It was mid-afternoon on Thanksgiving day. We were leaving one holiday party for other holiday parties where we did not want to be late. Since what we saw somewhat defies belief, let the record reflect we had been drinking only water and taking no drugs. We were driving north in somewhat […]
Long before Tom Brokaw christened his “Greatest Generation,” Baby Boomers inaugurated the trend of iconizing the 1960s that was their generational crucible. The peace sign, long hair, and incense-soaked head shops pretending to sell “tobacco products” softened the blow of news that a friend was killed or injured in Vietnam. To belong […]
When we moved into our house, a friend took in the black wrought iron fence, the house set well back from its perimeter, and grinned. “The Munsters.” Our haunting, though, took the form of rust. And because somewhere beneath the layers of black Rustoleum was an embossed date in the 1800s, we […]
Well, I am back to being an essayist/journalist/travel writer/critic/blogger/feuilletonist, after a month’s vacation, a word that comes from a root that means “empty” or “free.” Vacated. Ah, but from what? Despite my time off, the back of my couch is lined with (new to me) half-read books—Dorothy Day, Leslie Fiedler, Adam […]
One of the glaring aspects of our modern world is that we talk faster than we shop by an order of magnitude. Sure, it has always been true that we communicate faster than we acquire goods and services. But never before have we been able to talk to so many people […]
In 1870, “Chinese” was the first time an Asian category for race was included in the U.S decennial census. By 1890, “Japanese” was the second. It was not until the 1910 census that other Asian categories were identified as “Filipino,” “Hindu” (used incorrectly for Indian Americans), and “Korean.” That year, 160 Filipinos lived in the […]
Nestled in the Park County Local History Digital Archive, an electronic collection of visual and oral documentation from Park County, Colorado, lives a photograph titled “Woman of Asian descent sitting with bound feet.” Inscribed on the lower right corner, is an address: 619 Kearny St, San Francisco. And next to it, on […]
I remember the crack of a gunshot in the 2018 debut of Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang’s two-part An American Soldier. I remember the operatic death, the performance of it, the abruptness of it, the sonorous belting, the tall wooden structure on stage right, and the tenor on top of it, playing Danny Chen, […]
If you are one of more than 200 million Amazon Prime members worldwide, you probably have sitting on your kitchen table what has sat on mine for the past week or so: the Amazon Holiday Gift Book, Unwrap Joy, printed in robust paper stock. If you did not receive your copy, […]
While societal norms often discourage us from discussing politics, I found that this could not be further from the truth in D.C. Instead of causing a notorious Thanksgiving style blowout, it united people with a common passion. Not because we agreed on everything, but because we had chosen to entrench ourselves in politics to the […]
