Excerpt… Between the Hindu Kush and Baghdad, summer, 1323 Johanna was no match for Firas in upper body strength, but he made her practice with a heavy wooden practice sword for a month before he found a small sword in another market which weighed half of what the practice sword did. She discarded the first…
I remember seeing a sign outside a VFW post on Fireweed Lane in Anchorage which read: Freedom is not free. It was the first time I’d encountered that phrase and for years I thought it meant that only soldiers paid in blood and sacrifice for our freedom. No. American citizens have been holding America’s feet…
Read more How it comes out rests, as it always has, in our own hands.
“EVERYBODY HAVE FIVE GLASSES OF WINE in front of them?” Everybody did. “Good,” Van says, and gets out a honking big wooden bowl, which he informs us is absolutely essential in the making of Caesar salad. I don’t own a wooden bowl. Also, I don’t know how to coddle an egg, which the twenty-page handout…
Read more “Everybody have five glasses of wine in front of them?”
Excerpt… On the Road, summer, 1323 “TELL ME ABOUT the Templars,” Jaufre said. Alaric sighed. To Jaufre’s ears it sounded a little theatrical. “First, I beg you, please rid yourself of the habit of calling me Alaric the Templar,” the older man said. “Ram will have his little joke, but the farther west we travel,…
Read more “I beg you, please rid yourself of the habit of calling me Alaric the Templar.”
Marty Baron is the Forest Gump of modern day journalism. He was with the Miami Herald during the 2000 election, with the Boston Globe during 9/11 and spearheaded the Globe‘s investigation of the Catholic Church’s coverup of pedofile priests, a story that inspired coverage of the same story to wherever in the world the Catholic Church had a footprint. As…
Read more We should not start our work by imagining we have the answers; we need to seek them out.
NO MORE SLEAZE BAGS. No more plastic monkeys hanging off the side of your Wasilla Bad Apple. No more intermission admonitions to go out into the parking lot and father a child. After 3,547 performances (“Absolutely that many,” he said when challenged) in two locations in sleazy downtown Spenard, Mr. Whitekeys is calling it a…
somewhere in the Hindu Kush, summer 1323 They had had considerable difficulty in finding exactly the right village to help them. Many were too small, without enough men. Others weren’t poor enough, having staked out the only arable land in a day’s walk and therefore capable of feeding themselves and their families without resorting to…
I’ve spent a lot of time in Ireland, enough to have what I consider to be extended family there. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to stories (Irishmen tell stories as well as any Bush pilot or Alaska state trooper, which is saying something). The thing about Ireland is best exemplified by the Faulker…
Absolutely no seal oil is permitted in the vehicle, or an extra charge of up to $200 may apply. —Car rental agreement, Nome FRIDAY WE PICK UP Peggy Fagerstrom, who describes herself as “our trusty Native guide” to everyone she introduces us to, to the great hilarity of all, and we drive east down the…
Balkh, summer 1323 A scream from the hollow below spun her around. She leapt down the loose scree of the knoll and slid into camp in a scatter of loose gravel, barely managing to stay upright. There she found Hayat and Alma clinging to each other as they watched two young men, ragged and dirty,…
