War Dances
Sherman Alexie
Scribe 2010
ISBN: 9781921640803
$26.95
224 pp

Sherman Alexie is a native American and many of his stories and poems in this collection make this obvious.  Other pieces ignore it completely.  He sometimes refers to himself as a “part-time Indian”.  He treats his ancestry with humour and lightness, while also exposing the mistreatment of natives by others and the pain this brings. (more…)

A pleasant exhaustion envelops me as I sit in a crowded Jumbo, waiting to taxi for take-off from Heathrow, to head east; back to the familiar from what was unfamiliar and became familiar very quickly. (more…)

Sometimes the best-laid plans of mice and men … can be as nothing if the workers of the Belgian railway decide to strike.  Plan B for getting to Amsterdam from London: train, ferry, train.  Includes a two-berth cabin for the night crossing.  Travel and accommodation for the same price as the non-existent train through Belgium.  Thank you, striking workers. (more…)

This should be called ‘From the Galley’, as I am sitting twixt two of those on a Boeing 777 somewhere over the Timor Sea, on the way to Kuala Lumpur, on the way to Europe.  Close to twenty-four hours stuck in an aeroplane to spend two weeks on the other side of the world. (more…)

Making sense of the world can be difficult.  We attempt it through our senses, tempered by our mind.  What the mind does with all this input depends to a large extent on its programming through culture, education, parenting, race, peer influence, the environment and the media. (more…)