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Citizen Kane — 1941 dir. Orson Welles Metropolitan — 1990 dir. Whit Stillman

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This is what I find most frightening about humans

“According to one scholar, the “ideal victim” in the Troubles was someone who was not a combatant, but a passive civilian. To many, Jean McConville was the perfect victim: a widow, a mother of ten. To others, she was not a victim at all, but a combatant by proxy, who courted her own fate. Of course, even if one were to concede, for the sake of argument, that McConville was an informer, there is no moral universe in which her murder and disappearance should be justified. Must it be the case that how one perceives a tragedy will forever depend on where one sits? The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss once observed that, “for the majority of the human species, and for tens of thousands of years, the idea that humanity includes every human being on the face of the earth does not exist at all. The designation stops at the border of each tribe, or linguistic group, sometimes even at the edge of a village.” When it came to the Troubles, a phenomenon known as “whataboutery” took hold. Utter the name Jean McConville and someone would say, What about Bloody Sunday? To which you could say, What about Bloody Friday? To which they could say, What about Pat Finucane? What about the La Mon bombing? What about the Ballymurphy massacre? What about Enniskillen? What about McGurk’s bar? What about. What about. What about.” -Patrick Radden Keefe, SAY NOTHING

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Butler Citizen, Pennsylvania, March 1, 1918

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First sunrise in Zion (at Watchman in Zion National Park)

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Sky on fire Saturday night #gcresidency (at Goucher College)

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Mr. Trash Wheel keeping the harbor slightly cleaner! (at Mr. Trash Wheel)

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Rae Gomes reads from her work - home stretch of the MFA Creative Nonfiction @gouchercollege #gcresidency (at Goucher College)

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Lee Gutkind "godfather of creative nonfiction" marks 20 years of @gouchercollege MFA program (at Goucher College)

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Gone fishin' (at Lake Roland)

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Modernist metal and stone growing lichen (at Goucher College)

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The monsters that torment us - All your fears are well-founded

On Halloween The Wall Street Journal published my review of two books of cultural history that connect our horror stories with very real phenomena.

Haunted by Leo Braudy and Ghostlandby Colin Dickey show us that our horror stories are not trivial entertainment, but expressions of profound human emotions and indirect responses to very tangible realities. Both authors make clear that folk tales,…

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If These Walls Could Sprechen

If These Walls Could Sprechen

I’m delighted to share this recently published story of a small German country house that stood witness to nearly a century of history, two totalitarian regimes, and several generations of ordinary people. Humans will do remarkable (and sometimes terrible) things to persist and survive as wars, empires, and borders change around them.

A few miles west of Berlin, a little house sits on Groß…

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at Rawlings Conservatory & Botanical Gardens

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I early voted. This is how I feel about it.

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Full moon setting over the Grand Tetons in the pre-dawn mist this morning. Ethereal beauty beyond a phone camera. (at Jackson Lake Lodge)

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Cops and poor blacks are our scapegoats Submitted for your consideration: it is impossible to prosecute the drug war WITHOUT systemic abuses and routine violations of individual rights.

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at The Foundery