A World of Speculation

A lesson in composition

Stanley Fish, dean emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, takes side-by-side speeches of Kerry and Bush and deduces the following object lesson: Words are not just the cosmetic clothing of some underlying integrity; they are the operational vehicles of...

Back from America

After spending two weeks on a journey from the West to the South and back, I have a few scattered observations about flyover America (in no particular order): You often get the sense that it’s still the Sixties, driving the remaining stretches of the old Route...

Dinners, stories and gossip

My uncle was preaching at a tiny church in the town of Eros, La. He’s my mother’s little brother, and he looks more and more like my grandfather every year. The church meets in a remodeled house trailer on a lot about a block off the Highway 34, behind the...

Hiatus

I may have wiped my hard disk today–taking out calendars, addresses, e-mails, passwords, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, blogs in process, photos, music and more. I am, on the one hand, verklempt. I am, on the other, philosophical. Maybe it’s time for a...

Sadie’s lumps

When we last met Sadie, she had fallen asleep after an exciting day in Oregon City. Today, she was decidedly lumpy. She came into the house with a welt the size of a ping pong ball on her muzzle just below her eye and other lumps of various sizes all over her back and...