and I attended a funeral yesterday for Charles, one of my son's best friends from high school. I will use just his first n...

For an on-the-ground look into the U.S. "surge" in Iraq, read Nir Rosen's "The Myth of the Surge" in the newest issu...

Last week, poetry and prose were sources of healing at Virginia Tech. Nikki Giovanni, Lucinda Roy, Edward Falco – these writers in the schoo...

This week in Sojourners , Jim Wallis talked about the Virginia Tech shootings in his "Hearts & Minds" column. The headline, ...