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Playing it Safe
Wednesday February 1, 2012
I’ve been having trouble starting this post. All week, I’ve been eyeing the item on iCal—blog post due to Greg Wolfe—and moving on. Not in the mood. No ideas. My last one hasn’t run yet, so I have some time. Et cetera. This morning I read Sara Zarr on Advent and Caroline Langston on Christmas with Satan. Caroline’s title alone made me shiver, first at the adversary’s name, and second, in admiration, especially as I kept....
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Song of Myself
Tuesday January 31, 2012
The ambition to some day become a writer was planted in my head sometime around 1980 in a Long John Silvers restaurant in Conneaut, Ohio. I was seated at the end of a Formica table, a plastic basket of crispy fried fish and brown hushpuppies in front of me, listening to my grandfather grill my aunt’s boyfriend, Sean. It was just me, my dad, and my grandfather all looking at Sean, who had an earring....
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Take Care of Each Other
Monday January 30, 2012
Take care of each other. That was the second of three “pearls of wisdom” my father offered as my wife and I were packing up early on New Year’s morning 2012 to head back from South Jersey to Asheville. I remember one other occasion on which he offered a father’s wisdom. Then, like now, I was about to leave him and my mother. About to leave home. (Is that the right word for the place....
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Lucky Life: Poetry in Motion
Friday January 27, 2012
I’ve been waiting for a chance to share this movie with you for two years. In Lucky Life, the new film by Lee Isaac Chung, three friends—a writer named Mark, his wife Karen, and their friend Alex—drive to join their friend Jason at a North Carolina beach house. They’ve been friends for years, but this vacation is unusual. Jason has an aggressive form of cancer, and he probably won’t be with them much longer. They share conversations, walks on the beach, memories. Okay, let’s face it, that’s not the....
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Offending the Experts
Thursday January 26, 2012
I read that famed biologist E.O. Wilson provoked a tempest by claiming a genetic basis for social cooperation that has the politically unfortunate side-effect of undermining a widely embraced explanation for the persistence of homosexuality. If he’s right, we’re stuck with an uncomfortable reality that homosexuality is a choice, or a learned behavior, or something that sounds equally unsavory in the parlors....
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Current Issue
Issue 71
Fiction by Larry Woiwode, interview with Joe Henry, art by Fabian Debora, essay by Barry Moser.
Good Letters: The Image Blog
