February 4, 2025

This photograph was taken on a morning infused with the reflective light that is characteristic of the Hudson River. I was walking past the South Nyack, N.Y., home once owned by Carson McCullers, the Southern writer whose first novel “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” (1940) echoes today with voice given those who are rejected, forgotten, mistreated or oppressed. It has been described as an “allegory for the human condition” and was published as Nazism, fascism and communism and World War II attempted to change the world order and which more than afflicted humanity.

That time is gone; a new time is here. The absorbed light in the home of a sensitive, insightful writer of the human condition continues to arise by day. It is called upon – again – to endure.

– Art Gunther