… when motivated by generosity and relieved of fear.
Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal
By Naomi Shihab Nye
After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.
Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older [...]
I recently read (and very much enjoyed) The Night Men by Keith Snyder, which for some reason renewed my interest in Raymond Chandler. In a Chronology in the back of a Library of America omnibus edition of Chandler, I found the following:
1945: Begins writing original screenplay The Blue Dahlia for Paramount, which wants [...]
I’ve been a fan of Lynda Barry ever since I first ran across Ernie Pook’s Comeek in an alt-weekly in the late 1980s. I’ve often been astonished by her uncanny ability to invoke precise details of childhood and adolescence, and after reading her latest book, What It Is, I finally begin to get a [...]
I had intended to post this pic with something whiny. But while my kids were swimming at the (very VERY crowded) public pool today, I was reading Vikram Seth’s Two Lives, which chronicles the friendship and eventual marriage of his Indian-born uncle and a German-born Jewish woman. The part I read today described [...]
I recently ran across this phrase on a Christian site (sadly, I don’t remember where) defending a recent change of some sort. It struck me as odd at the time, so I Googled the phrase, which revealed that it is the title of a popular Vince Gill song, and also a famous (apocryphal?) remark [...]
PeaceBang reports on a story I hadn’t heard: that Barack Obama prayed at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and, as is customary, placed a written prayer in a crack. Then, as PeaceBang says,
Some schmuck fished the note out of its hole and made its contents public.
Yes, I provided a link, which makes me [...]
Fans of the “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series by Alexander McCall Smith may recall the remarks of the protagonist, Precious Ramotswe, on the passing from fashion of the “traditional build” for Botswanan women. In the latest, The Miracle at Speedy Motors, she muses thus:
… fewer people wished to be considered traditionally [...]
I spent a few precious minutes in a bookstore on Friday, and got a chance to flip through Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosphy through Jokes. I can’t recall what this joke was supposed to illustrate, but it made me laugh anyway:
Three women are in the changing room of [...]
I know, I know, literature is a matter of taste. But I have never even begun to understand the general adulation of Chuck Palahniuk, and I had mentally filed that fact in the large folder labeled “Things People Seem to Enjoy that I Can’t Stand,” at least until I read this review in a [...]
Sara Miles’ “Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion” is the best thing on this topic I’ve read lately. If you doubt that starting and running food pantries can be a holy undertaking, Miles will convince you otherwise. I wish she had written more about the effects of burnout on herself and her [...]
