In North Loup, Nebraska, where I spent my boyhood summers with my grandfather, the television pulled one signal out of the sky, channel 10/11, and when the picture dissolved into snow the day still had eight hours left in it. A boy in a town like that learns the oldest technology on earth. Boredom is a raw material. A long afternoon wants shape, and shape comes from rules: the stick is a bat because we agree it is, the crack in the walk is a foul line because we say so, the score matters because we decide it matters. Nobody sold us that afternoon. We manufactured it ourselves, on the spot, out of dust and agreement, and the dust became the best part of the summer.

Continue reading → Make a Game of Life