A Wedding In France
On 10 August 2017, in Bergerac, France my daughter, Michelle Elisabeth Townsend, married. Michelle gave me 45 seconds to summarize before the assembled my impressions, recollections, hopes and fears. I wanted five days. Patrice made me sit down, write what I wanted to...
Upon a long road
It has been a long road across storied lands – Croatia, Germany and the United Arab Emirates before I go to the farm. Patrice is teaching these two months in Colorado, and felt I would be underfoot, so…I’ve come to Dubai to write and visit my child. The...
Long Road: Dresden to Dubai
Novelist seeking words in storied lands Our year abroad on a budget approaches an end. Our strategy was to live where it was inexpensive (Rovinj, Croatia) in order to afford better (Dresden, Germany), then giga-expensive (Dubai) (visiting a child). It has worked....
Memory and memorial
Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’ Mary McCarthy, a New York writer and Trotskyite, speaking of Lillian Hellman, a New York writer and Stalinist, on the Dick Cavett show (January, 1980) Dresden, Germany I am in Dresden until late summer. We...
Camouflage, Concealment and Deception
…and Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming I have been taking long walks in the Upper Swabian countryside this spring. The Alps like the Rockies advance or retreat as is their wont and per the air’s clarity. This is a rich and well watered land, tended...Featured Books
Ledokhod: Spirit Falls translated into Russian
Ледоход is the translation into Russian of the novel, Spirit Falls, a coming-of-age novel set in the late 1950’s on the empty and hardscrabble borderland between Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin.
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