Turning Up Bones

Because we’ll all be fossils one day.

The fact and fiction of David Lee Holcomb. You decide which is which.

  • The shape of words.

    I know the difference between an Apostle and an Epistle, I can list the twelve sons of Jacob, and I can whip out a quote from the four Gospels for just about any occasion. None of which, in my case, has anything to do with religion. Click here to continue

  • When in danger, When in doubt

    This week saw the first home-grown case of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in – of course – Texas, the state that gave us such giants of scientific and medical insight as Louie Gohmert and Joe Barton. Click here to continue

  • The Wild Blue

    In a movie of her life, she would probably not be played by Angelina Jolie, or Scarlett Johansson. She was a housewife from Columbus, Ohio: mother of three, five feet tall and a hundred pounds; she had dimples. Click here to continue

  • Bam. Pow. Kablooie.

    In the comics, nobody was sending us out of the room before the subject of nuclear armageddon was discussed; nobody told us that we were too young to worry about what pollution was capable of doing to our bodies; conversations about race didn’t suddenly slam to a halt every time we strolled in to ask… Click here to continue

  • The price of pretty

    Until the Church removed her from the calendar in 1969, July 20 long had the distinction of being the feast day of Saint Wilgefortis the Liberator, the protector and patroness of women suffering in relationships with abusive husbands. Click here to continue

  • Unintelligible at any speed

    Forty-nine years ago today, on May 17, 1965, the FBI released their report: Although there may or may not have been something pernicious hidden in the song, they certainly couldn’t make it out. They concluded that the lyrics were “unintelligible at any speed”… Click here to continue

  • Arrival from always, departure to forever

    Packing up the wife and three small children (the oldest — me — having just completed the second grade) he returned to the town of his own childhood, a place in the Appalachian foothills of northern Alabama with the peculiar name of Boaz. Click here to continue

  • Skiing the Slippery Slope

    On a whim yesterday I wasted twenty minutes on a quiz on the Christian Science Monitor website: it was a condensed version of a test that 8th graders in a Kentucky school district had to take in 1912 to determine whether they were fit to proceed to high school. How hard could this be, right?… Click here to continue

  • Persistence

    Some time back I wrote a journal post here in which I bemoaned the fact that a couple of pieces of artwork that I had just completed seemed to be falling flat with my usual public. In retrospect, I realize that I may have sounded a bit petulant, and perhaps even just a tiny bit… Click here to continue

  • See what you made me do…

    A Persian word that became widespread in the days of the Ottoman Turkish empire — baksheesh — could mean a tip, a contribution, or a bribe, interchangeably; today we pretend that these things are actually separate and distinct, but in politics, nothing much has changed. Click here to continue