The Inconvenience Store
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

The Inconvenience Store

The modern market exists to give us what we currently don’t already have, and … what we do not have is the luxury of waiting.

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The Zanesville Cut
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

The Zanesville Cut

The Zanesville cut was one of the ways I kept the pulse of the heartland, to know if it was dying faster than me. Happily, it never was.

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Yule Log
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

Yule Log

Christmas is an island of the divine amidst a sea of the mundane. Kids know this, which is why a great deal of their Gregorian calendars revolve around it.

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Taking It to the Street
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

Taking It to the Street

The man-on-the-street interview is an integral part of any self-respecting newspaper … The Mount Vernon News used to do one regularly before they moved their newsroom to Manila, besides Buzzfeed’s offices.

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I Confess: I was the Bishop
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

I Confess: I was the Bishop

You would think you could trust professors who hem and haw over semicolons to get properly sentimental about a building, but no.

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Hindsight is 2020
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

Hindsight is 2020

Larger institutions are merely the collective inertia of private hopes and wills, and I think many of us face the raw and primitive work of having to start over again, within.

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Tractor Thoughts
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

Tractor Thoughts

A John Deere’s gearbox has a great deal more personality than a whole server farm of artificial intelligence, anyway, and more motive power besides.

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Scootland
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

Scootland

You are neither a vehicle nor a pedestrian, but simply a weak third-world state or a malevolent superpower depending on your lane.

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A Review of Bossa Nova, U.S.A.
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

A Review of Bossa Nova, U.S.A.

Panned as pedestrian at the time, I praise it for the same reason; it is very much a song about walking about the town that I met in it.

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Tripping
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

Tripping

If your young child turns to you upon arrival, as they often do in these vacation commercials, and says "I wish we could stay here forever," you have failed. 

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Flying Home
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

Flying Home

The differences between the technological revolutions of the 20th century and the 21st century is that the first was a victory against nature; the second is a victory against mankind.

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On Gravedigging
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

On Gravedigging

It is almost a transactional thing; you hope your future interment will be generous enough to place you beyond the reach of whatever future mobs you anger, if you do this creature that kindness.

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We Petty Men
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

We Petty Men

The removal of Lee's monument is typical of our epoch's scorched-earth discourse.

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One Night Only
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

One Night Only

It was a moment Kruschev and Nixon could not have imagined, standing there in the kitchen.

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The Gallery Café
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

The Gallery Café

Far from being customer-obsessed and other LinkedIn truisms, the café does not give a damn.

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Goodbye to Cleveland
M. T. Eley M. T. Eley

Goodbye to Cleveland

For those who like such things, there was an odd loneliness in Cleveland, truly unique to the area.

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