General
“He that is dead lives again.” The chanting wasn’t coming from a church, and it wasn’t for William Butler Yeats, although that statement applied to him was in fact true. William Butler Yeats was sitting on a park outside, relatively innocently, thinking that he had always believed that every two thousand years things came around [...]
John The slick rushes down by the lake cut at his ankles as he runs, young and free. He’s young and he’s running, and he’s just done something bad. The moon fat as a orange air balloon grins in the sky, the chickens are in bed and he is not, and the night is deep. [...]
Who’s winning? An extended family of four, on the way to the airport, pops a tire going seventy on the highway. They survive, but they’re going to miss their flight. The first place they find to pull over is a leukemia/lymphoma clinic, which means nearly everyone there is having a worse day than they are. [...]
“Wow.” “Wow.” The man behind them, getting up from where he’d been strapped to the table just smiled, The device had, shockingly, worked perfectly. He stepped in between to get a closer look at the picture. “That’s amazing,” he said. “That’s exactly what…wait a minute.” The other saw it, too. “Oh,” said one. “Well that’s [...]
He sat at the empty table for a long time, looking at nothing. A half-drunk bottle of wine stood near his right hand. He hadn’t even had the energy to finish drinking it all away. The house was empty now. His wife and kids would be happier, he supposed. He hadn’t been unaware of what [...]
Occupy 2
This is not a story about Harvard. It could be. The national average family income is just under 45,000 dollars. You could earn twice that, so twice what the average FAMILY pulls in, and still not be able to send one of your (on average) 2.5 kids to college, for two years, with a whole [...]
Wall street, the 99% and the 53%
It makes me sad to go to the “We are the 53%” website, and not for any political reason. Just because, if you go there, in between all the high schoolers and college kids who don’t know their asses from their face holes (no offense kids, none of us did either at that age, it’s [...]
Hurricane
As I sit here, waiting for the hurricane, studiously not doing any packing for my upcoming move, I get the chance to read a couple of the political and economic columnists I most respect and basically the news is this: if we’re going to get out of this hole we need to do more of [...]
Israel 5
And so I complete my digging tour. The dig itself goes on for another week, but my part is done. To be honest, I feel pretty good about it. I will miss the community, and being part of this thing for sure, but my back feels like it’s been used for spare parts, I’ve got [...]
Israel #4
Though it is viewed by many as an intellectual hobby, and though it is an activity carried out—mostly—by bands of academics, whom nobody is going to confuse for a football team any time soon, archaeology is dangerous. Everything about archaeology is dangerous. It’s not ice road truckers dangerous. I’ve never heard of an archaeology related [...]
Israel # 3
What we are excavating is a house (a series of houses, but my group is excavating just one of the three currently under way). This is most interesting because, frankly, no one excavates houses. I recently read a book called the Dirty Parts of the Bible. Had it been called the Interesting Parts of the [...]
Israel 2
Lemme tell you about bucket lines. Actually, let me start with this. I’d say, probably, the least well understood thing about archaeology is the scale of everything. This part is basically subtitled: Why Finding a Broken Pot is Cool, but I’m Not Like Writing Home About It. Think about your kitchen. Think about your kitchen [...]
Archaeology post 1
Here we are, in Israel again. I’d say the getting here went about as smoothly as it could be expected to go. The flights were great, on time—the Newark to Tel Aviv flight had on-demand movies and TV which, as far as I know, is more technology than my apartment has. Among other things, I [...]
The NBA Lockout: Bad Contracts
I guess the only thing I really want to say about the lockout, right now, is that a lot of people out there seem to be acting like they have no idea why anyone would ever dole out a bad contract. Which is weird because that one seems sort of obvious. You’re competing for a [...]
After the Debt Ceiling
Ezra Klein figures that Obama wouldn’t have come out yesterday to blast Republicans for refusing to raise taxes to deal with the deficit if there was any hope left to the negotiations, and that’s probably true. I don’t see either side in this mess being willing to appear PUBLICLY as if they lost anything, and [...]
The NBA Draft: The Biggest Myth
Imagine you’re at a restaurant. For most of you, this will not be hard. If it is, I would suggest that you try to go to one, if you can. They are often delicious. Now imagine that this restaurant is on the planet Zeprion 9. On Zeprion 9, as you know, the inhabitants suffer under [...]
April
It’s April again (it happens every year)—the month of my birth. In less than three weeks, I’ll be 26, and I won’t have started my career, unless this counts. I keep playing basketball every week or so, and the 18 year olds out run and out jump me with very little trouble. Yes, I know, [...]
What I’m Interested In
Someone once told me that the work of any given poet tends to revolve around three specific themes. There are a lot of ways to hear a statement like that, but I heard it like a kind of fateful ghost. No matter what one turns to write, the same beings will find a way to [...]
It is not worse to imagine, he said Except for the horror I would rather the horror, he said The shell of a burned-out car hovered like a rusty halo Around his head What is real is not fearful Except to awake and find It is not a dream Should I fear waking, because I [...]
“What are you doing to me?” she said. “I’m not doing anything. I’m making you as you are.” The water scythed between the rocks, pouring into her shadow image. He touched the tip of his finger to the torrent and the water froze. She stepped out of her image, tall and proud. “I’m beautiful,” she [...]
So I write books about fish and papers about the Bible and columns about the Mavericks. To me, this represents a perfect circle, but that probably bears explaining. There’s nothing unnatural about doing the things you like doing. You can’t be unnatural to yourself. Your interests are related because you’re interested in all of them, [...]
Merlin Rogers is a man keenly, painfully, awake to the reality of horrible decisions. That’s something a lot of people don’t understand. The girl you shouldn’t have married, but she had something you hadn’t seen before and lacking an objective way to determine effective love, you figured you had it about right. The career path [...]