The George Saunders graduation speech currently making the rounds of the Internet reminds me of a failure of kindness of my own. I have committed many, of course, too many to remember or recount; I pick on this one, because, quite frankly, besides being memorable in all the wrong ways, it is a little lessContinue reading “A Failure of Kindness”
Category Archives: Travel
The Genealogy of Moi
In reviewing Francois Weil‘s Family Trees: A History of Geneaology in America (‘In Quest of Blood Lines‘, New York Review of Books, 23 May 2013) Gordon S. Wood, after tracking an older American obsession with family lineage, possibly noble birth and associated family fortune, notes an interesting statistic: By 2005, a poll found that 73 percentContinue reading “The Genealogy of Moi”
Geronimo and the Cruel, Beautiful, West
Yesterday’s post on the continued presence of derogatory team names and mascots in American professional sports was, in part, prompted by my reading of Geronimo‘s autobiography. It is a short book, an easy read, and comes with an excellent introduction by Frederick Turner. (Geronimo: His Own Story, As told to S. M. Barrett, with introductionContinue reading “Geronimo and the Cruel, Beautiful, West”
Hudson Crossings
Yesterday, at the World Trade Center transit station, as I took the escalator down to the PATH train, heading for an afternoon spent with a cousin living in Exchange Place, New Jersey, I made note of a little datum: I’ve been crossing the Hudson–in both directions–for over twenty-five years. One such crossing, back in 1993,Continue reading “Hudson Crossings”
A Long, Hot, Sickened Journey
The worst of the heat might have receded from New York City but that’s not going to deter me from churning out another hot weather-related blog post. On this occasion, about a time when a combination of heat and a mysterious ailment combined to induce in me a misery that has, thankfully, not been rivaledContinue reading “A Long, Hot, Sickened Journey”
Memories of Hot Summers Elsewhere
Talking about the weather is supposedly a concession, an admission that a conversation has run aground, spun off into irrelevancies; nothing, it seems, quite shows the lack of an agenda for an exchange of words like a discussion about the heat, the cold, the rain. Well, I admit defeat; I admit I’m tongue-tied and incoherent.Continue reading “Memories of Hot Summers Elsewhere”
Brawling at Twenty Thousand Feet: The Everest Punchup
The high-altitude slopes of the world’s highest mountain–Mt. Everest–might seem like a strange place to indulge in fisticuffs but that’s precisely what happened on April 27: It takes a lot to rattle Swiss climber Ueli Steck….on April 27, while attempting to climb Mount Everest, it wasn’t the mountain that nearly killed him but a mob ofContinue reading “Brawling at Twenty Thousand Feet: The Everest Punchup”
Kinds of Nostalgia
In reviewing Hadara Lazar’s Out of Palestine: The Making of Modern Israel, (‘Palestine: How Bad, & Good was British Rule, New York Review of Books, 7 February 2013) Avishai Margalit writes The term “nostalgia” was coined by a Swiss doctor, Johannes Hofer, in a dissertation submitted to Basel University in 1688. It was meant to be usedContinue reading “Kinds of Nostalgia”
Winners and Losers, All Together
On Thursday night, after a brief foray into New Jersey, I returned to New York City by train, arriving a little after midnight at Penn Station. I walked upstairs into the arrival hall, turned toward the Seventh Avenue exit, and emerged in front of Madison Square Garden before walking east on 33rd Street toward theContinue reading “Winners and Losers, All Together”
Craig McGregor on Living in the Bush
This morning, as I rummaged through my bookshelves in one of those periodic, vain attempts I make to try and organize them, I came upon my copy of Australia Fair?: Recollections, Observations, Irreverences (edited by Russell Braddon, Methuen, London, 1984). I had purchased it in 2000, in Sydney, at the Berkelouw’s bookshop on Oxford StreetContinue reading “Craig McGregor on Living in the Bush”
Samir Chopra 