Category Archives: Well Worth Reading

Free-range grammarians

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The Chicago Tribune has a funny article on Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson, two guys who have spent the past three months roaming the country and righting wrongs, a la Kung Fu. Instead of blazing fists of fury, however, their main weapons are Sharpies and Wite-Out, which they use to correct the grammatical errors they come across on signs and menus during their voyage.

The project sounds like a ploy for a book deal, but the article is a fun read anyway, especially for those among us who bristle at the misapplied apostrophes in our lives.

Dana Weiser’s Explorations of Identity

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Friend and artist Dana Weiser has launched a new website showcasing her work. She uses the medium of sculpture—particularly porcelain—to explore the complexities of immigration, assimilation and adoption in the United States.

Her artist statement says:

“I have experimented with different ways of approaching social integration of identity issues. I have explored issues of lost identity, double identity and racial identity. I have looked at the history of stereotypes of Asian Americans to have an understanding of the stereotypes of today; I have created curious abstractions to reflect issues of ethnicity.”

The results are thought provoking and well crafted; they are certainly well worth a look.

Putting Out The Unwelcome Mat

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Blanche DuBois would have a tough time (well, an even tougher time) in modern America, as kindness to strangers doesn’t seem to be much of a motivating factor for anyone anymore. As the New York Times reports, an Italian man coming to the United States to visit his girlfriend received the common Customs response of being treated like a criminal for no reason:

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

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Amazing Articles

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A trio of great stories made their way into my mailbox lately. Perhaps the most interesting is an analysis of tribal vengeance by Jared Diamond, author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel. (I almost typed that as Guns, Germans and Steel, which would be an interesting book in its own right.)

The article, “Vengeance is Ours,” in the April 21 issue of the New Yorker, explores the dynamics of revenge in tribal societies, focusing on Papua New Guinea. The politics of the situation are fascinating, even as the mechanics of the feuds consistently unnerving in their disregard for human life. As Diamond explains:

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They Say There Are No Atheists in Foxholes…

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Well, maybe this is why. The New York Times reports:

“When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.”

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