I’ve rediscovered tennis. I played when I was a teenager and rarely has a year passed when I didn’t play a few games, but this spring, I signed up for a town round-robin and found myself playing regularly twice a week for the first time in ages. Thinking about the game — my game —…
If the timing of this seems crazily off, it’s because the contents of this post first appeared in my monthly email newsletter in June. If you subscribe, you can get more writings like this delivered straight to your inbox and not miss a thing. Sign up here. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, we’re preparing for the end…
This winter, I was back in Sudan and had a videocamera with me. We’re finishing up the El Kurru International Archaeological Project and the dig director, Geoff, asked me to make a short film about cultural heritage in El Kurru village. To do that, I took camera and editing classes from my local cable access…
The contents of this post first appeared in my monthly email newsletter. If you subscribe, you can get more writings like this delivered straight to your inbox and not miss a thing. Sign up here. On Take Your Child To Work Day, Cognoscenti published my essay I Took My 11-Year-Old Daughter to Work… In Sudan. Great headline! I…
In an ongoing attempt to remember what we do in our annual-ish trips to Toronto, I write these travelogues. They are peculiar to our taste and meanderings. Be warned! This year, we figured the 150th birthday of Canada would feature lots of fun stuff. (By the way, when I was a kid, we celebrated the…
We had a delightful visit to Montreal a few weekends ago. It was the 150th birthday of Canada and 375th birthday of Montreal so there were lots of street performances and random stuff going on. Circus performances were held around the city and they ranged from amazing to amazingly weird. That photo of the people…
Our family travels to Toronto semi-regularly and as the kids have aged, we’ve gone from patronizing Ontario Place and the Ontario Science Center, to the ROM and Casa Loma. This summer of 2017, we went to the Art Gallery of Ontario for the first time in a few years (possibly the first time for the…
I thoroughly enjoyed Ann Patchett’s new novel, Commonwealth. In it, she tells the story of an extramarital affair and the blended family of six children that results. The stepsiblings mostly live on opposite coasts except for summer vacations when they become a tribe, wandering around the Virginia countryside. Patchett’s books tend to be about groups…
Like a few million other people, I went to see the new movie Wonder Woman soon after it came out. Like a few hundred other people, I’ve taken a course in the Sumerian language and was surprised when, as a minor plot point, our heroine reads a few lines of that ancient tongue. So I wrote…
Turns out, if you Google “Pee in the Sahara” you may find the story of Mauro Prosperi, an ultramarathoner who went off course in Morocco and ended up in Algiera (183 miles off course). Or, you could find my short article on a bus stop in Sudan and the “facilities” provided there. You can read…
Jack Cheng, PhD 