The first thing I look for in each new edition of the New York Times is an editorial piece by Verlyn Klinkenborg.
Verlyn’s ongoing editorial column The Rural Life is always the best thing to read in the whole paper (which is saying something because every edition of the NY Times is a work of art). I’ve been reading Verlyn’s editorials for a few years but it was only today I realized that Verlyn is a man! Well I’ll be jiggered! I was going to mention her breathtakingly beautiful, deeply moving, thoroughly visual style of writing in my entry today. I’m glad I did a little research first.
Mr. Klinkenborg was born in 1952 and grew up in Iowa and California. He has a Ph.D. in English Literature from Princeton and he’s been on the editorial board of the New York Times for ten years. His work has appeared in a gazillion great magazines, he’s won many awards and a fellowship, taught literature at Harvard, and is now a visiting professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He’s written a few books, two of which are on my reading list: Making Hay and The Last Fine Time.
Verlyn lives on a small farm in rural upstate New York. That’s within stalking distance of Durham Township, right?
Kathleen Connally 