My phobia keeps me from drinking heavily. It makes visiting hospitals a sphere of the inferno. Even watching a movie at home is fraught, although my husband usually manages to warn me or clamp his hand over my eyes. It all started early in grade school, when three kids threw up on me in rapid […]
The Edwardsville (Illinois) High School had two incidents this month that resulted in the district organizing “listening circles” for parents. On Tuesday, November 5, “EHS Administration was made aware of a racially insensitive and inappropriate social media post that was sent off campus by one student to others via the social media platform, Snapchat,” Dr. […]
“ … if he was Anita Baker’s man He’d take her for her masters, hit it once an’ shake her hand On some ol’ thank ya ma’am an’ ghost her” —from “Figaro” by Madvillain I have been puzzling, from the safety of a marriage, over the phenomenon of ghosting and what prompts it. […]
For years there were questions about where Eddie Murphy went. It is true that, apart from his Shrek work, and a movie called Mr. Church, in 2016, Murphy has not done much for a long decade. His fans have wondered when his “comeback” might occur. It appears that time has arrived. The first sign is […]
The Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis had special programming on Saturday, but there was time before it began to look at the exhibits and stroll the grounds. Joe, evidently named for Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., sits in a courtyard down a flight of stairs. The sculpture, one of Richard Serra’s “Torqued Spirals,” is a 125-ton […]
After co-directing a succession of award-winning documentaries with Ken Burns, Lynn Novick stepped forward to direct one on her own, with Sarah Botstein as producer, and Burns stepped back to be their executive producer. Filmed over four years at maximum- and medium-security prisons in New York state, College Behind Bars focuses on the Bard […]
Cancel culture seemed, for a while, to be a reaction to celebrity culture. Like mortals scaling Mount Olympus to steal a thunderbolt or two, we had grown weary of blind worship. Determined to take back a little power, we watched closely, and whenever one of our gods proved unworthy of our ideals, we pounced. Social […]
It is one thing to live within a system you cannot admire, and another to do something about it. Those who vowed to move to Canada after the re-election of George W. Bush know this, as do those who vow civil war if Trump is impeached. Not feeling good about your subjective experience among the […]
A giant white speech balloon is tethered at the foot of the grand limestone steps of the St. Louis Central Library. Passersby pause, some thinking of comic strips, some of texts. One guy misses the little tail pointing out at the bottom of the bubble and reads it as a giant eyeball. Which makes sense, […]
Peter Matthiessen’s The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness was the same book in the 1980s, when I first read it, as it was on publication in 1961. In the 25-year interval forces had changed the Amazon, but their effects were not as apparent as they have become now. This means the […]
