A writer you should know

Margaret Renkl is a Nashville resident who writes a wise weekly column for the national newspaper of record, the New York Times. Here's how she concludes her latest essay.

We may be in the middle of a story we don’t know how will end, or even whether it will end, but we are not helpless characters created and directed by an unseen novelist. We have the power, even in this Age of Anxiety, to enfold ourselves in small comforts, in the joy of tiny pleasures. We can walk out into the dark and look up at the sky. We can remind ourselves that the universe is so much bigger than this fretful, feverish world, and it is still expanding. And still filled with stars.

Her essays are consistently good, as is her first book Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss. I don't know if she'd say so herself, but she's a worthy philosopher.