Steven Rinella

And I really love to write about juxtapositions.

I love about kind of wrestling with the ways in which things are contradictory.

And Massachusetts is a very rich state, but it still has very, very low income areas, one of which I grew up in.

Yeah, you guys grew up poor, or you grew up poor.

I grew up unhoused, which on paper, you would think those were kind of the worst years of my childhood, but I actually loved those years because I was surrounded by other adults.

I was part of this community in inner city Boston.

I was a Catholic worker.

It was very much everyone kind of taking care of one another.

It was really community-driven, and I loved it.

And then when I moved out to this farm in kind of north central Massachusetts, that's when things got lonely.

But a few towns over is where John Chapman was born, like I said, during the Revolutionary War.

Not yet.

No, ask me.

He would drag you on his roams, right?

Absolutely.

A wanderer and a rambler.

Because again, we didn't have any money for any kind of vacation.

And so my father would take me out on these long camping trips, these long hikes.

We would sleep outside.

We'd go up into the White Mountains in New Hampshire.