October 31, 2003
Southern Exposure
I've recently accepted an invitation to begin contributing to a new group weblog covering Latin American topics, Southern Exposure, which is up and running from today. I won't post everything I put there here, or vice versa, but some overlap can be expected from time to time.
Fast Food, Slow Food
Via the comments thread on this post at Metafilter, a slice of suburban American scariness on this Halloween.
With the doors closing at 11:00 PM on Saturday evening the Town of Herndon police closed the line waiting to order at the Guatamalan import, Pollo Campero, at 8:30 this evening. Prior to this I was told the line had extended to over three hours.
[...]
Anyway, for those who like to wait in line, I should mention that we had just left the Cheesecake Factory in the Tyson's Galleria after being told their line was ALSO two and one half hours long.
You may draw your own conclusions.
My country, I weep for thee.
October 23, 2003
Update
It's been a month since I've had anything I felt like sticking up here, so I thought I ought to just note that I'm still here and this blog is not technically on hiatus or anything. A bit of travel in the past few weeks - a long weekend to Salvador and Praia do Forte, with its sea turtle preservation project, which was a hit with our little one especially.
Also, after loading the house with dozens of new books over the past few months, I've found it amazingly easy to get into the groove of reading and have made my way through about half a dozen books in the past month - the list at right is now updated. Last night I started reading Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life(review). I'm still humping it through the others - A Pattern Language and the Alice Sebold translation (milestone: more than half way).