Excerpt–Under My Vodou: Haiti, Revolution, and Zombie Transformation as Liberation in Alejo Carpentier’s “The Kingdom of This World” and Brian Moore’s “No Other Life”
[Reviving an older series from a year ago for this Halloween season, I provide another selection from Modern Death in Irish and Latin American Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), available for order here or here, or as a free pdf here or here. As with our previous four excerpts, we share this chapter as yet another […]
On Robi Draco Rosa’s “Vagabundo”, Mission Music, and The Terrible Questions
A Latin Rocker reminds us: if we’re not preparing for eternity, then just what do we think we’re doing here?
I Have Detested The Rolling Stones Long Enough
On finally coming around to my old mission president’s favorite band, and becoming as a little child, for of such is the Kingdom of God.
A Plea for Lighght
On Aram Saroyan’s one-word poem, the Light of Christ, and the Kishi Bashi song my wife and I danced to at our wedding reception.
Summer Sales Addendum: Recalling Kyle
A real-life parable of what it looks like to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.
The Last Summer Vacation, Sabbath, and Bomb the Music Industry!
Vacation as Sabbath, because you rarely know when your last time is your last time.
“Do not procrastinate the day”: July, by Low
This song is brilliant, because there really is this malaise associated with the month of July, isn’t there. Because you must now confront the fact that the year is not only half over but past half over.
On The 9/11 Memorial, Homer’s Odyssey, and the Proper Burial of the Dead
Shortly after I moved to upstate New Jersey in 2018 for work, my Dad flew out from the west coast to visit. He hadn’t been to the greater New York City metropolitan area in literally 20 years, when my family took one of those ill-advised, National-Lampoon-style drives-across-America in a cramped Ford Taurus sedan to see […]
After China
Jacob and I share the same first name and briefly shared the same bed–I slept in it Fall ’06, he in Winter ’07. The bed in question was in an apt. complex in Anqing, Anhui Province, People’s Republic of China, just about a 10 minute walk away from Anqing Foreign Language School, where we both […]
Review: Arcade Fire, WE
Arcade Fire finally goes full EFY.