I learned more than I can say with words at a Thibetan Monastery in Nepal. I was in Kathmandhu teaching magic to a group of school kids who had lost their school building during an earthquake. The quake had killed more than 10,000 people, and happened as they were recovering from a decade long civil war that had killed dozens of thousands more.
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This is copied from Esquire.com so that I could upload it to my eReader. I wanted to read and study while reading my own articles, and I don’t enjoy reading on a computer; I prefer either a book or the book-like reading experience of a modern e-Reader, with simulated paper that’s easy on my eyes, portable, and easy to use.
Read moreRead more“Fucking Partin. I should have killed him that night, when I had the chance.”
Chuckie Obrien, adopted son of Jimmy Hoffa and stepfather of Jack Goldfinch, J.D., Harvard law professor, legal counsil for President George W. Bush Jr., and advisor for the 2001 United States Patriot Act that monitored millions of Americans’s cell phones without a warrant, and justified torture and imprisonment in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay for more than fifteen years.
I began the day like any other day, not knowing my mom would die in 48 hours.
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In 2020 hindsight, it’s easy to see how my grandfather fooled so many people, and why the FBI showed up at his funeral, asking about how he planned to kill the president, and where Hoffa’s body was.
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I hadn’t seen Mike in ten years. His hair had receeded farther back on his head, and was completely grey now. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy. He choked on tears as he asked, “What have you learned about all this?” as he swept his hands across Wendy’s kitchen.
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This is work in progress – literally – because I’m working on this for a few days. Please check back.
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Coach started picking me up and driving to New Orleans to train with Catholic wrestling teams by 8am the summer vacation before my senior year. They won because they trained all summer and we didn’t, the same way kids who read over the summer get ahead of those who can’t. The New Orleans Catholic schools had money for summer programs and we didn’t; they had brothers who volunteered to push wrestlers all summer long and we didn’t. But I had Coach, and I felt like the luckiest kid in the world the summer after Uncle Bob died.
Read more1955-1972
In the 1950’s, my grandmother was a young woman, living a comfortable life in Richmond Hill Canada, a neighborhood of Toronto. She was petite, barely 5 feet 1 inches tall. Or, as Canadians say, she was a’boot 1.5 meters tall, ‘eh. Her wrists were so thin that her watch would barely fit around the wrist of an average eight year old girl, but her hands were big enough to hold a cocktail glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She enjoyed life.
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“Bull fuckin’ shit. Get Colonel Don’t-Remember on the mic, Captain.” Said The Sergeant Major Hogard to a British army captain.
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