Creative Commentary
The Mandate: Israel and Palestine Form One State
Really, I don’t like interceding. I would’ve preferred to continue my anonymous visits to this biblical land but, after decades of Israelis slaughtering as many as they dared and Palestinians wishing they could’ve killed more, I must no longer remain divinely detached. I naturally favor neither side; I embrace both. That many consider my embrace…
Ryan Mathews Demolishes the Bruins who Ignored Him
Two years ago this November I went to see a Bakersfield phenom who was rushing for about 300 yards and four touchdowns a game against good high school competition. I took notes and wrote an article and sent it to UCLA coach Karl Dorrell and three of his assistants, stressing Ryan Mathews wanted to attend…
Highlights from the 2008 Olympics
I see many noble commentators have downplayed if not altogether ignored Olympic sports in order to rebuke China for a range of civil rights concerns and thereby imply the nation today is as ill as in the era of Mao, who shred at least as much flesh as Hitler and Stalin. China has in fact…
Bob Costas Explains Olympic Coverage
BEIJING – Every night during the Olympic Games I’m frequently overcome by sensual gratification and the release of absolute power: this invariably occurs as I tell billions of inconsequential viewers that, in essence, their time matters not, and fragments of headline sports they’ve waited months to watch will be shown in two or three hours,…
Poe at the Gentleman’s Magazine – Part 11
Edgar Allan Poe, despite working for Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, seemed not to understand the implication of my being William E. Burton: I paid ten dollars a week, more than sufficient compensation starting in June 1839, and expected him to be a dutiful and deferential editorial assistant. I realized many readers considered Poe brilliant, particularly after…
Jewish Film Festival in the Bay Area
Baghdad Twist Don’t ask my age. It’s none of your business, I told my son, and doesn’t concern people who’ll watch your documentary. No one’s going to see me in this film. They’ll only hear my voice. Better they look at black and white photos of me as a child in reasonably hospitable Iraq where…
Roderick Usher Assails Edgar Allen Poe – Part 10
My family and I are profoundly distressed by Edgar Allen Poe’s recent short story “The Fall of the House of Usher”. We, who so often said yes when this forlorn orphan begged to visit, now learn he considers our home “melancholy” and one which pervades his spirit “with a sense of insufferable gloom.” Had Poe…
Virginia Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe – Part 9
I hated gossip about Eddy living with his “child cousin.” I wasn’t a child but a young lady only three months short of fourteen. Eddy still made sure our marriage bond said I was twenty-one. That afternoon in May 1836 a smiling minister married us in our boarding house. My mother and our landlord and…
Poe the Editor and Family Man – Part 8
When Aunt Maria’s mother died her pension was also buried and that night Edgar Allan Poe raged to dig it up. Aunty and Virginia guided him into bed from which he two days later arose dazed but determined to be responsible. Aunty had become his real mother and Virginia, though only age thirteen, was already…