On Richard Halliburton’s The Glorious Adventure

First published in Tin House #45, Fall 2010.

I first came across Richard Halliburton during a layover in Brooklyn on my way from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New Orleans. I was moving because I’d failed to find work as a deckhand in the Caribbean, my goal for the winter. The main problem was I knew nothing about sailing–an issue that never stopped Halliburton, an adventurer who was eventually lost at sea while trying to navigate from Hong Kong to San Francisco for the 1939 World’s Fair.

Brooklyn isn’t on the most direct route between Puerto Rico and Louisiana, but it’s where my stuff lives–one shelf in a friend’s living room, a plastic bin in her basement. I drop by a few times a year to exchange sweaters for shorts, T-shirts for thermals. Living out of a backpack is a great way to make stories, but it does not encourage exploring your roots. When, in my reading, I found hints of a gay man born in 1900 who swam the Panama Canal, crossed the Alps on an elephant, and made the first recorded winter ascent on Mount Fuji, I was determined to read every word he’d written. It felt like finding a picture of my great-grandmother and recognizing my eyes in her wrinkled Irish face.

[more]

Posted on October 1, 2010 to Tin House
Tags: , ,

Papers, Please! The GOP Wants to be Sure You’re a Citizen

First published on Global Comment on August 9, 2010. Read the original with comments here.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he’s open to requiring parents to prove their citizenship in the birth room (a logistical nightmare for hospitals), in order to prevent illegal immigrants from having children who would qualify as American citizens. He has good company – while similar bills looking to repeal sections of the 14th Amendment are born and die quietly in every session of Congress, this year, many prominent Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon.

[more]

Posted on September 16, 2010 to Global Comment
Tags: ,

The Blind Pig

First published in The New York Times on August 8, 2010. Read the original here.

At the Blind Pig, Joseph Frase, the chef and an owner, smokes his own sausage in the backyard — appropriate for a restaurant in Louisville’s Butchertown neighborhood. His menu reflects the working-class history of the area, with upscale renditions of pan-European peasant fare like spaghetti alla putanesca and shepherd’s pie. Unlike their humble ancestors, however, the dishes at the Blind Pig use simple preparations to highlight the strong, natural flavors of the ingredients.

[more]

Posted on September 16, 2010 to New York Times
Tags: ,

Birth Tourism: The Newest Red Herring in the Anti-Immigration Arsenal

First published on Global Comment on July 23, 2010. Read the original with comments here.

Earlier this year, The Marmara Manhattan, part of a Turkish hotel chain, began offering a package to expectant mothers. For between $5100 – $15000, visitors got a two-month stay, prenatal consultation, crib, and items for both mother and newborn. They say they’ve already sold 15 such packages. This is the cutting edge in birth tourism, the practice of visiting countries to give birth to children who will then be citizens. And though it involves a tiny number of women, it’s about to be a big deal, if the anti-immigration crusaders of The Tea Party have their way.

In late May, Rand Paul told a Russian news program that America is “the only country I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen.” While it may be true that we are the only such country Paul knows, we are far from the only country with birthright citizenship laws. Yet as anti-immigrant sentiments become more common in developed nations, that list of countries is shrinking. It’s been suggested that recent changes in the birthright laws of England, India, Australia and other countries have been undertaken to prevent birth tourism. In a contentious 2004 referendum, 80% of Irish voters rejected birthright laws over concerns about “citizenship tourism.”

[more]

Posted on July 28, 2010 to Global Comment
Tags:

My Country, My Train, My K-Hole

First published in The Morning News on June 30, 2010. Read the original here.

The train from Chicago to New Orleans passes through Kankakee, Homewood, and Yazoo City; names that evoke images of wagon trains and episodes of Dr. Quinn. I don’t know most of this country.

Were I to draw a map, the Northeast would be ponderously detailed; Chicago would float in limbo; and California would consist of San Francisco and L.A. smooshed together between beaches and pot farms. The rest would be a mess, cartography by way of Cubism.

I’d like to say riding the train taught me something about this country; that my seatmate (probably, to ensure maximum movie potential, my elderly, black, female seatmate), told me about growing up on a farm in Yazoo City, or the first car to come to Homewood. But she slept most of the ride, and the only words we exchanged were a cordial “Have a safe trip,” when she got off at Jackson.

The train cut through towns at dawn and dusk. I saw dirt roads and business districts, stretched my legs in Memphis, and watched the moon rise through the snack car window. Sans context, without my mythical seatmate’s ur-narrative of rural childhood, the Mississippi—that long north-south axis of Americana—sprawled alongside me, meaningless.

Just the way I like it.

[more]

Posted on July 28, 2010 to The Morning News
Tags: ,

In New Orleans, New Life by the River

First published in The New York Times on June 27, 2010. Read the original, with photos, here.

For residents of the blue-collar Bywater-Marigny area of New Orleans, access to the Mississippi River has been blocked for years by decaying industrial buildings. But it won’t be much longer, thanks in part to R. Allen Eskew, an architect whose firm has been hired to turn a mile and a half of piers and wharves into a riverfront park to open in fall 2011, Step 1 in the nearly $300 million Reinventing the Crescent plan.

The park is one of many projects, small and large, growing in the fertile soil around the Mississippi. Amid colorful shotgun houses (left), tucked away on streets named Piety, Desire and Independence, a wealth of cafes, boutiques and bars offer a calmer alternative to the excesses of the French Quarter, just upriver.

[more]

Posted on July 28, 2010 to New York Times
Tags: ,

« go back — « Previous Entries