CAW

I know the crows don’t care. It’s the end of the semester. I know, crows, you don’t care. Fora little over 100 years, American schools have used this A-B-C-D-F system to do something. No one’s quite sure what. It might be about showing mastery of various skills, or maybe about knowing facts, or maybe completing […]

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. […]