I like ducks. I watch the same two mallards visit this area of Lake Martin. Almost every morning.

I don’t know if they’re married. Ducks are seasonally monogamous. So this could just be a one-season stand.

Still, they are my friends. I guess they’re here to find food. Sort of like going to Piggly Wiggly with your spouse, minus the buggy, and the rolling of your spouse’s eyes whenever one of you places six jars of something you don’t need into the basket because it’s BOGO.

One of the ducks is male, with an iridescent green head and a yellow bill. The female is brown, with a black bill.

I call them Lucy and Desi. I don’t know why. It was either that or George and Gracie. But he isn’t a George. Sometimes you can just tell.

Each morning, I sit on the dock with coffee in hand, legs dangling off the edge, and I talk to them as they paddle by.

I ask what they’ve been up to. I ask what’s going on in their lives. How’s the family?

How do you like this weather? Do y’all have any summer plans?

They’re unafraid of me, even though I am a big scary human, located only a few feet from them. They come near me sometimes. Not too close, mind you. But close enough that I can see Lucy’s pretty eyes and Desi’s amazing emerald hood.

Desi is definitely the friendlier of the two. I get the feeling that Desi is the kind of duck you’d want to party with. Whereas Lucy is more driven, and highly focused on making sure everything is just so. Sometimes I wonder whether she’s holding Desi back.

For a long time, they showed up. And for a long time, I’d sit there, watching them undergo the seasonal changes of life.

I watched Desi lose his green plumage during molting season, and turn brown. I…

My first concept of robots came from watching The Jetsons before school in my underpants. My boyhood morning routine consisted of sitting on the sofa in my tighty-whities, eating Cap’n Crunch, watching television, and listening to my mother say, “Get those underpants off my couch, Mister!”

Rosie the robot was the Jetsons’ fun housemaid who skated from room to room, wearing an apron, completing important daily tasks such as vacuuming, cooking, and using her mechanical claws to forcibly administer baths to Elroy, whose father she called “Mister J.”

I liked Rosie. In fact, I think Rosie was one of my favorite cartoon characters with the exceptions of Yogi Bear and Farrah Fawcett.

Back in those days robots were a far-off idea. They were sci-fi. This was pre-internet. Pre-cellular phone. The only computers anyone ever heard of were the size of an average Chuck E. Cheese.

Robots weren’t real back then. They were imaginary concepts. Like the Tooth Fairy, or the Department of Agriculture.

Which is why, yesterday, I was stunned to have an

actual conversation with a robot.

This all started when my brother-in-law first downloaded an AI app onto my phone a few years ago.

Now, I had heard of this app before. I had even used this program when doing research for a piece I wrote on AI. During my research, I remember asking the app to produce a well-written 500-word column, and to do it in the style of the writer “Sean Dietrich.”

In seconds—this is an astonishing display of intelligence—the app replied: “I thought you wanted something well-written.”

I remember the first vocal conversation I had with AI. When you first set up the app, you must select a voice. They offer a male voice, female voice, and a voice that sounds like a real teenager except they are only partially repulsed by you.

I chose the female voice. Then I asked the voice if she…

“Yeah, I got a story for you,” said the old woman in the nursing home.

She had midnight skin, dandelion-fuzz hair, and she smoked Newports. Each day she liked to park her wheelchair in the parking lot where she could face the supermarket, and watch all the happy customers walk in and out of Publix.

At the time, I was a cub reporter, looking to scare up a story for the local paper. Back when Americans still read newspapers.

The old woman faced Publix. She flicked her lighter, drew in a breath, then began to speak.

“You ain’t old enough to remember the flood,” she began.

The Great Flood of 1927 is not often remembered in our selective pop-culture history. Historically, we Americans tend to only remember wars, good-looking movie stars, and crappy pop songs. If you ask a schoolkid about the flood, odds are they’ll look at you as though you’ve got three heads, blink twice, then resume texting.

In 1927, the Mississippi remained at flood levels for 153 days.

