The last thing I’m going to do is review a book I’ve not read.
Plenty of people are pouncing all over “American Dirt,” especially Latino writers. They don’t need another old white guy to wade in.
The major complaints seem to be around author Jeanine Cummins’ tone-deaf characterizations of immigrants, Mexicans mostly. Her characters could have been more nuanced, more richly detailed, less stereotypical, the critics say.
Some also resent that she made an extraordinary amount of money for writing this story, as though her seven-figure payoff sucked the oxygen right out of the cultural-literary writing room — money that maybe could have gone to authentic Latin/Mexican writers.
I started the day by rescuing a hummingbird
That moment when you realize the offbeat lead to a blog post that you have been struggling with since Thanksgiving isn’t really the lead to a blog post, but an offbeat poem that celebrates the particular insanity that grips us between Halloween and Boxer Day.
I have been asked today to discuss the proper way to traverse the Erie Canal, the 363-mile waterway that links Albany, New York, to Buffalo and the Great Lakes. 
I have never been good with deaths, weddings, baptisms, or birthdays. Even holidays. Christmas always felt designed to highlight my personal ineptitude at selecting presents for people I love but should get to know better.