Category: Correspondence

A poem written by Sir Alfred Lyall in the mid-19th century and quoted by King Abdur Rahman Khan in his 1900 biography, The Life of Abdur Rahman Khan, Amir of Afghanistan, reads: The Afghan is but grist in the mill, And the waters are moving it fast, Let the stone be upper or nether, It...

The hawk, golden wings rustling in a stiff, cold breeze, floats above the prairie, eyeing its prey.  A tiny movement in the sea of grass probably stirred the majestic beast from the powerline that served as a makeshift perch: The hawk takes to the air with a speed that defies my poor eyesight’s ability to...

A decade ago, Celeste Dell’Anna, to this day the only interior designer in Milan with a world reputation and a beautiful wife, was doing our new house in Knightsbridge.  We became great friends, initially because I appreciated the tragic spectacle of this man of culture being baited, like some great white stag personifying the Italian...

I awoke again this morning to an entirely clear sky.  It is cold early in the morning in late summer in the mountains of South Chile, about 45 degrees.  We are suffering through a very long dry spell.  There has been no significant rain for over two months, and the clear sky is mostly obliterated...

We’ve crammed the Suburban with about as many people as it can carry, driving the fence line on a section of land not far from Meridian, Texas, on a cool Sunday afternoon during deer season.  My brother left a message even before we made it home from church, asking us to come with his family...

It is now Carnival.  If you look at Venetian painting, where it is a recurrent theme, very occasionally among the profusion of masks and costumes worn by the revelers you will spot the fool’s cap, the jester’s conical hat decorated with bells or pom-poms.  Nowadays, the hat, sold on every street corner in a variety...

A couple of springs ago, my daughter and I took a bus from Thessaloniki in northern Greece over the mountains to Istanbul.  The trip was ghastly.  In an effort to save some money, I had found us seats on a local—a big mistake.  Despite the promise from the ticket vendor that no smoking was allowed,...

“What is the purpose of your journey to Canada and how long do you plan to stay?” That is the question anyone traveling across the Canadian border has to answer to the border guards, no matter where he crosses.  For myself, it was at the Pigeon River (which divides Minnesota and Ontario near the beautiful...

What was meant to grow separately cannot last long as an artificial whole.  This prehistoric wisdom seems to be forgotten by advocates of multiculturalism—which is just a misleading euphemism for polyethnism and multiracialism.  The unpredictable side of multiracial conviviality seems to be deliberately overlooked by political elites in multiethnic and multiracial Belgium, a miniscule country...

I am fumbling in the console, looking for my Jim Reeves Christmas CD, when I notice the wall of rolling, gray clouds approaching from the east.  The sun is sliding slowly beneath the horizon in the west, shooting shards of orange-red hues into the purple-blue sky, presenting a striking contrast to the dark gray wall,...

When the Taliban in Afghanistan were busy destroying ancient gigantic stone statues of Buddha, some commentators asked: What’s next?  Now, a fundamentalist Muslim group known as Unione dei Musulmani d’Italia (Italy’s Union of Muslims) has demanded that a priceless 15th-century fresco, which they call “obscene and blasphemous,” be removed from San Petronio, the 14th-century cathedral...

A few months ago, when word of an article of mine about the events of September 11 went round the Russian community in London, I received a telephone call inviting me to a private meeting with Boris Berezovsky.  (A relevant question to ponder is whether those Westerners who are unfamiliar with the name have somehow...

It is a warm night for November, even in Texas.  Thanksgiving is a few days away, and the warm weather, interrupted by a cool snap, has returned, reimposing itself like an unwelcome guest on an autumn background of falling leaves and brown, seemingly endless prairie stretching north to distant Canada.  Southeast from Waco, along Highway...

The only substantive change to my character that I have observed over time is in the workings of the spleen, the abdominal organ once regarded as the seat of what are now called the negative emotions.  When I was young, the objects of my hate were precious few, though, of course, I used to fulminate...

I was picking tomatoes on our small farm in north-central Kentucky when I heard the news of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  It took me some time before I understood that what Bob Edwards of National Public Radio was talking about was not a book or movie.  I...

It’s near the end of October, and the air is crisp and cool.  The wind blows hard here on the prairie, the thermometer failing to reflect the chill you feel on your skin and in your bones.  A smattering of pinks, reds, and oranges coat the white-cored, cottony fingers floating against the pale-blue morning sky. ...