Rain kept falling. Waters kept rising. The icepacks of the north kept melting.

The river in Vicksburg broke 40 feet. Nashville and Chattanooga flooded. Creeks and tributaries as far away as Kansas and Iowa were inundated.

Nationwide, 170 counties and parishes were drowned, seven states flooded, and 900,000 were driven from their homes. The flood claimed lives from Virginia to Oklahoma.

“This story happened to my uncle…” she said.

Her uncle was married with kids. When the floodwaters invaded his home, the family moved upstairs to stay dry. When the second story flooded, the family moved to the roof. When waters finally engulfed the rooftop, her uncle swam ashore to find help, tied at the waist by a rope attached to his chimney.

“I don’t know how he made it to shore against those currents. Shoulda killed him.”

The family found safety in a church with about 200 others.…

DEAR SEAN:

I’m pregnant. My husband and I have been going back and forth on name options but have no ideas. So right now I have a baby without a name. I know this is a strange request, but can you give me some name suggestions? I don’t want one of those modern names.

Thanks,

NEW-MOM-IN-GRAND-RAPIDS

DEAR GRAND-RAPIDS:

The night I was born, my mother took me into her arms and decided that she was going to name me Elvis.

My aunt recalls: “Your mama loved Elvis. Plus, you were a Capricorn, you know. Elvis and Jesus were Capricorns.”

Case closed.

In the end, my mother gave me a Scots-Irish name. But over the years I’ve wondered about how differently my life would have played out if my mother had gone with Elvis.

PATROLMAN: License and registration, please, sir?

ME: Here you are, officer.

HIM: Do you know how fast you were driving back there… (looks at license) Elvis?

ME: Uh-huh-uh-huh.

As a writer, when you start working on a novel, the first thing you think about are the names

of your characters. In fact, names are one of the most important parts of any story. Think about it. How many pieces of classic literature do you read where the hero was named Heman Pickles?

You do, however, have to be careful when you give opinions on names you like and dislike because feelings can get hurt very easily. My mother and aunt once got into a knock-down-drag-out argument after my aunt admitted that she never liked my mother’s name.

My mother was fuming. She stood from her chair and informed my aunt that she never liked my aunt’s name, either. Things got ugly. My mother said my aunt’s name reminded her of a barefoot and pregnant hick—my aunt, at the time, was barefoot, also pregnant.

So then my aunt said my mother had a bad singing voice and that…

My wife and I are in training mode. We walk 10 or 12 miles, several times per week, practicing for our second Camino. We will walk across Spain soon, and we need to get in shape.

We get up early. And we start walking. We walk for most of the day. Until we’re covered in sweat and smell like the hindparts of a filthy goat.

And with each Camino training walk, I am remembering what I learned on our first Camino. Something all pilgrims eventually learn. It’s not the magic of the Camino that changes you. It’s the walking.

When I was a kid, walking was life. I walked everywhere. I walked through the woods. I walked miles of neighborhood to see my friends. I walked to the filling station. I walked to school.

But as I got older, I quit walking. Namely, because America is not built for walking. Not even a little. We are a nation of highways and overpasses, with few sidewalks. If you don’t believe me, try

walking to Walmart and see if you survive.

In the last 10 years, pedestrian death rates have risen by 25 percent. The average American sits for 8.5 hours per day; 50 percent of all car trips in America are under three miles.

It’s a shame. Because the act of moving your legs does something to you. And I don’t mean it makes your butt smaller, although this happens, too.

As you walk, you feel your mind getting quieter. There’s less chatter up there. You become reflective. Relaxed. Your body and legs go on autopilot. Your soul begins to emerge. Although you THINK you’re walking, what you’re actually doing is praying.

We don’t know this, of course. We never knew what real prayer was. Growing up, we were taught to think that “prayer” meant clasping our hands, kneeling, and using a physical voice to ask the Celestial Santa Claus for…

The year is 250 A.D. It’s Good Friday. Although, technically, there is no “Good Friday.” Not for another hundred years.

