Thanksgiving: Have You Hugged Your Stuff Today?

11/24/09 9:51 AM

Every holiday deserves its own impassioned editorial. Thanksgiving is ridiculously soon.  Hopefully this isn’t a surprise to you, but if it is, Happy Thursday Off!  Feel free to meet with family around a roaring fire with roasted turducken and a vegetarian option, or else meet with your roommate around a lighter while you hand-heat cans of spam and sip animal-friendly tap water. Why do we North Americans do this?  Because in 1621, a repressed religious group sailed here and, remarkably, didn´t start a blood feud with the Mohawks.  Instead, they took that year’s harvest and had a feast.  How the tradition turned into blood relatives meeting, eating, watching football and subtly exchanging Christmas lists, I’ll never know. Now remember what...

Taken With a Grain of Assault

11/16/09 5:17 PM

Getting assaulted was interesting. It started with the perfect day.  Not the most breathtaking, but very nice anyway.  Spring is just settling in here, and the weather was exquisitely San Diegan, i.e. the air is so 70-Fahrenheit and so still that it feels like walking in a vacuum.  No classes.  I spent an hour out on the town with the dog, no leash required because he orbits me like an electron.  Came home, had a colossal lunch (courtesy of Chile), topped it off with a classy glass of fine wine… and I did a heap of that good ol´ end-of-the-semester homework just because.  I´ve seen better days, but this was going perfect enough. It was 10:00, and I was walking back from martial arts, of all things.  I go by the beach because I´m...

Cool photos around Chile:

11/3/09 1:38 PM

Click here to see the photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=40062&id=1140382258&l=fbab50f2a1

First post from Chile

10/22/09 8:04 PM

I´m writing from a humble four-story house on a hill, in a room with a glass wall that faces the sea. It's the same sea on the same West Coast I grew up with, but strikes me as bluer here. The land reaches around to hold the ocean in like a crescent moon, technicolor houses growing on its hillsides right to the ends. This is Viña del Mar, Chile.  Back when this was all vineyards, the name meant Wine of the Sea.  From the attic, one window faces the city.  The other faces Valparaíso: Valley of Paradise.  Take your eyes off the horizon, though, and you'll see everything the curtains on the tour bus kept at arm's length. Chile is a land of chipped paint, of graffiti walls, of splintered wood and rusted metal.  Wrappers and plastic bits are...