Blog Archive
Into the Dark
Just getting to the 9/11 Museum is quite a production. Most of the surrounding area is still a construction site, and so after you leave the subway station you walk all the way around it, hemmed in by tall chain-link fences, before you come upon the 9/11 Memorial: the two gigantic waterfalls . . .
Read MoreMaterial Realities
One of the first items you see in the New-York Historical Society’s exhibition on Civil War textiles is a giant cotton bale. Its burlap bagging is shredded so that the cotton mushrooms up out of it, released from the tension of compaction. Behind it is a photograph of a Confederate fortification at . . .
Read MoreAbraham Lincoln, Media Icon
A tall figure strides toward you through the fog. Then you see him from the back as he walks up a hillside, dragging his left hand through the tall grass. There he is again, staring out at the Pacific Ocean. Always in a long black coat and a stovepipe hat, a hint . . .
Read MoreWrite On
What is it that inspires us to write? The pressure of a deadline? Competitive word counting, à la the #GraftonLine project? A serendipitous discovery in the archive? For me, inspiration has taken many forms. Pressure, yes. Guilt, yes. Excitement, yes. But what has done more than just inspire me–what has actually changed . . .
Read MoreMidnight Risings
One Midnight Rising is about men who make secret plans and train for battle, intent upon killing as many men as they can in pursuit of their goals. They hide in attics and cellars during the day and venture out only at night; they dream of blood. The other Midnight Rising is . . .
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