The Candyman films (1992 and 2021) set out to tell a harrowing narrative of historical and modern-day racial violence in Chicago. Oddly, this began when director Bernard Rose bought the rights to Clive Barker’s novella The Forbidden. The Forbidden dealt with themes of class and social abandonment in the UK. Still, Rose, […]
It was mid-afternoon on Thanksgiving day. We were leaving one holiday party for other holiday parties where we did not want to be late. Since what we saw somewhat defies belief, let the record reflect we had been drinking only water and taking no drugs. We were driving north in somewhat […]
Who needs a time machine? I look out the window and see snow falling, and I am five again. Excited as the snow deepens, thrilled (still) to play in it, cozy in front of a fire afterward. The adult in me loves the way snow covers an often ugly world with pure loveliness—white […]
The biannual Art & Design sale at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, in St. Louis’ Metro East, was as well-attended last weekend as usual. Visitors shopped in the atrium of the Art & Design building for ceramics as well as glass, metal, photo, and print objects. Proceeds funded the Wagner Potters Association, […]
In A French Village, when her son is killed by a German bomb, a man tells the keening mother to “Be dignified.” I would slap him, but instead she pulls herself together. In a later episode, a young woman is fired from her job as a maid because she is Jewish. She turns […]
Long before Tom Brokaw christened his “Greatest Generation,” Baby Boomers inaugurated the trend of iconizing the 1960s that was their generational crucible. The peace sign, long hair, and incense-soaked head shops pretending to sell “tobacco products” softened the blow of news that a friend was killed or injured in Vietnam. To belong […]
The fabric is Scottish broadcloth, a white as warm as the sunlit cathedral stone. The colors have the pure brilliance of the stained glass. The design is clean, strong, and radiant; I cannot imagine anything more joyful. Or riskier. In a time when many Catholics are growing more conservative, the Archbishop of Paris […]
Rory came over again from the old place. His wife had been gone three weeks this time, and he would drive to the airport to get her after we ate pork nachos. We have known each other for twenty-five years. To kill time, we talked about writing for a platform on […]
When we moved into our house, a friend took in the black wrought iron fence, the house set well back from its perimeter, and grinned. “The Munsters.” Our haunting, though, took the form of rust. And because somewhere beneath the layers of black Rustoleum was an embossed date in the 1800s, we […]
Capitalizing on Christmas lost its shame so long ago that we often feel almost duty-bound to return the holiday to its Christian roots in search of what we nebulously acknowledge as meaning. This narrow pursuit denies Christmas’s celebrants in two ways: first, by blinding us to the holiday’s pagan origins and customs; […]
