What One Writer's Wrought

THE SCENE: A small village in rural Turkey, about 2005 A small, very old woman, wearing a head-shawl held in place with the help of thick black glasses, is lying face down on a table in her hovel. A man, not quite-as-old, wearing a colorful cap (a busy but friendly village elder) has just finished giving her an injection in her bum. The woman, pricked, says, Not that it's of any use! He replies, Well, it's old age, what can you do. With a soft groan, she begins to sit up, rubbing her backside. I pray for death to come. No use, I just can't die. He smiles, and gently scolds her. Your time will come. Wait your turn! Having put away his implements, he walks towards the door as the old woman reaches for her cane. Gazing out her front door, down on the decrepit roof of a shelter built for animals, and for protection from the elements in the final approach to the house, he says, You have to fix this before winter. She arrives in the front door next to him, and says softly, ...

In June of 1983, I left my home in upstate New York and boarded the first of a series of flights that would take me across an ocean and one continent, and then about half of a second continent, before arriving where I would spend the next three years of my life. I was a Peace Corps Trainee - not yet a Volunteer - who had been invited to serve in the Central African Republic. I'd picked up a liberal arts degree (English & Philosophy + History), which initially I'd assumed would be more than sufficient for getting my foot in the Peace Corps door. It wasn't until years later, while working as a recruiter for the Peace Corps (a small federal agency whose budget last year was $400 million), that I realized how utterly dime-a-dozen my background had been. My own recruiter sounded overworked but was kind, and let me down gently. He offered some tips about activities and classes which would make my application more competitive, before suggesting that, if I ...

When just the other day I heard for the first time the name of Edmund G. Ross mentioned in media coverage of the Trump impeachment hearings, I realized the time had come to do my part in spreading a little of what I've come to learn recently about who Ross was, how he once had been remembered, and how now still newer perspectives have arrived. (Buckle your revisionist seat-belts.) Something I'd read a couple of months back suggested that, for understanding historical comparisons, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson (beginning in 1868) was a lot more instructive, and significant, in comparison with Trump's, than either the near-impeachment of Richard Nixon (forestalled by his resignation, in 1974); or especially when compared to the impeachment of Bill Clinton (in 1998). Good news for the curious, a new book on the topic has just come out, called The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson, and the Dream of a Just Nation , by historian and biographer Brenda Wineapple. I...

As a relative newcomer to Austin, I have to admit that visiting the LBJ Presidential Library had not been a real high priority. Like New Yorkers who maybe one day will get around to visiting the Statue of Liberty, I figured when the time was right, I'd one day get on over to the LBJ, maybe with the next out-of-town visitor. Don't get me wrong! I think that if you overlook Johnson's Vietnam policy, we'd be looking at one of the greatest presidents we've ever had. The more you learn about the hardscrabble background he had to overcome to get to where he got to, there's even more about the man to be impressed about. Picture Trump in LBJ's place? A re-creation of the Oval Office Anyway, I'd figure I'd get there soon enough someday. Then one day this past summer, I heard about the Motown Exhibit at the LBJ, and that was something I was gonna rush down there to soak up, and hoo-wee, am I glad I did. Motown: the Sound of Young America , ...

Anyone who knows me well will be shocked to hear me give a positive review not just of a horror flick, but of a zombie-apocalypse film! I've never really felt a part of the whole zombie zeitgeist, and so never went out of my way to see any zombie movies, even ones with Bill Murray in them . Before we go on, allow me first to make a plug for libraries. The modern library is so much more than a place to borrow a book. You may be aware that folks have for some time been able to borrow audio-books and DVDs, but get this ! Anyone with a library card nowadays can also stream movies for free (up to four per month), in the comfort of their own home. Get the complete scoop at hooplaDigital.com , which is how I'd come to enjoy this amazing movie, Train to Busan . In retrospect, I guess my choosing this film must have had something to do with the week's activities. On the Wednesday following Thanksgiving, I'd caught a red-eye from San Francisco, having come from visiting...

As a new resident of Austin, I was excited to volunteer for my first Texas Book Festival. In an article I wrote last month about the festival, I'd described my role as an author's guide, and how I'd had the good fortune to meet a number of very interesting people, one of whom was best-selling author, journalist and private eye Rene Denfeld. Denfeld had made a strong impression on me of someone with integrity, and with a huge measure of compassion for all of her fellow humans, not just the ones lucky enough to be born in her own country (the United States). What little she divulged of her personal life during the 45 minutes I heard her speak was enough to make me an instant fan, and soon after went looking for what books of hers I might find on the shelves of Austin's new downtown library.• The first one I was able to get my hands on was her "novel" published by Harper Collins in 2017, The Child Finder . I put quotes around the word novel because from th...

