Jeff Sharlet: I’m back, again, after a month mostly off the grid in the woods of New Hampshire. I was at The MacDowell Colony, a cluster of cabins for artists of all disciplines (including us nonfiction types). It’s the oldest such colony in the U.S. — Aaron Copland, Thornton Wilder, Willa Cather, James Baldwin, and thousands of others have worked there — but there are plenty of other similiar outfits. Journalists, documentarians, and nonfiction writers would do well to look into them — there’s much to be said for a month or two of quiet working time, prepared meals, and, most of all, the company of artists from many disciplines. It’s too easy for journalists to talk only to journalists. At MacDowell, poet Jean Valentine drew connections for me between her dream-guided poems and her hard-headed knowledge of religion and politics; opera composer Stewart Wallace showed me the bridge between the politics of protest music and religion of gospel; playwright Octavio Solis introduced me to the folk religion of Mexican corridos; and sculptor Tom Nussbaum taught me the strength of a simple line. That’s just a small sample; a lot of people without websites to link to, including The Revealer‘s own Kathryn Joyce, made this departure from The Revealer and the workaday world invaluable. So I’m passing the word about this great place, in thanks to MacDowell, in explanation for my absence, and in recommendation to journalists who want to get away from, or beyond, or beneath the news.