& welcome to my virtual woodshed. I’ll be workshopping ideas & stories for my book-in-progress, Broken Atlas, with plenty of serendipitous detours into adjacent terrain. Expect curios & cracked eggs, dispatches from afar & unexpected encounters.

News item of the day: At dawn, Saddam Hussein is escorted to the gallows, which is contained in the same building that his intelligence service used to execute Baath party enemies. He refused to wear a hood. The hanging was followed by bombings in predominantly Shia areas that claimed 75 lives.

By coincidence I watched Emile de Antonio’s Vietnam War doc, In the Year of the Pig, last night. While it may be specious to draw too many direct parallels between the two wars, de Antonio’s film essay makes for timely viewing. An elegantly-constructed examination of the Vietnam War’s logic told as agitprop collage and a brilliant example of how film can successfully compress history. For more info on de Antonio, one of America’s most innovative documentarians, check out this interview.