Terroir, Code Orange November 14, 2008: There are many rich people here, many fine, even spectacular houses, but also modest bungalows and cottages. For a town of 57,000, Santa Cruz has an astonishing variety of architectural styles, with conical towers, shingled turrets, spindled porches and lacy bargeboards hanging from gables. There are tiny apartment complexes sharing intimate, [...] by Linh Dinh

Reading Santa Cruz November 11, 2008: [All photographs taken in Santa Cruz, CA, on November 10th and 11th, 2008. The first five images are details of "Woven Stories, Woven Lives," a street mural by Betty Lou Sturm and Betsy Miller Andersen.] by Linh Dinh

Adapt, Migrate or Die November 11, 2008: [All photographs taken on the Municipal Pier in Santa Cruz, CA, 11/10/08] by Linh Dinh

What Remains November 8, 2008: A day after the Phillies won the World Series, unleashing a reasonably benign celebration that left only a few windows smashed, a dozen planters destroyed, negligible looting, a tacky bronze statue of a businessman tottering and 76 people (symbolically?) arrested, I took a bus from Philadelphia to Allentown to do a reading at Muhlenberg College. [...] by Linh Dinh

Impossible Life October 21, 2008: If This is a Man You who live safe In your warm houses, You who find, returning in the evening,    Hot food and friendly faces:    Consider if this is a man    Who works in the mud    Who does not know peace    Who fights for a scrap of bread    Who dies [...] by Linh Dinh

Numbered October 8, 2008: In "Doctor Brodie's Report," a 1970 short story by Borges, there's an Amazon tribe with no notion of cause and effect and no sense of the past. N. T. di Giovanni translates, "Since they lack the capacity to fashion the simplest object, the Yahoos regard such ornaments [produced elsewhere] as natural. To the tribe my hut was a tree, despite the [...] by Linh Dinh

Death, with Compound Interest October 5, 2008: Give money me, take friendship whoso list, For friends are gone, come once adversity, When money yet remaineth safe in chest, That quickly can thee bring from misery; Fair face show friends when riches do abound; Come time of proof, farewell, they must away; Believe me well, they are not to be found If God but send thee once a lowering day. Gold [...] by Linh Dinh

Empire in Funkville September 29, 2008: "The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetic nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem [...] One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the bays contain fish or [...] by Linh Dinh

Shove It! September 14, 2008: On December 3, 1937, Attila József, age 32, scissored his right sleeve, lay down, draped his arm across a rail and stared at the train arriving on time to kill him. It was his second attempt, the first pointless and disappointing because someone else had been wheeled over up the tracks. József knew his train schedule. He also wrote: To shove [...] by Linh Dinh

Clayton Eshleman on 9/11 September 10, 2008: "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."--George W. Bush, 9/13/01 "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."--George W. Bush, 3/13/02 "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool [...] by Linh Dinh