A member of the St. Louis Media Hall of Fame, Jeannette Cooperman was the staff writer at St. Louis Magazine for twelve years. Her work was cited as Notable in Best American Essays 2021 and Best American Essays 2023; she received the Writer of the Year award at the 2019 City & Regional Magazine Awards; and she was named to the 2017 FOLIO: 100 list of “the best and brightest” in the magazine industry nationwide. Cooperman spent a decade doing investigative reporting for Riverfront Times, where her work was recognized by the National Education Writers Association, the National Mental Health Association, the National Black Journalists Association, the National Gay and Lesbian Journalism Association, and the Society of Environmental Journalists. She holds degrees in philosophy and communication and a Ph.D. in American studies, and she has written eight books—seven nonfiction, biography or cultural history, and a murder mystery. She and her husband, a historian, live with Willie, a goofy but sweet standard poodle, in a century-old farmhouse in Waterloo, Illinois.
“Sorry to sound nostalgic,” a friend apologized, about to mention something that had changed for the worse. I shrugged. After hearing MAGA devotees long unabashedly for a time when half this country was either drugged on Valium or barred from polite society, I, too, was wary of nostalgia.…
“Every medium — print, TV, social media — has its own contract with the truth,” writes media ecologist Andrey Mir. He goes on to explain how our media gradually shattered the very notion that there is truth—singular, shared, floating above us all, letting us aspire to reach it…
Can this controversial, privately funded $850 million center—dismissed by many as a vanity project, architectural folly, and dangerous precedent—really shore up democracy?
What I love are the ways the show has succeeded. Not because it is storybook happy, but because the audience response proves we are better than I thought we were. We hunger to hear a coach or boss tell us winning isn’t everything. We thirst for integrity and principle, forgiveness and kindness.
If the amateur philosopher remains undaunted, someone might say brusquely, “Ma titfalsafi,” do not philosophize. Or, sarcastically, “Yo faylasuf”: You are a philosopher. Again, not meant as a compliment.
He had me at the name. Richard J. Powell has written a gorgeous book about Black artists and their use of color, and every page leaps up at you, jolting you into attention.
After the most gruesome, tough assignments...I went shopping.
What passes for nonchalance is often cruelty, perpetrated by the few who can still afford—and wield enough power—to live easily themselves. But sprezzatura! There is a grace to it, and a calm confidence.
Artist Spencer Finch tiled the colors of Barack Obama’s life. Women will see them better than most men can.
We need to stop forcing touch—without stopping to touch each other.
Remember Abraham Maslow’s pyramid, a hierarchy of human needs that put the basics of survival at the wide bottom, then slanted up to intellectual creativity and spirituality? We wanted to locate consciousness up there at the peak. Antonio Damasio finds it at the foundation.
Is charm a form of social glue or sociopathy?