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Vital Fictions: Superstition
“After the Atlanta Braves removed Chief Noc-A-Homa’s teepee in 1982, and the team lost 19 of the next 20 games, our son, a devoted Braves fan, blamed the gods. The team’s creation of…
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The Blind Pig Who Found a Truffle: Chance
“That was the first time I laid eyes on my future bride, but something was already astir. As J. D. Salinger had written in ‘A Girl I Knew,’ ‘She wasn’t doing a thing…
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The Loin & The Limb: Peace
“Pacifists are often jealous of the fact that Bhutan has more monks than soldiers, Monaco’s national orchestra is larger than its military, and Costa Rica must borrow a cannon from El Salvador when…
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Along the Oregon Trail: First & Last Words
“An Austrian tour guide once observed that saying farewell to a group of American tourists she’d known for only two weeks is a lot like grief, for it’s unlikely she and this random…
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Wearing the Condom of Financial Responsibility: Thrift
“Shortly after my first book was published, I received a small royalty check and promptly squandered it on some books that were available at the local libraries. Said my frugal wife, ‘Skip, if…
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Even & Odd: Numbers
“As a former reading tutor at the local elementary school, I taught children as varied as the boy who read WWII as World War Eleven and the girl who correctly multiplied 17 x…
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More Jesus than Paul: Anecdotes
“I credit my mentor James Dickey with convincing me that the best teaching is anecdotal. He told a rapt class that when Deliverance was being filmed, the body that Dickey as the sheriff…
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Hurdling the Hazards at the Ramadan Inn: ESL Students
“Driving out of the zoo’s parking lot, a student from Israel exclaimed, ‘Oh, look! There’s a peace pigeon.’ It was a mourning dove, of course, and then I had to explain why it…
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Super Heavyweights: Whales
“As half of my brain struggled not to hate the highly social, carnivorous orca, I was reminded that some Northwest Native Americans regard them as the reincarnated souls of humans. This may be…
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Cutting the Butterfly from Its Cocoon: Failure
“Evolution’s unceasing determination to improve life from monocytes to mammals depends on clearing the deadwood, but the deadwood has its uses. Pico Iyer, a superb travel writer, has described the lotus blossom, the…