‘Don’t write like a housewife. And read David Sedaris.’ This was the advice my daughter gave me as she thrust a copy of his book, Let’s Discuss Diabetes With Owls into my hands. Three years later, on the night of my 49th birthday, Bec took me to see David Sedaris at Cadogan Hall in London.
Gold brings out the worst in humans, and nowhere more so than on the goldfields themselves. In 1857, far from the prying eyes of the colonial government, European miners slaughtered their Chinese counterparts, destroyed their homes, stores, temple and equipment, and largely escaped justice. Meanwhile, incarceration in barbaric mental asylums awaited other Chinese miners who
To paraphrase W. S. Gilbert, the Muslim’s lot is not a happy one. Nothing is guaranteed to quicken the pulse more than a negative Muslim headline. But before we rush to condemn or condone the Muslims, the news media, or Western culture at large, an historical perspective exists to give cause for reflection. If nothing
We stole our first vehicle at fourteen. It was our grandfather’s ’94 Chevy pickup, and Pete and I took it every night that summer without license and without permission. We’d cruise the suburbs, sometimes meeting up with girls down the road or to grab milkshakes at the 24-hour drive-thru. Anything we could think of really,
Once upon a time, a young girl, skinnier than most, plucked clay pigeons off the ground of a mostly empty rifle range while her father poured himself another beer at the lodge down the hill, just out of sight. As the brisk wind turned her spindly arms to chicken skin, she wished for a life
24 July 1964: 4:18 p.m. A man carrying a suitcase rushes down the stairs to the crowded Whites Only platformohannesburg train station. Looking straight ahead, he runs his hands through his floppy fringe and mops the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his tweed jacket. The man bends down, sets the shabby
I became a consumer in 1967. Like those women appearing with alarming frequency on the cover of the National Enquirer who tell of having been penetrated by aliens with laser probes and sucked dry whilst hurtling through outer space at the speed of light, I remember the exact time of my induction into the consumer
None of us had an easy time being in the play The Laramie Project, but I think Jay got stuck with the worst of it. Yes, Caleb had to play one of the guys who beat Matthew Shepherd to death and Paige had to play a homophobic old lady as one of her parts, but
On the surface, A Love That Never Dies could be interpreted simply as two grieving parents (Jimmy Edmonds and Jane Harris) mourning the loss of their son, who died in a road accident whilst holidaying in Vietnam, by using documentary to express and cope with an indescribable pain that no parent should ever have to
The 1986 Chernobyl electrical explosion revealed the deficiencies, ignorance, and complacency within the Soviet political and administrative system, as well as one Ukrainian family’s intuitive and uneasy response to a radioactive chain of events. April 26, 1986. A mismanaged electrical-engineering experiment was about to take place at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Engineers with little knowledge
