What It Means to Try
I was not thinking of the modern catastrophes of movement and making-do that end so many human relationships in our time. For some reason I was thinking of Bobby McHein.
By Sacha Mardou
The Gun Show in the Age of Violence
The gun show was small, which was fine with me. We would not have to shuffle-walk through the civic center for long. I left my eyeglasses in the car and wore a military-themed shirt but fooled no one. Just past the ticket counter, where everyone entered and automatically turned left,…
Whatever the Opposite of Regret Is
Back in what was called (affectionately in the military) the Reagan-Bush years, I got out of the Army, did a bachelor’s in English and philosophy, then realized I needed a job. I had one unsolicited offer, to manage a city-park facility where I worked summers with a team of disadvantaged…
The Meaning of Being a Veteran
Sunday is Veterans Day, which Woodrow Wilson set in motion in 1919, when he asked the country to remember the armistice that ended WWI. Now it is a day to honor all those who have served in the military—distinct from Memorial Day (those killed serving in war) and Armed Forces…
Midterm Elections in St. Louis
An AH-1 Cobra gunship outside the VFW Post 5077, in O’Fallon, a town in Missouri’s 2d Congressional District, where Cort VanOstran (D) challenged incumbent Ann Walker (R). Some 120 people waited in line to vote during November’s midterm elections. If you were looking for a place to represent the split…
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…
Tremors and Portents
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.
Seeing Braggadocio
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,…
“Planes, Trains,” and Technology
It must seem odd to our children that this movie presents certain problems as insuperable, but then most Americans under the age of thirty have never known a time like the one portrayed.
Donut Scoff, Friends
The stretch of coastal Louisiana called Acadiana, from the Texas border to almost New Orleans, is often sold as a foodie culture, though its people would never call it that. The Francophone foodway has adapted to local resources, so French mirepoix, for instance, (carrots, celery, onion) became the Cajun “holy…
The Louisiana Elegies
Coastal Louisiana is sinking, and the sea is rising, faster than anywhere on earth. Water cuts through everything—in gutters, culverts, ditches, swales, bayous, rivers, estuaries, channels, and lakes. Tropical downpours flood the streets, stall traffic, pour over doorsills into homes. Geysers spurt out of manhole covers. Cattle stand…
Knowing Puddles
Puddles, in the shadow of his greatness. Puddles Pity Party was in town last night. I felt like the guy in front of me in line for the second Star Wars movie, in 1980, who poured bags of loose change onto the ticket counter and cried,…