Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,175 entries, all of them here in full.
October 6, 2008 · 282 words
Celebrity Chimp Tells All
It’s all very well hypothesising about those monkeys and typewriters, he says: isn’t it time for human beings to look around? “You’ve had a million humans, at least, writing away for much longer than a thousand years, and only one of them ever managed to produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Only one! Well, well,
Read entry →October 5, 2008 · 237 words
21st Century Crime
A man robbing an armored car in Washington State recruited his unwitting henchmen from Craigslist. “ . . . an ad was posted on the free classified advertising site, asking for 15 to 20 men to show up near the Bank of America on Old Owen Road at 11:15 a.m. Tuesday to work on a […]
Read entry →October 3, 2008 · 276 words
Turtle Parts
So I was washing my hair this morning, and I was using this small sample bottle that we’d been given by somebody or other, and the bottle says on it, “Green Tea and Willow.”Green tea and willow. In shampoo.Does anyone out there have any idea how these items are supposed to make my hair cleaner […]
Read entry →October 2, 2008 · 393 words
1873
An article by Scott Reynolds Nelson suggests that 1929 is the wrong model for the current economic crisis. The real model is 1873, the worst depression the Western economy ever endured. When commentators invoke 1929, I am dubious. According to most historians and economists, that depression had more to do with overlarg
Read entry →October 2, 2008 · 395 words
1921
Since my mother passed away I’ve been performing the sad but necessary task of going through her belongings. That includes several albums of photographs. Here’s a picture of my mother from 1921, when she was five years old. She’s outside the one-room schoolhouse in Makinen where she received her first eight years of ed
Read entry →September 30, 2008 · 1,196 words
Red Heroine
Tonight’s entertainment was Red Heroine, the oldest surviving wuxia, dating from 1929. The silent film was given a live accompaniment by Devil Music Ensemble, one of a number of groups now touring the country providing music for silent films. The film opens with the attack of the Tartar Western Army upon the poor but v
Read entry →September 30, 2008 · 1,196 words
Red Heroine
Tonight’s entertainment was Red Heroine, the oldest surviving wuxia, dating from 1929. The silent film was given a live accompaniment by Devil Music Ensemble, one of a number of groups now touring the country providing music for silent films. The film opens with the attack of the Tartar Western Army upon the poor but v
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