The Passage: Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart. Stop being tough at your desk and stammering with timidity in the presence of people. Imagine for one second that you raise hell in public and stammer on paper. You’re a tiger, a lion, a cat. …
The Passage: I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking up and not …
For the next ten days, I’m starting my daily writing with a warm-up exercise. I’ll randomly choose a passage from Steinbeck, Hemingway, or Babel, type it out (to internalize the language), analyze the style, and then mime it in my own vignette. Today’s Passage: “We slept, all six of us, beneath a wooden roof that …
On Christmas Eve 1914, in the middle of the blood and horror that was the first World War, there occurred an unplanned truce. It began in the darkness on Christmas Eve night, when the men began singing Christmas carols. Voices raising in the cold night, sparse and few at first but growing ever stronger. The soldiers of both sides sang together …
Read more “The Christmas Eve Truce, Pt. 2 — The Horrible Side of the Story”
The holidays are a time to be grateful. Although less blatant than Thanksgiving, it’s part of the Christmastime tradition. Secular families give thanks for their loved ones and their blessings. Families of a Christian bend partake in something old and sacred as they gather together around tables saying grace — in the moment, giving thanks …
Read more “Take Time to Give Thanks: a Celebration of Free Markets and Christmas”
Christmas Eve is a night of silence. The sanctity of the night goes beyond even religion. It’s one night in a span of nights in the coldest, darkest time of the year — long swaths of darkness hovering around the solstice, wrapping the world in cold. Regardless of your religious beliefs, you feel the gravity …