When I first clambered onto the Italian carousel, at Piazza della Fontana di Trevi, my impressions were a kind of paean to the seriousness of Roman life.  Now, some four years later and roughly 400 kilometers to the south, I find myself in Palermo, marveling at the essential childishness of the people.  I dare say...

Trekking north along the closest major artery, Canada-bound travelers are treated to a small hotel with a decorative windmill, several car dealerships, and a shopping center with a McDonald’s, a Blockbuster, and a Subway—all common manifestations of the Pax Americana.  Then, however, they reach a graveyard. Bisected by Front Street, the bricked-in cemetery with decorative...

A blood-red sun is setting on the horizon, distant but familiar, dull but glowing, like the bloodshot eye of a wounded Titan.  Layers of pasty-blue, thin, translucent clouds drape the blood-eye image, as if they themselves were the misty, cloudlike shimmerings of heat rising from the sunbaked pavement, cooled by a late-summer rain.  I stand...

The steamy morning reminded the congregation that Baltimore is on the shore and was once considered part of the South. The heat and the elderly substitute for the vacationing rector made the service informal and cozy, but if I had known the small church didn’t have air conditioning, I might have chosen some other Sunday...

LA’s Conservative Rabbi David J. Wolpe chose Passover to surrender the claim that “positive-historical Judaism” (a.k.a.. Conservative Judaism) builds the Judaic religion on established facts of history. History proves the Exodus never happened, he proclaimed on Passover, with perfect unfaith and to the hurrahs of other theologians of the “eat-kosher-but-think-traif” camp of Judaism. His faith...

The implosion of the right-wing official opposition Alliance Party under its young evangelical leader Stockwell Day dominates the headlines of most of Canada’s papers and feisty tabloids: Will the “gang of eight” dissident Alliance MPs be hung out to dry? Will Stock get drummed out over some Zionist-sounding remarks that set the tender Canadian sensibilities...

The funeral home looked better on the outside. The solid, dignified impression given by the white pillars standing guard outside the large double doors disappeared when you stepped inside and walked on old carpeting into a dimly lit room with dark wood paneling. Across the room were a pair of lime-green armchairs embosse^l with tarnished...

I only believed myself close to death once on my Holy Year pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi. I had been walking in the sun for seven hours along the ancient footpaths and cart tracks between Gubbio—where the saint tamed the wolf that had been terrorizing the townsfolk—and Valfabbrica, the only village...

It is a beautiful April evening in Hico, Texas. My wife and I are having dinner with my in-laws, and I am eyeballing a statue of Billy the Kid across the street from Lilly’s Restaurant. Hico, you see, was the home of “Brushy Bill” Roberts, widely believed around these parts to have been the notorious...

“Before I have my coffee, I want a glass of lemon juice,” I say to the barman. He is out of lemons, which apparently can happen even in Sicily. “Oranges?” Out of oranges, but I suppose this, too, can happen. “What can I get then?” He offers me a lemon granita, made with crushed ice...

A selective historical motion picture about a 19th-century rebellion aboard a cruel Spanish slave ship rakes in megabucks as a result of media hype, including the notation that white production assistants were forbidden to put the stage-chains on the black actors aboard the replica vessel. No one mentioned that the original chains were first put...

The weathered boatman peered out at the three Westerners as we climbed into a small water taxi to cross the bay from the city of Ambon to the airport. “You’re from America? Send us arms. The Muslims are bad.” He used his hands to indicate a rifle as we pulled away from shore. Ambon, the...

From time to time, the Catholic Church has to address the thorny problems caused by those liberal faithful who challenge her principles and tenets. Much more rarely do we hear about initiatives coming from the other side of the spectrum, since these initiatives generally do not pose any threat to Church doctrine, but are limited...

“All the cars you see around here,” yet another taxi driver bringing me from the Grand Hotel Villa Igiea to the congested center of town began in a confidential undertone, “it wasn’t always like that, you know. Before, it was all carriages.” Then, after a pause that he reckoned was long enough for the average...

Years ago, an Hungarian friend of mine, eager to finish a novel, decided to go to Corsica to find the peace and quiet he craved. Some six months later, after he returned to Paris, I asked him if, during his stay, he had picked up any Corsican. Not much, he admitted, except for a phrase...

