existing at our latitude felt like living inside someone’s mouth.

a party at his family’s old distillery. It’s now home to Bulleit. Tommy Bulleit uses the old office that belonged to Julian’s father and grandfather.

every bottle carries that time travel with it into the world, sealed tight against the oxidizing danger of the air. Maybe whiskey is so fragile because once the cap comes off, the past rushes out of the bottle and is gone forever.

Willie is the one who suggested the University of Missouri for journalism school, where I went to college.

Julian tells everyone he meets that he doesn’t make whiskey while the Bulleit folks talk about their old family recipe, which was once made for them by a competitor that was owned by a Japanese beer company, which was owned by the same Japanese conglomerate that long ago made the Zero fighter airplane.

rataplan, which evokes the incredible noise a dozen running horses can make and the way you feel that noise in your chest, loud—not like something in nature but like standing next to a tower of speakers at an Allman Brothers show. The

I’ve been ordering my life foolishly. A voice of warning has been growing louder as I considered what being a father actually means. When I make an accounting of myself honestly, I do not like what I find. Always a pleaser, I have put satisfying bosses above myself or the needs of my family and friends. I have put worldly success at the top of my

I WAS BORN IN A MASK, the monk and philosopher Thomas Merton wrote.

Be glad if you can keep beyond the reach of their radios.