Bradford Philen

There’s a typhoon outside and that’s literal. From the balcony windows, we watch slanted sheets of rain rush from the sky. Storm winds sway the native Arecaceae and shoo debris every which way like a rag doll. It’s all swooshing and swirling and rushing, but we live in the Fort. That’s not a literal fort…

After the turbulence and whisking clouds, the sky clears. 10 minutes to land. The dirt roads below remind you of the deep red earth between Lusaka and Livingston where elephants roam and you can buy fat cake and fried fish heads at road-side stands. From above, Vientiane looks a lot like deep red dirt roads.…

The Vintage International version (1992) of James Baldwin’s play Blues for Mister Charlie offers some of Baldwin’s insight in the introduction “Notes for Blues.” Baldwin actually begins by expressing his general and genuine disdain for the American Theatre. He states, “I am not convinced that it is a Theatre; it seems to me a series, merely, of…

There’s the story; then there are the stories. In 221 B.C.E., or there about, Qin Shi Huang united the then very sparse and warring kingdoms of the Far East. Qin led the unification of what would later be hailed The People’s Republic of China. Qin did that. He became China’s first Emperor. That was the…

It’s 11:18 on Sunday morning, May 24, and I’m on the bullet train to Hangzhou. The train is mostly full, but, in our group, we are fourteen – twelve teenagers and two chaperones. It’s one of ISB’s Senior class End-of-Year trips, we’re traveling at about 310 kilometers per hour, and the word that keeps appearing…