I'm reading Winter World and Why We Run: A Natural History by Bernd Heinrich. I like animals, and Heinrich writes about them fluidly, without melodrama or weakness. His books on nature never fail to surpirse me, never fail to make me look at my world with keener interest and assurance, nor do they make me …
The Expectant Father by Armin A. Brott, Armin A. Brott I've been reading over this book that my sister gave me about being a father. I've been reading it because in eight short months (well, a little less), that's what I'll be. My fiance and I were swimming a few days after we watched the …
I was flipping through the old 1936 edition Webster's Universal Usage Dictionary housed at the coffee shop near my house. There's this thing called a Ducking Stool, which was used to dunk kids under water when they acted up in school. It was also used on witches, but that was less interesting to me than …
Though there is no title story for Jon McManus' collection of thirteen stories that's actually called Born On A Train, it's a hell of a title. The stories make me see how much it matters that there are still writers out there who we can call badasses. The collection rides roughly on the edges of …
I've been reading and teaching poetry for the past three weeks. Kenneth Rexroth's 100 Poems From The Chinese has just about the most kickass translations of Tu Fu anywhere. After you start reading those poems, you start living them. No kidding. I was driving along listening to the NPR fund drive and drinking a tall …
At school, Kelly Thomas had her butt-ugly sister telling everyone Vincent was too poor to go to the circus. The girls, they were the meanest, skipping rope singing "Vincent Harris wants to go. Vincent, Vincent, He's too po'."
My life could have been different but it wasn’t.
