Author: Ben East
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I Want the Truth!
Watching the special prosecutor drama unfold is like watching A Few Good Men. We’re at the part now where Tom Cruise explains his winning strategy against Jack Nicholson. Here’s how the lowly Navy Lieutenant plans to bring down a decorated Marine Colonel: Kaffee: He eats breakfast 300 yards away from 4000 Cubans that are trained…
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A Borrower Be
The patient wait is over. Patchworks is now available through the Fairfax County Public Library. Reserve your copy today. Can one intern save us from ourselves, when the government he works for keeps shutting itself down? Patchworks shares a pound of absurdity for every ounce of tragedy, winking in dismay at the circumstances of our…
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White Chapel, Black Hole
Human excrement paves the dungeon floors at Cape Coast Castle. The same is true of other slave forts dotting Ghana’s coast, and along the rest of West Africa. The impacted waste is one of the more subtle, more stirring features of a tour through those high limestone walls. The cannons are there and stacks of…
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February
The shortest month. Winter’s last stronghold, light surrounding us more and more each day. We celebrate African American culture and contributions this month, and recognize the struggles overcome while dedicating ourselves to the struggles that remain. This year, February brings 15 days of international sportsmanship from PyeongChang, Korea. BenEastBooks takes on all this, while continuing the original mission highlighting…
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The Portable Art
Unlike the stuff we writers produce, art and music seem to make no demands of those who encounter it. The artist puts it out there—hangs it on the wall, pours it through speakers—and the public responds. They see it. They hear it. They get on with their day, likely the better for having encountered these…
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Swamp Talk
Why do the murders keep happening? What are we doing to stop them? Can one earnest intern make a difference, when the government he serves keeps shutting itself down? Join the whole Patchworks crew for a bite at The Fed Buffet. Great Falls Library 9830 Georgetown Pike, Great Falls, VA Saturday Feb 3rd, 1:30-4:00 America’s next gun…
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Writers’ Tip—Go Away!
Five weeks of surfing stretched out before me off the white beaches of northern Brazil. On the bus from Salvador to Ilheus, a teacher on summer leave, a young man with no duties, I felt the ultimate exhilaration of liberty. A peak experience, anticipating surf in the mornings and writing in the breezy shade of…
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A Tic Is Not A Style
I don’t know what it is, but I’ve observed a natural tic in my writing lately. I wish I could call it a style, but it isn’t. It isn’t something pretty. It’s a tic. If I had a tendency to do something that made my writing stand out—Raymond Carver, T.C. Boyle, Zora Neale Hurston—it would be…
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Rock Paper Scissors Shutdown
Gun violence isn’t the only systemic failure of the federal government to be yodeled at with doomed futility in Patchworks. Furloughs and government shutdowns also pepper a story full of recurring small deaths. There comes a point—moments before the plot’s big turn—when two sympathetic colleagues must choose: which of them will take a round of furloughs instead of…
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