Our loneliness makes us avid column readers these days.

Many people have believed that they were Chosen, but none more baldly than the Texans.

Man is different from animals in that he speculates, a high-risk activity.

Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn't brotherly -- who lived mostly under his parents' roof . . . who advocated one day's work and six days "off" as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown . . . is probably the American writer who tells us best how to live comfortably with our most constant companion, ourselves.

Black bears, though, are not fearsome. I encountered one on the road to my house in Vermont, alone at night. I picked up two stones just in case, but I wasn't afraid of him. I felt a hunter's exhilaration and a brotherly feeling.

Poetry is engendered in solitude, so what better meter for it than the clip of a buckskin horse?

Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.