Author: Ben East
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#WeAreElliott: Sahil Jain
Sahil Jain, MA International Affairs, Class of 2018, #WeAreElliott Current Student Sahil Jain, a native of Northern California, began his time at the Department of State in the Office of Israeli-Palestinian Affairs. Subsequently, he joined USAID assisting with the launch of the Global Development Lab Bureau. He then returned to the Department of State, where…
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Technical Writing and SEO
Against considerations of writing as craft, technical concepts get 1.5 stars, distracting from the fundamental purpose of writing: to communicate, to inform, to entertain, to share emotion and feeling and intent in some kind of visual, potentially permanent, way.
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Learning to Drive
I learned to drive like I learned to shoot: a golf cart can’t be so different from a bb gun, can it? With the golf cart you’ve got two pedals and a wheel. With the bb gun, you’ve got two sights and a trigger. My poor son. He’s learning to drive on a 12-year-old stick…
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Three Guys Diagnose
Backing into my driveway yesterday, I heard the kind of metal on asphalt screech you get when your muffler is falling off. My driveway slopes a bit, so I stopped immediately to prevent driving the tailpipe in on itself like a telescope. Then I nudged forward and the same scraping sound came again. Of course…
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Acts of Papyrus
Why should I think of this ancient on a rainy afternoon, two days after Christmas? The answer involves a breakfast of bananas, milk, and avocado, the wrapping of gifts in discounted paper, the sound of metal scraping against asphalt beneath my car, a podcast featuring Egyptologist Kara Cooney, the aroma of black bean soup filling…
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Where Fact Meets Fiction
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My personal journeys work best as parody. I am a very unserious traveler. I board the train for the potato cutlet, not the arrival in Bangaluru.
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My Barber, My Chiropractor
my barber is an artist with blades and attachments that buzz exquisitely around my head. He uses at least three different scissors snipping with casual abandon to create a snowstorm of clippings before clearing my face in a single stroke. He runs his blades across my eyebrows and whistles out my nose—only the Turkish barber…
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Return of Light
What lifts my spirits during these cold, dark times is this: tomorrow we will have one second more of daylight than we have today.
Ben East Books 