Those in the Gulf South are realistic about hurricanes.Three days after Laura hit, cleanup is well underway. South Lake Charles.Groves of trees all over town are crushed.West Prien Lake Road.Tobacco Plus gas station, near the casinos.Vape shop, Ryan Street.Utility vehicles staged in supermarket lot near McNeese State University.Emmanuel Baptist Church, Common Street.Guardsman outside Calcasieu Parish Public Defender’s Office, downtown Lake Charles.Plinth that used to hold the Confederate statue on the courthouse lawn.Capital One Tower missing windows, downtown Lake Charles on the lakefront.Former Calcasieu National Bank building, downtown Lake Charles.
I had a busy morning but by 1:00 was in Seoul Taco on Delmar with the communists. Their social media said they were organized to aid The People of St Louis, a nice sentiment, but I was interested because they said in a post that they had realized that the…
A few days ago, a man in Memphis messaged me by LinkedIn to ask if I was the person who had offered to help him market his book. When I said no, he showed me the email that offered to make his novel a smash hit.
The other day, a post on Threads stopped me mid-skim. “I am a Japanese woman,” it began. “Here are seven words my language has that English desperately needs.” For a decade now, I have been collecting words from other languages. After years wallowing in English vocabulary like a muddy…
I could never live in the desert. Rain cleans my mind. That soft rinse sluicing down, soothing all that is dry or cracked or withering. Add thunder, and you have catharsis: any violent emotion can be released into that heavenly rage. And there is no comfort quite like cuddling close…
By the time it was gone, the change was subtle but unmistakable: one corner left without its figure, one pedestal left bare. But to understand why that absence matters, it helps to understand who Kate Chopin was and the stories she wrote.
The ginger nut (and by association other cookies of its type, such as those made with black peppercorns) has an aggressive presence but offers scant sustenance. It is meant to aid digestion of other things, to have a warming effect in winter, to relieve boredom, and perhaps to remind us we are alive in the sometimes dry, husky business of life.