Rare snow in Australia.... "I've never seen anything like this before in my entire life!
God moves in mysterious ways - Snow falls in Queensland as NSW SES report 100 vehicles stuck in heavily blanketed northern tablelands
The Prolific Writer Phenomenon
“Novels are better than television, but the surest way to make money from novels is to write with television in mind”... more »
Why do writers write? For pleasure, meaning, money, fame – and for no reason at all. Lydia Davis explains... more »
When the communist regime in Poland fell, it was a victory for writers and readers and the CIA as much as trade unionists and politicians... more »
The Indian Wedding
Another great piece by Samir Varma on Indian marriages—where deep traditions endure, even as subtle revolutions unfold around the edges.. It starts with this kicker:
When I told my mother I was marrying my girlfriend, an Italian Jew, she called all my friends in the US asking them to break us up.
When that failed, she faxed my future father-in-law threatening to disinherit me and never speak to me again. When that failed, she tried to get my PhD advisor to “tell us to break up.” (Luckily, he was relaxed enough to laugh about it with me, though it was embarrassing and deeply unpleasant.) Then she invited my girlfriend to India to “meet the family,” where my girlfriend paid a significant fraction of her yearly income as a starting engineer to fly over.
The pièce de résistance? My mother threw a party to “introduce her to everyone” — and spent the entire time complaining about her to all the guests. About 100 of those guests came to talk to me afterward, apologizing profusely, saying Indians aren’t like this and I should explain so she doesn’t think all Indians are nuts.
At my wedding, I had exactly zero relatives present. We didn’t speak for three years …
