The man asking if I am a Christian is a Puerto Rican chef living in Dallas, someone I met in the strange expanse of the internet, specifically within a Chinese gaming platform called Age of Origins.
At the slot machine that night, I also had no control. I even lost my money. I did not feel so anxious. But at the trade show, I kept worrying more, trying harder, all the effort to feel in control, but did the odds change a lot? Maybe not.
Never since that first Fourth of July have we been so divided between wannabe monarchists and republicans. Perhaps what we assumed would be progress has turned out to be a circle.
“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks, and everyone has a different answer. King, prophet, peasant, rebel, son, shepherd, rabbi, redeemer—to this day, Jesus is what each of us needs him to be.
As I was being vetted, administrators asked what I would do if my Ukrainian partner wanted to talk about hardships and loss. I said I could listen. What else could I do?
Because I worked for Ray at “The Riverfront Times” for 18 years, my thoughts immediately turned to the many other “RFT” alums who loved and admired him. Over the next several weeks, I contacted more than 50 of my old colleagues and asked them to contribute remembrances of their often life-changing time at the “RFT” and to reflect on Ray’s impact on both them and St. Louis. Almost everyone said yes, and this tribute is the result. —Cliff Froehlich
The women of Lota, Chile, or Lotinas, represent a long feminist movement to preserve cultural memory and reinvigorate the economy of their city. At the end of March 2026, they flew more than 20 hours to be in residency for a week at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where they led workshops on art “as a tool of historical storytelling and civic activism.”
Not since Prohibition has there been such a strong and widespread public warning. It feels a little odd.
Having retired and returned to civilian life, what did Bo Gritz try to teach or communicate to us? Unlike, say, John McCain, he never modeled reconciliation with former enemies. He did not go to Vietnam after 1995 with veteran groups for humanitarian purposes. He did not preach against violence, or for peacefulness, responsibility, or inclusion. Mostly, he seemed interested in anti-social things: radical individualism, extreme autonomy, distrust of people, and the assumption of his own power, by violence if necessary.
Language has allowed us to be bound together by codes of law; to move easily between past and present and future; to fathom the deepest mysteries of the universe. But while scholars were busy defending our species’ superiority, biologists were uncovering mysteries of animal communication that shot down one “special” human capacity after another.