I was a kid when they discovered irony. First, irony ore had to be dug from the comic vein, said to be buried in the Poconos, then smelted in the furnace of several very earnest cataclysms. By the time I came to reason, the culture had forged The Beatles (and in […]
I used to wonder if politics boiled down to temperament. Were liberals just bleeding hearts who preferred compassion to logic? Were conservatives just devoted rule followers nervous about change? Then my mental diagram turned into a wild doodle, with fat circles at the edges for those even more rigid or more woke, and […]
She served on the highest court of the land as its first female justice. She sustained a “nondoctrinaire, context-attentive approach,” rare today, that kept her decisions aligned with the social consensus. A moderate Republican appointed by President Ronald Reagan, she received the nation’s highest medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from Democratic President […]
Is there any reason to update what your heart holds dear? Chuck Reinhart posed that question in a nostalgic song he titled after a grocery store of his childhood, Midget’s. No one knows the music of Chuck Reinhart, except his friends, like me, and a few people who have attended open mic nights in […]
Substitute teaching is one of the most important, underrated jobs of all. Thrust into an unfamiliar environment, in front of an audience that tends toward the hostile, these unfortunate people bridge a canyon of lessons from one ledge to the other until the full-time instructor returns. I had these substitute teachers […]
I bought a new Christmas tree: there is a phrase that should tip you off. I never had an artificial tree in the house when our sons were little. Every year, real pines filled the high-ceilinged bay window in our old house or pressed the ceiling in that other house. Their […]
1. I Wonder… Christmas in Ghana always began with a warm “It is Jesus’ birthday month” declaration at the end of church from my pastor and a card. My family traditionally wrote the first ones to our neighbors, the Datsas. Maame Datsa always greeted us at the gate. She was one and a half years […]
During the early days of the pandemic, my ex-partner passed time by tracing his family heritage back four generations. The majority of his relatives, he claimed, did not have ties to the Deep South and they were not remembered as poor slaves or sharecroppers. They lived comfortably as farmers in Ironton, […]
The mass exodus of Black St. Louisans in recent years continues to raise eyebrows and stir concerns that question where longtime residents are going, but mostly, why they are leaving. This city’s complexities regarding race, class, and land further muddle the reasoning behind Black residents’ migratory patterns and their move to St. Louis […]
A history repository: Greenwood Cemetery matters because it is a history repository. Established in 1874, it holds the distinction of being the first nonsectarian historically Black Cemetery in the St. Louis metropolitan area. It houses the final resting places of notable figures, from Civil War veterans to influential community leaders. It […]
