A small fence in a forgotten cemetery in rural Tennessee is a metaphor for the fences we love to build in our country and our society, and succeed not in keeping us safe, but in tearing us apart.

Genealogy fascinates me; it always has. Maybe it’s a nod to my childhood cemetery tours with my grandfather in Alton, Illinois, him pointing to carved blocks of granite and recounting stories of the bodies that lay beneath. For me, those “tours” were a roadmap of the past, a means of understanding and comprehending my history […]