THOMAS LARSON

(San Diego Reader September 29, 2004)

Riley has had trouble sleeping ever since he was left in this pen, its gate locked, its concrete floor hosed off every morning. He hates the constant barking either side of him, that deep ruff-ruff bark, deep as a dungeon. He's enticed by dozens of familiar and strange smells emanating from the drain. He's confused by passers-by who peek in, murmur an apology, and don't yell at him. For them, Riley curls his backside into view: nice tight skin, nice silky coat. Then he turns, brings his pant front-and-center for an even better display: cropped ears, massive chest, wide mouth, viselike jaw, sledgehammer head, lodgepole neck. And his disposition (let's not get too carried away). Riley's handler (I'll call him Reggie) used to praise his three-year-old, praise Riley can still hear—You're just the best or You got game, boy, you got it, you little monster. The gashes on Riley's face and neck are still not healed. They'll be scars. And because of them, most visitors who peer in and lock eyes with Riley will turn away in fear, not get to know the real pit bull. One thing Riley can smell is fear, and fear means something worse is coming. But if you look close you can also see wonder in his green eyes: How long am I in here for? Where's Reggie?

(San Diego Reader August 26, 2004)

Ten-year-old Olivia Palmer, a fifth grader at Pacific Beach Elementary, picks up the television remote, presses "on," and touches two numbers, 3 and 6, on the keypad. The TV goes to MTV's Real World. It's a program about real people being videotaped while they're doing real and really mundane things. One of which is to sit on the couch and watch reality television shows. Olivia knows The Real World well. Much to her parents' chagrin, she's seen its episodes dozens of times. Indeed, Olivia, who seems older than ten, in a way already aged by the media, has watched all kinds of shows: the new reality TV, music videos, horror films, programs like Lizzie McGuire (an old favorite) and That's So Raven (a new joy: "I'm into That's So Raven but not, like, into-into. I'm not obsessed with it") and her all-time favorite, The Simpsons, which, besides its goofy improbability, does, for Olivia, have a message: "Like, chill out and don't be so frustrated."

(San Diego Union-Tribune July 25, 2004)

Shaken and Stirred

We all felt it, June 15 of this year: a 5.2 temblor 40 miles off the coast Coronado. That first shake of the building (if you were indoors); the recognition, "It's a quake"; then the peak of the seismic wave jolting the walls and the table and everything on the table. All of it in five seconds.

What I recall of that long instant is how time distended under stress. For example, the fourth of those five seconds, when the quake got much stronger. Suddenly, that unwieldy fact got me up and headed for the door; when I stepped outside, the rattling stopped. And yet how many of us think back and say, we're certain we had the presence of mind to handle whatever would have happened? A total prevarication. In the moment, you don't know how long the possibility of the quake is, which is really the possibility of your death—a fear no different, I assume, from the fear that rises in battle.

(San Diego Reader May 20, 2004)

(Southern Humanities Review Spring 2004) (Revised)

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In November 1903, the fifty-nine-year-old Olivia Clemens, already diagnosed with hyperthyroid heart disease, had been suffering badly from nervous exhaustion and shortness of breath. Her New York doctors recommended that her husband, Samuel, return to Florence, Italy, where the dry air had helped her breathe before. Such might aid her recovery. So Sam and Livy, as she was called, accompanied by their grown daughters, Clara and Jean, a nurse, a maid, and a secretary, sailed for Italy. At a rented villa near Florence, the family bivouacked; they hoped Livy would rally. But the winter proved unseasonably foggy and rainy, and she worsened. The frail woman was in bed day and night, receiving oxygen; she slept sitting up, terrified of choking to death.

(Free Inquiry February/March 2004 Volume 24, Number 2)

The Passion According to Henry

The pith and purity of his prejudices, the grit and grace of his language, the dazzle and buck of his outrage: Does it really matter what H. L. Mencken attacked? Politics, literature, culture? We read him now as we have always read him, to see how and how hard he hits whatever he targets. When it comes to religion, Mencken’s view of Christian science is not much different from his view of, say, evangelicalism. "Sewers of superstition," he calls them all—practice and practitioner. For Mencken, those who think the divine intercedes in or rules human affairs are boobs whose "sin" is not belief but the piety with which their belief is lacquered.

S. T. Joshi’s anthology, H. L. Mencken on Religion, brings together 70 like-biled excoriations from Mencken’s most fertile period—as editor of the Smart Set, 1914 to 1923, and the American Mercury, till 1933. Most of the essays here fall within a 12-year frame, squarely on the Coolidge and Hoover years. In 1925, Mencken reached fever pitch in a series of editorialized dispatches (the former effacing the latter) while covering the Scopes trial. A quarter of this collection concerns that trial with Mencken flaying small-minded Dayton, Tennessee, and the "Fundamentalist Pope," William Jennings Bryan.

(San Diego Reader December 4, 2003)

Disperse • Sunday morning, Clairemont Square Shopping Center parking lot. An asphalt expanse between Town Square Stadium 14 and Burlington Coat Factory. A few gulls perched on the edge of a roof. Fifteen more scattered on the pavement. From one, from another, a plaintive cry, that squeaky swing-set sound, an alien despondency. The 15 in tightening togetherness. Separate, too, and separating, mocking togetherness. Flocking in anti-flock. A club, every adult member identical, their grey-and-white plumage fixed. Otherwise, a few embrowned young. At first glance. Then, a sense that they are one. Their response—silence, a discontent, standing stock-still. Nobody speak, as if to say we are not one—gull, seagull, shorebird, vagrant, visitor, coastal fisher, scavenger—we possess individualities, alas, that no one can see.