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THE FOOD WE LEAVE BEHIND

A plate of golden-brown fried ravioli topped with grated cheese and garnished with herbs, served with a side of marinara sauce in a small bowl.
St. Louis Toasted Ravioli

I am thinking of all the foods and memories of food that I have left behind as I have aged and have moved all around the United States. Some favorite regional foods are no longer available to me as I no longer inhabit the places where they are readily available. Others favorites seem to be gone because the special people who made them with such care are no longer with us.

Please read my reflections on my free Substack page, “Everyday Life: Florishing in These Times, ” and be sure to comment on the foods you have left behind, the people who made them special, and the places where you enjoyed eating them.

https://craigphillips.substack.com/p/the-foods-we-leave-behind

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LIVING LIFE IN THE BIG RING

Every July I return to Lake Champlain with my bicycle. The roads are familiar, the fields still need mowing, and the Strava segments still challenge me.

But this is not really a story about speed. It is about a lifetime on two wheels—from a red Raleigh Colt carrying a trombone to school, to a celeste Bianchi, to the carbon Specialized I ride today. It is about family rides, grandchildren discovering bicycles, and the quiet determination to keep chasing fifteen seconds.

Aging changes the body. It does not have to diminish the joy.

Please read this on my free Substack Page:

https://open.substack.com/pub/craigphillips/p/living-life-in-the-big-ring?r=2jqz90&utm_medium=ios

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PATIENCE: THE ANCHOR OF THE SOUL

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This morning, my dog Rosie fell asleep in my lap on the back deck and wouldn’t let me get up. The foxglove were lit up in the early light, my coffee went cold, and I found myself thinking about what a 17th-century book had to say about patience, storms, and the hammer that shapes gold.

You can read it here:

https://craigphillips.substack.com/p/patience-the-anchor-of-the-soul

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF WONDER

In October 2021 I harvested ten pounds of grapes from a single vine on my back fence. I left them on as long as I could. Let them ripen before the frost came.


That turned out to be a good description of flourishing. Not a feeling you wait for. Something you practice, daily, with what you have.


Seven years of writing on this site. One year on my free Substack page. A new retrospective essay on that first year on Substack is up there now.

What are you paying attention to these days?

https://craigphillips.substack.com/p/the-architecture-of-wonder

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THE MEANTIME: NINE WEEKS READING THE EXPANSE

Five thousand pages. Nine novels. Nine weeks. What I found in James S. A. Corey’s The Expanse wasn’t just great science fiction — it was a meditation on decency, mortality, and what we do with the time we have. Because the meantime, it turns out, is the only time there is.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-194116678

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WHAT THE CITY KEEPS: A NEW YORK CITY MEMOIR OF LOVE AND LOSS

Check out this new post on my free Substack Page.

A month in New York City keeps turning into an encounter with the past. My father’s midtown commute, my wife’s mother and grandmother lunching at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, the invisible lines running through a city where lives pass within feet of each other for decades without ever meeting. I keep wishing I could compare notes with the people who were here before me.

https://open.substack.com/pub/craigphillips/p/what-the-city-keeps?r=2jqz90&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

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INVITATION TO MY FREE PUBLIC LECTURE IN NEW YORK CITY—3/18/26

If you are in the NYC area you are welcome to attend my free public lecture on “The Earliest Mapping of the Religions of the World.” Signup on Eventbrite is encouraged.

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“SNOWBOUND” — THEN AND NOW

Snowbound! Check out this post on my free Substack page.

A Nor’easter is tracking up the Eastern Seaboard this morning, and the snow-covered birch trees outside my window in New Hampshire sent me back to John Greenleaf Whittier’s great 1866 poem ‘Snow-Bound’, and to the question of what we lose when no storm can truly cut us off anymore. Modern life is specifically engineered to prevent the conditions that produced some of the best writing in American literature.

https://craigphillips.substack.com/p/snowbound-then-and-now

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MAPS, SPACE, AND OLD HERESIES

This week my reading moved from a 1677 woodcut map of New England to a 1606 copper engraved map of the religions of the world, to a seventeenth-century catalogue of world religions and Christian heresies, to a sprawling space opera set across the solar system. A rare book arrived in the mail, a public talk prompted uncomfortable questions, and the common thread running through all of it turned out to be the same: people trying to draw the world as they wished it to be, and the significant silences their clean lines depend on.

Check out the new post on my free Substack page!

https://craigphillips.substack.com/p/maps-space-battles-and-old-heresies

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WHAT MY DOG TAUGHT ME ABOUT JOY

Check out my new free Substack post!

Watching my Cavapoo Rosie explode into the first snowfall of the year reminded me of something we’ve all forgotten. The ability to feel unbridled joy doesn’t disappear as we grow up—it just gets buried.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-181510207