Did I tell you I'm afraid of flying? Turbulence, specifically. I know, it's not turbulence that's dangerous, it's the cold, canned air. Don't bother linking me to statistics about how it's safer to fly than to eat a Caesar salad or whatever. They don't alleviate the terror clawing at my heart when a plane starts rattling around. If I may plagiarize myself, I've said before that I fear flying in the brainless way a dog feels thunder. That's just how it is.

But so, Saturday I agreed to go up in a four-seat prop plane. Friends arranged it. "If I have to die," I wrote them, "might as well die in the company of people I like."

One of them is a pilot, and he sent a breezy email to let us know that the good thing was, no one was going to die. The bad thing? "That is not to guarantee that we will always be landing on an official paved runway--so long as you guys bring sturdy shoes in the event of a forced landing, all will be well."

My mother tried to convince me not to go. "Do you know how many of those little planes crash?" she asked.

"I know," I told her, "but [pilot friend] says this plane is as safe as they come."

She sighed. "I don't know why you care so much what people think of you."

Truth, I was tempted by the otherworldly idea of jaunting somewhere with funny friends on a spring afternoon to crack crabs and get a light sunburn. Whose life is that? Mine, for a day! So I went. Look at this thing:

Look at me looking at this thing:


That, friends, is the face of primitive doubt. How something so heavy go up so high?

"Do you want to know how flight works?"[pilot friend] asked me.

"We all have to believe at once?" I said.

We strapped in and put on our little headsets which weren't working (buttressing my fears about plane malfunction) and [pilot friend] showed us the tiny hatch through which we'd escape in the event we landed "upside down."

"I know we'll be safe," my other friend said, "because I know how much [pilot friend] values his own life."

So up we went, over to Maryland, where we landed and borrowed a truck from a stranger to ride into town for crabs and beers. I did okay! I only cried on the inside! On the way back we hit serious turbulence. [Pilot friend] asked us to look for bogeys. Bogeys, you guys. Pew-pew laser sounds filled the cabin, and I clutched my friend's arm, making peace with my impending fiery death.

We landed safely at Leesburg Executive Airport, and [Pilot friend] was right: nobody died. But nothing wears you out like long spells of sheer terror, which did kill my plan to work on my next book proposal that night. I spent the evening wishing someone could just surf the net for me, so tired was I.

Maybe you did something scary and exhausting today and you just want to mellow out with some links, pictures, and video. Here, put your feet up and let me lead you through some programming.

In the Land of Believers got Briefly Noted in The New Yorker, which almost would have made me okay with dying in that tiny plane. My friend said it perfectly: "You got to see your name in that specific New Yorker font!" I feel so lucky.

And then I did this Interview with TIME Magazine with the most thoughtful, incisive interviewer.

Here are some other fun profiles, interviews, and reviews:

The Bogus Born-Again - East Bay Express

Credo - Gina Welch - The Washington Examiner

Interview with GW Today

Review in Sliced and Diced

Review by Denny Burk


And here go some pictures of readings I did a couple of weeks back:

Politics and Prose - Washington, DC