My summer idyll is winding down. The air is cooler. The crowds are thinning. The days are shorter and I’m packing for my annual Appalachian road trip. I just finished Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. It’s not an easy read, but I recommend it. Kingsolver explores the ways opioids ravaged the hill country of Western Virginia, West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky. I have family there, and some of them have first-hand experience with it. I stick to moonshine.

Before I set out, I figured it’s time to take a brief pulse on the legal field.