December 27th, 2009 / by WD / 2 Comments »
Sorry for keeping a picture of my dinner on the front page for so long! I’ve been consumed with finals and have been severely neglecting this site. In the works: essay on the former Audubon Park Natatorium, restored photo galleries and guest entries. For now, a few pictures from my trip to Seattle and Walla Walla, WA.
November 3rd, 2009 / by WD / 2 Comments »
October 24th, 2009 / by WD / 2 Comments »
I just finished the excellent “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star” by Paul Theroux. His chronicles of the trains, cities and people of India, Central Asia, South East Asia and Japan are acerbic, lyrical and entirely engrossing. The book is highly recommended, and though it provided many laughs, I got a particular kick out of his described lack of fondness for China, reproduced below:
China exists in its present form because the Chinese want money. Once, America was like that. Maybe this accounted for my desire to leave. Not revulsion, but the tedium and growing irritation of listening to people express their wish for money, that they’d do anything to make it. Who wants to hear people boasting about their greed and their promiscuity? I left for Japan, reveling in the thought that I was done with China – its factory-blighted landscape, its unbreathable air, its un-budging commissars, and its honking born-again capitalists. Ugly and soulless, China represented the horror of answered prayers, a peasant’s greedy dream of development. I was happy to leave.
