“The lights are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.” ~Sir Edward Grey, August 1914 It is hell living with a historian. I talk about Venezuelans’ opinions. My husband talks about an end to the international order. I wonder aloud whether AI…
What are we to make of this smackdown, all of us who thought AI would never sound profound or witty? Will the writing of books cease to be a human endeavor?
When a single model of progress is treated as universal, difference is easily mistaken for failure. Lives that do not align with that model are read as backward, compromised, or insufficiently conscious. Yet liberation loses its meaning if it cannot account for unequal conditions, uneven timelines, and conflicting needs.
Eyes squeezed shut, I can still feel (or at least imagine) my mom’s arms around me, drawing me close to her warmth and rocking me back and forth, back and forth. A reliable rhythm, its arc never too far in either direction. In milky, dazed contentment, I no doubt dozed…
Jefferson Lake is 14 feet at its deepest but holds Largemouth Bass, Channel Cats, Crappie, Carp, Topminnows, Golden Shiners, and Bluegill. Being a non-fisherman and non-city dweller, I was surprised by the variety.
This long strange year yielded some gems....
“Why,” I asked my husband, “would anyone want to waste time watching a bad movie?” “Because it’s fun,” he replied, as though this should be obvious. “No. A good movie is fun, even if it is wrenching. A bad movie is just sad. Pathetic, even. An insult to filmmaking. It…
The St. Louisan who preserved Timothy Leary's work—and should have been famous too.
Few of us as Americans believe honestly that we are equal in democracy. We only believe that it is better to believe so, rather than do so through policy and programs that will result in strife and arguments. Equality, or as de Tocqueville expresses it, the quality of being “almost the same,” exists mostly in our collective imagination. But if it does not reside there it might not live anywhere at all.
Neighbors who had always been kind, with food and celebrations shared, went cold overnight, then flamed into a murderous rage.