Reading Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s “Letter from a Japanese Crematorium,” written after a visit to Japan for her grandmother’s funeral, feels like eavesdropping on the deepest and most spellbinding of secrets. My cousin Takahagi, a Buddhist priest, does not want me to go to the crematorium. It is not a place for visitors. When I press him, he explains: the crematorium . . .
Proof that Amanda Stern’s Happy Ending is truth in advertising: Laurie Anderson, reading.
Cormac McCarthy links: Will Ridley Scott really direct Blood Meridian? The Road moves Whitehead to tears cry a single tear at Dallas BBQ, and inspires 20 readings, and a scholar’s (casual) speculations.
My great-great-grandfather, Allen Alexander Johnston*, was born in Kentucky in 1854. He moved to Dallas before the turn of the century and founded A.A. Johnston Contracting & House Moving sometime prior to his death in 1916. Many early house-moving platforms of the kind depicted in his ad were pulled by teams of horses. How Johnston powered his rig I don’t . . .