Tempe, Arizona ( Read more... )

It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page ( Read more... )

I gave a quiz on solids of revolution:
Thursday. The Arctic chill hits you as you jump out of your two-seater plane onto the landing strip in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. The police chief is there to meet you, shivering on the tarmac ( Read more... )

It's been half a decade since eight editors of the Ithaca High School Tattler took the city school district to court over claims of censorship and violations of freedom of the press ( Read more... )

For no apparent reason, the Cornell Daily Sun did a quasi-profile of my father, titled, uh, "The Scientist: James Paul Alexander (Exploring dark matter and the Large Hadron Collider with physicist Jim Alexander)". Apparently he is moving to Switzerland next year.

For 11th graders: Somewhere in Canada's frozen north, a poacher is setting a trap for a polar bear. Unbeknownst to him, a polar bear has noticed, and is running toward the poacher to teach him a lesson in Arctic ethics. The poacher's friend, watching in horror, tries to warn the poacher, but they're a half-mile apart, and the poacher can't hear his ( Read more... )

On July 17, I turned my last timecard in to the physics department. On the 18th, my father showed up in Hyde Park and handed me the keys to his rapidly-rusting minivan. Then I put everything I owned into it.
( And then... )

June 13, 2009

On Saturday morning just after midnight I ran into Lou in the basement of Hitchcock. He was putting ice into his Nalgene. "Hey bro! Want to come drink gin with me by Botany Pond?"

"Dude, I've been drunk every night since Tuesday," I said. "Yes, I do."

So Lou filled his Nalgene with gin and we walked out to Botany Pond. We started ( Read more... )

I wrote my great-aunt and uncle a graduation present thank-you note:... We have been channeling some of your Pacific Northwest weather in Chicago, as it rained all through senior week and graduation. But I liked it. There was something about the drizzle and the clouds that framed everything with a sort of resilience. (Defiance, maybe even.) The ( Read more... )

Google Search: used bookstores near phoenix az ( Read more... )