The Grace Hotel
Thailand, 1976They served Western breakfasts and Heinekens on the 3½-hour flight from Kathmandu to Bangkok. It was all you could drink, and my friend Dave and I helped ourselves as we flew south of the Himalayas, searched for Everest tucked somewhere in the jagged skyline near the Nepal-China border, crossed Bangladesh and the sprawling delta, cast our shadow on the unbroken forests of green Myanmar, skirted the edge of the Andaman Sea, and finally began our descent into Thailand. Farther east were Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam, destroyed by the war that we had feared would never end. It was October 1976. Saigon—now Ho Chi Minh city—had fallen to the North Vietnamese Army a year and a half before. There were reports of boat people trying to escape, rapes and murders by pirates on the open sea, massive reeducation camps, and torture and genocide by the Khmer Rouge next door in the newly named Kampuchea.
The Grace Hotel
Thailand, 1976They served Western breakfasts and Heinekens on the 3½-hour flight from Kathmandu to Bangkok. It was all you could drink, and my friend Dave and I helped ourselves as we flew south of the Himalayas, searched for Everest tucked somewhere in the jagged skyline near the Nepal-China border, crossed Bangladesh and the sprawling delta, cast our shadow on the unbroken forests of green Myanmar, skirted the edge of the Andaman Sea, and finally began our descent into Thailand. Farther east were Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam, destroyed by the war that we had feared would never end. It was October 1976. Saigon—now Ho Chi Minh city—had fallen to the North Vietnamese Army a year and a half before. There were reports of boat people trying to escape, rapes and murders by pirates on the open sea, massive reeducation camps, and torture and genocide by the Khmer Rouge next door in the newly named Kampuchea.
Deep Dives
Contrary to Life
Fool’s Gold
Years ago, I took my daughter Maggie to India. She was 14 at the time, and we found ourselves early one morning wrapped in blankets and drinking chai on the balcony of a small hillside hotel overlooking a wide bend in the upper reaches of the Ganges. We were near the village of Lakshman Jhula, just north of Rishikesh in the mountain state of Uttarakhand. The valley below us was thick with rising fog, but as the clouds slowly lifted we saw white-clad figures making their way down to the rocks and sand on a wide point bar at the river’s edge.
Letter to a College President
The Mary Washington Way
When University of Mary Washington President Troy Paino found out students had once again erected tents in Jefferson Square to protest the war in Gaza, he decided to make his way to the grassy square rather than call in Virginia State Police. It was a drizzly Saturday afternoon, April 27, and a dozen 20-somethings were sitting inside the tents, eating snacks and studying for exams. Campus police were already there monitoring the situation as they had been since the sit-in started the day before. The students weren’t being disruptive or violent in any way, Paino said later. “By all accounts, they were peaceful and not engaging in any form of antisemitic rhetoric.”
NO MOSS?
For Hospital Corporation,
Free Clinic Support ‘In Perpetuity’
Comes to an End After 20 Years
(They’re Keeping the Building, Too)
No Moss?
For Hospital Corporation, Free Clinic Support ‘In Perpetuity’ Comes to an End After 20 Years
The Far-Right Spammers of Falmouth Bottom
Meet the Neighbors
The Right-Wing Spammers and Scriveners show up for work in the mornings just like anybody else, pulling off Washington Street in the tiny village of Falmouth, Virginia, squeezing through a narrow opening in a chain link fence, and parking in a gravel lot under a row of ivy-strangled oaks, three of them dying, one already dead. They drive a Toyota Prius with a turtle sticker on the back. Or a black SUV, or an older-model Camry, or any of a dozen other middle-class sedans. Nothing flashy, though one of their bosses, a bearded, balding, political marketer and Shriner potentate named Andrew Coelho keeps a Heritage Shrine Club trailer back there for ferrying around his lodge’s clown cars.
The Beavers of Accokeek Creek
We Like Nature OK, We Just Don’t Like It to Be Too Messy.
Dishonorable Mentions
The Gaujot Brothers of West Virginia
They must have been hard up for heroes back in the day. How else to explain the Medals of Honor—America’s highest award for valor in combat–given 15 months apart in 1911 and 1912 to the Gaujot brothers of West Virginia, one of whom had once shot and killed an apparently unarmed fellow soldier and got away with it in military court, the other of whom had been court martialed for water-torturing Filipino prisoners and had to pay a whopping $150 fine?
Deliverance
Story Time in Heck
I’d rather have been Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, one of my favorite Old Testament stories, plus I always liked saying their names, but since there was only just the one of me I settled for thinking of myself as a modern-day Daniel in the lions’ den as I strode in a light rain past the free hot chocolate tables and the not-so-free donut trucks and into Riverbend High School in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. The lobby had been converted for the day—the first Saturday in December—into what looked like the tail end of a yard sale when all that’s left are a bunch of crappy books laid out on folding tables, plus a couple of bowls filled with rubber balls and pencils.
