When it’s a sunny day in the Midwest, and I’m flying in, it’s hard to beat–at least if you love farmland. There’s something about this region that gets me each time I fly in-the breadth of earth in cultivation, the churches that dot the landscape, the long driveways, the copses of trees marking property lines, the barns and silos, and on and on it goes.

The flight is full. A very kind retired couple is seated next to me to my left. I always try to get a window seat. I do not ever seem to tire of looking out. The woman is at my elbow. She sees me reading Dostoyevksy.

“How’s your book?” she asks.

“It’s great,” I say. “I have not read this one since college, and that was quite awhile ago. I had forgotten a lot of it.”

“I have never read that one, but I’ve heard it is good.”

“It is. It’s a tome,” I said. “It’s taken me several days to get through it. Almost a thousand pages, but worth it.”

She looks at me in uniform and asks, “Where are you headed?”

“To teach some soldiers,” I say. “In the Midwest this week.”

“Well, thank you for what you do.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She returns to reading on her Kindle and chatting with her husband on her left occasionally about golf.

They are both very tanned, and they look the part of a couple who spends a lot of time in the sun and on golf courses.

St. Louis, Missouri fades into the background and Iowa is in view below now. I read a few more pages of my Dostoyevsky novel. Raskolnikov is being interrogated by his mother and sister, and his conscience is murdering him for his earlier crimes.