Tonight, all people who follow “The Way” meet underground. They have to.

Followers of The Way are being martyred left and right. They can’t afford to expose themselves and get beheaded. They have families.

Tonight, they meet in a barn. They all gather among farm implements and bleating sheep. No candles.

The children sit in the center of the barn. The adults, on the periphery. They sing a few songs. The lambs and ewes join in.

Theirs has always been a singing tradition.

They sing to honor the fallen. They have many loved ones who were captured and killed for following The Way.

Everyone in this barn knows that it’s probably just a matter of time before they themselves are arrested. They have prepped their kids for this.

“If Mommy and Daddy go missing, run to Aunt So-And-So’s house. She’ll know what to do.”

They are all fasting tonight. Not just from food, but water, too. They

will fast for 40 hours to remember the death of the Nazarene. It’s just what they do on this particular Friday.

Someone gets up in front of the group. Brother Andrew. He explains why they are meeting in darkness tonight.

Because they are remembering the Jewish Carpenter’s sacrifice. Also, they remember the lives of martyred brothers. Last week, two teenage girls were beheaded in the square for refusing to light incense to Caesar.

Romans have all sorts of interesting ways of killing these followers of The Way. They dress their prisoners in fresh animal carcasses, then turn wild dogs loose. They place them in barrels with spikes then roll them down hills. They dip them in tar, light them on fire, and suspend them as torches.

Ironically, Romans call them “atheists.” Or worse, “Little Christs,” or “Little Messiahs.” This is because they have…

Hello. I am a sea turtle. We turtles don’t actually have names. But you can call me Squirt. Pleased to meet you.

Maybe you’ve never met a talking sea turtle before. Well, I’d like to change that.

The first thing you should know about me is that I’m very old. Much older than you. I was born before automobiles. Before lightbulbs. If I wore underpants, I’d have underpants older than you.

The reason I am writing is because I have something to share with you. I’d like to talk about water. Water is my favoritest thing on earth.

You probably like water, too. But probably not as much as me.

See, water doesn’t just fill the ocean. For sea turtles, water fills the entirety of all I know. To me, water isn’t just a thing. To me, water is all-powerful.

Water contains the most power in my universe. I have seen water swallow islands whole. Filling every coral forest, immersing every sandbar. Water engulfs. Water overtakes.

Imagine water behind a dam. All its weight. All its raw

power. All its energy. Just begging for someone to poke a tiny hole in the dam so that tiny stress fractures can soon rupture the steel and concrete which try so feebly to restrain it.

That’s the power of water.

But water is more than just power. Water is my life. You see, water is always around me. I drink by filtering saltwater through glands in my eyes. I eat by allowing the water to bring me bits of food.

Water bathes every fiber of my being, flowing inside me, and outside. Water is in my organs. Inside my muscles. In every patch of flesh. In my bones, and cartilage.

Water fills in my heart. Water is inside my skull. My brain is mostly water. So is yours, actually.

There is nowhere in my kingdom where water is not. Water is even what…

I had a toy rocket when I was a kid. It was made of plastic. The word NASA was printed on it. It was a Saturn V rocket, king daddy of all rockets. The same one that took men to the moon. My GI Joe doll could ride it like a horsey.

My friend Bradley had a shuttle-stack rocket, with winged orbiter and two solid rocket boosters. You want to talk power.

All the boys wanted to play with that thing. We would fight over who got to play with it.

“It’s my turn, Randy. Give it here, you big hog. You’ve had it forever, it’s not even yours.”

“I’m telling Mom. What did you call me? No I’m not. Say that again and you’ll have a fat lip.”

“What did you call me? Nuh, uh. YOU’RE a stupid turd monger. Oh yeah? I know you are but what am I? MOM!”

I recently had a conversation with some young people about space. They were teenagers. They were uninterested.

