The gentle art of sanity amidst civilization
From the monthly archives:
Today’s article is posted on Josh Hanagarne’s excellent blog, World’s Strongest Librarian. The title is not a euphemism, my first job really was in a traveling reptile show, and this is my ridiculous story. Raptitude Experiment No. 4 will debut on Thursday, see you then. Read about David getting wrangled by a boa constrictor.
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Last week, convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was released from prison by the Scottish government, on “compassionate grounds.” He is dying of cancer and has less than three months to live. Initial reactions were strong, but deeply divided. Here are just some of the millions of opinions that flew back and forth on Twitter, in [...]
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Sweaty, muddy and bleeding a little, the three of us picked our way through the overgrown ‘trail’ that snakes between Blue Lake campground and the remote, mythical Goblin Lake. We were traversing the final leg of our return trip through a wondrous forest of moss, bogs and toadstools, but the hike had been taxing. We [...]
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Asking for help has always been so hard for me. I always hated it when I couldn’t do something for myself. I felt like a failure. I was so used to being asked for help, I sort of felt like I’d lose my identity as “the knower” if I put myself on the other side [...]
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It seems that we are members of the only animal species that lives most of its life knowing that it’s going to die. I sometimes wonder if life would be easier if we didn’t know it. It really is the worst of all spoilers. Happy Monday, by the way. Now, there are other animals that [...]
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Just behind the little gas tank door on my Honda, there is a silver scratch in the paint, about the size of a dime. It looks almost like an upside-down Nike swoosh. The panel is a little bit dented. I know exactly when it happened. It was a Friday in June 2006, I was new [...]
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Mohandas Gandhi, in his search for the true roots of human violence, identified seven categorical acts of “passive violence.” They each mark a common human oversight that leads to suffering and destruction. Supposedly, there are no other mistakes of significant consequence. These are too elegant to spoil with my own commentary, so I’ll just leave [...]
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Over thirteen years of grade school, the average student probably hands in a small forest’s-worth of worksheets, journals, drawings and assignments. So much of it is profoundly unmemorable: lab notes, arithmetic tests, book reports, and all other sorts of by-the-numbers tedium. The creative work, however, is much more revealing. When a kid is asked to [...]
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Thirty-two days ago, David began an experiment wherein he vowed not to touch any drugs for thirty days. And I’m a new man. Just like that. This last month has definitely begun a new chapter for me, and perhaps closed an old one. To recap quickly: thirty days ago I was a daily coffee drinker, [...]
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Meet Jake. Jake is a black-and-beige beetle I found in my bathroom garbage pail about a week ago. He seems in no hurry to leave. I don’t know what he’s been up to all week, but for now he’s residing in the maze of tissues and toilet paper rolls in my little white bucket. For [...]
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