Those in the Gulf South are realistic about hurricanes. Three days after Laura hit, cleanup is well underway. South Lake Charles. Groves of trees all over town are crushed. West Prien Lake Road. Tobacco Plus gas station, near the casinos. Vape shop, Ryan Street. Utility vehicles staged in supermarket lot…
In a time of instant expectation, a hurricane is a lesson in waiting. I grew up in the Midwest, where tornadoes blossom quickly, and their effects are quickly known. A hurricane grinds its way from Africa, many times, its path uncertain. Even after forecast models converge, and its landfall spot…
Dave "Tuffy" Cabusora hopes that DeJoy’s recent claim, after being put on the spot, that he will authorize overtime as needed will get things back on track. Before DeJoy, postal trucks made two stops at Tuffy’s house, every day. That stopped a month ago.
The National Center for Education Statistics says there will be about 16.5 million students taking classes at undergraduate institutions this fall, which is down by six percent from a decade ago. Still, that is some four million freshmen, and by my calculation most of…
Recent daytrips with my sons made me recognize a category of historical monument I had not considered much: the overenthusiastic mea culpa. The first was in my hometown of Herrin, Illinois. A stone recently erected in the cemetery marks the graves of “scab” workers murdered in 1922, during a…
“At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant…
“Unemployed coal miner and wife living in old barn. Herrin, Illinois.” Arthur Rothstein, 1939. FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress, fsa 8b36448. We were driving to visit my hometown, and my elder son wanted to know if I thought that where I grew up was The South. I did not…
I was bothered for a time: how did the creative talent apparent in the viral video not produce more of what was enjoyed so widely, if only for use as a promotional tool? %
There are many skillful touches to the documentary film “Father, Soldier, Son,” such as juxtapositions of images of the Eisch children, looking at photos of their father overseas, with a shepherd child in Afghanistan staring at a Blackhawk helicopter spinning its rotors in the dust.
Screen shot of video of Walmart shoppers in Minnesota today. My son and I were looking up facts about WWII’s Pacific Theater, because we had been talking about my father’s service there. It is always a shock to re-encounter the scale of that war, especially the loss…