Forecasters, Make the Weather Personal

We have all figured out what supercells, the dew point, and a wintry mix are, we have made our peace with El Niño, and La Niña, and we have flat-out given up trying to understand Arctic oscillations. Give us forecasts that tie what is inside us to what is around us.

Tell Those Angels to Stop Dancing!

Aquinas thought women easily corrupted: “When a soul is vehemently moved to wickedness, as occurs mostly in little old women…” He had paved the way for witch-burning. Plus he spent an awfully long time figuring out how male and female demons had sex.

Invent a New Kind of Femininity

“Thinking about what aging means for the trans child,” Miranda July jotted in a writing notebook. “…. And how the physical changes of middle age/old age out anyone who is living as more feminine than they were born.”

The Biggest Push Yet to Make the U.S. a Theocracy

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) opened by asking the audience the most rhetorical question possible: “Do you believe that God has a plan for America?”

A Princess Was the First Professional Writer?

Enheduanna, a Sumerian princess, is believed by many to be the earliest named writer in world history. What man would have compared his creative process to childbirth? What man could have written what might be the first #MeToo account of sexual exploitation?

I Do Not Believe in the Tarot, But—

In ten seconds at Etsy, you can find decks that are Gothic, Art Nouveau, or Impressionist; Aleister Crowley’s sexy, mystical Thoth deck; Botanica Oculta cards that look like vintage seed packets; the gorgeous black and gold Azazoth deck inspired by H.P. Lovecraft; the Abusua Pa The Tazama African Tarot; the Punjabi-influenced Marigold Tarot; a Luna Somnia deck that layers in astrology; and a deck that uses haunted cats.

The Glue That Holds Us Together

Elmer’s glue had to be smeared all over one’s finger, the inside of the wrist, or possibly the whole hand, then allowed to dry—blowing on it was permitted—and slowly, deliciously, peeled off.

Roses in an Alley

Was my cheerful trespass neighborly, an act of communal solidarity, or a brazen crime? Our jurisprudence gauges severity by dollar value, but what is the worth of a half-dead rose in an alley?

Shakespeare’s Sisters Speak Up

In Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance, Ramie Targoff points out that when Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own, “she knew almost nothing about the powerful literary works a small group of women had written—and in many cases, published—around the time of Shakespeare.”

To See, or Not to See

Michael Eastman wants to walk around my little Southern Illinois town with his camera. A photographer whose work is in museums, who has shot the world’s extremes of beauty and decay, wants to walk around Waterloo, Illinois, and shoot? What the hell do I show him?

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