Chris Bohjalian's Blog
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Jun.16.2013
It wasn’t the worst Father’s Day present ever: Children everywhere have given their fathers gifts that are far more troubling. Exhibit A? Anything at all from the Sky Mall catalog. Nothing says love quite like a Hobbit chess set or tan thru swim trunks. But this gift was up there.
I was a 10-year-...
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Jun.08.2013
A woman I met last month in southeastern Turkey is going to die, probably sometime soon. Asiya’s death will not be covered by any news service, and for all but a few people in her small village of Chunkush, she will not be missed. Even the relatives who love her will probably think to themselves,...
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Jun.02.2013
HERE’S THE setup: A Coca-Cola bottle falls from a low-flying airplane over an undeveloped corner of Africa. How undeveloped? The local tribesman who finds it — as well as the rest of the villagers — have no idea what it is and presume it’s a gift from the gods. Unfortunately, the empty bottle...
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May.26.2013
U.S. Army private Corrado Piccoli was killed in France in the summer of 1944. This is, in most ways, a very old story – 69 years old, to be precise. Moreover, Piccoli was only one of the tens of thousands of Americans killed in battle that season. Posthumously, he was awarded the Purple Heart.
And...
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May.20.2013
It was over thirty years ago that the Hollywood Blockbuster Season gave us “Odorama.” Yup, 1981’s version of 3-D was a scratch and sniff card with numbered aromas. When a number flashed on the screen, we in the audience would scratch. It was a John Waters gimmick for his film, “Polyester,” which...
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May.12.2013
If you are a little boy and want to test your mother’s love, color in the leaves on the dust jacket of her first edition of Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Or draw the Starship Enterprise and a Klingon battle cruiser in the sky on her first edition of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man...
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May.05.2013
You might not know it from what I share in this column, but I played some pretty serious football and baseball as a boy.
First of all, I was on the same high school football team – the illustrious Bronxville Broncos of Westchester County, N.Y. – as Roger Goodell. Yup, that Roger Goodell....
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Apr.28.2013
It has been almost two weeks now since the Boston Marathon ended in a nightmarish terrorist attack; it has been nine days since Boston was paralyzed by a manhunt and Watertown was a battleground. The news cycles are moving on.
But among the elements of the story that will stay with me a long time...
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Apr.21.2013
The other day we had some massive trees cut down in our yard and the fellow taking them down wanted to be sure that he didn’t accidentally incinerate the center of Lincoln by dropping a six-story maple on the lamppost at the edge of our driveway and causing an electrical fire. That would have put a...
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Apr.21.2013
The other day we had some massive trees cut down in our yard and the fellow taking them down wanted to be sure that he didn’t accidentally incinerate the center of Lincoln by dropping a six-story maple on the lamppost at the edge of our driveway and causing an electrical fire. That would have put a...
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Apr.14.2013
IN THE coming days, Armenians around the world will come together to acknowledge what I have come to call “The Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About.” April 24 marks the 98th anniversary of the night the Armenian religious and intellectual leaders were rounded up in Constantinople — and the...
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Apr.07.2013
Josie Leavitt is coming to Burlington, Vermont tonight and hoping to kill.
“I bombed. I killed. The language of comedy is all very violent,” she said. It’s worth noting that Leavitt said this in almost the same tone of voice with which she had gleefully shared with me the color of the nail polish...
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Apr.05.2013
Rock-and-roll t-shirts? Check.
T-shirt cannon? Check.
Old family photos? Check.
Nine days from today it begins: "The Sandcastle Girls" Lucky '13 Paperback Book Tour. 13 stops in 13 days in 2013. Please join me!
April 14Fresno, CaliforniaCollege State University, FresnoArmenian Studies...
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Mar.31.2013
Other than weddings and funerals, there are only two times a year when I am likely to wear a necktie to the church here in Lincoln, Vermont: Christmas Eve and today, Easter Sunday. This is true with the vast majority of men in the congregation. There are usually 100 to 125 people in the sanctuary...
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Mar.26.2013
Robert Frost was born on this date in 1874. Most historians presume he is playing softball in this Bread Loaf photo from the 1940s. I've always suspected it was Tai Chi. (Photo courtesy of the Middlebury College archives.)
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About Chris
Lincoln, Vermont’s Chris Bohjalian is the critically acclaimed author of 16 books, including eight New York Times bestsellers. His work has been translated into over 25 languages and three times become movies.
His epic novel of the Armenian Genocide, The...
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