I asked whether they knew we’d

been to the moon. One of them shrugged and said the moon landing was a hoax. I smiled. Then, I asked whether they knew what the International Space Station was, and how it was designed in 1984, and how it’s been in orbit for 27 years, and how it’s been visited by almost 300 astronauts.

The teen just smiled vacantly and said, “The international what?” Then they went back to texting each other dirty pictures on their phones.

But there was a time in our culture when space exploration was treated very differently. I come from old men who worked on Roadmasters and Impalas beneath shade trees in the backyard. Men who loved machines. Men who thought rockets were the glory of all manmade achievement. Men who used the words “John Glenn” with the same tone they used when speaking of the Gentle Nazarene.

That’s…

Wake up. Start coffeemaker. Turn on TV. A panicky news journalist is saying America is doomed and only minutes away from exploding. And if not America, at least my house.

Turn off TV.

Coffee is ready. Pour said coffee. Check my phone. Look at emails. The first subject line attracts my attention. “YOU ARE NOT A TRUE AMERICAN IF YOU DON’T READ THIS!!!”

I want to be a true American, but for the next few minutes I’ll have to settle for being a fallacious one. Namely, because it’s a little early to be reading anything in all caps.

Sip coffee. Massage eyeballs. Leash up dogs. Take them outside for morning walks. It’s still dark.

One of my dogs doesn’t want to pee. So we walk in tight, concentric circles through the neighborhood as I whisper-shout, “Go pee!” As though these two words have ever helped a canine successfully urinate within the long and noble history of dogdom.

I check my phone. To give

my dog privacy. Hop on social media. My newsfeed is nothing but politics. Whatever happened to cute kitty videos?

The first post I see shows the picture of an American flag covered in mud, or perhaps it's a more organic substance. The first words are: “PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MIND TOTALLY FREAKING BLOWN, AMERICA!”

The user who shared the brain-blasting patriotic item is my childhood Sunday school teacher. A woman whose wardrobe once consisted entirely of polyester. Her profile picture is a bald eagle wearing a bikini.

Soon, I am walking through a dark neighborhood near my house. My dog is sniffing the millions of locations where other dogs peed. I’m encouraging my dog to leave her mark on this world so we can go back home.

Surrounding me are yard signs galore. There must be hundreds, perched in everyone’s yards. Each sign has some urgent message.…

We crossed the Indiana state line at noon. It was sunny. Cloudless. The springtime air was dry and pleasant, smelling of apples, IndyCar, and Hoosiers.

The GPS took us on backroads. We saw tractors, and cows, and fields of soy and baby corn, and big billboards that said Jesus loves you and doesn’t want to send you to hell so please call the toll-free number to learn more or visit our website whose address was a scripture verse with a dot com at the end.

We pulled over at a country gas station. I saw a guy pumping gasoline on the other side of my pump. He was wearing denim work clothes, filling up an old Ford pickup. His beard was white. His truck bed was full of firewood. Cherry and hickory, from the looks of it.

“Alabama, huh?” he said in a Midwestern accent. “I’ve been to Alabama. Good barbecue. No lottery.”

This was all he said for a while. Then he spit into a small cup.

“Do you have a lottery in Indiana?” I asked.

He laughed.

“Is a bear Catholic?”

“What about barbecue?” I asked. “I’ve never had Indiana barbecue, what’s that like?”

He pointed to the truck bed full of wood. “Follow me and find out. Me and my sons are barbecuing all weekend.”

I told him I really wished I could but I have to be in Nashville, I can’t make it. He smiled and said, “Next time.”

Then the man explained that Indiana barbecue is not talked about in mainstream culture, but it’s a beautiful thing nonetheless. Even though Indiana’s barbecue doesn’t get any press alongside Barbecue’s Big Four—Memphis, Texas, Kansas City, and Carolina—it’s a work of art, he told me.

“Our sauce is sweeter,” he said. “Sort of similar to Kansas City barbecue sauce, but we don’t just use brown sugar. We use stuff you’d find on a farm. Sometimes we use maple…