Category: Writing
-
What’s for Dinner? Butter.
The whole house smells like butter. And onions. Butter and onions. As well it should: our five-person assembly line this morning put together one full gross of pierogi. That’s 144 butter-filled, butter-fried dumplings. With 12 for dinner, that’s a dozen pierogi apiece. So what, exactly, is a pierogi? Depends who you ask. If you ask…
-
Peace & Light on Christmas Eve
The word PEACE stretches out in silver letters beneath the lighted garland on our mantel. Tomorrow we’ll build a fire there and friends will gather round for warmth and cheer. The shortest day of the year has come and gone, & our side of the world now turns toward light. Will the light show our…
-
Tactical Pens vs. Writers’ Block
As the growing scarcity of my trusty silver Parker Jotters drives up the price, I’ve been eyeing these tactical pens to replace them. For those who’ve used them—a few questions: Which do you like best? Does the ballpoint provide smooth action across the page? Does the ink hold fast, or does it smudge and blur?…
-
Little Green Men
I’m about done reading Little Green Men, Christopher Buckley’s satiric romp through an imaginary government bureaucracy established in 1947 to promulgate UFO hysteria in America. MJ-12’s mission: keep the Russians off-balance during the Cold War & boost support for Defense spending against unknown threats by means of increasingly intrusive forms of alien-related phenomena. What begins as mere sightings…
-
Adventures in Punctuation
Important for boys: Digging up the backyard to make a pond, building makeshift shelters out of branches, then hiding inside to spot the wildlife attracted to the pond. Not important for boys: Punctuation. Or did the publisher assume that some kid’s sister would get ahold of The Boy’s Book of Adventure and refuse to let…
-
Not One More
Working on a promotional series for Patchworks. This one takes up the refrain from Everytown for Gun Safety. It’s a good refrain. Not one more.
-
Moleskine in Paris
In preparation for travel to Paris this week I found myself cracking open the last of my black Moleskin Cahier 5×8.25″ notebooks. Normally this brings satisfaction as I add yet another 80 bound pages of journaling to what has become 40+ such notebooks over the last dozen years. With departure impending, however, I felt more…
-
Too Much of a Good Thing
This piece in the Post has me thinking about the Second Amendment. A corollary argument is unlikely to convince pro-gun extremists. But it should. They will one day wake up to find all their rights revoked if they refuse to allow reasonable limits to the size, shape, and scope of their arsenals. (I’m satisfied with…
-
11:15 06-Dec-04
The next-to-last time I saw Mohamed—11:15, Dec 6, 2004—a blast-resistant window separated me from the Afghan businessman with good English, admiration for the U.S., and a carpet enterprise in Virginia. The last applicant of the morning at our visa counter in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Mohamed was alone in the waiting room when the high-low alarm began…
-
10 Words I Hate
Manspreading. Not in defense of the posture or those who assume it. The word’s as gross as it is misleading. I predict an EEO complaint in its future. File this word with mansplaining as a crappy portmanteau. Votarama. Actually, this whimsical-sounding act occurs when congress picks America’s pockets and probes our inner reaches for pork.…
Ben East Books 