Our List of Lists

Holy listmania! It’s the end of the year and every time we turn around folks are putting things in order from least to best, or best to least, or lining things up and saying, “I like ’em all equally.” We thought we’d call some of the better ones to your attention. You don’t have to read them all, but you have to know they exist. So here they are (in no particular order, of course). –- Brian Allen Carr

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UPSIDE DOWN my dad says and I know he means Australia because that is where I know these kangaroos come from. We read the sign last time and I remember, the map of Australia and the cartoon kangaroos drawn all over it.

IS THAT THE ONLY PLACE THEY LIVE my mom asks and my dad he nods his head up and down to say yes but says it out loud anyway.

YEP.

And she smiles and shakes her head and says THAT’S FUN.

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A Rat Race We Can Deal With

An unlikely fog enveloped Charleston, SC this morning. A solitary cherry picker led the pack of cars down the blinded road. After passing him and cresting the arc of a bridge, there was nothing in front of us, nothing to see. The experience reminded us of our sailing days, days spent anxiously rocking in the stillness of an offshore fog. This fog, though, was different; it infused our morning with a touch of serenity. And for that we are grateful. But we don’t want you to go into your morning blind. So how about a little reading? The Boston Globe loves Paul Auster’s Invisible. Academia is wary of the Abbeville Institute, as it should be. Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States is revisited by a group of celebrities. Archeologists and geophysicists revisit Troy’s existence, and The Australian delves into one of the foundations of literature — The Iliad. Finally, Jake Adelstein makes his living fighting Japan’s foremost gangsters, which makes a battle with American media sound downright cruel. Into the foggy abyss we go. – Andrew Geer

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