While I was out of town at my parents' farm near Samson, Alabama, the other editors of The High Hat, aka the best damn magazine on the web, managed to pull together Issue No. 9 without any help from yours truly at all. This goes without saying, but I'm going to say it, anyway: they are mindblowingly, forkbendingly, breathtakingly, worldshakingly awesome people, and it's due to their smarts and diligence that every issue of the Hat is better than the last.

This one is dedicated to places, and is chock-full of stand-out articles, including Erika Jahneke on the ghosts of 9/11 in Rescue Me and World Trade Center, Shauna McKenna on Roma and Tokyo-Ga, and tons of brilliance, especially from the extra-prolific Phil Nugent and Steve Hicken.

I contributed a semi-considered article on the films Gerry and Grizzly Man and the tv shows Survivorman and Man Vs. Wild, all of which deal with little people lost in the huge indifference of Nature. Go check it out.

On another note, if you left me a comment asking for an email and haven't received one yet, please let me know. I've tried to answer all the emails, but I've been a bit extra-scattered and smothered and even a little covered lately, what with my book in endgame plus stress of family tragedy and distractions related to our little nuclear family.