-
Quitting Time
·
Today I left the job at which I’ve worked for the last two years, one of the more dysfunctional I’ve held besides the barbecue place boasting a back-of-house fight club, though of course I’d be lying if I pretended the last few weeks at the up-to-present job haven’t been pleasant, though of course I’d be Read more
-
It Explains So Much
-
Memory Lane
·
One begins to realize that our national middle-class hunger to return to two decades of Depression, world war, Prohibition, Racism Unadmitted, Covert Fascination with Sex, Deadly Innocence, Isolationism, Provincialism, and Deprivation Remembered as Good Old Days has become a cultural sickness. Read more
-
Bravery, Dash
·
In the Middle Ages learning, and even literacy, were not considered necessary acquirements for a great lord. The qualities expected of him were bravery, dash, a certain magnificence and easiness of style, perhaps the practical sense of a man of the world, but not learning. Such men set the pace for lesser landowners, and their Read more
-
Spaceguard
·
Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. On June 30, 1908, Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometers — a margin invisibly small by the standards of the universe. On February 12, 1947, another Russian city had a still narrower escape, when the second great meteorite of the twentieth century detonated Read more
-
Something Like a Storm
·
On the night of June twenty-ninth a great noise wakened the besieged, followed by a rolling of drums: the enemy had managed to explode the first mine beneath the walls, blowing up a lunette and burying twenty-five soldiers. The next day, towards six in the evening, something like a storm was heard to the west, Read more
-
Homonym
-
Courage
-
Nobody Likes It
·
Lest the reader imagine that I am letting my fancy free to infer Penner’s early attitudes from his later and more rounded nature, I shall quote here some of the first scrawly-handed entries to be found in his diaries. He began his records early and continued them until his unfortunate demise. There is an astonishing Read more