Archives

The Resurrection of William T. Sherman

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 Agnes Moorhead, the mother-in-law on […]

Revisiting E.T. as an Adult

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 with me since largely because the story is led and performed by children, and […]

Tremors and Portents

    As I was headed to see the earthquake museum there last week, New Madrid, Missouri, felt a 3.3-magnitude quake. This is not unusual. In the last six months alone there have been more than 100 temblors in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, according to the Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI) at […]

Death by Selfie: A Cautionary Tale

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 deaths off a cliff (Taft Point) in Yosemite […]

Seeing Braggadocio

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, Eldorado, America, Rising Sun, Herod, Equality). Grandiose or not, they sounded like something you […]

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

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, not like me. While I […]

Halloween and How We Dress Our Girls

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 well, not because I am […]

Facebook of the Dead

For true-crime aficionados or Investigation Discovery TV network fans, many believe that when Michelle McNamara’s posthumous book, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, was released in late February 2018 McNamara’s reporting had something to do with the arrest of the alleged Golden State Killer, 72-year-old Joseph James D’Angelo. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department contends that […]

“Planes, Trains,” and Technology

      The holiday movie-watching season is near, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is one of the classics. Steve Martin and John Candy, as I am sure you remember, are forced by mishaps into two days of bad travel together, on their way to Thanksgiving Day. The movie was released in 1987 and holds up well, […]