Hardware   Before software, freeware, shareware, thisware and thatware, there was hardware — actual stuff. Before cities, even before words, there was always hardware — we were born to love the things that pound and grab and pierce and cut and work our will upon the world. Before this brightly lit business of gleaming steel hammers and bins full of nails — this emporium of purpose, shrine to the facts of real physical existence — there must have been a cave, hidden, close guarded, filled with hides, bones, flints, feathers, sinews, sticks. Was that when my father wanted me to watch him take the things we needed, showed me how to make?     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont March 2015