Being Human
The Grace Hotel
Thailand, 1976They served Western breakfasts and Heinekens on the 3½-hour flight from Kathmandu to Bangkok. It was all you could drink, and my friend Dave and I helped ourselves as we flew south of the Himalayas, searched for Everest tucked somewhere in the jagged skyline near the Nepal-China border, crossed Bangladesh and the sprawling delta, cast our shadow on the unbroken forests of green Myanmar, skirted the edge of the Andaman Sea, and finally began our descent into Thailand. Farther east were Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam, destroyed by the war that we had feared would never end. It was October 1976. Saigon—now Ho Chi Minh city—had fallen to the North Vietnamese Army a year and a half before. There were reports of boat people trying to escape, rapes and murders by pirates on the open sea, massive reeducation camps, and torture and genocide by the Khmer Rouge next door in the newly named Kampuchea.
Cell Block
Clear and Present
Shortly into my first year teaching English and International Baccalaureate Lang & Lit at Mountain View High School in Stafford County, Virginia—the first day, actually—I knew I was going to have to do something about the cellphones. If a school shooter had blasted his way through the door to our classroom, the kids might have videoed first, posted on social media second, and only then looked around for somewhere to hide. And that’s IF they’d been able to pull their faces away from whatever was streaming on their iPhone screens to even notice. Not that I allowed them to be on their phones. They were just that good at sneaking them out, and that uncaring about my disapprobation and orders for them to put the damn things away already so we could get back to discussing the implications of the curious elliptical passage at the end of chapter two in The Great Gatsby. (A drunk Nick Carraway, the narrator, is standing in the bedroom of the photographer Mr. McKee, who is sitting on the bed in his underwear.)
Prescriptions
Cell Block
Clear and Present
Shortly into my first year teaching English and International Baccalaureate Lang & Lit at Mountain View High School in Stafford County, Virginia—the first day, actually—I knew I was going to have to do something about the cellphones. If a school shooter had blasted his way through the door to our classroom, the kids might have videoed first, posted on social media second, and only then looked around for somewhere to hide. And that’s IF they’d been able to pull their faces away from whatever was streaming on their iPhone screens to even notice. Not that I allowed them to be on their phones. They were just that good at sneaking them out, and that uncaring about my disapprobation and orders for them to put the damn things away already so we could get back to discussing the implications of the curious elliptical passage at the end of chapter two in The Great Gatsby. (A drunk Nick Carraway, the narrator, is standing in the bedroom of the photographer Mr. McKee, who is sitting on the bed in his underwear.)
Letter to a College President
The Mary Washington Way
When University of Mary Washington President Troy Paino found out students had once again erected tents in Jefferson Square to protest the war in Gaza, he decided to make his way to the grassy square rather than call in Virginia State Police. It was a drizzly Saturday afternoon, April 27, and a dozen 20-somethings were sitting inside the tents, eating snacks and studying for exams. Campus police were already there monitoring the situation as they had been since the sit-in started the day before. The students weren’t being disruptive or violent in any way, Paino said later. “By all accounts, they were peaceful and not engaging in any form of antisemitic rhetoric.”
Not Healthy. Not Caring. Not Even a System.
Broken Bad
A few months after he graduated from college, a friend crashed his bike one evening as he raced down a trail near Charlottesville. He suffered a life-altering spinal cord injury, but as those injuries go, he was fairly lucky: He retained full use of his upper body and partial use of his legs, and despite fears that he’d never ride again, he went on to become an Olympic para-cyclist. He was also fortunate in another way: Before his accident, his dad had bought him a short-term health insurance policy.
Papa Don’t Preach
Put Away That Cell Phone or Ernest Hemingway Will Punch You in the Face
How to Hospital
There’s No Point in Depriving Yourself When Things Already Suck
LOL
A Modest Proposal
Being for the Benefit of the Citizens of Our Glorious County, Their Children, and Future Faithful Generations (With Apologies to Jonathan Swift)
Top 10 Reasons Why Home is Better than the Pound
As dictated by J.D. (aka Jus’a Dawg) Evans
Kiss “A as in Apple” Goodbye
The All New & Completely Updated Guide to Code Words for the International Spelling Alphabet
A Modest Proposal
(With Apologies to Jonathan Swift)
Being for the Benefit of the Citizens of Our Glorious County, Their Children, and Future Faithful Generations
22401-ish
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Late October
NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
–Robert Frost
Cell Block
Clear and Present
Shortly into my first year teaching English and International Baccalaureate Lang & Lit at Mountain View High School in Stafford County, Virginia—the first day, actually—I knew I was going to have to do something about the cellphones. If a school shooter had blasted his way through the door to our classroom, the kids might have videoed first, posted on social media second, and only then looked around for somewhere to hide. And that’s IF they’d been able to pull their faces away from whatever was streaming on their iPhone screens to even notice. Not that I allowed them to be on their phones. They were just that good at sneaking them out, and that uncaring about my disapprobation and orders for them to put the damn things away already so we could get back to discussing the implications of the curious elliptical passage at the end of chapter two in The Great Gatsby. (A drunk Nick Carraway, the narrator, is standing in the bedroom of the photographer Mr. McKee, who is sitting on the bed in his underwear.)
