Seattle and ashes

Charles D’Ambrosio sketches scenes from a pre-boom Puget Sound – my good old days, chilluns – in The New Yorker.

UPDATE: I found the story, as I often do with D’Ambrsio, beautiful and evocative. Interstingly, I distinctly felt that this story was written in conscious dialogue with Alexie and Vollmann. Perhaps someday Vollmann will write of the Northwest directly.

UPDATE II: on Father’s Day 2016 I noticed that the new Yorker appears to have bitrotted this, and presumably other, old links. Fixed. This post gave me such a thrill when the author himself dropped by to express appreciation for my expression of appreciation.

Learn from Jon

Jon, who has been a bit quiet of late, makes up for it with disquisitions on the American left, his Christianity, and an unimpeachable list of tunes. Clearly, the man is, in fact, the Greatest Bus Driver in the World.

Seriously, I urge you to reflect on that list of music. It lends credence, as it were, and predisposed as I am to listen to Jon on things political it makes me reinspect my impulse to skip the religion component. Jon makes me think, and think hard.

But why does he think Billy is back on the sauce?