This is a journal of my journey to Mount Katahdin in Maine in July and August, 2009. My itinerary began with a road trip to Mount Desert Island, Maine, where I keep a house. The trip is about six hundred thirty miles in distance. I began… [continue]

I had (for a few months now) assumed that Hillary Clinton was the first woman in the United States to win a presidential primary. Turns out, as you may already know, I was wrong. In 1972 Shirley Chisholm took sixty-seven percent of the vote in the New Jersey Democratic primary, becoming both the first African-American and first woman to … [continue]

It is April 7th and I am fat. Why should this concern you? Let’s not be coy tubby, you are too. That jelly belly isn’t full of giggles, it’s full of shame and Ben and Jerry’s. But let’s not stop there. Where’s Surinam? Don’t know, do you? There’s no shame in that; nobody knows where Surinam is except … [continue]