The idea being, what we talked about in class before, that most of us are forever looking off into the distance, don’t see the world around us. Nathan turned in twenty-three pages. With a note apologizing and saying he knew how busy I was and I didn’t have to read all of it.” “This is the ant-farm kid, right?” “Ant mill. But yes.” Richard was in his homeboy clothes, baggy tan pants, unbuttoned plaid shirt over a T-shirt the legend of which had long faded away but which I knew to be WONDER DOG. Dressed for school he’d be in pressed slacks, shirt and tie. Here at home he looked as if he might be on his way to a grunge-band rehearsal. “He went back to America’s beginnings, to the utopian communities: Oneida, New Harmony, Brook Farm. All those struggles to create one small part of the world that was better. By example, by exemption. Nathan suggests that there’s something there, something in our blood as Americans, that we never got away from. Then he moves closer on the timeline.