I had returned to the east coast in July of this year to watch a high-school buddy wrestle in an amateur tournament on the beautiful white sandy beaches near Point Pleasant, New Jersey. We re-connected with my sister and another classmate / good buddy, on that beach, that day. Then, prior to returning to my new home in Austin, I went to visit my niece and her partner, who the year before had moved into a new house in Caytonsville, Maryland. I'd heard long ago of Benjamin Banneker: this legendary, 18th-century, African-American man, but had mostly forgotten about him until this recent visit to my niece's place, situated in the immediate vicinity where Banneker was born and spent most of his life. Born free in 1731 in Ellicott's Mills (opposite what would become Ellicott City) to Mary (a free woman), and Robert Bannaky (a freed slave from Guinea), he would become a consummate autodidact : almost entirely self-educated. His neighbor, George Ellicott, whose family had buil...

The 25th annual Texas Book Festival took place this past weekend, and I overheard an attendee say that the best thing George Bush Jr. ever did was to marry Laura, who founded the TBF in 1995*. The first festival flowered the following year. It was a glorious day, fine weather to be outside, either casually strolling or purposefully striding inside, on the grounds of, or within a couple blocks from the state Capitol building. You may not have heard that the Texans of the 1850s modeled their building after the one in DC and, being Texans, they had to have it be just a little bit bigger (about 14'7" taller), and it sure is a handsome structure. Especially for a first-timer like myself, one of the best things about volunteering at the TBF was getting to meet authors you may have never heard of, and so to gain a bigger glimpse of the world than perhaps you'd had in a while. It was both a pleasure and a real honor to get to meet three different groups of authors, accomp...

Fifty-two years ago yesterday, on Oct. 9, 1967, at the age of 39, Ernesto "Che" Guevara was assassinated in the village of La Higuera, Bolivia, with assistance from the CIA, who for years had been looking to kill the charismatic revolutionary. Loved by millions around the world, partly for his commitment to improving the lives of the downtrodden, Che had completed medical school in his native Argentina, and probably would’ve gone on to lead the comfortable life of a doctor if it hadn’t been for a motorcycle trip he made in 1952 with a classmate around S. America (memorialized in the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries , starring the Mexican hottie Gael Garcia-Bernal ). The nine-month trip opened his eyes for the first time to the depth of misery suffered by so many, and resulted in his decision to give up all that his parents had hoped for him, and work instead to foment world-wide, anti-capitalist revolution. He had met Fidel Castro in Mexico in 1953, and in November of 1...

Near the end of an unusually long day, about six, seven years ago, I was struck by the number of encounters I'd had with a variety of animals. And then I was struck in turn by what a gift it was, this place I'd found, where something as simple as a multiplicity of meetings with mammals could just happen like the way I'm about to tell you it did. --- I was living back then in a pretty rural area of northern California. (You could stick a comma in there and just as easily say it was a "pretty, rural" place, too.) It was so rural, there weren't but one more county north before you found yourself on Oregon's doorstep. So this was really northern California, not north Cali like City by the Bay north. Folks call San Francisco "northern" Cali just because the other two big cities in the Golden State, LA and San Diego, are hours and hours away to the south. But going north along the coast after SF, first it's Marin, then Sonoma (with Napa due e...

Two days ago, I returned from three weeks in California, where I'd lived for about fifteen years. Today I wrote a letter to the editor of The Independent (a weekly newspaper published in s. Humboldt county), who has just emailed to say that he will publish it in their next edition. Here it is. --- This past June, I wrapped up nearly 15 years of life in Humboldt and Mendocino counties - including 11 years as a DJ at Redwood Community Radio - before moving to Austin. I returned in mid-September for a farewell shindig, and to celebrate my 60th (as well as KMUD news-anchor Lauren Schmitt's 27th) birthday, on Sep. 17. After extended visits with friends here and there, I finally arrived safely back in Austin yesterday afternoon. I wanted to thank and acknowledge the generosity of my old friend and former colleague from KMUD's Board of Directors, Siena Klein, who weeks before had offered her home in Miranda for this party. The foul weather that had been forecast ...

In May of this year, a friend wrote: Now that Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington are out of favor, I assume we'll have to drop Memorial Day too. People interested in bringing about real equality in American society should not be tilting at Confederate windmills. They should be working to make the present situation better. After warning him that I had plenty to say in reply, and briefly worrying that perhaps I'd inferred too much from what I took to be his position (and trusting that he would take the time to clarify where I may have overstepped), I jumped in. -- -- "Friend, I have no quibble with your believing that Robert E. Lee is out of favor, as well he should be for taking such a prominent role in defending slavery. But do you actually believe that Jefferson and Washington are also no longer as accepted? Perhaps because their being slaveholders is more widely acknowledged than it once was? "I know the current occupant of the White Hous...