FEAST OR FAMINE

The Steady Running of the Hour (2014) is set in two time periods: (1) two months in 2004 in Europe, and (2) 1914-1924 in Europe and Mt. Everest. Tristan Campbell’s mother Elizabeth has been dead for three years, his grandmother Charlotte is a mystery, and his great-grandmother is Eleanor Grafton. Twenty-three-year-old American Tristan receives a letter from a British law firm of an inheritance. If he can prove that his great-grandmother was Imogen Soames-Andersson – the sister of Eleanor Grafton – then the vast amount of her accumulated wealth is his. But there is a catch. English moutaineer Ashley Walsingham died climbing Mt. Everest in 1924 at the age of 29 (long before the first summit climb in 1953), leaving his vast wealth to his lover, Imogen. Imogen never claimed the inheritance, and neither did anyone else. Under the 80-year clause, Tristan has about 7 weeks to prove that Charlotte was really the daughter of Imogen, and not Eleanor. If the law firm has not had an...

Chapter 1: There is Nothing on the Land Mongolian Proverb: Good fort un e may forebo de bad l u ck, which may, in turn, disguise good fortune. When does nothing become something? When does the middle of nowhere become somewhere? If ever the middle of nowhere had a physical location, it was Ulaanbaatar. ‘The snow is early this year,’ said Temulbaatar Bagabandi. As he said, a punctured tire forced their vehicle off the road. The driver and Temulbaatar raised their sheepskin collars and deftly attended to the situation as if it were a regular occurrence. Neither emitted a grunt, a groan, a sigh, or any sign of complaint. Jorja Himmermann remained in the car. A dead pigeon lay on the cement pathway in a pool of melting snow. It was flat on its back, and flakes of wispy snow landed on its scaly pink feet. Another dead pigeon tangled in a chicken-wire fence dangled with its entrails exposed. Jorja watched a short, ruddy-faced Mongol, who had a small cart of fur pel...

The International New York Times published an article on January 25, 2016, with the headline: ‘Cafeteria Crackdown Prompts Cries of Bean Counting in Italy.’ What does ‘bean counting’ mean? The Urban Dictionary defines bean counting as ‘a rather silly thing to do’ because beans are a cheap commodity and counting them is nitpicking over small things in order to save costs. The Urban Dictionary adds that ‘it is a derogatory term.’ The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines bean counting as ‘financial decision-making or analysis done by bean counters.’ The article mentions that the mayor of a town near Milan, in Italy, found that his town had accrued an ‘alarming’ debt of more than a million euros in unpaid school lunch fees. His decision was that ‘children whose parents were up to date on payments would be allowed to eat cafeteria-prepared meals. Children whose parents had not paid would not.’ About 500 families were affected by the decision. Families owing nearly six thousa...

All photographs are by Martina Nicolls