It “is always ‘symbolic,’ even when it is ‘real’.” -Marshall Sahlins, “The Ethnography of Cannibalism” “We’ll eat you up– we love you so!” -Wild Things to Max, Where the Wild Things Are I’m almost done with Typee, Melville’s… hmm… dumbest novel.  I think Typee is the novel I could write.  I mean I could write […]

The town died as soon as its industry left.  They abandoned a Catholic church, half built.  All the Catholics left.  People who stayed took their heritage seriously, preserving a Victorian-era wreath made of human hair of the dead, clocks brought from the old country, and the yokes their oxen wore. Today it has a population […]

If you haven’t had a Christmas breakdown yet, THERE IS STILL TIME. I had a minor one when I decided I would run into the mall and pick up a pine-scented candle.  Having a pine-scented candle is part of my Christmas celebrating. It had already been a day of near-misses: friends I was supposed to […]