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.
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,…
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…
Frankenstein bicentennial
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…
When Shakespeare, Poe, or Hitchcock wanted to create an atmosphere of mystery and foreboding, almost always a dark bird from the crow family would appear. Yet, perhaps we should rethink the way many of us think about the First Bird of Creepy. Researchers continue to discover that one of the…
There are tons of listicles during this delightfully creepy time of year recommending gothic or horror-related short stories of yore. However, I would like to share some of the creepier short fiction that has been out more recently. Carmen Machado’s masterpiece (I promise I do not use this word…