A quick summary: a memoir wherein the author, Jeroen Van Bergeijk, drives a Mercedes into West Africa to have a bit of an adventure as well as to turn a profit selling it to an African car dealer, or deserving cabbie, or whoever ends up actually producing the cash in the end.
It may be that [...]
Entries from January 2009
January 30, 2009
“My Mercedes Is Not For Sale”
January 29, 2009
There Are Things Worse Than Death
Sometimes the news gives you a story that you just can’t shake.
A woman accused of trying to suffocate her 11 month old.
Not your run of the mill child abuser, though. A loving mother who has cared for her child, born with severe physical defects that she can never hope to recover from. A [...]
January 28, 2009
Lincoln Inspiring American Heroes
Inspired by President Obama’s admiration of Abraham Lincoln, my daughter and I have been focussing some of our homeschooling efforts on learning about Lincoln’s life and his participation in American history.
This morning we watched “The Real Abraham Lincoln,” which I’d recorded off the National Geographic channel. I highly recommend it. Fascinating and accessible, [...]
January 27, 2009
Renaming
My first lesson gleaned from studying Mark Morford’s columns in the San Francisco Chronicle is how concisely he adds meaning by simply renaming things.
For example, in his column entitled “When History Spanks,” he talks about the Republican campaign team and refers to them once as “vile, cold-blooded tacticians” and then as “these Rove-trained dung-flingers.” [...]
January 26, 2009
Top Five: TV Cartoon Characters
Okay, time for something light and silly.
Dig deep into the past, unless perhaps you’ve had free time lately to ingest some animated goofiness, and reveal to the world which cartoon characters have made you really laugh?
Mine:
1. Daffy Duck
2. Bugs Bunny
3. Ren (of “Ren & Stimpy”)
4. Bart Simpson
5. Yosemite Sam
Okay, I’m a little Bugs-heavy, but hey, [...]
January 24, 2009
Progress?
True to my promise, I have been trying to think of concrete ways that I can participate in this move forward that we as a country are attempting.
One big area that I used to participate in a lot but have lately slacked on severely is taking better care of the environment. I tend to [...]
January 21, 2009
“Baby Food”
I recently found, in the Jan. 19, 2009 issue of The New Yorker, an article entitled, “Baby Food” written by Jill Lepore. I got to this quote and it just about made me cry:
“When the babe, soon after it is born into this cold world, is applied to its mother’s bosom; its sense of [...]
January 20, 2009
The inauguration according to e
The kids and I attended the local celebration and it was great. There were three speeches by local school children, a dance performed by children in the local Hmong community and a step dance performed by members of the local Black Youth United group. Plus seeing the inauguration live in such a crowd [...]
January 19, 2009
Top Five: Historical Moments
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as the momentous inauguration tomorrow, today’s top five is: in no particular order (unless you wanna), which five events or moments in history strike a chord with you, inspire you, or otherwise give you the warm fuzzies? It has nothing to do with which you [...]
January 18, 2009
Autodidact curriculum
Some folks, after being plied with a couple of brewskis, might shyly admit to having fantasies of being a star quarterback, a rock god or maybe even royalty. My confession: I fantasize of being a syndicated columnist.
My first hero was Molly Ivins, who unfortunately for the world of words and intelligence has passed on.
But [...]
January 17, 2009
Book Review: “The Last Straw”
Hold your applause ’til after the show please, but I, who require a minimum of three months to get through so much as a magazine article, read an entire book this morning!
Okay, it is a kid’s book. But it does have 217 pages in it!
Fine, most of those pages consist of cartoony drawings. Nevertheless, it is [...]
January 16, 2009
If the events were to be scrambled…
Just hypothetically, because I like the weather out here on a limb…
Say that one heard about the two events yesterday (farewell speech and aviation disaster) and then the extremely cold temperatures made one’s brain short-circuit for a minute and one got a bit muddled in the head…
One might walk away with the befuddled impression that [...]
January 15, 2009
Worth the Wait?
I’ve noticed that, in the South, cashiers will chat their hearts out to each customer. Regardless of how many people are in line, the person being rung up is the most important human in the world.
On the West Coast this sort of behavior would get you shot.
But when you stop and think of it, [...]
January 13, 2009
Reason and Imagination
Note: I can no longer make the spaces between the paragraphs, so now it just looks like one big squished text… sigh. Just thought I’d warn you, dear readers. If anyone is having this same problem and fixes it, will you let me know how?
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot [...]
January 12, 2009
Top Five: Musical Artists
Pretend that you were on your way to be stranded on a desert island forever and you could only take the complete works of five bands or musical artists. Which would you bring?
For me:
1. Aerosmith
2. The Presidents of the United States of America
3. Bob Marley
4. Gypsy Kings
5. Edith Piaf
It’s funny, I thought of a couple [...]
January 9, 2009
Folk Art
Today, touring the Hickory Museum of Art’s Southern Contemporary Folk Art exhibit, I decided that folk art is my favorite flavor.
Two reasons.
First: if I don’t like it, no biggie. Someone was just sitting in their backyard, had a funky inspiration, goofed around for a while with some different materials, colors, forms. I can get [...]
January 8, 2009
Another intimate tidbit…
There was a 15 year span in my adult life during which I did not shave my legs. Ever.
I had spent the previous seven or so years of my life shaving my adolescent legs, because “we have to.” I hated every wasted minute, every painful red rash bump, every time the stupid guy who sat [...]
January 6, 2009
Altered States
Sometimes I feel the need to make sense of our society’s drug policy. For a brief moment in the ’60s (or so I’ve heard, having not made my entrance into this world until 1970) there was a subculture of people experimenting with altered states of consciousness, often induced chemically. But besides that, we have all [...]
January 5, 2009
Top Five: Worst Fears
Since we’ve gotten a jolt of positive energy off the New Year, maybe it’s time to look at the dark side for a moment.
My top five worst fears:
My kids being in pain.
Me being in pain.
Having my dearest possessions stolen… I only have a couple really dear things, such as my laptop, but if it were [...]
