Earlywood: Immediate and Ordinary Beauty

Publisher’s note: Good morning! It’s time for Earlywood, often immediate and ordinary beauty indeed. Every Saturday, we publish a free excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. Sometimes it’s from a magazine article. Or a book. Or (in this case) a blog entry. This one is from December 2019. Each entry has been updated or annotated with some modern context or point of view. We hope you enjoy it.

One of the reasons we’ve made Lost Art Press books as durable as possible might seem silly. Perhaps it is the result of growing up in the Cold War, but I’ve always worried that human civilization is on the brink of collapse.

And after that happens – whether it’s from war, climate or alien economics – people will need to build things without the help of YouTube or television. Maybe our books (which have already endured floods, dog attacks and – nature’s worst – the toddler), will survive as well.

Lately, however, my morning walks into Cincinnati have changed my mind.