Bricks

I drive across one of the more interesting parts of town on my way to work. Quite a few boarded-up houses. Down one street where a business has one building on one side, and one on the other, so someone might be driving a forklift across slowly. Down one end of a cemetery. I salute […]

Sydney Plague of 1900

Now, what about an Australian plague? What about a plague that wasn’t actually as bad as people thought it was (for a change)? I give you the Sydney Plague of 1900. Good news: only 103 people died. Which is shit for them, but as you’ve learned, a plague of 103 is hardly a plague. It […]

Fall

This fall, I’ve known six people who have died. None of them were close to me. I was a secondary mourner for all of these deaths: a cousin-in-law’s brother-in-law, a great aunt and great uncle I had never known well, an old friend’s father, and my aunt’s parents, who both died in the same month. […]

Everything Has Always Been Terrible

A series in which I reflect on how, as the Buddha pointed out, life is suffering. Plague of Justinian It’s the original, the one, the only, first plague pandemic, and it got named after the man in charge, Justinian. For the next 200 years, this stuff, plague, would pop up and destroy, much like a […]