Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,176 entries, all of them here in full.
March 15, 2007 · 248 words
"Heinasirkka, heinasirkka . . . "
In honor of St. Urho’s Day, which is Friday, I’d like to send you all a card. I’ve had St. Urho in mind this spring, since our weather is so far proving ideal for the propagation of locusts. I hate the little buggers flying about and eating every leaf in sight, and will do my […]
Read entry →March 12, 2007 · 779 words
Monsieur Vidal
As I’ve been driving about the state, I have been enjoying an audio book of Gore Vidal’s latest memoir, Point to Point Navigation, as read by Vidal himself. I admire much of Vidal’s fiction— not so much the historical bestsellers like Burr and Lincoln, where he’s so busy trying to shock us with the behavior [&hel
Read entry →March 7, 2007 · 977 words
The Lure of Africa
I was viewing the Travel Channel last night, and caught the Namibian adventures of celebrity chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain. (And has anyone out there read his fiction, by the way?) During this episode, Bourdain joined a group of bushmen for what he described as the worst meal of his life, beginning with what a [&h
Read entry →March 4, 2007 · 814 words
The Turks Were Here!
The Turks turned out to be legit. They swing this way every year, working their way through the South and Southwest, to sell any carpets they failed to sell at the big Atlanta carpet show. So a van filled with a million dollars’ worth of Turkish carpets turned up in our driveway this afternoon, and […]
Read entry →March 1, 2007 · 434 words
Soliloquy
Expository Lumps, Part VII: Just say it. So how often have you seen this scene in bad movies: the villain has captured the hero, and (before dismembering him with a laser or chucking him into the piranha tank) proudly boasts of his accomplishments and plans. And then of course the hero escapes, and uses his […]
Read entry →February 27, 2007 · 329 words
The Turks are Coming!
Okay, so we got this weird phone call the other day. It was a woman from Yuksel Carpets, which is the outfit that sold us our carpet in Turkey. Interesting followup, I thought. Anyway, according to the lady, it seems that Yuksel is in a jam. They were selling carpets at the big January carpet […]
Read entry →February 23, 2007 · 233 words
Adios, Amigos (2)
The environment in which I live is dying. Usually this is a slow process, but on occasion it can happen very fast. Here are pictures of the process happening quickly, the destruction by fire of the riparian cottonwood forest that lines the Rio Grande, known locally as the “bosque.” This fire burns as I type. […]
Read entry →February 21, 2007 · 374 words
Adios, Amigos
The great thing about living in the country is watching nature happen all around you. All winter long, the sandhill cranes become our neighbors. They spend the night in the Rio Grande nearby, and you can hear them calling each other in the night. Early in the morning they fly out to the farmers’ fields […]
Read entry →February 17, 2007 · 805 words
Sex. Violence.
Kelly’s reply to my previous post, in which she mentioned that many (okay, most) of my protagonists are killers, started me thinking about which of them are, and which aren’t, and why. In fairness to myself, it has to be admitted that many of them aren’t. Drake Maijstral doesn’t want to hurt anybody despite his [&helli
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