Latest work
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116
Read more: 116The ides of Jupiter. It was about this time in the 1970s that many began to call him my grandfather. Or maybe I just started noticing. After school, at the drug store to get taffy, the clerk asked about him, about my grandfather, and so did Mr. Sullivan, who owned…
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The enemy of my enemy
Read more: The enemy of my enemySoviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Hafez al-Assad in 1977. Memory is a curse that hexes and vexes the would-be new. As pundits rage about Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war, flip back to 1970, the year Hafez al-Assad took power in a military coup. Even then, the Soviet…
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Whatcheeria
Read more: WhatcheeriaDuring Romer’s Gap, only creatures like Whatcheeria wiggled through. Once, the words I treasured most reeked of syllables: Cambrian, Silurian, Ordovician, Devonian, and my all-time favorite, Carboniferous. These vast stretches of ancient time passed little seen by living creatures, which only settled in to stay a few hundred million years…
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A tougher pilgrim
Read more: A tougher pilgrimPope Francis in Cuba, before traveling to the United States. In a non-Catholic majority country, a pope is best seen through the prism of his approach to key Christian values, determined in part by his demeanor. This is especially true in the largely Protestant United States, an issue-oriented secular state…
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Flavia and Maurizio
Read more: Flavia and MaurizioIntimations of civic mortality. Almost every year toward the end of summer bucolic tales of Italy slip into American newspapers as a kind of bittersweet bonbon to mark the end of the travel season. These stories rarely have much to do with the country’s bizarre politics or its underworld seething,…
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Misprison of modern relief
Read more: Misprison of modern reliefHope for a soft European landing has little grounding in immediate fact. When chaotically unhappy people risk everything to leave their homelands in search of a promised land they fully expect to find one. Their imaginations combine to suggest their arrival point, wherever it is, will afford relief and safe…
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