Tag: place
The Ties that Stretch and Bind
Many a time, I have seen my friend doting on his little seven-year-old half brother, picking him up from school, cooking for him, and keeping his classmates’ junk food at bay. Staying abroad and settling into some sort of upwardly mobile immigrant comfort would go against the grain of years of habit.
Print Culture and the Fate of the Literary Quarterly
The general continued to pay for the upkeep of the LSU tiger in an airconditioned cage. The amount of money involved was almost precisely the same as the subsidy for the Southern, then the best quarterly in the country by a large margin.
Castles Built on Sand
Even for the average homeowner, ownership all too often is imagined as a way of gaming income flow and consumption over a lifetime, accumulating enough to spend down before one has to become a ward of the welfare state. It is part of consumer society, not a buffer against it.
The Vast White Landscape: E.B. White’s “Great Snows” Revisited
Rock Island, IL
A century ago in New England, the approach to snow was quite different. When snow began to fly, people switched to...
Imitation and the Art of Flattery: the Cold War of the...
Washington, Connecticut. At the end of his introduction to a re-publication of the Marquis de Custine’s "Empire of the Czar, A Journey Through Eternal...
Sewers and Leashes: A Local Story
Hillsdale, MI. This is a true story. It happened once upon a time in a place I do not now live.
After an arduous...
… Neither Proud Nor Lonely
C.S. Lewis noted that “If you had asked Lazamon or Chaucer ‘Why do you not make up a brand-new story of your own?’ I...
Jawboning: A Tale of Two Hardware Stores
Hamilton, Ontario. The other day I was standing in a cavernous mega-chain hardware store looking for gardening supplies. This was not an easy task...