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Posts published in “Essays”

Perchance To Dream

Ah, bed. Clean, crisp sheets, a good book, and the prospect of eight restorative hours freestyling the Lethe. As a person who has spent roughly 5,000 nights on hard prison cots, another couple of thousand…

Burning Man, Chicago & 17,000 Book Lovers

Freely admitting I’m a country bumpkin that doesn’t get to the big city very often a recent trip to Chicago to attend the American Booksellers Association convention drew me into a megalopolis. I had to…

Items You Might Have Missed

At the age of 96, Dr. Henry J. Heimlich had occasion to save a woman who was choking by using the famous maneuver he had developed for that purpose and which bears his name. This…

Requiem For A Pasha

The year is 1990. I'm standing on the Amtrak station platform in Lafayette, Louisiana. We'll be here for ten minutes and then roll on to New Orleans. I sniff the air and wonder which direction…

Birdkillers

You want your terrorist scares. The ISIS of the natural world resides in your backyard or, at most, the field beyond. We're talking cats. Cats kill at least one billion birds per year. Some estimates…

Adventures In Babysitting

I never had any children, for much the same reason that I never kept rabid weasels: I do not require the presence of small, toxic, hyperactive biters destroying a house to fulfill me, and if…

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