I was startled to see William T. Sherman, scourge of the South, on the Delmar Loop the other day. His name was underfoot on one of the hundreds of bronze stars in the sidewalks that honor those with some connection to St. Louis. Chuck Berry, Redd Foxx, T.S. Eliot, and…
When E.T. was released on June 11, 1982, I would have been three, almost four, years old. My mom took me to see Steven Spielberg and Melissa Mathison’s ode to gentle extraterrestrials and childhood wonder amid parental chaos. E.T. has stuck…
Tens of thousands of quakes have shaken the New Madrid Seismic Zone since they began to be recorded 200 years ago by non-Native people. Back then there was almost no infrastructure or building of significant size in the region to be damaged. In 1811 the population of St. Louis was only about 1200, and Memphis did not exist.
A man of science makes dead matter live yet abandons his own creation. A creature is composed of human body parts yet denied a place in human society. The epic struggle that ensues between creator and creature poses enduring questions to all of us.
This is not an indictment of selfies or selfie culture, which have some redeeming and empowering benefits regarding increasing social sensitivity, self-esteem, and making marginalized communities more visible. Instead, this meander is a what-the-hell-is-happening? lament regarding yet another sad story of an Instagram couple falling to their…
Braggadocio, MO: “Sometimes you have to see for yourself.” Where I grew up, just north of the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, towns were often named for more famous places (Cairo, Golconda, Cadiz, Galatia, Corinth, Sparta, Denmark, Vienna, Mt. Vernon) or with ringing optimism (Future City, Urbandale, Metropolis,…
Karen and Denise | Common Reader: Faces & Places
When I was fresh out of college, my first full-time job was as a sixth-grade language arts and social studies teacher in Henderson, North Carolina, a small town 40 miles north of Raleigh. My charges were 120 students, mostly rural poor or working class like me, and brown and black,…
Last year, for my daughter’s first Halloween, I dressed 9-month-old Lucinda as Rosie the Riveter–cute little denim jumpsuit from H&M that my mother ironed a “Rosie” patch onto while I fashioned Luci’s red-and-white bandana around her head in the trademark WWII factory we-can-do-it worker’s garb. I dressed the part as…
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and in the Romantic age more generally, monstrosity came to be conceived as an excess of vitality. Exactly what life was, however, was a matter of intense debate.