Author: Ben East
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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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When Researching Aliens
Best to look at the problem from the other side. Not aliens on earth—earthlings in space! By far the most memorable version of Space Oddity for me is the one recorded by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield during his long sojourn aboard the International Space Station. The lyrics are somewhat different from the original, and so…
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The London Embassy
What to read this week? Paul Theroux’s The London Embassy, of course! This day in history U.S. diplomacy with England took over a new location. Our landmark perch in Grosvenor Square is no more. I visited the location once—an aside to the controversy going on right now, and one that makes this move feel deeply…
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