It took 114 years, but by 2000, Virginia had become a Republican state. What brought about such a great change in the Old Dominion? Let’s take a look back. Reconstruction was the low point of Virginia history. In 1865, a defeated and gutted state lost not only its cities, towns, farms, and one third of...

I first noticed it as I drove past, heading for one of those small-town Wisconsin festivals, this one celebrating the largest earthen dam in the Midwest (by their claim, of course) nestled in the stanitsa of Spring Valley. The whole lawn was filled with antique tractors, the kind you might see at a local fair...

Asked in ever more incredulous tones, the question is warm with sympathy on the lips of friends and cold as Damask steel in the mouths of enemies. “Why Palermo?” One frivolous reply is that, back in Venice, the crab season is now over; the white-sneaker hydra of package tourism is about to hot-millipede it over...

Tony Blair’s promised target before being elected to his first term in office was “Education, education, education”; some months into his second term, it is clear that his promise has been honored, and that his target has been hit—clean between the eyes. English education lies unconscious on the canvas. If there is any real learning...

In January of last year, Chilean actress Danielle Tobar made international news by moving into a glass house in downtown Santiago. During the short course of “Project Nautilus,” the intimate details of her daily life were open to the (largely prurient) curiosity of onlookers. After only six days, Tobar abandoned the house, claiming security concerns....

What price would you place upon your soul? For the people of Mississippi, this question recently became more than a mere philosophical or theological inquiry. True enough, all of us face this question in small, unnoticed ways as we move through life. Thankfully, most of us can make our choice quietly, in private, and away...

When my family and I moved to Purcellville nearly ten years ago, I was surprised by how much traffic came through our little town. Purcellville had a population of less than 2,000 then, and the Old Colonial Highway, which doubles as the town’s Main Street, began piling up well before 6:00 A.M. on the weekdays,...

A friend of mine just got arrested for arms dealing. From whom he was buying the arms, to whom he was selling them, or, indeed, whether he ever bought or sold any, I haven’t the slightest idea. But the raid, by the Italian police and intelligence, on Sasha Zhukov’s five-million dollar villa in Piccolo Romazzino,...

I’d forgotten that a Barnes and Noble bookstore had opened in the old department store building. As I walked back to my car in the Baltimore suburb of Towson, I remembered what I’d seen in the other bookstore closer to home, so I changed my path a little, pushed open the heavy door, and headed...

As a rabbi once accused of being “too soft on the Catholic Church”—liking Catholicism too much to make that particular Lutheran comfortable—I read with special sensitivity the report on a young girl and her family who left the Catholic Church for a liturgical reason, of all things. According to the Associated Press, the young girl...

Rockford made the national news again in late May, when the wire services ran shocking headlines about a pregnant shoplifter gunned down by police at a local Wal-Mart. Talk radio buzzed with angry debates between those who congratulated the police on a job well done and those who couldn’t understand how officers could possibly shoot...

Let’s say you have an idea. Any old idea. No matter how big or small, grandiose or simple. You naturally want to share that idea with someone, anyone, maybe no one. Maybe you want to keep it to yourself, fearing negative reaction. Or maybe you think your idea is so good, so great, so broad...

I have always wanted to spend some time in Rome, for a whole rosary of personal reasons. As with much else in a person’s private life, to recount these in print is to expose oneself to public ridicule. Yes, Rome is a wonderful city. Yes, the food is good. But then in England, where I...

When I moved to Cincinnati from Chicago in 1973, I found I could gauge the personality of my new city by listing the things I missed about the home I’d left. I missed the bulging Chicago newspapers. I missed being in a place where cynicism competes with humor as the prevailing public attitude and humor...

The influx of Northern migrants to these parts continues to produce misunderstanding. Some time ago, the good people of Hillsborough, North Carolina, gave up their right to shoot marauding vermin in their own backyards to an official municipal squirrel-shooter. Citizens whose nut trees were being sacked, gardens despoiled, or houses chewed up (it happens) could...

I have been a Eurocentric, heterosexual, white male ever since I was a little baby. An unreconstructed Marxist would say that this accident of birth—carelessly amplified of late by the sybaritic sojourn in a palazzo on the Grand Canal whose windows watch the West decline over the campanile of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari—is what...