January 27, 2004

I knew Baghdad was in bad shape, but I didn’t expect the vast expanse of urban slums that sprawl across the flatlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. I was also surprised to see that the effects of the coalition bombing and open combat were limited. In this city of 5.6 million, which was crumbling for a decade under Saddam Hussein, the most severe blow to normal daily life has been the mayhem caused by looters and thieves.

We have a bumper sticker on our car: “Keep Vermont Civil.” The sticker is a bit tattered, since it goes back to the controversy about “civil unions”—the Vermont law passed in 2000 establishing various legal equivalencies to marital rights for gay and lesbian couples. The legislature had been forced to take action following the 1999 ruling of the Vermont Supreme Court holding that denial of marital rights to such unions violated the Vermont constitution’s “common benefits” clause.

Some exegetes and preachers have tried to persuade us that the Song of Songs is an elaborate allegory about the love of God for Israel or of Christ for the church. Yes, the book may have something to teach us about the divine-human relationship, but it is also, and without doubt, a song of erotic love. It is sensual, playful, beautiful and filled with longing. It is an expression of joy in the pleasures of the flesh, and it revels in the beauties of the human body. The Song mostly speaks in a woman’s voice—a woman who expresses forthrightly her erotic longings.

When my wife, Darrah, and I met Andy in the Los Angeles airport, we thought we would never have a real conversation with him. This tall, muscular guy nonchalantly palmed a Bible as if he were pacing across the stage of a megachurch. But we soon realized that we would talk with him again, and soon. We were all missionaries, and we were all on our way to teach English at the same university in central China.

As we waited for our flight, Andy raved about the book Wild at Heart, a pop-Christian version of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.

It is often said that academic squabbles are so nasty because the stakes are so low. But at Baylor University the squabbles are nasty because the stakes are so high.

Before the advent of drug traffickers and serial killers, films often focused on conflicts over real estate. Think of the red dirt of Tara in Gone With The Wind, the stately mansion in The Magnificent Ambersons or the contested open plains in Shane. Property is also the focal point of House of Sand and Fog, based on the 1999 novel by Andre Dubus III. The film is directed and co-written by first-timer Vadim Perelman, who emigrated from Russia to Canada when he was a teenager.