When I spotted this fruit in the market, I left the stall I was standing at and zipped over to the neighboring stall where it was being sold, five-year-old in tow. I started asking the hawker about the fruit when the lady from the previous stall came over, carrying my crying three-year-old. She shot me […]
Author Archives: bingregory
About Ghetto Palm
These entries are dedicated to chronicling the growth of Ailanthus altissima in cultural consciousness. Simply put, I’m collecting any reference to the tree in art, literature, movies, music, etc. and putting it on the web. I also may include ecology of the tree, but it’s not my principal focus. Why am I doing this? People […]
Little Odessa
Little Odessa‘s an older movie (1994) that I just picked up on VCD a little while ago. It’s not a particularly interesting drama, but the setting is. It’s filmed in a part of New York city called Brighton Beach. It’s a decaying industrial sector with a large Russian immigrant population. The climax scene in the […]
Ghetto Palm
My newest project is something of a fan site for an unusual tree, Ailanthus altissima, the Tree-of-heaven.
Between Hope and Fear
Muslim WakeUp’s most recent article deals with the scoresheet mentality in religious observance, where promised rewards for good actions are tallied up like a “pile of candy”. I agree with Pamela’s assessment that this is the morality of toddlers. As a convert, this kind of thinking has very little appeal. In fact, this simplistic kind […]
Baby Toes
When a baby puts her toes in her mouth, it means she’s asking for another baby, and pregnancy is right around the corner.
Key to the Garden
In every chapter, he begins his topic with selections from Quran, develops his argument with support from hadith and writings of other shaykhs, and then… concludes with a poem! The effect is quite moving; can you imagine how much more interesting your university coursebooks would have been with the same technique?
Taski Cemerlang
You’d never know he’s only catching about a tenth of the Bahasa Malaysia he hears, because anytime anyone asks him anything, “anh” he says.