I’m staying in a place called the Sunrise Cabin, but there’s no sunrise—only an uneven cover of clouds that’s getting progressively more translucent as dawn breaks somewhere beyond them. I’m not sure this cabin gets much sunlight, anyway, judging by the layer of algae that slicks the wooden deck. The pines around the cabin must […]
Author Archives | Chris Mackowski
U2′s music and Seussian trees: a visit to Joshua Tree National Park
As beautiful as the landscape is as I near Joshua Tree National Park, the picture somehow doesn’t seem complete. Where are Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr.? Their 1987 album first introduced me to Joshua trees—those desert-stunted twisty trees that look like Dr. Seuss might have drawn them out here in the […]
Storyline: The Improbable Philanthropist and other stories
Al Andrews makes an improbable philanthropist. “Philanthropists have lots of money,” Andrews says. “I didn’t have any.” Andrews is the first of half a dozen guest speakers who makes appearances during the Storyline conference. Donald Miller calls Andrews from the audience to join him at the cafe table onstage. The two settle in as though […]
Storyline: Conference, Day One
“Did you come from a cold, wet place?” Donald Miller asks. A murmur of laughter ripples through the room. “That’s awesome,” he says, laughing. The weather in San Diego is in the mid-sixties today, and everyone I’ve met so far at the Storyline conference has reveled in it. “That part is free,” Miller quips. Miller […]
Storyline: Prologue
First in a series I’m forty-thousand feet above the Rocky Mountains. Denver is some ninety miles to my left and a long way down. I’ve lost the sun beyond the curve of the earth, but the light it still throws is as bright orange as the glow from inside a smelting pit. Molten sunshine has […]
Wilderness worth getting lost in—a review of Lance Weller’s “Wilderness”
No Civil War battlefield offers a writer more metaphoric possibility than the Wilderness. Not only was the Wilderness a virtually impenetrable second-growth forest—“the dark, close wood” and “one of the waste places of nature,” as soldiers called it—but the very idea of “wilderness” suggests a place and a time of being directionless and lost. One […]
Uganda Journal: heading home
Standing on the Equator, I’m as centered as I’ve felt during my entire journey. A few feet to my left, in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s a sign that says “Did you know?” with a shallow bowl that drains into a bucket. In the Southern Hemisphere: same thing. Did you know, in the north, water drains […]
Uganda Journal: Africa’s darkest heart
Final words, written in shit: “I never for my husband was killed….” Scrawled on concrete, marred by blood: “Cry far help me the dead.” The lost voices of 300,000 dead, forgotten beneath the earth. These are Idi Amin’s torture chambers—five concrete bunkers burrowed into the mountainside beneath Mengo Palace in Kampala. Amin, the notorious dictator […]
Uganda Journal: making matooke
Because he’s back home from secondary school for the holiday, Simon is in charge of the kitchen at the Bethlehem School this month. Although only seventeen, he’s easily one of the best cooks whose food I’ve ever eaten. “In Uganda, it’s considered a disgrace for a man to cook unless he trains to be a […]
Uganda Journal: a walk to the well
The well at Nakagongo sits in a low valley, with a web of trails that lead down to it from the surrounding hillsides. It’s not an especially grueling walk and not especially steep, but it’s a five-minute hike downhill from the road. On days like today, when it rained for a couple hours in the […]
Uganda Journal: the double tragedies of Kasensero
The Rwanda Genocide Memorial in Kasensero sits high atop a limestone bluff that overlooks Lake Victoria, which shimmers gray-blue against the horizon a half-dozen kilometers away. In 1994, the bodies of more than 10,000 genocide victims washed up on Victoria’s shores after floating nearly a hundred kilometers downriver from the killing grounds in Rwanda. The […]
Uganda Journal: the safari (part two of two)
The second of two parts The first thing we see on our boatride along the shores of Lake Mburo is a pair of African fish eagles, which look like streamlined bald eagles but with the white extending from the head and neck down to the chest. Our park ranger, Moses, tries to fill us in […]
Uganda Journal: the safari (part one of two)
The colonial King of Ankole, Omugabe, loved his impala. The capital of Uganda, Kampala, had been named for the graceful antelopes—but the growing population in the city began to squeeze the impala out of their habitat, and they were being hunted relentlessly. The king knew he had to protect the impala he so dearly loved. […]
Uganda Journal: the sunrise
I know it seems counter-intuitive to put a disco on the first floor of a hotel, but someone in Kyotera apparently thought it was an excellent idea. I have a corner room, and one of my windows opens on the same side of the hotel as the disco, three floors and a thousand thumping beats […]
Uganda Journal: the market
One of the best ways to see how the locals live, I’ve found, is to visit the market. Alas, on such a trip, words fail me—mostly because I don’t always know what I’m looking at and a language barrier prevents a lot of question-asking. So I’ll let some pictures do the talking this time:
Uganda Journal: the women of Nakagongo
She’s not Big Brother, but Deb Naybor has nonetheless been watching them: twenty-seven women from the village of Nakagongo, Uganda, who have carried with them GPS units that track their movements and Deb, back near Buffalo, New York, has followed them via satellite. Now she’s showing up in Nakagongo to find out just where these […]
S&R Honors
Click here to learn more about past honorees...- Profiling the Tea Party: In defense of the IRS. Sorta. Or not.
- Saturday Video Roundup: “Imagine the Band,” by John Lennon and Wings
- The Rest is Noise (6)—Descent into the Maelstrom
- I hate handguns, but I have still considered owning one
- Redneck jokes are racist
- Mystery Unraveled: How a white, moderate, married, churchgoing, middle-class, middle-aged woman could vote for Obama
- An open letter to Burt Rutan, regarding his WSJ commentary on human-caused climate disruption
- Meet the men of Match.com: Really, guys, are you serious?
- Climate scientists still besieged
- Pelosi on Bush: “He’s not worth impeaching”
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Samuel Smith: One more thing. Re: Organizing for Action and othe…
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wufnik: I tend to agree. There are a couple of other thing…
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Jim Booth: May be much to what you say, here, Wuf. Think abou…
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Frank Dilatush: Interesting Sam, I thought I spoke _directly_ to t…
