I am unusually Halloween-attentive, because, as it happens, I was born on Halloween, so for me it has always been an occasion of great moment.

When I heard about the Microsoft Kinect, though, I felt an urgency rising in me. A game you played without touching any machinery? A chance to wave your hands around, Minority-Report style, and move things around on a screen? This sounded like almost too much fun, with gadget-y pizzazz that sounded astonishing.

Sometimes I'm dazzled by how modern and fabulous we are, and how easy everything can be for us; that's the gilded glow of technology, and I marvel at it all the time.

Winter in the country is very white. There is black grit on all the shoulders of the roads and on the big mounds from the plows, and all the cars are filthy, but the fields are dazzling and untouched and pristine.

Most fourth graders can't say why Abraham Lincoln is an important historical figure? Wow. This is far more distressing than if the news had been that fourth graders were bad at reciting multiplication tables, because you can, in fact, Google that.

I think coexisting with another life form is a very rich experience. It's why people keep plants and animals.

Animals can seem more pure. Without complication, I mean, animals are selfless. What animals do for us, they do out of instinct.