(pokes head out of hole, squints at sun)

Photo by Raff Liu on Unsplash

At least four concerned Shedheads have checked in with me lately, worried that I haven’t posted here in a while. My apologies for not keeping up this end of our deal. I don’t have a good excuse … I think I’m going through a bit of a creative troth and I’m still figuring out what the next big project might be. Plus, I don’t care what Punxsutawney Phil said, it feels like we’ve got 100 more weeks of winter. Those of you in cold gray places who suffer from seasonal affective disorder: I feel you. At least a little.

But, as I have preached in this space more than once, being a professional means doing the job even on days when you don’t feel like it. And one way to stumble into the big project is to do a bunch of little ones and see if one of them wants to be something more.

I’ll be back in our regular groove, and then some, this week; I’m working on some thoughts about empathy, and figuring out a way for us to share great new music in a more regular way. I’m writing this on a cold rainy night in Savannah, but soon I’ll be back home, in more ways than one. This space has become home of a sort for me. And I hope for you, too.

For now I want to leave you with one extra thing. The marvelous Anna Sale interviewed me recently for a bonus episode of her podcast DEATH, SEX & MONEY. As part of a larger discussion of public service jobs in America, and how they’re under attack because of Elon Musk and DOGE, Anna wanted to talk to me about a piece I wrote last year about the death of my brother-in-law, Ed Williams. He was a public servant and a damn good one. We also talked about the shredding of the journalism business and a little about DOGLAND. (FYI, the paperback is out April 8!)

The episode is behind a paywall—if you have Slate Plus you can listen to it there. But Anna was gracious enough to send me the audio file so I could share it with everybody here. It’s one of my favorite conversations on tape, which makes sense, because nobody’s a better conversation partner than Anna.

Here you go. See you back here in a few days.

—TT