Hugh Hollowell

As a self-employed solo operator, one of the best things I do is keep a daily log. It began so I would remember when I did what, or what I committed to, but I quickly learned a side benefit was that as a solo operator, it is easy to have worked all damn day and feel you got nothing accomplished. Except you can look at the log and see that you actually did.  I don’t know that the tools matter all…

This whole essay is beautiful, but I love the concept of borrowing free energy. I am a big believer in using free energy – whether it’s the energy generated round religious holidays, like Christmas time, or the energy we can feel from the changing of the seasons. Every day is not the same. Our personal energy levels are not the same every day – we all know that. This has been a long winter. If…

We can’t take care of the planet in the long term unless we take care of each other now. And we can’t take care of each other in the long term unless we take care of the planet now. I believe in human rights, and I welcome the other citizens of this earth with open arms. I believe in the rights of our fellow species to make a home here, too, and I welcome them with the plants they need to…

When I was a little boy, both of my parents worked a lot, and I spent a lot of time at my neighbor’s house. They were retired farmers, and as my surviving grandfather lived far away, they filled that role in my life.They were very much a product of their time. They didn’t follow daylight saving time, or government time, as they called it, and they didn’t have air conditioning, although I think…

Today is Mike’s birthday. Facebook reminded me this morning, which felt like a punch in the gut. So, I thought it was fitting to tell you about Mike’s Bible. The Bible itself is nothing to look at. If you were looking for a generic idea of what a Bible should look like, it would look like this one. It’s black leather, with gilt edges and a black ribbon to mark your place, and in gold script in…

It was pouring rain outside, but inside the bar, it was warm and dry. It was also dark, and the task lighting here and there behind the bar made pools that illuminated the area around them. The murmur of conversation played off the piped-in piano jazz, and the overall effect was that you were lucky to be alive while such a place existed. It was the bar in a nice hotel in downtown Memphis in the…

I intend to answer a question from the readers of this blog each week (you can read more about this here). This week’s question comes from Karen. So many otherwise progressive people I encounter, especially in faith spaces, have not really examined their own ableism. You are a rare progressive who is on an anti-ableist journey. I’m curious how that happened to you. First of all, thank you for…

In summer of 2024, I made a list of 100 things I love. Here is another 50. That sharp bite in the back of your throat from horseradish. The first sip of a Diet Coke from McDonalds. Browsing a bookstore on a rainy afternoon. The smell of a freshly plowed field. Muscadine jelly on a buttered biscuit. Wandering the produce section at the Asian market. Listening to someone nerd out over one…

Hi friends. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been updating my blog each weeknight for a couple of weeks now. I like daily blogging—it’s generative for me. It makes me practice writing, even when I’m not working on a specific writing project, like the next book. It’s like off—season training. Keeps me in shape. But in a way, blogging daily without a unifying project to order it is…

CW: Some mentions of sexual assault and spiritual abuse, but nothing graphic. When Dan was a boy, he idolized his grandfather: they were inseparable. Dan’s grandfather was a minister, and the way Dan described it to me,the grandfather was revered in their small town. He moved with integrity, his word was his bond, and he embodied manhood to Dan, and to many others in their town. It was his…

I’ve been in a position several times recently where I have been asked what I do. To which I replied, “Do about what, exactly?,” which I think is funny and they never do. It turns out, when people asked that, they mean, “What is your occupation?”, and I don’t have a good answer for that. The closest I come these days is “storyteller”, which is somehow both true and not helpful, either to them…

I don’t know how he found me. But that’s true of so many people who read things I write—I write things, and some of them connect. It’s a partnership between me and the reader. I supply the words, and y’all supply the meaning. He lived in Raleigh when I did, and so maybe he had sat in a church service where I preached, or maybe he was attracted to the work that happened at the nonprofit I ran…

When I first moved to Raleigh some twenty years ago now, I was living in a tiny room in a rooming house, and I needed a place to write. On the third day, I wandered into The Morning Times, a coffee shop downtown, and the barista asked my name. The next day when I came back, she used my name to greet me when I came in the door. After that, The Morning Times was just my coffee shop. Over the next…

We live in perilous times. I’m sure that has always been true, for somebody. It’s after all, why apocalyptic literature always has an audience: it’s always the end of the world for someone. But here in the US, things seem particularly fragile. Rights we assumed were etched in stone have been seen as ephemeral. Elected leaders have made room for White Supremacy and Christian Nationalism to go…

As my Grandfather would say, I am busier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but I thought I would let you know where I stood on some metrics I measure. I announced at the first of the month that my goal was to break the Technoratti 50k mark by the 15th… well, it just did not happen: The best I have gotten is at 64k. I understand the lower you get the harder it becomes, so I…

NB: Each week I’m posting something from the archives of my more than 20 years of writing on the web. Sometimes it’s a social media post, sometimes a blog post, or (like today) it’s an excerpt from a newsletter issue published in 2019. Each entry gets updated with some modern context or point of view. – HH Back in 1992, Sinead O’Connor caused a sensation when, on Saturday Night Live, she tore up…

A thing I love is when I learn about a word or phrase that gives language to a thing I have known, but did not have words for. Like the first time I learned about harm reduction, which is a specific theory of social work that says that in order for people to make good decisions, they must first be alive so let’s focus on keeping them alive to buy them time to make good decisions. So, under harm…