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.
March 16, 2014 · 78 words
Time For St. Urho!
Since I seem to be concentrating on posts about Finnish matters these days, it’s worth reminding you that Sunday is St. Urho’s Day. I trust you will all be clad in green and purple, and prepared to drink up all the liquor before the Irish hit the bars on Monday. And feel free, as you imbibe, […]
Read entry →March 14, 2014 · 134 words
Reserve Your June For Reading
I’m pleased to report that the publication date for Rogues, the new blockbuster collection from George RR Martin and Gardner Dozois, has been advanced to June 17. Pleased because, after all, I’m in it. I’ve contributed a story featuring Sean Makin, the protagonist of The Fourth Wall. It’s a complex, knotty little near-
Read entry →March 8, 2014 · 259 words
Taos Toolbox: the IRS Edition
I haven’t been posting much, because for the last week or so I’ve been wrangling all my tax information, all the cheeks and the stubs and the little receipts, into a form coherent enough for my accountant to make sense of. It’s the kind of repetitious detail work that I’m not at all good […]
Read entry →March 1, 2014 · 79 words
Epic
Clearly you were all so completely entranced by the Finnish music video I posted a couple days ago that, by now, you’re totally slavering for the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. Which, thanks to Australian performance artist Scott Sandwich, you can now experience in eight minutes. Eight minutes for a national epic
Read entry →February 27, 2014 · 61 words
Squeezebox
I’m in one of those dark Nordic moods, and so I need to listen to soul music, which— given my heritage— would be Maria Kalaniemi, virtuoso accordion player, and her composition “Skimningspolskan.“ Listen closely, close your eyes, and you can just about see the dancing dwarfs lurching to the music on the sho
Read entry →February 25, 2014 · 700 words
Reviews in the Nick of Time: Monuments Men
Monuments Men is, as they say, “based on a true story,” in this case the story of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program of the allied armies during World War II, an organization composed of hundreds of (mostly) artists and art historians, from many countries, who attempted to preserve art and historic building
Read entry →February 22, 2014 · 611 words
Truthiness
I’ve been watching the Winter Olympics with rather less enthusiasm than is my wont. Possibly because so much else is happening in my life right now that the Olympics are more of an intrusion than a pleasure. But still I feel obliged to watch, somehow. (The NBC overlords are chortling as I’m typing this.) My favorite [&
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