Is it time to confess environmental crimes against nature? I had decided to expand my pot patch into a new area in the back forty, a cute trick on just one acre, no doubt. I…
Posts published in “Essays”
The warden of one of the world’s largest and most overcrowded penitentiaries might reasonably be expected to be a burly, hard-spoken disciplinarian, packing a gun as he shoulders his way through the-prison yard and living…
It was fitting that Rafael Puyana, the Colombian harpsichordist who died ten years ago in Paris at the age of eighty-one, should have made his debut—on piano—in 1945 at the Teatro de Cristóbal Colón (Christopher…
“Alright then,” announced Mr. Bumpers. “It’s decided. We’ll open the house to those less fortunate, like homeless-type people guests, right? All in?” Nods of agreement around the table. “It’s great,” said Tallulah, the eldest daughter.…
It was late summer, 1987. A hot afternoon was fading into evening, after I'd spent the day working six games as an umpire in the state softball playoffs, in Wentachee, Washington. I'd blown a call…
The word “melena” can be spelled and pronounced in two ways with profoundly different meanings. With the accent on the second syllable and an “i” instead of an “e.” It then becomes Melina, as in…
You say yes, it’s artificial because it is presented in nonhuman expressions. You say no it’s not artificial because you read somewhere that it isn’t, though you don’t remember where you read it. Is AI…
Seven miles offshore from a fishing village called Guanghai (“an opening to the sea”) in Taishan County, Guangdong Province, People's Republic of China are two small islands called Shangshuan and Xiachuan. They are visible out…
The Osage called the war that was waged against them in the 1920s a “Reign of Terror.” The terrorists were all white men—white settlers, white businessmen, white criminals, white cowboys and white lawmen— who committed…