I've made mention here before of the Mountain Eagle, the eastern Kentucky newspaper run by the Gish family. I've been reading this newspaper every week for 25 years, since the moment I first met publisher Tom Gish's son, Ray, when I was in college. Over time, I've absorbed numbers of dreadful Eagle headlines about local murders, mining accidents, corruption, and Oxycontin; but this week's may be the most distressing statement yet. To me, it seems to encapsulate the desperate misery that is poverty, and also loneliness, and also love; and I can't stop thinking about it.

"Woman who left kids in hot car while shoplifting is still in jail"

The article goes on to mention that she was stealing "baby formula, diapers, shaving cream, razor, and two eight-ounce soft drink bottles."

But even as I had barely come to grips with the sadness of that complicated story, I read another headline, this one in my own local paper, the Waterville Morning Sentinel:

"Police: Man forces ex-wife to swallow wedding ring"

Meanwhile, here I sit at my writing table, listening to chickens complain and the dog bark; listening to the cicadas rattle in the trees; listening to robins chortle in the maples. "The world is too much with us; late and soon." Tragedy is not too large a word.