A few weeks ago, as I prepared to wind down the Sunday Essays, a reader asked which were my favorites. It’s a bit of a hard question, because to tell the truth, I haven’t read many of the essays since publication. One day, I’d imagine, I’ll read some or all of them, and I’ll be interested which at that point are my favorites. At this point, though, these are the ones that jumped out as I scrolled through them—the ones that made me say, “I think that was a good one:”
The first, ironically, isn’t really a Sunday Essay. It’s a letter I wrote Emma the week of our wedding to be read on our wedding day in a video, at the prompting of our videographer. It was made for show, but it was meaningful and will remain meaningful: To Emma, On Our Wedding Day.
The real first one, then, came more than a quarter of the way into the series. It came after Election Day, and I think it was the best I’ve done at summing up my feelings on the distinction between a nation and its government, and why that’s important: On This Country, Which Is Bigger Than Its Government.
Similar in its applicability to life but probably lesser in its artfulness, I liked the one the following week about my high school cross country coach: On Winning, and Having Fun; and the following week, it was fun to dream about East 6th, which has indeed since come back: On East 6th, When It All Comes Back.
The Sunday before Christmas, the calendar gave me a chance to think hard upon my love for my religious ancestry, and on one of my favorite poems: On Christmas Eve, Longfellow, and the Quiet Darkness. In the lull between Christmas and New Year’s, I wrote about one of the best friends I’ve ever had—my childhood cat (cried on an airplane typing this one, wiped my snot on the inside of my mask, so that should be a lighter cultural touchstone from the year): On Barnaby, Christmas Morning, and the Meaning of Pets. Finally, New Year’s gave me a chance to talk Calvin and Hobbes and celebrate my favorite of the smaller holidays: On New Year’s Day, Hobbes, and the Big White Sheet of Paper.
The following week, with soft, relatively harmless (compared to what was to come a month and a half later) snow piling up in Austin, I spent the morning writing about one of my favorite cities, which happened to be a second home to me during the long distance phase of mine and Emma’s relationship: On D.C., Long Distance, and Saying Goodbye. The next week, I wrote of my first second home, the prideworthy Rust Belt city where I went to college: On South Bend, and the Liberation of Isolation.
One of my quieter favorites, and one I should probably revisit more often when I’m cranky about humanity, was an early February essay On Neighbors. This is the one that comes to mind most when I think, “Which was my favorite?”
Two written around the end of winter will be good for me to read in a decade. The first was in the aftermath of the winter storm that claimed an estimated 700 or so lives in Texas, which will God willing be the worst natural disaster I ever encounter up close (or, God really willing, from a distance): On This Week. The second was in the aftermath of an exhausted, exhausting, hilarious and joyful trip to pick up our puppy up in southern Missouri: On Yesterday, the Day We Brought Home Fargo.
The next week, in a brief pause amidst the noise of Selection Sunday (a big day for this blog, and in the house, where we were cleaning up after aforementioned puppy got over both Parvo and Giardia in the horrifying first few days of our time with her), I reflected on the blog itself: On The Barking Crow. At the end of that month, I wrote about the greatest spiritual experience of my life, love and forgiveness, and things like them: On Maundy Thursday and the Oregon Coast.
It became hard to write essays after that, perhaps due to the remaining fruit residing higher in the tree or perhaps because it was a hard spring for me. The last three, though, I felt good about upon publication. The first will be useful to me if I ever become famous, and perhaps useful otherwise, and perhaps humorous otherwise, but I promise it’s sincere, and I think it’s important: On My Non-Magnificence. The second talks again about America, but this time about patriotism and things like it: On America, and Love. The third, well, started the whole thing, and before I link to it let me say thank you to all of you who found it, read it, and reached out. I didn’t finish it early enough to figure out the best way to roll it out (a feature of these essays was often the haste of their construction, the consequence of a facet I improved at but never mastered), but I suppose here’s a good place to mention that mental health conversations are expected to be a larger part of The Barking Crow going forward, so if you’re looking for that kind of content and/or the return of MilkTime, keep an eye on it. Here’s the finale: On Suicide and on Remaining.
If you have other favorites, please share them with me, as I’d love to know which you enjoyed. Thanks for reading. Much love to you all. Similar things to these essays coming soon.
Bark.
I just read your favorites, and a few adjacent essays. It is a wonderful collection in its own right. But they also may prove to be a compost pile of fertility from which many other things will grow. Keep adding to the pile; keep turning it over.