'News' Category
Under The Banner Of Heaven
Under the Banner of Heaven will be the third book I have read from author Jon Krakauer. The other two books include his moving non-fiction account of the harrowing 1996 summit of Mt. Everest, Into Thin Air, and the compelling research retrospective about the last two years of life for Christopher McCandless in Into […]
Generation Kill
The wars in Iraq have figured as prominent cultural events in my adult life. I arrived in Berlin two weeks before the 1991 invasion and experienced firsthand the anti-American sentiment that decision fostered. When I returned to the States, I noticed how differently my experiences were from those of my friends and family. Germany’s perspective […]
If You Post It, They Will Come
I am away from home on business this week. I’m in Arlington, Texas, living out of a hotel. One of the perks of living out of a hotel– besides not having to make the bed or wash the dishes– is that the newspaper arrives right at my room every day before I get up. Granted, […]
Climate Change
I find talk of climate change seemingly everywhere I look. Yesterday more than a 150 of the world’s most popular music acts contributed to the worldwide concert, Live Earth. Twelve locations, seven continents, an audience of two billion. I have a difficult time wrapping my mind around something that large in scale. I wonder […]
Above the Fold
I am tempted to start this entry with a quote from Agent J from Men In Black II. “Old and busted; new hotness.” I know that phrase fails to capture either the tone or the facts of the latest change in my life. Still, I like the humor in it. It makes me smile. In […]
Shut Up and Listen
Discover is a curious word. I have been fascinated with the word discover for some time. We like to think that it means to learn or invent something spontaneously– as if producing something new out of thin air. We say Galileo discovered the laws of motion. Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity. Christopher Columbus discovered North […]
On Sentimentality
What is it that draws me to something for mawkish reasons? Why do I regret actions without rational justification? What is it about something—something simple and concrete—that compels me to attach emotional value to it?
I know I am not alone. I find these experiences permeated throughout almost every aspect of the days between Thanksgiving […]Traveling in Greece
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
For Whirl and me it was not the desert across which we fled. We fled across the ocean. For over two weeks we traveled the Cyclades. These strange, magnificent islands have transfixed me. I have wanted to visit them from the time I first […]On Wilderness and the City
I grew up in Colorado. For those of you faithful readers who have never been to Colorado, the state is a dramatic melody of regions—taken together they form a symphony of the beauty of the wild. The eastern high plains blend seamlessly into the agricultural grasslands of Kansas and Nebraska. The southern parts of the […]
So Far Away
I’ve sung the blues,
For every broken-hearted lovesick dream for you.
I’ve paid my dues,
Working hard-sweat, blood and tears for you.
I’m back in England. I left Chicago on Thursday. I was to stay for a week. Plans changed last night. I am staying longer—now nearly two weeks.
Due to a tragic series of delays in Chicago—it would be […]
