Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 178 entries, all of them here in full.
December 30, 2014 · 225 words
Chickenhawk
There’s a massively important article on the American military in the current Atlantic, which is fortunately readable online. It’s by James Fallows, who has always seemed to be the military analyst who asks the right questions. Here’s your take-away: If I were writing [a history of our times] now, I would call it Chick
Read entry →December 27, 2014 · 102 words
Dates and Times
We have released our lovely calendar for the year 2015. As in previous years, the calendar features images from the previous year’s travels, plus a list of holidays from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the U.K. As with previous years, I make no money from this. I just do this to share my life with […]
Read entry →December 25, 2014 · 103 words
Pre-Electric
On Christmas Eve the Los Altos neighborhood on the west side of Albuquerque turns off its street lights and returns for one evening to the 19th Century. The only illumination is the soft golden glow of luminarias, which are basically a candle in a brown paper bag, with a bit of dirt or kitty litter in […]
Read entry →December 22, 2014 · 66 words
Raucous Homecoming
Back in New Mexico! Hurrah! The last leg was the shortest but difficult, because of the difficulty of driving an overloaded, underpowered vehicle uphill, into the face of a headwind gusting to maybe 40 knots, on a weekend interstate highway choked with 18-wheelers. When the wind died down I finally made good time, and
Read entry →December 21, 2014 · 386 words
Medium Rare
We are now in Amarillo, Tx. After two days of crossing the Great Plains, I’m beginning to grow a bit nostalgic for those Pennsylvania mountains. Variety has its virtues. But tomorrow we’ll be in New Mexico, where there are plenty of mountains. Though alas, the entire drive there will be boring. The Joadmobile continues
Read entry →December 20, 2014 · 396 words
Fields of Springs
We are in Springfield, Mo., having previously passed through, or been within hailing distance of, Springfield, Penn., Springfield, Ohio, Springfield, Ind., and Springfield, Ill. It’s like we’re on the Simpsons tour of the U.S.! I noted that there were a lot of big gun stores in Indiana, just over the Illinois line, fro
Read entry →December 19, 2014 · 234 words
Joadmobile
I write from a motel near Dayton, Oh., after a long second day of our Cross-Country Odyssey. The plan was to load the car of Kathy’s late Aunt Dolores with such of Dolores’ things as we wanted to bring west, then drive cross-country in the middle of winter in an underpowered, overloaded 1995 Ford Escort […]
Read entry →December 15, 2014 · 162 words
Black Sun, Stalking
So over the weekend we had our twice-yearly black belt weekend, which was mostly devoted to graduating 33 new Kenpo black belts. I also re-certified for my own black belt, in which I re-tested for, well, just about everything I’ve learned over the last thirty-odd years. I was a sweat-soaked bag of silly putty at [&hell
Read entry →December 12, 2014 · 235 words
Honor/Dishonor
John McCain, the only member of the Senate known to have actually been tortured, speaks on the Senate torture report. I wanted to include this in yesterday’s essay, but ran out of time. “The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow,” [Mccain] said, standing at his desk on the Senate floor as Ms. Feinstein […]
Read entry →December 11, 2014 · 1,369 words
Rogue
So the U.S. Senate report on torture shows that it was far worse than I imagined, or I imagine anybody imagined. We’ve known about the torture for years, of course, but now we know just how depraved and disgusting and totally without merit it was. Consider this: numbers are a little vague, but it appears […]
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