Archive - March 5, 2015

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Gerald Karey writes: Bam! Pow! Smack! Slam! Splat!
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Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) Goes Home

Gerald Karey writes: Bam! Pow! Smack! Slam! Splat!

A Writer Writes Bam! Pow! Smack! Slam! Splat! by Gerald Karey (Turkey 1965–67) How do you know you’re getting older? Let me count the ways. Here’s one certain way — you’re slowing and everything else is speeding up: Traffic — Someone told me that traffic only seems faster because your reflexes slow with age. Maybe, but if I’m tooling along at, say,  70 mph in a 65 mph zone, I will be passed on my right and on my left by vehicles traveling, I’d say, at 80 and 85 mph, along with the obligatory tailgating. Technology — Check out your basement or attic, or visit a recycling  center. Stacks and stacks of yesterday’s must haves, waiting to be shipped off to God knows where to be stripped for reusable metals, plastic, wiring, perhaps to wind up in tomorrow’s shiny new electronic toys, where they will begin their life-cycle all over . . .

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Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) Goes Home

In the current issue of The New Yorker (March 9, 2015) there is an absolutely wonderful and long piece by Peter Hessler on his return to China for a book tour last September. It is entitled “Travels With My Censor” and focuses on changing censorship in-country, but this piece really is much more than that. Peter spent a total of 11 years in China, first as a college teacher in Fuling, later as a journalist, and then later still to research and write his three books on China. Today, Peter and his family live in Cairo and he is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His latest book is Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West. His Peace Corps memoir, and first book, is entitled River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. Read it. The book is one of the best memoirs of the Peace Corps experience to come . . .

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