Charc Bites
“How ‘bout them hors d’oeuvres ain’t they sweet? Little piece of cheese, little piece of meat!” –Mason Williams
Contrary to Life
Fool’s Gold
Years ago, I took my daughter Maggie to India. She was 14 at the time, and we found ourselves early one morning wrapped in blankets and drinking chai on the balcony of a small hillside hotel overlooking a wide bend in the upper reaches of the Ganges. We were near the village of Lakshman Jhula, just north of Rishikesh in the mountain state of Uttarakhand. The valley below us was thick with rising fog, but as the clouds slowly lifted we saw white-clad figures making their way down to the rocks and sand on a wide point bar at the river’s edge.
Letter to a College President
The Mary Washington Way
When University of Mary Washington President Troy Paino found out students had once again erected tents in Jefferson Square to protest the war in Gaza, he decided to make his way to the grassy square rather than call in Virginia State Police. It was a drizzly Saturday afternoon, April 27, and a dozen 20-somethings were sitting inside the tents, eating snacks and studying for exams. Campus police were already there monitoring the situation as they had been since the sit-in started the day before. The students weren’t being disruptive or violent in any way, Paino said later. “By all accounts, they were peaceful and not engaging in any form of antisemitic rhetoric.”
NO MOSS?
For Hospital Corporation,
Free Clinic Support ‘In Perpetuity’
Comes to an End After 20 Years
(They’re Keeping the Building, Too)
No Moss?
For Hospital Corporation, Free Clinic Support ‘In Perpetuity’ Comes to an End After 20 Years
The Far-Right Spammers of Falmouth Bottom
Meet the Neighbors
The Right-Wing Spammers and Scriveners show up for work in the mornings just like anybody else, pulling off Washington Street in the tiny village of Falmouth, Virginia, squeezing through a narrow opening in a chain link fence, and parking in a gravel lot under a row of ivy-strangled oaks, three of them dying, one already dead. They drive a Toyota Prius with a turtle sticker on the back. Or a black SUV, or an older-model Camry, or any of a dozen other middle-class sedans. Nothing flashy, though one of their bosses, a bearded, balding, political marketer and Shriner potentate named Andrew Coelho keeps a Heritage Shrine Club trailer back there for ferrying around his lodge’s clown cars.
The Beavers of Accokeek Creek
We Like Nature OK, We Just Don’t Like It to Be Too Messy.
Deliverance
Story Time in Heck
I’d rather have been Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, one of my favorite Old Testament stories, plus I always liked saying their names, but since there was only just the one of me I settled for thinking of myself as a modern-day Daniel in the lions’ den as I strode in a light rain past the free hot chocolate tables and the not-so-free donut trucks and into Riverbend High School in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. The lobby had been converted for the day—the first Saturday in December—into what looked like the tail end of a yard sale when all that’s left are a bunch of crappy books laid out on folding tables, plus a couple of bowls filled with rubber balls and pencils.
A Modest Proposal
Being for the Benefit of the Citizens of Our Glorious County, Their Children, and Future Faithful Generations (With Apologies to Jonathan Swift)
Etcetera
About Pie & Chai
Steve and Janet Watkins started Pie & Chai Magazine in November 2022. Our intention is to publish 12 times a year, with a new issue coming out the first of every month. We’ll see how that goes. Steve is the editor. Here’s what Janet wrote (and Steve edited) for the first issue under the headline “Why Pie & Chai” which pretty much explains it all:
We’re launching Pie & Chai Magazine for a simple reason: to provide good writers with a place to tell good stories, the kind worth sharing. In these stories—under the broad categories of Deep Dives, Being Human, Prescriptions, LOL, Etcetera, and 22401(ish)—we hope to move, enlighten, and amuse you, and draw you in to a creative community.
We aren’t here to make money. We won’t sell subscriptions, we won’t run ads, we won’t pirate your data, and our contributors won’t get paid. Everything here will exist because someone cared enough to create it. For free.
We’re old-school print journalists, so we believe in facts (not alternative ones) and the power of stories to comfort and afflict. We’ll serve up deep reporting, thoughtful analysis, personal essays and poignant humor. You won’t find press releases here, or fiction. No poetry, either, except as it may offer itself up in some of the prose. What you will find is humanity in all its glorious messiness.
In our dreams, Pie & Chai has been a physical place for dishing up warm desserts and bringing people together. But we don’t own a building, and we’d rather write than cook. So, this is our virtual effort to expand minds, forge connections, and sweeten lives.
Pull up a seat.
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