Waaaah. I have a rash. It’s on my right arm, and it’s all over my right side and my back. If I don’t touch it, it doesn’t itch, but if I do touch it it drives me crazy with the itch. I’m thinking that on that hillside when I sat down with Lime, the hillside overlooking the ocean, that I shouldn’t have lay down on my back in only a t-shirt. I’m thinking perhaps it was some kind of poison plant on the ground. I wouldn’t know, but… there’s no other sensible explanation for this rash. Luckily for her, she …

It seems that everywhere I see articles by this Christopher Hitchens fellow, and they’re usually quite interesting. At The Atlantic this month, Hitchens has published one about Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, and his Scouting movement. It’s titled Young Men in Shorts and it’s rather worth a read. Its emphasis on the outdoors and on personal courage and initiative notwithstanding, the scouting ethos had always had something modern and totalitarian about it. B-P could not even keep his nature notes under control: he told his trusting readers that industrious bees were to be admired: “They are quite a …

I just got home from a trip with Lime. Though there were endless comments that made each of us laugh and laugh, strange situations including one of the worst dinners we’ve ever shared, and all kinds of funny things, I’m not gonna rehash a bunch of details here. I will tell one story, though. Unfortunately, it’s a story about something that upset Lime, but it’s also something I learned from, and learned about her from, so I’m going to tell it anyway. It was a rainy, cool day today, and we were wandering around this little tiny island outpost of …