http://www.fortunespawn.com Occasional thoughts and other peripatetic misadventures. Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:26:41 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Beynon Rees My review rating: 4 of 5 stars I heard an interview with Matt Beynon Rees on NPR the other day and I am intrigued by his Palestinian detective, Omar Yussef. I like to read well written books about places I may never see. ... http://www.fortunespawn.com/2008/08/23/the-collaborator-of-bethlehem Teacher Man: A Memoir by Frank McCourt My review rating: 4 of 5 stars I really enjoyed Angela's Ashes but was disappointed by 'Tis. I had hopes that Teacher Man would return to the joyful optimism of McCourt's first novel, and I was not let down. Teacher Man covers some of the ... http://www.fortunespawn.com/2008/08/18/teacher-man-a-review Over at MickeyMouse.com, Rick Klien reports on Matthew Jaffe and Julia Bain reporting on Bob Scheiffer getting this cutting comment out of Sen. Evan Bayh on Face the Nation:"We are not all Georgians now," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation," per ABC's Matthew Jaffe and Julia Bain. "If we ... http://www.fortunespawn.com/2008/08/18/sharp-words-from-evan-bayh Pawn well remembers that night in 2007 when we all learned that Elizabeth Edwards had incurable breast cancer. We all felt for her then, and held a sheltered place in our thoughts and hearts for her. Seems we need to open those same places yet again. Here, ... http://www.fortunespawn.com/2008/08/08/elizabeth-edwards-once-more-the-sting Pawn was in a deli this morning, having breakfast, and another diner came in and took his seat at the counter. He leaned in conspiratorially and asked the waitress if she wanted to hear an Obama joke. He then proceeded to tell it.Obama goes up to heaven and ... http://www.fortunespawn.com/2008/08/05/bad-political-jokes Quite the interesting and though provoking piece by David Brooks in today's Times. In a departure for Brooks, who is given to partisan cuts carefully buried 3/4 of the way through an otherwise thoughtful piece, here he is just thoughtful:Why isn’t Barack Obama doing better? Why, after all that ... http://www.fortunespawn.com/2008/08/05/brooks-on-obama Every four years, like clockwork, the far-left fringe of the Democratic Party comes out of the woodwork with one or another idea which is sure to polarize the electorate against them, driving vast tracts of voters into the waiting embrace of the right, and ensuring another insufferable term of Republican ... http://www.fortunespawn.com/2008/07/30/present-footload-weaponready-aim-fire Just sitting at my desk, listening to Sheryl Crow and it dawns on me that Aldous Huxley died on the same day JFK was assassinated.  Sure I'm not the first to make that connection, but there you have it. http://www.fortunespawn.com/2008/07/25/run-baby-run Back before this was a blog, when it was nothing more than a rant mailing list, I wrote about a website a friend had turned me onto featuring a motorcycle ride through the ruins of Chernobyl, in Ukraine. I just revisited that site, and found Elena's photoreportage of the ... http://www.fortunespawn.com/2008/07/15/checking-in-on-an-old-freind In a move that puts the ass in classic, Geo. Bush left his final G8 summit with this parting shot: As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." President Bush made the private joke in the summit's closing session, senior sources ... http://www.fortunespawn.com/2008/07/10/presidential-hubris-or-truth-you-decide