or Thomas Joseph Wilson's Blog
The Industrial Nopes One of the reasons I became a teacher–and I know this is not what I should be saying–was so that I wouldn’t have to work in a cubicle. It was at the beginning of my teenagedom that I had suspected that the cubicle environment would not be my bag. I don’t remember…
If one deigns to walk in a park in Ohio during the winter, you will plot a course through temporary bones. You will find temporary bones reaching every which way: reaching toward the water, the sky, toward other bones, toward the ground, toward you. Your journey will not be without classification issues. There are temporary…
I. Here I was, in the blizzarded-out mountains of Colorado in the 1800s, navigating a horse to some sort of hunting ground to score some deer for our starving party. A non-player character (NPC) made small talk with me while the game tried to clue me on things that it had already taught about riding…
The Phenomenon Let’s say you and some other smartphone owners have happened upon the topic of sanitary napkins. Sure, a niche topic, but we often happen unexpectedly on conversations about improving our daily tools: Tools are our species’s super powers. Anyway, someone in the group has found a new tissue brand that just owns, trounces…
My wife spread her arms as if to point out something egregious, something obvious and no-duh-ish. Her arms seemed to be indicating our living room. I scanned it. Nothing was amiss. I squinted. This was my way of letting her continue. “Your books,” she said. “Don’t you think this is hoarding? How many have you…
And, So, SARS-CoV-2 When we began our lockdown, many of us felt hemmed in with no space. We were relegated to our homes, and when we did leave, it was with a healthy dose of fear, a bottle of hand-sanitizer (if you were fortunate enough), and a homemade mask. But in this unwanted era, this…
Working and College Like any American, I have my consumerist bent on worldly things, and while my time and focus was on college, I wanted to work a life sustaining job while surrounded with things I had a kinship with: books and computers. And like an idealistic ninny, I chose to work at a bookstore,…
Driving Opinions People really like to declare a city of drivers terrible. You’ve heard it, “People drive like [insert parts of speech here] around here.” The metric always changes. And I guess I can see a sort of difference in New York City drivers versus Cincinnati drivers, but Nashville versus Cincinnati? St. Louis versus Houston?…
“There,” our tour guide said. I skimmed my eyes through the yellow grass, long and swirling still even with the absence of wind. We plodded closer and in looking so close, I could see how this could resemble American prairie, the lighter color of autumn covering much vastness. Then blotches of what was flattened grass…
“You must be asking yourself why I’m not in the enclosure with the wolves like the other conservationists,” the gentleman, an elder in age, said into the microphone. “It’s quite simple. I might not make it out.” You wouldn’t think West Lafayette, Indiana, home of Purdue University and many, many cornfields, would be a place…