Category: Dispatches

My Spa Visit or How I Dealt With Election Stress

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I shuffled into the dimly lit room in ungainly rubber slippers and shrouded in a voluminous white robe. The first thing I saw was a thick black rubber hose coiled on the far wall. Ominously, there was a drain in the floor beneath it. In the center of the room stood a bed rather like one you would see in an operating room. It was covered in plastic wrap with a small folded towel laid in the middle. Above the bed a strange device hung from the ceiling. Continue reading “My Spa Visit or How I Dealt With Election Stress” →

The Trigger-Warning Election

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Trigger Warning – this Presidential Election contains material that may be disturbing and traumatic for women who have been the victims of sexual abuse or rape, for immigrants who feel unwelcome in our country, for African-Americans who face racial discrimination, for Hispanics who face the assumption that they are not real Americans, for Muslims who fear that they are perceived as terrorists, for children who are victims of bullying… oh heck, this list is getting cumbersomely long, lets just say this election may be disturbing and traumatic for anyone who possesses a shred of humanity. Continue reading “The Trigger-Warning Election” →

Braggart in Chief

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It has come to this. Among the cacophony of opinion pouring forth from editorials, blogs, columns, and endless TV chatter this Presidential Election season, the one that really seems to get to the heart of the matter comes from a primatologist. Yes, Jane Goodall, famed for her studies of chimp behavior, is now the foremost political analyst in the land.

In the October issue of Atlantic James Fallows writes that Goodall told him “Trump reminds me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals.” What, I wonder, made Fallows seek Continue reading “Braggart in Chief” →

Please, Not in the Cathedral!

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 1 Comment
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Connections
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by Galia Amsel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looked like an enormous vacuum cleaner part – a black plastic tube emerging from the stone archway of an upper gallery, coiled into a knot in midair, and dangling just above our heads. A cluster of clear claw-like objects protruded from the open end of the tube. I stood in the transept of Salisbury Cathedral puzzling over the purpose of this contraption. They must be involved in some kind of cleaning or restoration project, I thought. Perhaps the tube was a chute for removing debris from the upper gallery. Or perhaps when it was uncoiled the tube reached to the ground and the claws became a tool for cleaning the stone floors. Neither idea was very convincing. At this point I turned to see my husband chatting to a cathedral docent,  Continue reading “Please, Not in the Cathedral!” →

Body Language in Black and White

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 1 Comment

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President Obama was speaking, his image almost filling the television screen, but my eyes were drawn to two people in the group behind him. They sat in the front row, one on either side of the President at his shoulder level. Two white police officers, a man and a woman. Together the image of the podium, President Obama, and the two officers formed a kind of triptych of mourning. It was Dallas on Tuesday July 12th 2016, the memorial service for the Continue reading “Body Language in Black and White” →

The Dagenham Idol

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 4 Comments
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The Dagenham Idol
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My Dagenham Idol replica

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few years ago I received a mysterious Christmas gift from my San Francisco brother. I opened the long, narrow box to find a crudely formed human figure made of wood. It looked like something you would find in the “exotic” home décor aisle at Pier 1 or World Market, along with the carved elephants and brass Buddhas. Standing 18 inches tall the figure was armless with a disc shaped head, a rudimentary nose, and a single eye. Just above the legs a round hole was an ambiguous indicator of gender. I stared at the figure for some time wondering what on earth my brother was thinking Continue reading “The Dagenham Idol” →

The End of Reality

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Poster for The Truman Show

In the movie The Truman Show there is a moment when Truman realizes that the horizon he sees is just a backdrop that rips open to reveal the real world beyond. His entire life has taken place on the stage set of a reality TV show. Something like that actually happened last week. But it didn’t happen to just one person; it happened to an entire nation. Now the truth is out. The United States of America doesn’t really exist. It is USA: The Reality Show! Continue reading “The End of Reality” →

Confessions of a Hedgehog Collector

~ dispatchesfromtheformernewworld ~ 2 Comments
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My garden hedgehog

My obsession with hedgehogs began with the gypsies. Every summer when I was a child the gypsies, in their colorfully painted caravans, made camp in a nearby field. We would creep through the trees to spy on them playing explorers encountering an exotic tribe, to use the imperial language that still lingered on in Britain long after the Empire’s sun had set. Until the coming of the gypsies my Belgian mother was all the “diversity” we had in our east of London Cockney neighborhood. The gypsies brought with them Continue reading “Confessions of a Hedgehog Collector” →